If you’ve ever lost track of a great plot idea or the perfect solution to that plot hole because you either didn’t write it down, or wrote it down on some random piece of paper that is somewhere in your house, car, or recycling bin, don’t worry: You’re not alone. And there is a better way to organize your ideas and writing that doesn’t involve a complex system of notebooks.
Don’t get me wrong; I love a good notebook. But I accepted a long time ago I’m just not the type of person who is going to carry around a physical notebook to jot down every idea, and the notebooks I do have aren’t pretty and organized, just a bunch of freewriting. Instead, I use Notion to keep my writing organized. I’ve already share how I use Notion to track my reading, and now I’m sharing how it helps my writing life!
First, I start with a nice clean layout of the stories I’m currently working on: Three novels, plus any shorter pieces. I also have my author career mission statement at the top, so that I always keep it in mind. I like being able to see everything I’m working on all at once, and also having a single image that captures the vibe of the story immediately available.
Each title links through to that story’s page. Every story page is slightly different, depending on what phase I’m in and what the story needs, so I’ll show you two versions.
When Drafting
First, what the page looks like when I’m drafting. As you can see, I like to pop in different pictures from my aesthetic board for the story and choose a color for the story, just to create the mood.
On the far left column, I’ve got some basic stats about the book: Status, Genre, Comp ideas, and Word count, with the word count I’d like it to be at. Then I link to the aesthetic board I’ve made for the book. I just use Pinterest because that’s what I find easiest, but you could also create an aesthetic board on a new page in Notion and link to that. You can also link to any other inspiration content you have—playlists, YouTube videos, etc.
In the drafting phase, I keep track of my weekly word count here. At the end of each week, I add it up and update the total word count above.
For the next column, I keep track of what I call “pre-production tasks.” These are small things to do, often earlier in the writing process, to be prepared. This might be general research you have left to do, create an aesthetic board, write character descriptions, etc. Other tasks that are related to writing, but aren’t actually writing. Below that, I’ve got specific research questions. Finding answers to these is part of my pre-production tasks, but it’s helpful to keep them in their own list. Having a list like this can also keep you focused during your writing time—instead of going down an internet rabbit hole when you have a question while drafting, put a placeholder in the text and then add your question here to look up later.
The next column is where I capture all those random ideas that pop up. I have the Notion app on my phone, so even if I’m not near my computer, it’s easy to pull up this page and type in whatever thought has just occurred to me. I then color code the text based on what area it’s related to—plot, characters, world, etc. I usually just add it all in this column, but if you find yourself overflowing with thoughts to write down, you could create a new page in Notion and just link it here.
The final column I made because as I’ve written this book, ideas for the sequel have kept cropping up. I wanted to keep them separate from ideas for this story, but still connected to this book, so they get their own column.
When Editing
Now, what does it look like when I’m editing a book?
The far left column is pretty similar—listing the stats of the book, linking to inspiration. Instead of counting how many words I write per day, I keep track of how many minutes I spend editing, just as a way to see how I’m using my time. I’ve also moved my ideas list to this column, since the other columns were getting long and I don’t have as many “ideas” in this phase.
I’ve still got some pre-production tasks I’m working on, so those are in the second column. Then I list my resources. This might be external resources, but I’ve also included things like the timeline of my main character’s past few years, a short summary of how the characters’ views of each other change, and then I link to the notes I made during my read-through. Basically, anything I need to refer to repeatedly and want to be able to find quickly.
The final column is my editing task list. This is some what pulled from my read-through notes, but instead of being notes for specific scenes, it’s more things that generally I need to include throughout, like mentioning a character’s nervous habit, or bigger scenes to write that I don’t quite know where it will go yet, but I know it needs to go somewhere. I also like to gather these “scenes to write” into their own list further down.
And there you go! That’s how I keep my writing organized no matter what phase it’s in. Again, the reason I love using Notion is because it’s so customizable. So even though I tend to use analog, handwriting-in-a-notebook for my initial brainstorm phase, you could use Notion for that too, or for keeping track of where you’ve submitted your story for publication after it’s polished.