This past week was all about getting organized, or perhaps, “better organized” would be a good way to put it. You see, I have started/stopped the writing of this book multiple times, so I thought it made a lot of sense to organize EVERYTHING I had written that was previously saved “willy-nilly” all over on my laptop to specific “Book Related Folders”. Seems pretty basic, right?
I actually took the time to create/organize the file structure on my laptop to kinda match what I had already written. Something interesting happened along the way though…my “BRF” layout ended up reflecting the outline I chose NOT to use!! CRAZY! I know!! I had written several stories about specific places and specific people. I also have first drafts of my “Acknowledgment” and “Forward” as well as other miscellaneous ramblings.
The current “BRF” looks similar to:
Golf Book
Miscellaneous -> Acknowledgement
-> Forward
The Courses -> Bonnie Brook
– >Glen Flora Country Club
-> Caddy Stories
-> Cast of Characters
-> Springdale Golf Club
Family Time -> Each Family Member gets his own folder for stories
Other Stories ->
Folders are in BOLD
Documents are ITALICIZED
Again, fairly straight forward and simple to use.
I ran into another difficulty while organizing my previously written stories – most of my “people” stories were contained in a single lengthy story. So, I also took the time to create a separate document for each person. It seems trivial, but should be a great time saver when the time comes to put the stories in some type of order.
So, what did I learn this week?
1) Always start with organization! Always! It’s a time saver.
2) Be flexible! Just because I chose the 1st outline, doesn’t mean I can’t make use of the second. Make note of any/all ideas that come to mind. You may find them useful sometime down the road.
Again, I hope this information is useful to you.
Now to get back to writing the stories. See ya next week!
Dan’s View 