Quick Links: Staying Organized While You Write–and Finish–Your Book

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

What tools do you write with? I use both MS word with track changes on and Scrivener.  At How To Plan, Write, And Develop A Book, owner Mary Carroll Moore gives her professional advice on how she stays organized while writing.

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Staying Organized While You Write–and Finish–Your Book

By Mary Carroll Moore

No matter where you are in the book-writing journey, at some point the sheer volume of material begins to overwhelm and it’s time to look carefully at how to organize yourself.

A private client recently wrote me about this.  She’s been trying to locate some “islands” (snippets of writing, or scenes) that she’d written a while back, but she couldn’t remember how she’d titled them.  They were virtually lost in the mass of material on her computer.

She asked:  “I’d appreciate your advice on how to save my islands on Word.  Should I title them? Date them? How will I handle revisions? As separate documents or just edits of the original?  Confusion reigns on this front!  Also, in your book (Your Book Starts Here), you mention saving work in files.  What are these exactly and how do I create them?”

I work in both Scrivener and Word.  I find Scrivener easiest for organizing, but I do end up using Word quite a lot for final drafts before submitting.  Here are the methods I use in each, plus some low-tech organization tools learned along the way.

Favorite Tools for Organizing Your Book-in-Progress