How I Stay Organized As An Author
When I first started writing my first book (that will not see the light of day), I was building and creating a world from scratch, and I quickly learned that I needed to get and stay organized as an author.
In my coaching business, I organize my business life in the Google ecosystem. My work schedule is on Google Calander, and my email is through Google for Work. Even my work documents and files are housed on Google Drive, so it was only natural for my writing life and business to live in Google’s ecosystem too.
My World
The world that I created from which all my books in the series originate is organized in what I call my New World Bible. I keep track of everything related to my world in this document. I have things like which eco-cities exist and what real-world city is each eco-city is based on. I have a world timeline that keeps track of historical events and timelines throughout the book series. This is helpful when I am planning a long expansive series of books. I also have details on the dynamics and when they reveal. This is just a small taste of what information lives in my world bible.
This document changes and evolves over time as I write more, and this one document made writing my New World Origins Novella easier. I’m writing New World Origins after I complete the draft for the first book in the series. With this document, I can write the books out of order as my creativity flows in different directions.
Series Plan
This document also lives in Google Drive, and it functions as a map of my plan for the series. It tells me how many books in the series there are. What themes are covered? Which tropes, who are the characters and the villains, and which conflicts and societal themes are covered? The series arc is also recorded here. When writing an expansive world and series, author organization is an absolute much. If I didn’t have this document as the foundation for my series, I would be writing blind. I’ve tried writing that way, and it’s absolute hell and ineffective.
Book Brainstorm
This document houses any and all ideas and details that I can come up with for each book. The story starts here. No matter how bad or outlandish the idea, I get it out of my head and into this document. This document is the spark of my ideas. I will add to this document over a week’s time.
Character Interviews
After I have a Book Brainstorm document, I start putting together Character Interviews for each of the main characters. It holds a series of questions and details about each character. I take about an hour per character per interview. It houses details about appearances and important dates, to their values system and backstory. Who is in their family? Do they get along with their family members? Questions and details like that.
Also in this document is an ongoing list of every character that shows up in the books. My Character document is organized for the entire series, I tried it per book, and it didn’t work as well since many characters cross over in different books.
Story Outline
Ah, the age-old writing question. Are you a pantser or a plotter? Being the hyper-organized person that I am, I found that for me writing a manuscript, especially a romance is nearly impossible for me without an outline. I plot in a very detailed fashion for each chapter with ideas from my book brainstorm. It’s how I make sure that all the necessary beats are hit and that the structure of the book is paced correctly.
I consider myself an intuitive writer, meaning I have a rough idea and some details about what happens in each chapter, but most of the book, chapter by chapter, comes to me as I sit down and write. The story may veer off from the plan as I’m writing, and I am totally okay with it. As long as the story still works and is showing up in an organized way.
I write chapter by chapter, and I find that I can’t jump around; I need to write in the linear order of the story’s progression. I also use Gwen Hayes’ Romancing the Beat to plot out my romances. There are many ways to plot a book, Save the Cat, Romancing the Beats, etc. What works for me is Romancing the Beats. I used to really struggle with plotting my books until it just made sense and clicked after reading her book.
Manuscript Drafts
Each draft that I write of the manuscript of a book has its own document. This might be overkill, but this is how I keep track of my rewrite notes to myself and any and all feedback from my Alpha reader, my loving and devoted husband. He sees the story in all its messy, ugly glory before anyone else gets their eyes on it. With his feedback and our notes, I can make sure that the story and flow are solid before I start my own rewrites. Most authors will tell you that all of their first drafts are horrid, and in this draft, I give myself permission to totally suck. As long as the words are on the page, I can polish them up later in other drafts.
In Conclusion
So that’s it. This is how I organize my writing process and write as much as I can to share my stories with the world. My life is crazy, and I have many roles in my life, mom-mode, business owner, supporter, and wife. If it weren’t for my organization, I would never be able to have my audacious goals and actually have books to publish for my readers.
Having all of these different docs in the cloud means I can jot down thoughts and ideas in between tasks when my creativity strikes or I can edit the next chapter for my husband while I’m waiting for my daughter (Monster) to get out of school. This organizational system allows for bursts of creativity or when I am in the flow and not miss a beat or lose an amazing idea or detail.
I have big plans for my author career, and without organization, my goals and dreams would never actually come to be. I would just be spinning my wheels in the land someday.
In the future, I will share how I stay organized in the business side of becoming an author. As a Business Coach, this may just come naturally to me; I know business. But sharing these details may help some of you that also share the same dream of becoming an author someday.
