I was one of those kids who loved to take notes in class.  They were color-coded and indexed.  I was always organized, at least when it came to my written work.  I taught those skills to my daughter and she made good money in high school selling her notes at the end of the year to the kids taking the class the next year.  Her notes for AP US History were a thing of beauty.

I’ve noticed some of this anal behavior creeping into my life as a writer. I crave organization, beautiful notes, color coding.  That’s hard to do on a computer.  So I’ve had to find other ways to get organized.

I found this desktop calendar at Target for a dollar.  It may be hard to tell (I purposely fuzzed it out), but that’s Fool Me Once, fully plotted, and with each subplot color-coded.  I recently discovered Frixion erasable pens and highlighters and that made this job an absolute joy.  It was like a spa day for my nerdy side. Total indulgence.  : )

But now, I’ve found something even better.  No more erasing entire squares on the calendar to move them somewhere else.  I don’t even need to stock up on more erasable pens because this new system is computer-based.

Here’s a screen shot.

This is the beginning of Reading the Signs outlined in Aeon Timeline.  Not only does it keep the work organized, but I can color code the various subplots.  At the bottom is a list of all the characters and it gives their ages when each event took place.  This was incredibly helpful in getting the back story straight.  You have no idea what a headache it is to keep all the events, ages, and characters straight over a period of time.  With this program, so much of the math is taken care of.

So, that’s my new toy.  It’s been incredibly helpful in getting my thoughts organized on Fool Me Once.  I’m editing like crazy and its starting to shape up, but there’s still oodles to do.  In fact, I need to quit fooling around and get back to work. 🙂