Writing of any type is partly an exercise in organization. You need to keep track of deadlines, research, contacts, trips, websites, characters, locations, timelines, etc. All of these activities can be well tracked on paper. But since I am a computer nerd and write directly with a word processor on my laptop, I look for computer solutions to all of these. This series of posts will explore some of the software this is available to help.
Keeping track of all the things that you have to do is important. You can use a diary or calendar program but not all tasks are best kept that way. I like to do lists and I’ve tried a variety of programs to do them. Most calendar programs have basic to do capability but these are very limited. For awhile I’ve been using a program called iGTD. This is a Mac only program, but that suits me since I write on a Mac. The name comes from a book by David Allen called Getting Things Done, which put forward a methodology for managing all the things we have to do. There are many other programs that implement these ideas and a comparison chart is available on another site.
iGTD lets me create tasks, assign end dates to them, as well as priorities and level of difficulty, assign tasks to projects and write notes about tasks. You can set tasks up as repeating on a set schedule. When you complete such a task it automatically reschedules to the next date.
iGTD is donationware software and works amazingly well. I love it, though I am still exploring all it can do for me. Such software usually can synchronize with a calendar program, generate alarms or reminder messages, and so on. Tasks can be assigned to Contexts and Projects. Contexts are meant to divide your tasks into those that need to take place in certain locations. Projects are particular activities. Since I work from home and pretty much everything I do can be done from anywhere, I have used Contexts in a different way, in fact similar to the way Projects are meant to be used. It is up to you how these ways of categorize your tasks are used. Both Contexts and Projects can be hierarchical, giving you further organization options.
I really encourage you to have a look at such software. If you work on Windows there is similar software that you can use.
Part 2 looks at Mind Mapping software.
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