Hi Michelle!
Thanks so much for having me as a guest blog on The Organized Writer.
First, everyone, I have a confession to make. I’m not the world’s most organized writer. I tend to prefer scraps of papers with scribbled ‘notes to self’ to spreadsheets or electronic files with labeled with helpful headings. On my writing desk are stacks of books. Some of these I consult obsessively. They look as if they’ve sprouted yellow sticky notes. Others are just there. It’s as if I’ve placed the tomes beside me in the hope I’ll absorb their information by proximity. Next to the books are the pictures, tear sheets, and articles, thick folders full of them that I’ve collected about any number of subjects, from architecture to circus acts to sugar daddies, as well as my dog-eared notebook that has ideas, snatches of dialogue, and snippets of scenes from my work in progress jotted down whenever the mood has struck me.
When I wrote my first four novels these tools stood me in good stead. More than good stead in fact. I have a decent memory and an active imagination so remembering my characters’ names and their particulars wasn’t that difficult over the course of four hundred pages. But when I received a contract to write my Rosewood Trilogy, the first I’d ever attempted, and began thinking about its structure, one where subplots were woven through the three stories and where the cast of characters expanded with each successive book, I realized something new was needed. Otherwise my head would explode.
For a period I was at a complete loss as how best to proceed. I began to fear that I’d bitten off more than I could chew. Luckily I had a friend who was a professional writing coach in Chicago (Nancy Beckett, founder of the Lakeside Writing Studio) and she gently guided me to a solution. I realized that I didn’t need to jettison my old yet beloved ways of collecting information and storing ideas, I simply needed to adopt new ones to manage this bigger and more complex world. The trick was finding ones I’d actually use.
For me, the answer wasn’t to be found in spreadsheets, admirable though they are. My
personality is better suited to blank spaces without boxes. So I simply began to make lists. I made lists of all the characters in each book and included all relevant information: age, occupation, where they lived, and their importance to the story. I made lists of places—stores, homes, restaurants, schools, to name just a few--and included rough descriptions of their location in Warburg, the fictitious town I created where much of my trilogy unfolded. And since the trilogy was centered on Rosewood, a large horse breeding and training farm, one of the most extensive lists I compiled was of the horses bred, raised, and sold.
This sounds ridiculously simple, but without this basic organization I would have been lost in the story. Moreover, I found these lists increasingly crucial as I moved from the first book, Remember Me, to Believe in Me, and then to the last book in the trilogy, Trouble Me for they helped me to recall crucial details I’d mentioned in the first four hundred pages.
Another challenge I faced was to devise a quick and easy way to remember the key events that took place in the trilogy. As my trilogy story was about three sisters, there was a great deal of history--of family lore and unexplained events—that needed to be included. The tool I found most useful to chart all the sequence of events was a timeline. Or rather, four timelines. I made one timeline for each novel and then because I wanted to see how the events spanned the entire trilogy I created a kind of super-timeline that incorporated the significant moments in the ‘history’ of this family.
The most important thing I learned about trying to organize my approach to writing was how idiosyncratic a process it is. What I found to be useful, you may not. Whether fancy and high tech, or barebones-simple, the only thing that matters is if it works for you.
Happy writing,
~Laura
Thanks so much for having me as a guest blog on The Organized Writer.
First, everyone, I have a confession to make. I’m not the world’s most organized writer. I tend to prefer scraps of papers with scribbled ‘notes to self’ to spreadsheets or electronic files with labeled with helpful headings. On my writing desk are stacks of books. Some of these I consult obsessively. They look as if they’ve sprouted yellow sticky notes. Others are just there. It’s as if I’ve placed the tomes beside me in the hope I’ll absorb their information by proximity. Next to the books are the pictures, tear sheets, and articles, thick folders full of them that I’ve collected about any number of subjects, from architecture to circus acts to sugar daddies, as well as my dog-eared notebook that has ideas, snatches of dialogue, and snippets of scenes from my work in progress jotted down whenever the mood has struck me.When I wrote my first four novels these tools stood me in good stead. More than good stead in fact. I have a decent memory and an active imagination so remembering my characters’ names and their particulars wasn’t that difficult over the course of four hundred pages. But when I received a contract to write my Rosewood Trilogy, the first I’d ever attempted, and began thinking about its structure, one where subplots were woven through the three stories and where the cast of characters expanded with each successive book, I realized something new was needed. Otherwise my head would explode.
For a period I was at a complete loss as how best to proceed. I began to fear that I’d bitten off more than I could chew. Luckily I had a friend who was a professional writing coach in Chicago (Nancy Beckett, founder of the Lakeside Writing Studio) and she gently guided me to a solution. I realized that I didn’t need to jettison my old yet beloved ways of collecting information and storing ideas, I simply needed to adopt new ones to manage this bigger and more complex world. The trick was finding ones I’d actually use.
For me, the answer wasn’t to be found in spreadsheets, admirable though they are. My
personality is better suited to blank spaces without boxes. So I simply began to make lists. I made lists of all the characters in each book and included all relevant information: age, occupation, where they lived, and their importance to the story. I made lists of places—stores, homes, restaurants, schools, to name just a few--and included rough descriptions of their location in Warburg, the fictitious town I created where much of my trilogy unfolded. And since the trilogy was centered on Rosewood, a large horse breeding and training farm, one of the most extensive lists I compiled was of the horses bred, raised, and sold.This sounds ridiculously simple, but without this basic organization I would have been lost in the story. Moreover, I found these lists increasingly crucial as I moved from the first book, Remember Me, to Believe in Me, and then to the last book in the trilogy, Trouble Me for they helped me to recall crucial details I’d mentioned in the first four hundred pages.
Another challenge I faced was to devise a quick and easy way to remember the key events that took place in the trilogy. As my trilogy story was about three sisters, there was a great deal of history--of family lore and unexplained events—that needed to be included. The tool I found most useful to chart all the sequence of events was a timeline. Or rather, four timelines. I made one timeline for each novel and then because I wanted to see how the events spanned the entire trilogy I created a kind of super-timeline that incorporated the significant moments in the ‘history’ of this family.
The most important thing I learned about trying to organize my approach to writing was how idiosyncratic a process it is. What I found to be useful, you may not. Whether fancy and high tech, or barebones-simple, the only thing that matters is if it works for you.
Happy writing,
~Laura
