Monday
May172010
Ways to save your ideas
Monday, May 17, 2010 at 9:57AM
I’m at that awkward stage where I’m thinking about what to write next. Over the past fifteen years I’ve assembled something like a hundred and fifty possible scenarios for stories. I still have them all even though some of the older ones really do make me blush.
Here, for example, is one from 1998 when an American publisher was courting me with the idea I could be ‘a Michael Crichton who could write.’
See? I’m not proud. I’ll even show you my old embarrassments. But, rubbish ideas apart, keeping thoughts is important. The big question is: how the hell do you manage them over the years?
The old answer was: folders. You create one called Ideas and throw everything in there. Been there, done that. The trouble is folders are like old metal filing cabinets. When I became a reporter on The Times they gave me one of them. I felt I’d finally made it. Every time I came across a piece of paper I thought I ought to keep I threw it in the filing cabinet.
One day the news editor came over and said, ‘You know that story you wrote three weeks ago? Someone’s threatening to sue. We need to see the source material.’
News editor leans down and looks me in the eye then says, ‘You do have it, don’t you?’
I patted the filing cabinet, smiled and replied, ‘Course I do.’
‘Good. Well find it.’
Gulp. Find it? I thought filing cabinets were about storing things. Not finding them.
Same on a computer. Yes, we now have fancy searching things that can track down a word in a document. But that’s just a word. What I want is something fuzzier, something that doesn’t mind where the thing you’re hunting lives and won’t go into hiding if you file it into the wrong folder.
What I need is a tag.
It’s very easy to tag files in Vista and Windows 7. You can find the instructions here. In Word you just fill in the tags you want in the properties box (remembering to separate them with a semi colon, not a comma) when you save the file. It looks like this.
I have now tagged the outline above ‘Ideas; Rubbish’ and it will happily appear every time I type either word into the Windows search box even if I move it to a different location on my computer. See the difference between this and having a folder marked Ideas? With a tag it doesn’t matter where the file sits. You can have umpteen different project folders and tags will be found across them. Tagging is also available on the Mac, though in a slightly more cumbersome fashion. The easiest way to deal with it is through a free add-on app Tagit. Mac users who want to tag as you save need to fork out $34.95 for Default Folder X.
This is based on using your computer as your filing cabinet which may be a bit big and cumbersome for many (and you need to remember to tag of course). There’s a strong argument for using tagging in a specific app that handles nothing but ideas.
On the Mac you could do this in MacJournal or even Scrivener, both of which handle tags. The same goes for OneNote and WinJournal on Windows. And Evernote, which runs on pretty much everything, uses tags too, of course. With these you tag a single entry, be it text or image, web page or video.
You need to work out which filing system works best for you. The pros and cons seem to me to be…
Leave it to the computer’s filing system
In favour…
Against
Use a specific info app such as MacJournal or OneNote.
In favour…
Against
In short… if you’re as disorganised as I am it’s just a good idea to tag everything that might of future use as you save it – idea, possibility, whatever suits you. If you’re half organised it may be worth setting up a specific ideas store in MacJournal, Evernote or OneNote or something and stuffing everything in there.
The main battle over possibility ideas is, in my book, the fight not to lose them. I need, from time to time, to be able to go back to my computer and just retrieve a bunch of notions very easily and quickly.
If you can’t do that you will, one day, kick yourself. And you won’t even be able to remember why.
Here, for example, is one from 1998 when an American publisher was courting me with the idea I could be ‘a Michael Crichton who could write.’
Apocalypse 16
A renegade Gulf War veteran is threatening to release Sarin poison gas on a pre-Christmas New York in the belief that he’s the ‘seventh angel’, sent to fulfil a biblical prophecy that triggers the end of the world. Frank Chesterton, a misfit thrown out of the UN chemical weapons inspectorate, starts to convince city cop Sandy Duke the threat exists. But they get caught up in an accident at one of the Angel’s makeshift gas factories which leads the police to believe that Chesterton is the one behind the terrorist threat. Duke, against her better instincts, throws her lot in with him, convinced there isn’t time to catch the real villain before he commits a major attack on the city. Chesterton and Duke are forced to combine their very different talents to apprehend the Angel through a combination of intelligence and direct action that leads to a final showdown as the city sits on the edge of disaster.
See? I’m not proud. I’ll even show you my old embarrassments. But, rubbish ideas apart, keeping thoughts is important. The big question is: how the hell do you manage them over the years?
The old answer was: folders. You create one called Ideas and throw everything in there. Been there, done that. The trouble is folders are like old metal filing cabinets. When I became a reporter on The Times they gave me one of them. I felt I’d finally made it. Every time I came across a piece of paper I thought I ought to keep I threw it in the filing cabinet.
One day the news editor came over and said, ‘You know that story you wrote three weeks ago? Someone’s threatening to sue. We need to see the source material.’
News editor leans down and looks me in the eye then says, ‘You do have it, don’t you?’
I patted the filing cabinet, smiled and replied, ‘Course I do.’
‘Good. Well find it.’
Gulp. Find it? I thought filing cabinets were about storing things. Not finding them.
Same on a computer. Yes, we now have fancy searching things that can track down a word in a document. But that’s just a word. What I want is something fuzzier, something that doesn’t mind where the thing you’re hunting lives and won’t go into hiding if you file it into the wrong folder.
What I need is a tag.
It’s very easy to tag files in Vista and Windows 7. You can find the instructions here. In Word you just fill in the tags you want in the properties box (remembering to separate them with a semi colon, not a comma) when you save the file. It looks like this.
I have now tagged the outline above ‘Ideas; Rubbish’ and it will happily appear every time I type either word into the Windows search box even if I move it to a different location on my computer. See the difference between this and having a folder marked Ideas? With a tag it doesn’t matter where the file sits. You can have umpteen different project folders and tags will be found across them. Tagging is also available on the Mac, though in a slightly more cumbersome fashion. The easiest way to deal with it is through a free add-on app Tagit. Mac users who want to tag as you save need to fork out $34.95 for Default Folder X.
This is based on using your computer as your filing cabinet which may be a bit big and cumbersome for many (and you need to remember to tag of course). There’s a strong argument for using tagging in a specific app that handles nothing but ideas.
On the Mac you could do this in MacJournal or even Scrivener, both of which handle tags. The same goes for OneNote and WinJournal on Windows. And Evernote, which runs on pretty much everything, uses tags too, of course. With these you tag a single entry, be it text or image, web page or video.
You need to work out which filing system works best for you. The pros and cons seem to me to be…
Leave it to the computer’s filing system
In favour…
- Works with all sorts of files. You can tag a Word doc as a possibility just as easily as you can a photo
- Simple to use (particularly on Windows)
- Easily portable – the tag sticks with the file, and can be read when you transfer it to your laptop
Against
- It’s easy to forget to tag when you save a file – more obvious when you’re using an information app, not just the ordinary computer filing system.
- Can’t transfer across operating systems – Macs can’t read Windows tags and vice versa (though I suspect there may be some coming interoperability for Office files). But if you really want to do this across different kinds of computers Evernote, clunky as it is, probably represents your best bet.
- Messy for tagging web pages. You either have to print or save them first somehow.
Use a specific info app such as MacJournal or OneNote.
In favour…
- Tagging ought to be second nature when using these things because you’re in the business of storing info already.
- You see the results more clearly since they’re confined to the app, not a bunch of different files in Explorer or the Finder.
- You can just copy and paste web pages straight into an entry
Against
- You need to decide in advance where you’re going to keep your basic ideas store – a journal or document dedicated to possibilities for example.
- Info apps don’t search everything. They’re very specific, discrete filing cabinets and can only see what’s inside them.
- Unless you’re careful it’s easy to lose stuff.
In short… if you’re as disorganised as I am it’s just a good idea to tag everything that might of future use as you save it – idea, possibility, whatever suits you. If you’re half organised it may be worth setting up a specific ideas store in MacJournal, Evernote or OneNote or something and stuffing everything in there.
The main battle over possibility ideas is, in my book, the fight not to lose them. I need, from time to time, to be able to go back to my computer and just retrieve a bunch of notions very easily and quickly.
If you can’t do that you will, one day, kick yourself. And you won’t even be able to remember why.
Reader Comments (9)
David, this is excellent advice. I use tags in firefox browser and they are great for research purposes. But what about offline ideas that occur away from desks, ipads and smart phones? I put mine all in a notebook. It was only after I left the notebook in a pub that I realised I needed to 'back-up' my written notes in a second pad. Cue much confusion and interesting hybrid story ideas...
I'm hopeless with anything on paper - it WILL be lost. That said I still think there's some way to go with the whole 'keep it, don't lose it' thing on computers. It should be easier. Same with to-do lists too. These simple things shouldn't be so hard.
You looked at YEP? The same developers made TagIt. YEP has TagIt on steroids as part of a much more sophisticated document management program created for people who like their files organized visually. This is one manual you have to read, however.
http://www.ironicsoftware.com/
It works across drives, and newly mounted volumes.
Batch tagging if you forgot to do it, or if the docs are 20 years old. Collections. A magnifying glass that lets you peruse portions of docs on a storyboard-like viewer that shows scaleable thumbnails of your docs.
Some intro videos to see how it works.
http://www.ironicsoftware.com/yep/video.html
Tags never work that well for me. Eventually I have far too many of them. Sure, they're better than nothing, but only just.
I've just started using Circus Ponies' Notebook 3.0 for organizing my writing life. I've got so many snippets, projects etc. I'm slowly setting up a notebook for this. Gonna take me a while.
What I'm doing is using the traditional computer folder structure with as much organization as I can muster. Then I create a notebook page for each project or idea and link (not embed) the files for that project on the page. Also, I can enter notes about the project, set up action boxes and due dates for submissions, keep a record of rejections and acceptances, and so forth.
It's already working well for me. Good way to keep track of revisions and the things you need to do for several different projects. The only bad thing is that I didn't start doing this years ago.
Yep - bought that too! Somehow never managed to get on with it. Don't quite know why. I always found it counter intuitive trying to turn pages I guess. MacJournal was definitely the best Mac info app for me.
I tried YEP but it didn't treat Scrivener files as documents, so it didn't help me.
I haven't tried MacJournal. Guess I should.
My wife took to Notebook instantly but it took version 3.0 and several attempts for me to finally feel comfortable with it and know what I wanted to do. And yet it's still a little awkward. They really need to revise their interface.
I seem to remember struggling with it too. The way Windows 7 treats tags, as simple file metadata, is the way forward. Apple should build it into OS X. Scrivener files are, of course, not really files but folders which is probably part of the problem.
Have to confess.. right now I am messing around with Windows with OneNote 2010. A lot more interesting than it looks at first sight, but it's not coming to the Mac
I do think with these things you have to find what works for you and then just stick with it. Which I simply can't do.