How I organise my notebooks as a writer

There’s nothing like a brand new notebook. Full of promise, unspoken dreams, imaginations running riot - I love to begin a fresh page and to just start writing.

I photograph my notebooks a lot for Instagram. But they’re not just props - they’re extremely well-used. I was asked on Instagram what I use each notebook for so I thought I’d do a video sharing what each notebook has inside. And this is the result:

Planning my writing & creative projects for the final quarter of 2019

Last quarter I started a new way of organising my to-do list for my writing and creative projects. I’d been inspired by the writer Sarra Cannon of the YouTube channel, Heart Breathings, with how much she achieves, how she was so focused and the way she organises herself. On her YouTube channel Sarra described the way she would focus on just a few goals each quarter. Then, in order to achieve these goals she would break them down into projects then divide them up even further into tasks. Her tasks she would write on post-its and place them on her kanban board in her office. Once a task had been completed she would transfer to the other side of the board.

This looked genius. So I investigated further and so began my own system where I organise myself in terms of goals, projects and tasks.

Now this was something I’d been doing naturally with my notebooks but not in such an organised, methodological or structured way. And I certainly hadn’t been looking at my deep goals OR breaking that massive goal into smaller, less overwhelming ones that were achievable in just a few months. I was also trying to do everything all at once. And getting in a muddle, overwhelmed and stressed. In addition if I had a break from my writing I would be put off getting back to it as I would lose where I was in the process and soon it would feel like a huge mountain I had to climb - so I’d put it off some more.

Going back to last quarter I set up my two goals. To gain 1000 subscribers on YouTube and to get my novel ready to send off to agents and my essays written monthly so by the end of the year I’d have enough to self-publish. I talk about how I got on in detail on my latest video below but this method of breaking it all down into tasks meant that I achieved my YouTube goal with just a few days to spare! I didn’t achieve my writing goals but I have made massive progress so I am delighted with that.

This quarter I am setting myself three goals. But my writing ones are not as big as last quarter as I’ve learnt from that! I’m looking forward to the work I’ve set for myself over the next three months - have a look in the video below.

Using my writing notebooks to share my writing journey

I began writing a novel from a period of loneliness and confusion and went on to create a blog, to having paid jobs writing for book and writing websites, to gaining a literary agent, to starting an Instagram account and becoming an 'influencer', to YouTube…whilst all that time having an on/off relationship with my novel and plotting out another one.

This is my writing journey told through my writing notebooks.

WRITING MY NOVEL: Breaking it down & identifying the plot holes

Oh my goodness I am really enjoying deconstructing (if that’s the right word?) my novel in order to make more sense of it. After my last video when I finished outlining the draft into four acts I decided to break it down into chapters. This was helpful as I saw how many gaps there were and also saw there was no time structure.

But I wanted to understand the gaps a bit more. The best way of doing this was to create a grid with the main relationships and themes running along the top and the chapters down the side. I ticked off where each one appeared. And discovered that despite a lot of the novel being abut my main character’s relationship with her mother and grandmother - they rarely appeared in the story!

With this information I wondered what to do next. And that’s when a friend mentioned on Instagram that she uses index cards so you can have one for each chapter - then use others to add in all the bits that are missing and move them around. So this is what I did and which is what you can see in my latest video in my novel editing journey.

(If you want to catch up and see my novel editing journey from the beginning this is the YouTube playlist).