Remember Everything
We have all been in this situation; forgetting some small detail about a character we created months–or even years–ago. It can be very difficult to keep up with all of the minutiae of our character’s lives, and I do not expect any one writer to have an infallible memory of each and every aspect of their characters.
What is a writer to do?
Traditionally, writers have kept extensive notes in a variety of places. Often, these notes are in the author’s own filing system, which can be quite foreign to the outside observer. While this does not impact the author’s own writing habits, it may impact any future developments in his created universe by outside writers.
And besides: who remembers which toe of the main character had that birthmark shaped like Istanbul, anyway?
Enter Evernote.
What is Evernote?
Evernote is a freemium online service which syncs your notes across multiple desktop and mobile platforms. Think of it like an outside extension to your own brain.
Within Evernote, a user can create “Notebooks” to organize a set of notes easily. Tag functionality is also built in, making for easy location of the user’s notes. Couple these things with a robust search feature, and you have yourself a simplified technological brain extension.
Evernote also supports syncing files of pdf, ink, audio and image formats (for Free account members) and files of any format (up to 25MB) for Premium members. Not only can you attach files to your notes and have them easily accessible on the platform of your choice, but Evernote also gives you the ability to edit files in-note, allowing you to save your changes back to “the cloud”.
My Evernote Writing Setup
I use Evernote on three primary platforms: Windows, Mac OS X and Android. The Windows and Mac desktop clients have superb functionality when it comes to editing and organizing notes, whereas the Android client allows me to take my database of notes everywhere I go.
Once you have signed up for an account at Evernote, load up the client to get started.
The first step you will want to take is to create a new notebook. You can accomplish this a number of ways, I chose to right click “All Notebooks” and choose “New Notebook”:
Create a new notebook
Next, name your notebook something that you can easily remember, such as “Writing”:
Name your new notebook
That is how it begins. Once you have a notebook setup for general writing notes, you can get started with bringing in individual ideas, characters, locations, story snippets, etc.
Using the tag functionality helps dramatically when trying to keep things straight. I have a tag dedicated to each story, and a sub tag for each individual type of note: Character, Event, Location, Story, Timeline:
Create relevant tags
The Results
While using Evernote to organize your writing will not magically make you a better writer, it will make remembering the smallest details much easier. I am able to set up a “Character Profile” for each character in a story, which could include personal details, significant life events, or even attach images of people who I think of when writing about the character.
This type of system becomes indispensable especially when there are long gaps between times when I sit down and write. And the ability to use the same notes wherever I go, synced to the cloud is like a dream come true when I compare it to the thought of lugging around notebook after notebook that can get easily lost or destroyed.
An added bonus when using Evernote is backups. Once a note is created in Evernote, it is sent to the cloud, as well as synced to any client that you have signed into and the web interface. If your hard drive crashes, fear not! Evernote has your stuff!
If you were to pass away today, are you confident that your writing would be available to your children, or any other interested party who could pick up where you left off? I have given my wife the password to my Evernote account, in case of my demise. While I do not expect her or any other person to be particularly interested in my unfinished works, I do like to think that they would still be available just in case.
How About You?
What type of system do you use to organize your creative writing?
{ 2 trackbacks }