Story notes, every writer has them!
Now there is nothing wrong with a writer taking notes. They are very useful, essential even, but if you are anything like me you acquire vast quantities of such notes and you never, ever, throw them away.
The Mobile Phone
I love my mobile phone. I’ve got an iPhone which comes with this handy ‘Note’ app. I fill my phone notes app up with obscure commentary, scene ideas, and reminders to fix things. I do this at random times of the day and night. Typing on a phone is not always easy, you can hit the wrong key and autocorrect leaps in. Perhaps you are time pressured and you don’t have time to check the gibberish you just wrote. Or perhaps like me you are not wearing your glasses and it’s all a bit blurred so you hope for the best.
Later, when you come back to it, it could be:
- A perfect note that makes complete sense
- A bit random but can be deciphered with the aid of an encryption specialist
- Utterly uncrackable
Note Pads and scraps of paper
There is something very enticing about writing on physical paper. Yes you have all these whizzy electronic options, but sometimes the paper is there and it just feels better to jot it down.
This has the same issues as the above mobile notes app, but with the added bonus of a random location.
Later you could find important story notes:
- In 1 of your 27 notepads
- In the car
- In the office
- In random other rooms of the house
- In your bag
- Photographed onto your phone!
Electronic Notes
It’s not just the notes app on your phone that can house these random notes. There are a whole heap of electronic note saving options that you can get to from your phone, electronic pad, and computer.
Later you might find your notes on:
- Word documents on the computer
- On Evernote
- On your dropbox folder
- On your airdrop folder
- In Scrivener
- In other writing applications
- On a gazillion other shared applications that may or may not sync with each other.
Duplication
There is only one thing better than taking notes and that is…drum roll please…you guessed it…making backups of your notes!
While trying to write my book blurb I managed to accumulate 17 versions scattered about my computer, airdrop, and dropbox folders, and that was without the scribbled ideas for it on bits of paper! I had made so many duplicates I had no idea which one was the most current. I couldn’t even trust the last edited date because I had gone back and opened them all!
Then there are the photo’s of notes…
The saving as v2, v3, version new, version latest, version xyz…
And lastly but not leastly, copying the same file to multiple locations!
Phew!
Love them or loath them, no writer can call themselves a writer unless they have an avalanche of notes accumulated over years and a myriad of mediums and devices.
Culling the notes!
Every now and then we have a bit of a note cull. We seek desperately to identify the ones we can throw away. This is a painful and laborious process. Simply placing a note into the ‘possible deletion’ category will be quite stressful!
Having gone through this exercise, approximately 99% of the ‘possible deletion’ will be recategorised as ‘keep’.
And finally, you decide to delete / throw away the 1% you were confident about…tomorrow!
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