How I Use Evernote For My Writing (and Why You Should, Too)

I’m sure most writers in this day and age have their preferred digital method of keeping track of their writing. I’ve talked to my peers who use everything from a simple word processing “notebook” to a spreadsheet all the way through applications written for the exact purpose of allowing scribes to stay organized.

For years, I used OneNote from Microsoft, but at the time I switched to a Mac, I no longer had that option. As luck with have it, I stumbled on a new (at least then) free multi-platform tool that allowed me to maintain access to my notes from my desktop as well as on the road and found it to be perfect for me:  Evernote, by the Evernote Corporation.

Like OneNote, Evernote doesn’t force you into any structured methodology — it provides you the tools and widgets and lets you decided how to leverage them. So while my process won’t necessarily appeal to you, perhaps it will give you some ideas on how to better use the software or switch to it, if you’re not familiar with it and want to try something new.

Starting with Notebooks

Generally speaking, I respect hierarchies, especially those that make my life easier, and since I usually have several active works-in-progress, I find writing hierarchies imperative. In this case, a logical breakdown in separate notebooks helps me keep my thoughts orderly and compartmentalized. My most active ones are:

• Daily Pages — This is my core notebook and contains a single page for every day. The first thing I do when I wake up is create a new page simply titled with the day’s date. These pages contain anything I create that’s not for a WIP throughout the day. These can include, but aren’t limited to, the following:

• Titles:  Frequently, an interesting title just pops into my head and even though I may not have anything more to go with at the moment, I’ll jot it down anyway. Many of my stories have just started with a title and then weeks / months later, I see it when scanning my notes and the story idea  (or storyline) just appears.

• Opening lines:  Sometimes, I either have a good opening line come to me or I’ll just sit down and write opening lines that I think will lead to more down the road. It’s a good creative exercise I use to warm up if I have nothing in the WIP queue I want to begin continue working on.

• Story ideas / Loglines:  Frequently, I get an idea that’s not necessarily fully formed, but still can be expressed in a few sentences. I call these “story ideas” (or if they’re better suited for a screenplay, the industry term “loglines”). They can be framed in the form of a “what if” question, for example — or anything that gives enough to work with when I’m ready to develop it further.

• Storylines:  Storylines are extended versions of story ideas / loglines. They are fully formed, but short, story synopses with a definable throughline, usually comprised of at least three paragraphs representing the beginning, middle and end of the story in question. Each storyline's premise is clearly defined, the hero’s journey is delineated from start to finish and key conflicts are called out. Storylines are usually the most “dangerous” because they can derail me from my current WIPs in order to further develop the idea while the storyline is still fresh in my mind.

• Snippets:  Very often, I start with an opening line of a story and then write several paragraphs from that until I’ve drained the well from which the idea came or I’m falling asleep at my computer. Just like storylines, snippets can derail me from a fully planned schedule. I tend not to force myself to stop during these writing frenzies simply because I feel anything I can get out of my brain and down on digital paper is a good idea, even if I never use what I write ever again. More often then not, though, I do continue from where I left off weeks, even months, down the road.

• Scenes:  Similar to snippets, sometimes an opening scene for a screenplay comes out of nowhere and I just write to see where it goes. As usually happens, I’ll write several scenes before I stop and transfer it over to Final Draft to continue. Two of my current WIPs began just like this — one of which I’m “pantsing” (just writing without an outline or any other formal story structure) from beginning to end), the other began as a pantsing project, but I stopped after fifteen pages and began outlining the rest. 

• Blogs:  These are blog ideas, either short one sentence descriptions or a few paragraphs (or bullet points) to make sure I capture the key elements of the intended post.

• WIP progress:  In order to keep myself honest, I track progress on my current WIPs, but I don’t record word counts or hours worked on each. Instead, I just note the WIP and what scene(s) I’ve completed. As long as I can see steady headway, I’m satisfied … unless I’m on a deadline, of course, then I have a writing plan, a process that’s for a separate blog post.

• Journal entries:  Though I don’t keep a formal journal, on those days where I can't get a lot of writing done because of something else — traveling, for instance — I at least mark a note on that day’s Daily Page indicating what I was doing instead of writing.

• Blogs — While I use MacJournal for blogging on my Macbook Pro, sometimes I’m not able to continue with my current post because I’m in mobile mode. Since Evernote is multi-platform, it’s easy enough to copy my current WIP to a blog page  in Evernote and keep writing on any one of my mobile devices. When I get back to my Mac, I simply transfer the updated post to MacJournal, format it, then upload it.

• Fodder — In conjunction with the Evernote Web Clipper (see below), I capture interesting / unique news stories and other oddities that could one day be grist for the writing mill. I may never look at it again, but with Evernote’s search function, I can find virtually anything I’ve had an interest in writing about. This is one of the handiest tools Evernote has.

• Writing — Many times, I want to continue building on a story Idea and maintain it in an separate Evernote page. I dedicate the Writing notebook to these pages and with Evernote’s Table of Contents feature (see below), I can easily create an index to make it easier to pick up where I left off. At some point, though, the proverbial chick has to leave the nest and it must move on to my writing application ... usually Scrivener.

The Importance of Tags

The entire Daily Pages methodology would be severely limited if not for tags. My process is pretty simple: when I come up with a new Title, for example, I simply add “Title” in the tags. Other tags I commonly use include:

• Snippet
• Blog
• Journal
• Opening line
• Story idea
• Storyline
• Logline
• Scene

In addition, I use tags that are titles to my WIPs if I do anything creative for those projects in order for me to easily go back to see what days I worked on those WIPs.

With Evernote’s filter capabilities, I can easily isolate pages by a specific tag. This definitely helps when trying to reorganize notebooks or consolidate pages related to a single WIP or entry type.

The Web Clipper

As noted above, Evernote has a browser extension they call the Web Clipper. What this clever little tool allows you to do is clip some or all of a web page and have it automatically be added to the notebook of your choice. While I use the Clipper to capture articles of general interest, I use it most to capture ideas for stories to write, placing them in the Fodder notebook mentioned earlier. The Clipper is somewhat intuitive in that it is able to figure out into which notebook the clipped page is likely to fit. More often than not, it’s correct, too, but it’s easy to change to another notebook if you prefer it elsewhere. The Clipper makes life so much easier.

Using Note Links & Tables of Contents

Another great feature of Evernote is the ability to create note links — links to other note pages anywhere within your Evernote library — and an offshoot of that, creating a table of contents of links to pages within a single notebook. This latter capability is particularly handy for my Writing notebook which consists of over one hundred partially written stories:  I can easily jump to any story I’d like to continue working on after I scan a page of links to choose from. Another great use of note links:  adding a link to a “fodder” page as a reference for a story I’m writing. This way I won’t have to copy the content of the entire clipped page into the story page itself. Pretty neat.

Other Bells & Whistles

While there are too many other features of Evernote to describe here, there are a couple of others worth mentioning that I use a lot of:  bulleted lists and horizontal lines. Because I tend to "think in outlines" even when I’m pantsing (this goes back to my days as a software developer where I would have to write hundreds of lines of code on the fly), I like to capture ideas in bulleted form. Evernote provides the ability to create numbered lists as well, a feature I rarely use. A button to create horizontal lines is also quite helpful:  I use those to separate activities / writings within a single Daily Page, for example. For me, it helps keep the page looking neat and organized.

Pulling It All Together

All of these features make Evernote a pretty powerful tool, but no collection of features is worth anything if you can’t use them effectively. Here is a overview how my “typical” writing day goes with Evernote. I put typical in quotes because there is no such thing in reality.

• Create a new Daily Page and title it with the day’s date (“June 27, 2014”).
• Any ideas that stayed with me from my dreams get written down with a descriptor for what type it is preceding it. For example, “Title:  Title of an Amazing New Story.”
• Add “Title” as a tag.
• Insert a horizontal line after the aforementioned title.
• If my brain is ready to pick up from a WIP, I would do the work on the WIP until I stop, then go back to the Daily Page and write “WIP Name — scene N.”
• Add the WIP name as a tag.
• Insert a horizontal line after that note.
• And so on.

At the end of my writing day, I have an idea of what occupied my creative efforts in chronological order. Not too shabby.

So will all this make you a better writer? Maybe yes, maybe no. However, it certainly will make you a more organized one and that usually leads to being a better something. If you a process or a tool that works for you, then you’re probably better off than 80% of other writers. Keeping organized requires constant attention — and tweaking — in order to be successful. If you have no process, who knows, maybe I’ve given you a framework from which to build. In any case, Evernote is a free software program worth exploring.

One final word:  I know that OneNote is now available on the Mac, and while I use it for access to my old notes on occasion, I am too entrenched in my Evernote world … and I like it that way. ☺ 

Organizational Me

Those people who know me are quite familiar with my lifelong preoccupation with organization and its scion, time management. That’s not to say in this area I’m practically perfect in every way (to quote a description of Mary Poppins) -- God knows my wife can point to examples of my LACK of organization, to be sure. However, in certain areas of my life, most notably my writing, I’m forever actively pursuing my ideal world and devote much time to the effort.

For many years, I’ve used Microsoft OneNote to keep my writing organized. OneNote allows you to create a notebook-like structure that you can arrange to handle all of your writing needs. For example, since I write many different types of pieces, I break mine down from top down beginning with Movies, Television, Non-Fiction and Fiction. Both Movies and Television are broken down into Comedy, Drama and Action / Adventure. Under Fiction, there are Novels, Novellas and Short Stories. Under Non-Fiction, you’ll find General Essays, Technology and Blogs. Each of these is split further until I finally get to different sections for each work-in-progress, with a separate section for story ideas and snippets, the latter of which is just a container for fragments of prose I compose out of the blue with no other intended purpose other than to get an idea out of my head and maybe use some day.

Unfortunately, OneNote is not a cross-platform product, leaving me bereft when I migrated to the Macintosh. For a while, I continued to run OneNote on a Windows virtual machine, but that grew old pretty quickly. Then I discovered Evernote, a true cross-platform product that allows you to maintain your data in a cloud and makes it accessible to all your IOS, OSX and Windows devices. I found my nirvana! The only challenge was moving all my data from OneNote to Evernote. There was no easy migration path that I could figure out, so I did what anyone would do - I avoided it.

For the last few years, I adapted Evernote into my organizational system, only moving some of my active WIPs from OneNote into it, but leaving 90% of my older unfinished material to gather digital dust. Until recently, that is.

I finally broke down and began the long arduous process of moving all my old data into Evernote. It took several weeks to go through everything I had and then rearrange Evernote to accommodate it all. I tried to maintain the same organizational system in Evernote that I had in OneNote, but I had matured that process significantly in Evernote. Besides, since Evernote doesn’t have multiple layers of hierarchy (unlike OneNote), I had to learn to live within the two-layer system they have and then figure out how to go from conform my old structure to my new one. Trust me, this was a lot more work than it sounds like.

In the end, I’m pleased with the results. All of my legitimate projects (current and future) now reside in their own Evernote folder, with story ideas, snippets, fodder (web articles with potential story material), articles and the like all occupying their own folders. I have documents in a general Writing folder dedicated to Titles (book, story, whatever), Names (people and places, of either real or made-up names), Opening Lines (starting sentences that just come to me) and Loglines (single sentences describing a film idea, like “An amateur scientist discovers the secret to immortality, only to discover that the government will do anything to prevent the invention from getting into the wrong hands.”).

The best part of this exercise is not only did I pick out the next twelve stories in the last of the Foothills collections (tentatively entitled Life Beyond the Foothills), I have another dozen as back-up (for another collection down the road), PLUS I have thirty-six more for a three-book sci-fi series of twelve stories each. Not all of these stories are complete yet -- some are merely titles and general plots, others are halfway through the first draft, etc. However, I’m now ready to start the next book for real!

Stay tuned for more …

Michael

Labor of Love

Slightly longer than four years to the day, I published my second short story collection, Secrets of the Foothills. This book is the second of three books in the Foothills series, the first of which was entitled In The Foothills. [Ed. the capital “T” in “the” was completely intentional. Don’t ask.]. If everything goes according to plan, the final collection will be published in less than two years from now.
What keeps authors driving toward completion, especially when faced with the daunting task of creating from scratch a plausible narrative, rewriting, editing and polishing the draft so that it sparkles, handing it off to beta readers and editors who red-line the hell out of it, rewrite, re-edit and re-polish and so on, only to send it timidly into bookshelves (virtual and real) throughout the world?

Simply put, insanity.

Sure, you were expecting something more poetic with the title “Labor of Love,” but in truth, we authors have to be a little bit out there to do what we do. The same goes for artists in any medium, I guess. Voluntarily baring one’s soul for a public flogging certainly isn’t a sign of someone playing with a full deck, right? And yet we do it, willingly, gladly, even joyfully if we’re doing it right.
What does it take to be a writer? Talent, sure. Guts, absolutely. But if you’re not a little bit eccentric, you may just be like Sisyphus pushing that big ol’ rock up that hill, year after year, typed line after typed line. It’s not going to work for you no matter what you do. If you’re not non compos mantis, you need not apply. Really.

We writers are the odd ones, always looking off in the distance, trying to resolve some conflict our main characters have found themselves in, because God knows we didn’t put them there, right? Or when we finally show a little mercy to our protagonists, we’re busy dreaming of new ways to torture them. We’re sadists AND we’re masochists, it seems. Yeah, we’re normal alright, aren’t we?

Of course, I’m just kidding. Who among us who take the craft of writing seriously could ever see ourselves doing anything else? We’re not crazy -- we just have something to say and want to do it in the only way we know how and damned the consequences. We want to create people or worlds or whole universes simply because we feel this is the best way our message can go out to get through to the right people, if only they would listen.

Writing is truly a labor of love. It’s the best way I’ve found to say something profound and in an entertaining way. There’s power in knowing you can do that. You know what I mean, those of you who love to create.

So, keep your pen sharp and your quill well-inked … and remember, publishing a book isn’t an end, it’s only permission to start a new one.

~ Michael ~

Playing Catch-Up (Ever So Briefly)

I'm not sure if I should be shocked or amused that the last post I made to this blog was back in early June.  To say the year's flown by is not only a cliché, but a regular comment I keep hearing from both my off-line and online friends.  What the hell is going on?  Did someone speed up the timeline?  I feel like it was just last week we were celebrating Christmas and here we are again, with only thirteen shopping days left.

New Book

What have I been doing, writing-wise, since June?  To begin with, I decided to publish another collection of short stories again, this time without poetry.  The working title is Secrets of the Foothills, which is a spin-off from the first book, In the Foothills (and yes, I have the title for the next one to follow this one).  I have several stories completed, but unedited, for the new book, plus I have several stories plotted, but in various stages of completion.  Needless to say, this has kept me very busy the second half of 2011.  The book should be released by August 31st, 2012.

Screenplays & Television

At the same time, I've also been busy working on my screenplays (I have several in various phases of development).  Writing those takes a totally different mental state and is a welcome respite from the short story writing.  I've been getting a lot of interest in my scripts lately, too, so perhaps the industry is opening up a bit.  Can I get a witness?  No?  

One of the most promising new projects I have in the entertainment genre is a TV series (a sitcom) that I think would be a hit, but as always, only with the right producer, director, cast and crew.  I've already outlined a treatment with an entire season of plot lines written up.  "All" I need to do is write up a synopsis for each episode and package the whole thing as a single treatment.  Perhaps more to come on that later.

The Idea Jar

Finally, I made the "mistake" of opening up the idea jar.  I do this sometimes and just collect random titles or phrases I read everywhere (including from Twitter), then writing them down to noodle on.  From there, I just free-write a plot line based on the title alone.  Amazing out of all of those, how many are viable future projects.  To say I have more to write than I will have years to live is no exaggeration!  Believe me, it takes a lot of discipline not to get sidetracked on any of these new ideas.

Seasons Greetings

That's all from our hill, where the wind doth blow and Christmas is nigh.  Wishing you and yours all the best this holiday season (especially you Druids, from whom we get the quaint custom of dragging dead pine trees into our homes).

Peace,

Michael

Ode to a Recluse: Thoughts on Salinger

As many other readers (and writers) did this week, I mourned the death of Jerome David Salinger at 91 years old. On Twitter, I posted that he was one of my primary literary influences, but perhaps not for the reasons a writer growing up in the 60's and 70's would typically have. After a Saturday morning of reading the musings of others about Salinger in various blogs, I thought I'd throw my offering into the collection plate of public opinion on this subject.

I was never really moved by The Catcher in the Rye as so many of my contemporaries were. It was mandatory reading for me in high school honors English and I'm sure I thought I wrote a good book report, even though I didn't share Holden Caulfield's rebellious spirit or cynicism and couldn’t relate to him on any level. How could a Catholic school-educated, first-born son ever hope to rebel and not break the hearts of kith and kin? One may think by virtue of that one-line description alone, I would have plenty of reason to raise hell, run away, commit acts of unkindness or even hate the world. Nope; I was destined to be a good boy, leaving for later the "acting out" phase of my life.

When I got older and began to buy the classics for fun instead of obligation, I read some of Salinger's best short works and was finally seduced into believing the somewhat mythic hype about him that had grown during his self-imposed exile from the publishing world. I was convinced that Franny and Zooey was one of the best pieces of literature I ever read up to then (and still insist on that today). Because of Salinger’s new influence on me, I hungered for something that went beyond mere love of his prose: I wanted to be able to move people with words like his work did to me.

When I took those early tentative steps, first writing for myself and later for others, I would take note of the occasional news story that mentioned Salinger and his (even then) famous reclusiveness. The thought disturbed me at the time because while I was striving to find my literary voice, one that others would want to hear, there was Salinger, shunning the world, claiming to enjoy being out of the maelstrom, only writing for his enjoyment alone. How could anybody with such a gift do that? The idea that an artist would almost willfully mute himself, leaving his readers to wait and wonder, seemed almost cruel.

And yet, even in his reclusiveness, Salinger was a genius. Regardless of his reasons for becoming a hermit, his fans always remained hopeful that something new from his pen would someday hit the bookstores. Certain to be his final work, it would be the most magnum of all opuses, a swan song that couldn't be scripted any more dramatically. To my eternal sadness, though, every teasing suggestion that he would publish again was quickly snuffed out. Thus, for many, his reclusiveness became a bigger story than the art he produced. Not for me; in the end, the man became less important than the oeuvre he gave us.

The truth is this: while unlikely to happen in my lifetime, to be able to read a new work from one whose craft was honed over years of being out of the public spotlight would be like hearing a lost symphony by Mozart or viewing a never-seen Van Gogh masterpiece. I suspect Salinger would call that assertion hogwash (or worse), but I would hope he would still be pleased with the comparison.

RIP, J.D.

NaNoWriMo Winds Down

I won’t be “winning” NaNoWriMo this year, but this was a great exercise in getting one’s word count advancing. Currently at near 26, 000 words, I’ll be pleased to hit 27,000 words by tomorrow night’s deadline and with any luck, at the same rate, I’ll have the first draft finished by the end of the year.

That brings me to ScriptFrenzy, the other writing month sponsored by the same group of folks who do NaNo. I already have several screenplay ideas, so all I need to do is pick one, plot it out and get ready for that extravaganza.

To all the competitors this year, especially to those who made the 50,000 word minimum, I say congratulations. If any of those instant novels become bestsellers, I think the whole NaNo community will be pleased.

Best,

Michael

A Year Later

Greetings, friends ...

I'm glad to be able to return to this blog after over a year of inactivity. In case you weren't aware, I had gone a couple of rounds with a disease called dermatomyositis, an autoimmune disease in which the white blood cells attack the muscle cells as though they are foreign invaders. It's similar to many AI diseases ... for example, MS is an AI disease where the immune system attacks the central nervous system.

The upshot of the story is I ended up in the hospital for all of November and the early part of December in 2007. I was better by early January 2008, then ended up relapsing in February and didn't recover 100% until early June. Thanks to good medication, a great rheumatologist and the world's greatest wife, I am here and writing again. All of this is chronicled in a book I'll be publishing in early 2009 called The Year I Lost November. Profits from that book will be donated to The Myositis Association.

Because of my disease, I couldn't publish my first anthology of short stories and poetry until July 2008, called In The Foothills. The collection covers material I've written between 2005 and 2007. If you like short stories, I invite you to take a test run.

Besides editing the new book, I've been particular busy with NaNoWriMo this year. Unfortunately, because of my illness in 2007, I couldn't participate in the novel-writing fall classic. This year, I'm definitely in the hunt. As of this post, I have over 12,000 words written in my own someday bestseller (entitled Lens Flare), an action-packed thriller of arson and political intrigue.

That's all for now, folks. I hope your respective Muses are kind to you this week.

Best,
Michael