Organization: The Novel Notebook

There once was a Writing Goddess known sometimes as Lynn Viehl, and she looked and saw other little writers aspiring to greatness, but unable to keep their plots and ideas in line.  So the Writing Goddess gave the little writers a present – The Novel Notebook.  And all the little writers were grateful, because the Writing Goddess was amazing.

I’m being more than a little silly with my story there, but sometimes that is how I feel when I open up my novel notebook.  I feel a great, huge wallop of thankfulness to Lynn Viehl for making it available to others.  You might ask me, ‘Who is Lynn Viehl?’  She’s an author with over 40 novels published, some under a different name.  I am most familiar with her Darkyn and Kyndred series, which are paranormal romance, but she also writes science fiction and has a YA series beginning later in 2011.  I think that more than qualifies her for making this handy-dandy little tool I love soooo much!

What is the Novel Notebook you ask?  Well that’s a good question!  The Novel Notebook, if you use the template Lynn Viehl has provided or you create your own, is your story bible, it’s the repository for all of the information about your novel in one place.  I like to work with the template Lynn Viehl has provided simply because it has a) everything I need already organized and b) stuff I wouldn’t have even thought about if the template hadn’t prompted me to do so.  Sometimes it’s that little information that adds another layer of depth to my writing.

I know from reading Lynn Viehl’s blog that she likes to print out the notebook and work with it in hardcopy.  I’m a child of technology and I don’t like carrying around unnecessary binders or paper that always seems like it’s going to rip off the rings.  So I took the Microsoft Office program, OneNote and literally copied and pasted the template into that program.  After some tidying up, removing of unnecessary lines, I have my own template.  No, I’m not sharing that because the content isn’t mine to share.  It’s very simple to do, just open the Novel Notebook .pdf and copy the pages and paste.  I would imagine you could do this in Word as well with much the same results.

Maybe you don’t like this template, maybe you want to make your own.  Are you one of those?  That’s okay!  I think the important thing is to keep track of your information, your characters, the nuances of the plot so that your characters are not holding a softball bat in one scene and you have no idea where or how they got it, because a few pages ago they were toting around popcorn!

If simplicity is your style, use a spiral notebook and sticky tabs and make lists.  I’ll demonstrate some of my OCD organization later on, but for this week, I want to urge you to consider taking charge of your novel.  Think of it like a business, if you will.  If you’re a writer, chances are that you want to make writing a paying career path.  Treat your material like you would your receipts or files; keep it organized however you like.  And if you don’t have a method, I invite you to steal bits of mine!

My friend Suzan is also, coincidentally, doing a series about the novel notebook for pantsers.  Go check it out!

Do you have an organizational method to your madness?  Care to share?