Writing again! And what's saving my booty...
Hint: My MacAir, Notion, and Google Docs are the stars of the show
Hello, mid-September!!
I started working on my current series in 2015 when we moved back to Astoria, Oregon, from Washington, and in the last month, I have also created new files in Google Drive where I've been dumping all of my notes into so I have one source for all of the material -- that is huge, because I'm drafting/planning in Notion, but writing in Google Docs. And I'll format all of my novels in Vellum.
But I had/have notes in OneDrive, Dropbox, a 3-ring binders, random journals, even loose-leaf paper in a folder... it's insane! I had notes on names in a little journal here, and notes on pacing in a composition book there... a huge series bible for each series in a 3-inch, 3-ring binder... and I love binders, but it's not practical for me to write all of these things out on paper when I only have to turn around and need to have them in files on my computer. And paper notes don't have a "search" feature. Oops.
So, new plan: Everything is in Notion, and my Master Writing Files are in my Google Drive (for when I'm actually writing the manuscript for each novel). I can access those two sources from any device, unlike Scrivener, and Notion is truly the greatest tool ever and it can organize anything!
When I started my latest series, it was set in Astoria, Oregon. I'd named the town Cordelia after one of my favorite little shops we used to hang out in when the girls were babies in Tillamook. The series then was called The Chronicles of Cordelia, but all of that has since changed.
We'd moved to SW Oregon to the Umpqua Valley after Astoria, and so I started changing the location to there, renamed everything, changed the nature of Cordelia to reflect that area of the state (with more notes), made notes on the weather and rhythm of the environment... but then we had to move to eastern North Carolina last year, and I realized I couldn't write about anything set in the place where I'd lost everything. And I can't write a book set here. Crap!
But I realized I spent the last few months trying to figure out how I was going to be able to write TWELVE books if I couldn't even figure out WHERE these people lived... because Astoria was out, Tillamook was out, and Roseburg was out... so where was Cordelia going to be set?
We moved to our second house in ENC at the end of April and here, in this house, I can think. I still don't want to be living in this state. We still only think about leaving and moving back somewhere that feels like home, but this house lets me think straight... and so I now I am finally on the right path to write these books. I know now where Cordelia sits on the planet, and everything else is falling into place.
Because not only do I have these twelve books to write, I now have a second series of twelve that will be a spin-off of the first series.... and so I had to have somewhere for all of those books to live on the computer, not in 8 million notebooks. And the answer is Notion and Google Docs.
My Notion is beautiful. I had a lot of the files already in place for my writing business in there, but I wasn't using Notion every day to actually do any work, but now, I open it every day and get to work. I'm treating writing like my job, I can open my MacAir anytime and work, even for half an hour between things that are going on here, because this laptop is incredible -- the battery lasts forever, it's as light as a feather, and this house is peaceful enough to let me think. (I'm still painting/unpacking, etc. on the weekends, and writing during the week.... but still...)
After working for weeks and weeks, I have a huge Character Bible in place where I've cross-linked everyone's name, leaving the bulk of their info under their first name so I can find everything I know about that character in about two seconds... I have Series Bibles for both series ready to go -- notes on the towns, the waterways, the businesses, the magic systems, and I've collected Google Earth screenshots of the places I'm setting each town so I remember what it looks like, and feels like, when I'm writing. I've collected weather information for each town, and I'll be drawing maps of everything to include in the books and on my website.
I also have a spot called "Threads" and that is where I pop little notes on things that happen early in the story, but I need to remember to include later, or if something needs to happen later in the story, I can tuck those hints in an earlier book... or just a little tidbit I don't want to forget... all of those rando thoughts go in there so nothing is lost.
I have massive timelines set up that I'm using to keep my generations straight -- I have one Google Sheet where I have all of my main characters laid out so I can see when everyone was born and died, and who was alive at the same time... doing this truly makes it obvious when I have someone's age wrong. (I had so many mistakes in my endless lists of characters' ages, OMG.) But when everyone has their own column, and those colored columns are laid across one table, you can see how that character couldn't be the mother of that character, since she was only 8 in 1974. Whoops.
That's my Character Timeline, but I also have the Master Timeline, where I have the years from 1880 forward, each sandwiched in this massive list using Notion's toggle tool (my favorite), so NOW, I have added all of those birthdays and death days, plus actual events in the area that happened, and I've started adding all of the events of the books themselves into this timeline. Having all of these lives happening at once but also intersecting is a lot and I needed a way to keep it all straight.
That's what I've been up to! I'm putting my new series on the back burner for a second, though, and diving into my Elliot Lake series, because I really need to get his fourth book finished. To do that, I'm going to go through the first three books, making notes as I go in Notion, and then I'll have what I need to refer to in order to finish the fourth book. My Elliot Lake series is also getting a makeover -- new names, new covers, and a fresh edit for all of them, plus the fourth book will be finished, and then those books will be rereleased first.
My other three books will also get makeovers while I'm writing the Birdsong Bay series, and they will be rereleased as well. Then all of my work will be under my Forsythia Cottage name, and everyone will be happy. LOL
See? Look at my pretty Notion dashboard. Everything is in its place.
I also included a blurry photo of my Character Timeline... she's pretty. Even blurry. LOL And an example of a toggle list in Notion where I use toggles to stack info inside other toggles endlessly -- it's a lifesaver! (Names have been blurred out there as well.)
Have a great week!
Cynthia