Tools for Writers | How to organize notes from your 'napkin moments'

Are you looking for ways to organize your writing projects? Does your creative write right brain strike at all hours of the day and night. Do you have sticky notes, scraps of yellow pads and pages ripped from spirals produced from what I call 'napkin moments'.

Writing is a messy business. Ideas often come when you're not sitting conveniently at your computer. You could be on your way to the dentist when you suddenly discover your Antagonist's mother was a gypsy. Or you're making spaghetti and you realize your Protagonist, unbeknownst to you, has befriended someone most people would consider a scoundrel. You must write these things on the closest piece of paper available or take the risk of having them float forever off into the aethers.

So I was cleaning up all those paper bits of flotsam and jetsam, trying to figure out what to salvage and how in the world I could avoid the time-sucking job of entering them on my computer. TaDa! A brilliant flash of light appeared, proving that my right and left brain occasionally cooperate.

The answer? Clear poly folders. They're wonderfully low tech and the method involves absolutely no organizational skills, other than deciding what color tab to use for which project. I've been using these in my non-writing life, so I don't know why I hadn't thought to use them like this. It was one of those, I hate to say it, 'duh' moments.

Here's what I'm talking about. This particular design has color strips extending on the side with a writing strip for labeling. They're sealed on two sides only, easily accessible and feel nice in a heavy duty, but see-through kind of way.

They're only $5.99 for a 10 pack from Staples. I think Office Depot carries them too, but they like to hide them at the stores so I'm ordering the next batch online.

How about you? Do you have 'napkin moments' and a lot of messy scraps of paper that are just too good to throw away? What do you do with them?

Tools for writers: Choosing your book title

 After careful consideration and a short consultation with my advisory board, I've decided to alter the title of my book. Nothing too drastic, but I thought I would make it official here and use this chance to share a useful Google tool.



Advisory board

For the last year, the title of my book has been Guardian Cats and the Lost Books of Iskandriyah. The story is based on a mystical book saved from the burning of Alexandria's legendary library.

'Iskandriyah' is Arabic for Alexandria and I had originally decided to use that version, because I liked the exotic-ness of the word and it fit well with the fantasy genre. But for a long time, something has bothered me about it, so I stopped to analyze it.

1. First of all, although I love the word 'Iskandriyah', it's really hard to spell. More importantly,  Alexandria is a real city and the Library is a real place. The burning of the library was a famous historic event, so although my book is fantasy, it has a reality base. 
2. There's also city in Iraq named Iskandariyah and I thought that would add to the confusion. 
3. This next part has to do with very practical considerations, that of searchability. There is a cool Google Insights Tool that lets you enter keywords and compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. You can tweak this or use the simple results for a quick check. Here's what I found for my search terms:
• 'Alexandria' yielded 87 out of a possible 100.
• 'Library of Alexandria' yielded 51 out of a possible 100.
• 'Iskandariyah' yielded 20, but they all had to do with Iraq
• 'Iskandriyah' yielded 0

If I was still had any attachment to the exotic name, this pretty much decided it for me. Besides, if I could never quite get the spelling of Iskandria Iskandriyah down, I certainly didn't want to burden my readers with such a cumbersome name.

Thanks, I feel  better now.

Have book titles been an issue for you?

Need help visualizing your story? 8 tips to kickstart your imagination



Searching for the right words?


Writers have good imaginations, but sometimes we need help visualizing details if we've never been there or done that. Here's a few tips which can help you take it up a notch as a writer creating fictionalized reality.

1. Give your stories interesting settings. Think outside the box. Take your readers places they'd probably never get a chance to see. Imagine for a moment that your Protagonist and Antagonist meet unexpectedly at the World Egg Throwing Contest. Who knows where that could lead? Need a whole slew of odd events? Try odditycentral.com 
2. Is your antagonist a car thief? You don't have to go out and steal a car anymore to make it real. Most of you know you can learn how to steal one on YouTube, but maybe not like this. 
3. A great boost for describing places you haven't been to can be found on Virtual Tourist. Photos and user reviews give you first person descriptions of their experience. No one will know you haven't been there.
4. My favorite site for settings is Panoramic Earth which is an amazing tool that gives you 360 degree up-close views of thousands of places, including people who happen to be present at the time. I have a character who works at the British Museum and I was able to get a real sense of his daily environment by using this tool. It is highly searchable and maneuverable, as opposed to Google streets views can be good, but often seem to have a mind of their own.
5. How do you visualize your characters? There are lots of lists that help you create their personality, but can you see them? Here's a site that lets you choose facial profiles in a drawing format. Nicer than it sounds, http://www.pimptheface.com/create/  you don't end up with a Zwinky cartoon. There's another site which allows you to make alterations to facial photos called Face of the Future.
6. Have you thought about what your Protagonist wears? Is there one item you can dress them in that helps create an instant impression in your readers mind? Something distinctive that identifies him. Most of my characters wear cat fur, but one of my human characters is a natty dresser, who spends his entire paycheck just to make a good impression. He always wears a full length Harris Tweed coat, but I actually like this sporty one better.
7. Don't forget the audio aspect of your story? Give your writing an extra boost by including more auditory senses. Is it the 4th of July and you need to describe fireworks? Need a barn owl sound? Got a scene that could use a little extra drama with some thunder and lightning? Listen to these and more at: FindSounds.com
8. But my favorite place for great images is Flickr. Your search on Flickr will yield high quality photos that beat a Google image search all to pieces. I always link back to the image if I use it in my blog or FB page. But another way to use it is by creating a collection of pictures that evoke the people, places and moods in your book. For an example, here's my Flickr folder I created for Guardian Cats.

What tools do you use to boost your writing?

Sometimes life isn't all that pretty

This is a response to the newly issued, sanitized version of Huckleberry Finn. People who find Huckleberry Finn (along with To Kill a Mockingbird and even Shakespeare) offensive do not understand the intent of authors who write to gain a deeper understanding of human nature. Books offer us very personal glimpses into the nitty gritty of other people's lives and sometimes life just isn’t all that pretty.

Derogatory racial epithets should make us squirm. But Mark Twain was not using the N-word for shock value, or implying that it was an ok word. Huck Finn takes us on a journey to another era not so very long ago. Maybe the reality of his story jars us briefly out of our small self-absorbed universe. Maybe not. Maybe we discover things that rub our hygienic self image the wrong way. If we're lucky we might get an inkling of the idea that someone who is not like us is actually not all that different.

If we leave this world unchanged and untouched by its harsher realities, pretending they don't exist, then we've missed the whole point of being here. Purging the unsavory parts out of books seems a little like eating pre-digested food. No chewing required.

Real life is not for the faint of heart.

My antagonist is giving me fits!

I've spent all week searching the right name for her. She is an evil other-worldly creature and her name must be unique, yet pronounceable. I also want to make sure it's not associated with anyone else, real or imagined.

I usually love naming my characters and take great care in coming up with just the right one. It not only has to fit, but must enhance their personality. I think of name choice something like a costume designer choosing the right look for film characters.

But this character is not letting me off easy. She's going to be trouble.

After hours of noodling, I settled on two likely possibilites, then did a Google check. Name #1, Helvetia, turned out to be an obscure, creepy looking spider which worked well for my villain. However, it also turned out that Helvetia is the name of an ancient romanticized personification of Switzerland. After that it just didn't feel right anymore to dress my character in this name; plus it was too close to sounding like a typeface.

So, I moved on to the next name, an obscure slightly altered German word. I liked it for its edginess. It was appropriate for the character and I thought should quickly settle for Name #2 and get back to character and plot development.

In my haste, I almost skipped my usual research which would have turned out to be a disaster. A quick Google search of Name #2 presented me with a page of porn site links, complete with Google's graphic image feature.

Eeek! I am writing a children's book, not an X-rated adult romance. Imagine the embarrassment of having to explain to innocent young readers, or their parents (who might happen to look it up) why I chose [blank] name.

If I want to be even more thorough than a perfunctory Google search, I often check out the Urban Dictionary which fills me in on the down and dirty particulars of every word that gets genetically altered in the streets. I was definitely right not to choose Name #2. Kids not only know these words! They define them!

Do your characters ever give you fits like this? 

NaNo Award

I just had to share this custom designed award I received from a friend. Thank you Cynthia!

Crossing the NaNoWriMo finish line!

TaDa! I crossed the finish line on Monday at midnight with 48 hours to spare.

What a month! I started NaNo on a cross country airplane trip. I wrote my first 1,666 words flying high until my laptop battery died. It's been a wild ride ever since.

This was my first writing marathon, so I was pretty innocent as to what I might expect. This was probably a good thing and I dove in head first. What did I have to loose, but a little sleep? I was desperate to get my mojo back after several months of laziness and doubt about whether I could even write a second book.

So what's NaNo really all about? Have I actually written an entire novel? No, but I'm a lot closer to one than I was 30 days ago. What took me a year the first time around was condensed into one month.

 What did I accomplish in 30 NaNo days?

• I set a goal and actually did it! I finished! (I'm still amazed.)
• I had fun writing because the goal wasn't a finished story; the goal was to liberate my imagination.
• I do have the makings of a really fun story, albeit one that needs a boat load of editing.
• I have my mojo back!
• My writer's demons (all those self-defeating behaviors) are at bay . . . at least for today.

Things I learned which I was told were helpful and true, but now I know them for myself:

• Trust the process; don't think too much. Just write. Keep the fingers moving and surpising things do happen!
• I'm glad I started my journey with a road map and companions, i.e. plot points and a cast of characters.
• I don't think I could have done it without designating a special NaNoWriMo time to write until I got my word count in for the day. For me, this meant setting the alarm clock to 5 a.m. and starting the coffee pot.
• To keep the flow going, sometimes I simply had to start talking to myself or my characters. I found peace with this process. Blathering through the barriers, I call it.
• I forced myself not to spend time Googling 'the seven stages of grief' or 'how to steal a car'.
• I had to drastically scale back posting blogs, Twitters, and FaceBook updates.
• I had to spend non-NaNo time re-evaluating my plot and characters. A few characters were dropped off on the side of the road, but further on my Antagonist appeared, lurking in vapors of her shadow world, just waiting to tell me her story.

My first book, Guardian Cats and the Lost Books of Iskandriyah, is finished, and currently getting a professional edit.