Writing Journal Organization
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Journal Selection: There are millions of journal styles out there with different sizes, shapes, and design. Picking one out is the most exciting as well as important things to think about when first starting out.
Mine is a medium thick spiral bound notepad that is not as big as an actual notebook or as small as a stickynote. It Includes lined square shaped pages with a transparent cupcake cover on the front. Make sure to choose a journal that represents you and makes you feel comfortable of writing inside it.
Sections of organization: Now that you have choosen a journal that fits you, you have to organize the sections of what things you write in a number of pages. What I mean by that is like for example, having a section for advice notes, your story developments, or just an inspirational section.
On mine I created stcky note tabs that corresponds to the section.
Tab 1- Advice Notes Tab 2- - daily writing excercises Tab 3- Story developmets
Tab 4- random ideas for stories Tab 5- quotes and research
Here is a list of sections you can include in your writing journal. *= important
- Advice notes
- insprationl quotes
- writing excercises*
- personal experiences*
- Story developmant and expansion
- character development (creating a bunch of random characters)
- random ideas or inspiring thoughts for a story*
- random diaolouge for charaters
- blog posts and articles (nice for bloggers)
- Book reviews
- thoughts about your recent books
- Poems
Calander- Including a calender is optional but it really helps you keep in line of your day to day work for your stories, blogs, or things that you need to jot down. My calender that I inserted in the beginnning page of my writing journal really helps me a lot in what I HAVE to do for my blog and events for online writing programs or contests.
Writing Prompts Section- I will be explaining more of this in the next post of this series but it is VERY important that you create a section for daily writing excercises. In the next post I will be explaining writing propmts, excercises and where to keep and organize them in your writing journal.
Design- This is also an optional step but it's really fun to do and create to make your writing journal represent you more. I am not a huge expert on notebook designs but here are a few ideas if you want to.
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So yeah, these are some really great designs and you can always go online and just search 'Creative Journal covers' and dozens of journal designs.
I hope this article helps with your writing journal organization, remember it is important to add sections to certain writing topics but it's your journal so do whatever your comfortable with!
How are you going to organize your Writing journal?
Keep in touch to my blog, on the third post to this series I will explain writing prompts/ideas to write for and your writing enviornment. Hugs and Candy! :)
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I buy these little three section spiral binders that are 8.6x6.5 college ruled. I use one section for each book I am planning out. I use post-its within the book's section to mark what pages are what. Like, the character designs I mark with a small post it of one color to show where they start, I keep plot outlines marked in a different color. Then I have a separate notebook of the same size that I use each section for different things. One is for random plot ideas, the second for character ideas, names, random quotes, and then the third is for anything else that might need tracked for any story idea I come up with. I have a single section 8.85x5.85 notebook that I keep for my blog things. I use post-its to organize it and keep post ideas in it. I also have a constant to-do page while I get the blog and posts formatted how I want them to be, plus a list of photos I need to take to use in my entries.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite part about my notebooks is that I can color code them. I need the colors to keep my brain straight, so like on my character sheet pages I can write the sections in black, write out the character info in red, and then I have blue or purple I can use to write over the red as I finalize things. Makes things so much easier on me.
I'm pretty much surrounded by about 4 notebooks at all times, two for my books/stories, one for my blog, and then one that I use for random things.. shopping lists, to-do lists, notes for the games I play.
Love the post! You made some changes to your blog as well didn't you? It looks different.
yeah I keep post its as labels too and color coding sounds like a great idea! wow i like your way of having multiple notebooks for a subject, sometimes it's hard for me to keep track of even one journal.
Deletethanks! I did change some parts of my blog a few days ago, i annoy myself sometimes when I keep changing things! thanks for commenting ariel! :)
Hi Josie,
ReplyDeleteI'm definitively not so organize!
I keep a journal for my thoughts for my book. I begin by writing some random ideas on the front page.
After that, if I have some new ideas about the characters, I turn my journal and I start to write from the end.
And if I think of something during the night, I'm capable of opening the notebook in the middle.
So, when I'm in front of my computer, strangely, it's not difficult at all to make sense of my very personal organization. But maybe for somebody it will be a mess!
Lucie
http://newbooksonmyselves.blogspot.fr/
Wonderful blog & good post.Its really helpful for me, awaiting for more new post. Keep Blogging!
ReplyDeleteJournal support