In my past (pre-writer!) life, I was considered an
organized person, but the process of writing a book taps deeply into the right
(illogical) brain and that seems to have oozed throughout my whole life. Still, I cling to some vestiges of
organization that help me through the writing process. My master spreadsheet is one of them.
For every book, I open an Excel workbook and give it some
fanciful name. This inevitably has
nothing to do with the actual title of the book, which is generally one of the
last things that’s decided. For the
Brunson Clan trilogy, I called it “Reiver Record.” I’ll also select an interesting typeface and
color for headers. It’s all part of putting
myself into the mindset of the story.
This document is opened every single day and offers me a central
location to do the following:
Track hours and word count. I track my hours, word count goal and
progress, every day. (Some people set it
up by chapters, but this is what works for me.) I also make little notes on how
I feel or what I did. (Quick notes like
“love scene – needs work” or “beginning to catch fire.”) This is VERY helpful when I’m in the middle
of the next book and everything is awful.
I can look back to where I was at the same point in the previous book
and remember all looked dark then, too and it had a happy ending! Here’s a sample of how it looked at the very
beginning of a new project. You can see
the manic-depressive fluctuations I go through.
Create and remember the backstory. On another tab, I list the years since my
characters were born, with a column for their ages (hero/heroine), a column for
real, historical events that occurred that year, and a column where I can
record key life events for my characters.
It was particularly helpful when I had to juggle childhood recollections
for three Brunson siblings! That made it
easy to check when Johnnie Brunson went to court or when Bessie Brunson was
first kissed.
This also is invaluable for creating character backstory
when I need it. I simply glance at the
chart and I can see that the country was at war/peace/famine or whatever when
my character was a certain age.
Create the remember the timeline. I do a similar chart for the chronology of
the story itself so I have a record of when the various events happened, easy
to forget halfway through the story.
Remember character names/appearance. Another tab keeps track of my character names
and titles, along with eye and hair color.
This can be sorted, to make it easy to catch if you have too many
characters with names beginning with “J.”
Save tidbits of information. Whenever I have something I want to capture,
for example, the distance between two points and how long it would take the
characters to travel there, I just add a tab and make a note.
Some may prefer to do this in OneNote or another
program. For me, Excel is simple and
flexible. I back up every day by sending
this spreadsheet, along with the work-in-progress, to my Yahoo email and stick
it in a folder so I will never risk losing it.
I would mourn the loss of this master almost as much as if I lost my
manuscript!
Blythe Gifford has been known for medieval
romances featuring characters born on the wrong side of the royal blanket. Now,
she’s written a trilogy set on the turbulent Scottish Borders of the early
Tudor era, starting with RETURN OF THE BORDER WARRIOR, November 2012, Harlequin
Historical. CAPTIVE OF THE BORDER LORD
will follow in January 2013, and TAKEN BY THE BORDER REBEL in March 2013. The Chicago Tribune has called her work
"the perfect balance between history and romance." Visit her at www.blythegifford.com, www.facebook.com/BlytheGifford, or on Twitter
@BlytheGifford.
Author photo by Jennifer Girard. Cover Art Copyright ©
2013 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited. Cover
art used by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises Limited. All rights
reserved. ® and ™ are trademarks owned by Harlequin Enterprises Limited or its
affiliated companies, used under license.
