Organizing the Writing Life: Storage Systems
We writers create a lot of stuff. A certain level of organization—some small, necessary infrastructure to support this part of our creative lives—is necessary to keep all the stuff manageable and easy to find when you need it.
No matter whether you write on paper or laptop. Whether you print hard copy or store only electronic files. It accumulates.
It can drown the writer unless it’s organized.
Consider a book. Around 75,000 to 90,000 words, give or take. Maybe you are faster than I am, but my norm is about thirty iterations. Even my short stories have many versions on the way to publication. And there are not only my own documents: for every piece I write and publish, I get feedback from my wonderful writer’s group and writing partner. Last manuscript, they each gave me detailed feedback on the final manuscript, including tracking notes in Word.
First, how do I approach these notes, how do I work through them? But also, how do I store them for future reference?
Or consider research. The extensive research notes I made about aviation, Search & Rescue, and wilderness survival for my second novel. Not only do I need to keep those organized, for later fact-checking at final proof. When it came time to thank contributors in the Acknowledgements as the book was finalized for publication, I was desperate for a few days because I couldn’t locate the list of folks who helped with that research. (I did find it, in my writer’s notebook. But it was a real scare.)
Most successful writers have a method. They know how to organize the stuff they create, so that the research file is where they expect it to be just when it’s needed, or the notes from readers are easily found when ready to revise.
After a few publications, they also know what to keep and what to recycle when a new book is finally out in the world.
If you read part 1 of this organization rant, you know I am a systems geek. Systems create that infrastructure we writers need. They require some thought to create well, some time to maintain well. But they really do support the creative flow, so your writing time all about writing, not about searching for a lost file.
I’ll share my methods. I’m eager to hear yours. Tell us what works for you. How do you organize the first level of storage needs: your work in progress?
Organizing the WIP
Do you prefer tactile organization? Do you need to touch your books and papers, do tangible items to remind you of the physicality of your work?
Or are you completely comfortable with the virtual, and your entire writing life exists onscreen?
I’m a mix. I use an organization method from Twila Tharp—the project box she creates for each new dance she choreographs—and I love having everything I need on my laptop, which makes it all very portable. It took me years and several publications to figure out what works for me.
A la Tharp, I have a flat basket that sits on my desk or slides under it, out of the way, and I store all active items for my WIP here. This supports my need for the physical side of writing. Maybe I’d have clustering maps, photographs, research documents, or character collages in the basket, stuff I enjoy taking out and setting on my desk to review when I’m writing.
Since this basket can’t travel with me to the local coffee shop when I want to write away an afternoon, I also have the most necessary items stored electronically on my laptop.
Active and passive files
There are six kinds of documents I use for a WIP. They can be divided into active and passive files.
working draft (active)
past versions (passive)
feedback (active until entered, then passive or recycled)
master list (active)
research (active until used, then passive)
publication details (passive until pre-pub, then active)
Only active files take up space on my physical and virtual desktops. This was a huge step to organizing my stuff. It does require that you decide, though, what’s immediate to what you’re writing and what’s not. Horizontal filers, this might be difficult for you—if you tend to like to see everything at once, you may not move past chaos easily. But choosing really helped me. It also forced me to use feedback faster, figure out what research was a yes and what was a maybe.
Nothing is discarded with these choices, but the storage differs.
Once I decide what’s active and passive, I scan or enter the active files onto my laptop, into Scrivener if I’m drafting, or Word if I’m in revision (see below). I want them available to be used anywhere I write. So I might photograph that character collage or create that Scrivener version of my storyboard to have handy at the coffee shop.
I use something from the first five folders every day. The sixth only comes forward when the manuscript is accepted for publication and after it’s published.
Each requires a different kind of storage because of how I use it.
Working draft (active)
As I explained in part 1 of this series on organization, I use two different programs: Scrivener for my WIP at draft stage and MS Word once I reach revision of the whole manuscript. Scrivener took work to learn, and to set up. But I’m a fan. I stay in it as long as I can, working revisions of the individual chapters until they are ready to be merged with the whole.
Scrivener is what I open first to find my most current document, the one I’m working on now. It might be a scene, a chapter, or more than one chapter. Each day, I backup that version as a new document. In Scrivener, there’s a handy “snapshot” feature that lets me capture every version as it’s created, filing them behind the current scene or chapter file. In Word, which I use at whole-manuscript revision, I label each revision by title and date. I file them on my desktop, stored chronologically.
The goal here is to always be able to find, without ANY trouble, what you’ve last been working on.
Where do you store your WIP?
Past versions (passive)
Once you’ve created something, you have the choice of revising it electronically or printing it out and working on hard copy. In making a book, the writer creates so many versions, and they can accumulate hundreds, if not thousands, of pages.
Because of my decades as a professional editor, I tend to work on a new scene or chapter electronically until it’s fairly solid—the basics are in place, it’s satisfying to me on some level, although I know it needs work. At that point, I often print it out to read and edit by hand.
This creates a lot of printed hard copy, with hand-written edits. Once I’ve edited, I input the changes and the past versions get stored. These aren’t useful to have cluttering my desktop—I need to refer back to them, but not every moment. Dated at the top of the page as a header, they are clipped together and filed in folders by chapter, then as the whole manuscript, in a file drawer.
I have one large filing cabinet that stores these during the book’s journey to publication. Sometimes I need to go back and check edits. But as I say above, they are passive files and I want them off my working desktop.
Electronically, I store these versions in a master folder for each book, with subfolders for the chapters. Granted that chapters move around—parts of one will migrate to another. It can’t be helped, so I acknowledge the mess and do not try to track the origin of a chapter. Although Scrivener makes this a bit easier with its snapshots, I still move things around as the flow of the book changes.
As long as they are dated and kept in the master book folder, I can still search for sections by keyword. But the key is still: these are passive files, they don’t need to be in sight all the time, as long as I know where to find them.
Feedback (active until entered)
Feedback is essential. My feedback comes from my writer’s group and writing partner and my agent and editors. Depending on how it arrives, I store it the same way.
My agent edits on iPad with an Apple Pen so I store her notes electronically.
My writing partner, writer’s group, and editor send feedback in Word with track changes. Those are also stored electronically. I have a subfolder within the WIP folder called Feedback. Everything goes it there, and I find it by date. It often helps to rename the files: Marilyn feedback 10.22.24. Easier to find.
There are times I need to print out the feedback. Say, I have to compare four people’s comments on the same scene or chapter. Hard to do onscreen, even with split screens, so I print and lay the pages on my desk. All the revision notes and questions from feedback that I can’t use immediately go on my master list (see below)—the easy fixes I can make right away but these take thought and may cause other revisions.
When I’m getting whole-manuscript feedback (maybe 350 pages), it’s impractical to print four versions with feedback. I might print only the pages that have notes. Or I use the master list and jot down each person’s comments to think over.
I don’t keep printed feedback once it’s used—it gets recycled. I still have the electronic files in my Feedback subfolder.
Master list (active)
My most useful tool for storing and using feedback is the master list. I create one for each WIP, store it on my desktop, often print it out as well to put in the project basket.
It also includes ideas and questions, the things not yet solved that I’m ruminating about. Sometimes feedback generates more problems to solve! And if I’m freewriting in my writer’s notebook (see part 1 of this series), I often solve the problem as I write. Handwriting generates more ideas, opens me to something that typing doesn’t.
The list is gold to me during a project. It’s a place to accumulate everything I wonder about. It might have tasks to do, research to explore. Stuff I don’t want to forget.
Research (active until used)
Scrivener’s sidebars are handy for research notes, including URL’s to pages I need to find again.
But sometimes research is cumbersome. Not easy to scan or store electronically—historical documents, photographs, objects, letters, art, articles torn from magazines. I find it easier to organize these in a folder in my project basket.
My master list helps me keep track of research needed. Interviews to set up, calls to make, online searches to do.
I use my writer’s notebook to brainstorm research needs. I also use it to keep notes from phone interviews, which are not documented via email, and the name, contact info, and date I talked to that expert.
Once I’ve used research, I don’t recycle the notes—I’ve often needed them later, pre-publication, to get permissions or thank someone. But these notes are no longer active. I can keep them in a Research folder in my project basket or file them in the file cabinet.
Publication documents (passive until publication)
During and after a book is published, there’s a LOT of stuff left behind. Here’s what I do with it:
Emails with any agreements or decision points get printed or saved in an inbox folder dedicated to that book.
I discard my hard-copy versions of the chapters and manuscript pre-publication. I used to keep these for years, but I never used or looked at them.
I keep my writer’s notebook. This is my history, as I said, and great fun to review.
I archive my Scrivener files which automatically keep the earlier versions. I’ve never accessed this, so perhaps I’ll eventually stop saving them.
The final files—finished manuscript, galley proofs, final versions—all get saved electronically.
I keep five copies of the printed book in my file drawers.
Research is usually discarded if it’s been used but I keep it if it would come in handy to prove something in the manuscript. Again, never needed so far but I’m cautious.
I do enjoy keeping personal notes and emails from readers—another lovely thing to review years later when I’m starting a new project and feeling unsure about my worth as a writer.
When to start your systems
It sounds onerous to even consider creating these storage systems, so don’t worry about it yet, perhaps. The moment will come when the chaos becomes too great, and you crave the organization.
Or, if you’re already overwhelmed by the sheer volume of words and papers and files, you can start now. Never too late! I constantly refine my systems, as I learn more each time I finish a project.
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
What’s one thing you already do with your working systems as a writer that really does the trick for you to feel organized?
What’s something you’d like to try but haven’t yet?