Writing Chronicles- Week Five

Organization

Photo Description: A picture of the author’s August 2024 Outlook calendar. Each day has many colors representing meetings or activities encompassing various parts of her life.

Week Five

I haven’t consistently used a written to-do list for many years but I can color-code a calendar like no one else. I put every personal and professional appointment on there, create work blocks, and flag emails- that’s my “to-do” list. Each color represents something different. I also live by the appointment alert because I will quickly forget where I’m supposed to be at a certain time. Sigh.

How this translates over to my writing is a little trickier. Right now I have a series of folders within folders- interviews, research, outlines, and chapters are the current folders with folders under each of them. I am prone to having multiple documents open at the same time. It’s more like organized chaos.

I recently learned about Scrivener which I am playing around with. I think the most beneficial thing I see is that access to multiple documents simultaneously is easier to manage than what I’m currently doing.

So that’s what I’ve spent my week doing- trying to re-organize my writing life.

The re-organization also includes the structure of the book. My high-level outline has become more substantial through more interviews. When writing a practitioner-focused book, I rely on finding a formula that will work for the reader and allow a level of predictability so that they can focus on the content. I have a structure to my chapters that I’m playing around with and have started brainstorming the tools I want to develop/share for each corresponding chapter.

One (of many) things I’m still not sure about is the role of personal story-telling. I didn’t think that this book was going to include a lot of my story/perspective but now I’m not so sure. I’m still grabbing with this angle as I plot out the chapters and stories for each chapter.

Week Five DONE!