My Great Big Spreadsheet of Ideas - Tips for Writers

I get ideas everywhere. A funny story, a cool name, an interesting place to hide a body, a movie to watch, or a book to read…I had little pieces of paper and Post-it notes everywhere, and it was difficult to keep all the information in one place. I finally consolidated them into a spreadsheet. One column defines what it is (e.g. story idea, cool name, fun location, etc.) Then I have a short description or a link to remind me of what it was or who told me about it. If I see an interesting news article, I save it. Who knows, it may be good material later. By tagging each entry, I can sort it in multiple ways to see what I’m looking for.

When I get ready to start a story or novel, I cruise through my spreadsheet. I also mark the entry if I’ve used it before. What started out as twenty notes is now a spreadsheet with hundreds of lines. I have interesting poisons, funny quotes, descriptions of interesting people, or whatever catches my attention that I want to remember. My desk is much neater now, too. There aren’t twenty Post-its stuck to it and my monitor.

I have a big, giant promotional spreadsheet, too. It has a tab for every kind of promotion or marketing effort that I’ve done in the past. I collect contacts and recommendations and add them to the tab. Then, when I’m ready to start planning a book launch, I have a starting point. I have tabs for everything from blogs and podcasts to Facebook parties and reviewers.

I had to get organized. My writing time is limited, and I couldn’t spend it searching for things I wrote somewhere.

How do you organize your ideas or bits of information?

Making a List - Keeping Your Social Media Feeds Organized

After a while, your newsfeeds in Facebook and Twitter become jam-packed with updates from friends, pages you've liked, and promotions. And the social media sites are always tweaking their algorithms to adjust what you see.

There are groups of people that I like to keep up with so, I create lists in Facebook and Twitter to organize my newsfeeds. I like to see what members in my writing groups, critique groups, and anthologies are talking about. I group them in lists, and when I select to view it, I get all their latest posts in one place. My instructions for creating lists are from the web version of each of the social media sites. If you're using the application version, the links may be in different places.

For Facebook, open your personal site.  Look on the far left list of links and locate "Explore." Move down the list and click on Friend Lists. Click the Create List button. When the dialog box appears, name your list and add people. Save your list. The new list will appear under your "Friend Lists." Click it to see a newsfeed filled with posts from people you added.

To create a list in Twitter, click your photo in the upper right corner. When the drop-down appears, click Lists. The Lists page appears with all the lists that you're a part of. Click Create New List in the top right corner. Name your list and provide a description. Save it. You can add people to your list. Note, if you add someone to a list in Twitter, it appears on their updates page.

Twitter lists are fun. Others have added me to quite a few lists. I'm in one for redheads. Someone else created a Twitter list of "Heathers." It's neat to see what's out there. You do have the option to remove yourself from a list if you choose.

This is one way that I organize my social media time, so I can see the items that I'm looking for instead of wading through lots of other posts. Let's connect on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media sites. Drop me a line or add me to a list. I look forward to hearing from you.