by Laura Armstrong

(From the December 2004 issue of the Update.)

My husband’s the one with the “neat” gene. I’m the one that has to have everything out where I can see it or I forget I have it. Consequently, my work spaces are usually more disorderly than he can handle; he just groans and shakes his head as he walks away. This is something of a bonus because it means I get left alone at my desk, 15-lb. cat lying on the keyboard and children clamoring to go onto CartoonNetwork.com notwithstanding.

But put me online, whoo, baby, I’ve got some organization skills here, let me tell you!

It’s all about tools and knowing your limitations. If I put a piece of paper in a file folder and file it away, you guessed it: it’s out of my sight and it’s as if it never existed. I won’t raise my weary butt off the chair to go hunt it down, especially if I’m writing hot. I want it literally at my fingertips, just a click away.

Good old MICROSOFT WINDOWS EXPLORER helps me out here. I have a set pattern for all my books in progress. There’s the main book folder, then subfolders entitled “People,” “Places,” “Other,” and “Clothes.” Don’t ask me why “Clothes” is a top subfolder; that’s just the way I’ve always done it and if I move it around, I forget where it is. You go with what works.

What characters are wearing is part of the fun of writing, and I am an inveterate snipper from Internet shopping sites. For instance, I have a scene in my head where the female lead is going to a formal and wants to look smashing, so she wears what? I hit the Chadwick’s site, or Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Old Navy, whatever fits the occasion, and I pick out a dress for her. Then I right-click “Save Picture As” right into my clothes folder. She’s ready for the ball.

Okay, here’s my big confession. That’s where I get a lot of my characters, too. Models, actors, newspaper photos, online photo archives from the 1880’s, you name it. I find a picture online that fits my character and click it into my “People” folder. What can I say? I’m a visual learner.

“What if you find a picture in a magazine?” you ask. SCANNER/PRINTER/COPIER. $99.00. Hewlett Packard makes ‘em cheap and trouble-free.

For research on settings, events, etc., I love the standards: http://www.google.com, Yahoo’s search engine, http://www.mapquest.com, http://www.askjeeves.com. But I work off as many as three different computers, and keeping “Favorites” up to date on each computer is not realistic. I use a spectacular tool called BACKFLIP (http://www.backflip.com) which allows me to store links online on a passworded site. I can log in from any computer, any time, and retrieve my links. There are tools to organize the links into folders and subfolders, add descriptions, and—always important—back up your links to a single file that you can store on your PC, diskette, whatever, for safekeeping. You can download a “Backflip Now” button to your browser to make storing your links even easier.

Another tool, although a bit pricey, is ADOBE ACROBAT. Not the Reader, but the full version that allows you to create PDF files from any file, picture, PowerPoint presentation, Word document, website, you name it. For those web links I think might be taken down, I print the pages to Adobe Acrobat and store them in the appropriate folder. (Also good if you want to send your work to someone you really don’t want to be able to change anything in it.)

When I actually settle down to write, I use WRITEWAY (Professional Version 1.6, http://www.writewaypro.com $79.00). Again the need for visuals kicks in. In this program you can “build” a book. Its structure on the screen is Windows-Explorer-like. On the left you see icons for your chapters and beneath them you add scenes. On the right is your word processor. All of this allows you flexibility in moving scenes and chapters around, something that I find too confusing to do in Word or with—God forbid—paper. Also included in this simple but robust program are notecards for plot, character, setting, motivation, create-your-own, to keep you on track with what’s going on. There is an area for tracking research notes, character formation, and previewing-printing your finished book. Storyboarding, outline tools, and—gotta love this—word count tracking and goal setting are included. Need to get 50,000 words done in a month? This little baby will tell you the minimum word count per day you’ll need to crank out and then will chart your progress for you.

I can’t even use Word for writing after getting hooked on this tool. Not to worry if that’s what you’ve been using though. WriteWay has an import-export tool, so you can get it back and forth into Word and other programs if you need to. By the way, the wife of the software developer is romance author Tina St. John.

So there. See? I’m organized. Bad thing about that, though. I have no excuse for not getting the next chapter done!

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Laura Armstrong served as WRW’s webmistress and has several romance novels laid out in nice, neat electronic folders online.