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I am a fairly organized person. When it comes to managing clutter, I adhere to Benjamin Franklin’s credo:
“A place for everything, everything in its place”
Scarves, sunblock, tools, linens, books and the flotsam of everyday life have their berth and are easily stowed away and retrieved when needed. But for some reason, I haven’t been able to apply this same order to my note
s.
A ragtag collection of note pads, dog-eared composition books and an assortment of blank journals with pretty covers are squirreled away in the nooks and crannies of my house. Some are completely full of writing and others contain just a few pages. None of them have titles. I have no idea what is in them but I’m pretty sure there might be something I could use some day.
Flipping through the legal pad on my coffee table, I find morning pages/journal entries, a grocery list, details of an upcoming trip, random phone numbers and pages of drawings by my nine-year-old daughter, who thinks any piece of paper is fair game.
I explained my problem to my daughter who said, “You need categories!” and proceeded to create a chart into which we put the following headings:
- Journal entries
- Morning pages
- Random thoughts and phrases
- Blog posts
- Short stories
- Essays
- Non-fiction projects
- Shopping lists
- Words
(And I just noticed she included a final category: YOUR DAUGHTER!)
I am overwhelmed at the prospect of organizing what I have and creating a system I can use for the future. Do I need different kinds of notebooks for each category or a color-coding system? How do I maintain the integrity of my notes? Is there any hope for me?
popcorntheblog 
Can your daughter come visit my house?
Ha! Be careful what you ask for 🙂
As a newly-minted teacher, I am supposed to teach my writing workshop students to keep a writer’s notebook ( composition book) with a table of contents (leave 3-4 pages blank in the front to fill in as you go) in which they only write on the right-hand page (so they can go back and leave notes for themselves on the left-hand page.) Students number and date the pages as they go and fill in the table of contents with a title and page number. It’s cool. The problem is, I haven’t yet gotten into the habit of doing it myself. I know for me, part of the problem is that I don’t take my jottings seriously enough. I see them as exercises instead of future material, and therefore not worthy of an entry in a TOC. I’m working on making the attitude change!
Solid advice Karen! I’ll give a shot and let you know how it goes…
have you read the Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing? One of my favourite books. The main character has a different coloured notebook for each type of writing. Worth reading if you haven’t.
Carol- I can totally relate to this plight!! I have a ton of spiral notebooks full of bits and pieces of this and that. I actually did start trying to organize/categorize them into an even bigger notebook– but then I noticed I had laundry to do and completely put that project aside. You have inspired me to take another crack at it. Thank you! (Also, just to show how unorganized I am right now– I meant to resond to this post when it was still “above the fold” (if you will.) Forgive my tardiness…