Staying Organized

Organization is a key part of my creative process (and life in general). From initial idea to final published file keeping things in order is vital to doing the work. It's so ever-present and helps me in so many ways that writing this is like a fish talking about its relationship with water, but the main thread in all of it is that good organization makes life easier overall and that makes being creative and creating easier too.

When my surroundings, materials, and tools are organized it removes barriers to my momentum. Physical ones like having to clear off a place to work or search for things and psychological ones like the passive burden of other things I need to do or getting distracted/overwhelmed by a mess of clutter right in my face. There's a whole host of little tasks that can accumulate and get in the way of starting or continuing work on a project and good organization is the thing that lets me sidestep them.

I've had a long time to figure out what helps (mostly by trial and error) and put it in place to build up a system that works for me. These are the methods I use every day. They mainly promote/support two things:

- Knowing where things are being being able to find them immediately
- Having space to work without interruptions or obstacles

That's what's important, maintaining a neat well-ordered environment so the only chaos is the positive creative kind and not the stressful "where the hell are my glasses?" kind.

Here's what I do:


Put things where they go
Everything in my house has a place where it lives. A dedicated spot where it belongs and it goes there and nowhere else. When I need something I go get it from where it lives and as soon as I'm done using it I put it back.

This is definitely the most important part of my organization system, both for writing and just generally running my household. Since everything has a place where it lives I always know where everything is. I don't lose things and I don't have to look for anything, what I want is always in its spot exactly where I left it last time. I also always know (or can easily check) how much of something I have, so I can plan when to restock consumables and avoid accidentally buying duplicates. It's the most useful, ridiculously simple thing I do and it saves me tons of time, effort, frustration, and money. It does rely on me actually putting things back when I'm done with them, but that's easy. I've been doing this my whole life so it's already part of my habits/daily routines and maintaining the organized state doesn't take much effort.

Keep surfaces clean
I keep all the horizontal surfaces in my house that aren't specifically meant for storage cleared off unless I'm actively working on a project.

So shelves are exempt, they can hold as much stuff as will fit (as long as it lives there), but tables, desktops, counters, and floors stay clear or have the bare minimum of stuff on them (like in the kitchen). They're work spaces, for doing work. Keeping them clear means that when I'm ready to work on a project I can just sit down and get started without having to clean anything up or make space first. I also have room to spread out and keep all my papers/notes/materials in view at once. It makes it easier to actually get things done and just exist in the space because I don't have the stress of looking around and feeling like the place is a mess. This is another thing I've been doing forever, so it's habit by now and easy to keep up with.


These two concepts are the basis for everything I do organization-wise. All the other things I'm going to talk about are hybridizations of these two at heart, just applied to specific areas.


Keep projects together and tidy
Working in analog means there's always a lot of paper to wrangle. I've got a few ways to organize it depending on where I am in the writing process and the size of the project, but the basic idea's the same: To keep all the papers and materials for a project together in one distinct package. Each project gets its own package and they're kept apart from each other. That makes it easy to grab everything involved in a project and move it/take it with me or keep it safe and neat if it has to sit and wait for a while. It also makes sure nothing gets misplaced or forgotten in a random shuffle. The entire manuscript is right there, ready to go at any time.

The way I store papers depends on whether a project is pending, in progress, or done.

For pending projects where I've worked up an outline and have more rough notes than can go in the ideas notebook I've got a 13-pocket accordion file. Each project's notes go in their own pocket and wait until I'm ready to sit down and work on them. It consolidates all the loose pieces and scraps that would otherwise be scattered around in piles into one compact unit that also keeps them organized inside.

For in progress projects size is a factor. Smaller pieces like blogposts go on loose leaf that gets stapled and stacked. There's usually not much delay between writing the second draft and copying it into a composition notebook for long-term storage so a neat pile of papers is good enough, but if it's going to be a while or there's a lot of drafts I'll slip the stack into an A4-size zippered plastic pouch just to have all of them in a single unit while they wait. Larger projects like zines and books that I know will be more involved go in three ring binders. I love three ring binders. They're classic, give a good level of protection and organization, and are convenient to work in. I use ones with pockets on the covers for notes and add dividers so it's easy to flip/navigate between sections of the project as I work. 1" and 1.5" sizes are the best for me since they're big enough to hold everything but not too bulky to store or carry around.

And for projects that are done there's the composition notebooks. Everything I finish gets copied into a composition notebook regardless of the size of the project. Part of it is nostalgia, I'm a sucker for a classic marbled cover, but beyond that (and my general stationery requirements of durable/cheap/common) they're a standardized size (B5) that's easy to keep on a shelf. When one's full I can just put it up with the others in a compact, visually unobtrusive set that can hang out for as long as necessary. It's perfect. To keep the info in them organized I give each notebook a number (they're technically a series), record the dates I start and finish them, and reserve the first page as a pseudo-table of contents with the titles of all the larger projects it holds. I also put sticky tabs on the pages where the large projects start so I can find them without a lot of page flipping if I need to reference something.

Really big projects like full-on books where the manuscript breaks 50 pages or projects with things like maps that don't translate nicely to a lined notebook page get an extra type of storage. I still copy what I can into the composition notebook but I also take the draft written on loose leaf pages, put a binder clip on it (since it's usually too hefty to staple), and store the whole thing in an A4-size zippered plastic pouch (with a silica gel packet or two to prevent humidity issues). The pouch goes in my filing cabinet and I keep it along with the text-only version in my composition notebooks. It's not that much extra effort to keep both, so why not?

Only use one side of the paper in early drafts
When I'm writing I only use one side of each page all the way up to the final analog draft in the composition notebook. 

I know it sounds weird and wasteful but there's a reason, bear with me. I write my early drafts in spiral notebooks and on loose leaf. Part of the process is tearing out and collecting those pages into a sheaf of loose sheets that I spread out across my table to read and work from. Writing on just one side means that when I lay out the pages I can see everything I've written at once and consider it all together. My attention can flow smoothly from page to page without breaks or distractions from having to flip sheets over and there's no risk of missing something written on the back of a page. It might sound silly/like a small thing, but I definitely notice a difference in the quality of my work when I'm only using one side of the page vs using both and having to flip them. It's also not as wasteful as it sounds since I save the pages from the old drafts and use the backs of the sheets as scratch/scrap/note paper before recycling them. (This post was written largely on the backs of previously-used sheets.)

Keep digital files simple
My digital files have an extremely elegant organization system based entirely on being as simple and straightforward as possible.

For blogposts I save them as a .txt file with the post's title as the file name. They all go in a folder dedicated to the blog and when a post is published I move its file from the main folder to a subfolder named "published". I also have an "images" subfolder that holds copies of all the images I've used in posts. Those are named [post title]+[original file name](+ a number if there's more than one image in the post) so I can find and connect them to the text easily.

Things for collaborations and zine submissions also get saved as .txt files and put in a dedicated collabs folder. The file names for these are [project/zine name]+[piece title] format.

This is plenty for blogposts and collab work since I generally only contribute writing and blogposts don't have complex layout. The file structure for larger projects is a little more layered but not by much.

For large projects I have a main "RPGs" folder. Inside that I have a folder for templates, one for images that I plan to use eventually, and individual folders for each project. The project folders all have their own subfolders for art/image assets, but other than that I usually only have three project files:

- A raw text file (.txt)
- A working file that's the laid out/finished version (.odt since I use LibreOffice for layout)
- A final printable version of the working file for publication (.pdf)

There might be more if I'm working with other folks, like original vs. edited version of the text or more subfolders in the art folder for specific references and sketches, but generally it's just the three files and art. No incremental saves or in-progress versioned documents, just the plaintext beginning and finished end product. All my backups (to removable media, the cloud, and other devices) use the same file structure so it's easy to search and add new files/expand as needed.


If these things sound like common sense, it's because they are. These are basic principles as far as organization goes, but they work. The hardest part is getting the system set up in the first place and building the habits to maintain it, then keeping an eye out for ways to improve it and making that happen. It's absolutely worth the effort though, just for how it lets me focus my energy towards creating instead of stressing over everything else.

Two Books

Part of having a lot of ideas is there's way more than I can work on in a reasonable amount of time, so I have to have a way to keep them safe and preserved in a useful format for when I can get to them. It's not that hard, I just had to spend some time experimenting with what worked and what was convenient until I found a good solution. My current method is simple: I write it all down in a notebook. It's easy to reference and add to, organized with a consistent logic, durable, safe from the problems electronics have (battery, signal/connectivity, accidental erasure issues, etc), and the entries are detailed enough that they still make sense after time's passed. It's perfect.

The exact form of the notebook took a little development. What I used to do was just put my pending ideas in the same spiral notebook that I always carried with me. That way I'd have them on hand to work on at any time. There would be pages of my to-write lists mixed in with the blank pages and I'd just cross off ideas as I finished them. It worked well enough, but it'd get more and more fragmented as I got things done; and each time I used up a notebook I'd have to consolidate and migrate the remaining ideas to the next one or cut the pages out and keep them as loose sheets that could get lost. It ended up being a waste of paper and time as the ideas built up.

What I do now is carry two books: My spiral notebook for doing actual writing and an ideas notebook that's a repository for pending projects' rough notes, bits of ideas, and anything else I'd want to revisit. When I get an idea I'll write it down on whatever's at hand (my spiral notebook, pocket notebook, scrap paper, whatever works) but not immediately in the ideas notebook. I'll let it sit for a while then transfer it into the ideas notebook. There will usually be a batch of ideas ready to be recorded by the time I transfer them over. Doing it this way means I only have to recopy the ideas once and I can look over them again and judge if they're really worthy of being on the to-write list, then refine the wording so future me will know what I meant.

It works great because it's a to-do list but it's also a collection of all the things I thought were inspiring enough to write down and preserve. If I'm off my game or just bored I can flip through the book and something will jump out to kick me into gear. It does mean that I end up carrying more stuff around but the tiny bit of extra weight and clutter is worth it.

The way I record ideas is straightforward: All entries are organized chronologically since they're added as they occur to me. Small ideas are listed as bullet points (as detailed as they need to be) and larger projects (zines, books, anything more than a single blogpost) get outlined on their own pages with some extra space after in case I think of more to add. I write everything in ink and use different colors for small and large ideas so I can easily find the larger projects while flipping through the pages. (In my last notebook little ideas were recorded in green and larger ones in red, maroon, or black.)

I'm also picky about the notebooks I choose for the job. My normal MO of 'cheap and durable, as long as it works' is good for my everyday working notebooks because I burn through them so fast, but the ideas notebook sticks around. It's going to be with me for a while so it needs to be nice to use and do its job well. I look for something durable, portable, and convenient. An A5 size book with a stitched binding, waterproof soft cover, and thin profile (~1/2" thick spine) is perfect. It's a nice easy to carry size and weight with plenty of space to write in.

To go with it I also have an 8" zippered tablet case. It's just cheap lightly-padded fabric with a few pockets on the inside that's waterproof and closes securely. I use it to hold the ideas notebook and any more detailed notes (on loose pages/papers) for the project I'm actively working on when I go out. It lets me collect everything into one compact and protected bundle that I can throw in my bag without fear of scrunching or losing anything. There are purpose-made journal cases and covers with extra slots and compartments for stationery or tools, but I think the tablet case works better for my needs because it's so simple. It's got everything it needs to do the job I have for it and nothing else to get in the way.

Setting Goals

As previously discussed at length, I get a lot of ideas. So many that I have to be selective about which ones I choose to work on. There just isn't time for all of them (and honestly some of the things I come up with are better off left as ideas). So it's important to set reasonable goals for what I'll focus on and have an initial plan of what I want to do in a project to keep me on track. My criteria for what gets my attention is simple:

1 Is it interesting?
Writing is a hobby for me so I can be picky about which projects I decide to take on. I'm not going to spend my free time working on something that's not fun, so anything I put effort into has to be an idea I'm excited about. If it doesn't grab me from the start I don't put it on my to-write list.

2 Can I actually do anything with it?
Sometimes an idea is interesting but too small, niche, or otherwise limited to stand on its own. In order for me to start working on something there has to be at least enough potential material to make a blogpost that feels like an intentional complete piece and not like I tried to pad out a tweet. If an idea's too small I'll keep it aside as something that could be worked into another idea or project later.

3 Will it be useful?
This point's not as stringent as the other two. I definitely write things that are silly or unlikely to ever see use at a table (hi, infinite cookie generator) but I do try to mostly make things that someone could use in a game. The majority of what I write is for me, either because I needed something and couldn't find it or just thought it'd be neat to have. I'll also make things that I see folks talking about or looking for. Knowing that a project would be useful/helpful to someone bumps it up in priority in my queue.

Once I've decided what to work on I set a scope for the project. I think over the potential things I could do with an idea, see if there are other ideas that might compliment it and get added in, and be realistic about how much there is to work with. Projects tend to fall into one of four size/complexity categories: blogpost, blogpost series, zine, or a full book. It's usually easy to tell which of the four an idea will suit so I choose, make an outline of the parts/components I'll need, and try to stick to that scale once I start. (Ex: For a Troika! sphere book I'd set a ballpark goal of how many backgrounds, enemies, spells, items, locations, etc. I'd want before I get started writing it.) I don't set a target word or page count, instead I aim for what feels like enough. It's not an exact science.

Every now and then I'll find I misjudged and an idea will be smaller than I initially thought or (much more often) that I can expand the project into something more involved. When that happens I'll change my plan and adapt the project's scope to the more suitable size. The important thing is that the final finished work feels like it fits the presentation and the ideas neatly fill the space they've been given, not too crowded to breathe and not overly padded or stretched.

I also commit. Once I've started on a project I generally keep working on it until it's done. My work queue is FIFO and it's rare for me to have more than one major thing in progress at at time. I also tend not to abandon projects if they've made it through the gauntlet to the point where I've started work. If I need to take a break I'll set a project aside for a while and focus on other things, but I'll eventually come back to it and finish it. There's no quitting or scrapping projects that I've taken on. If it takes a while to get them up to my standards so be it, but they will get done.

How I get ideas

In order to write you need something to write about. Without the meat of an idea to build up and develop into a finished piece you've got nothing.

My method for getting ideas is simple: I pay attention to and interact with the world around me.

Creativity is a constant process of noticing and connecting things from your environment and spinning it out changed into something else that's yours. Every idea we have comes from somewhere. You can't draw water from a dry well, get blood from a stone, make bricks without straw, pick whatever idiom you like. It all boils down to the same thing: None of us create in a vacuum. There has to be a collecting stage where you observe and gather information from your surroundings to use as the raw material and inspiration for your own ideas.

My process of collecting raw idea-stuff has two equally important and complimentary parts: A constant state of curiosity and active effort to find new things. The first keeps my brain ready to grab and hold ideas and the second makes sure I'm exposed to plenty of them.

Curiosity

The constant state of curiosity is actually a tripart combo of attention, curiosity, and whimsy. I make a point to notice what's around me as I go through the day and pick up on whatever there is to see, even the tiny mundane details. If I see a nice patch of moss or sapling growing in a crack in the sidewalk or on a roof, I note it. When I go in a building I pay attention to the architectural details and floorplan. If I see an interesting sign, unusually-colored car, art, statue, nice tree, cool fungus, weird cloud, trash, roadkill, anything no matter how seemingly inconsequential I take a moment to squirrel the memory away for later. The same goes for the random ephemeral events I witness. An overheard conversation, a happy dog going for a walk, kids doing inscrutable kid things in public, animals interacting with each other or man-made objects, it all gets noticed. Anything can be a source of inspiration as long as I can remember it, I just have to pay attention and gather what's around me.

I also make a point to think about what I've seen. Be curious, ask questions, and follow the thoughts down whatever paths they take no matter how weird or goofy. Asking questions without reservation is the key to developing new ideas. I don't just grab the idea fragments I've collected and lock them away in a brain-vault to rot until the day I might need them. I take them out and turn them over, examining them and considering how they could work or change or go together. Creativity is about adapting, transforming, and juxtaposing concepts, not just collecting and regurgitating them as-is. I want to make something that's mine, and that means thinking and using my imagination. It's fun!

My most useful question is "what if?" It's so easy to get an entire host of ideas spun out from a single what-if. From small changes like "what if digital technology hadn't replaced analog" or "what if [mythical thing] was real" to more significant changes like "what if [law of physics] worked differently" or "what if [basic feature of life] didn't exist". It's an excellent brain-stretching exercise and a goldmine of ideas for fantasy and speculative material. I also get a lot of use out of "how?" and "why?" If I'm out and see an item sitting abandoned or lost/left I'll stop and think about how it might've gotten there or why it was discarded. (Obvious answer: It's a juvenile mimic, don't touch it.) The other basic questions (what, where, when, and who) follow to fill in the details, but why and how are what usually get the process going because they're more concrete and immediate to me.

And the final part that supports and enables the others is a carefully cultivated sense of whimsy. Not a childish, naive, twee aesthetic but a firehose sense of wonder paired with a distinct lack of self-consciousness. As a writer my job is to come up with things that are interesting, fun, and weird. Doing that requires a willingness to be weird myself. To play with ideas, look at things in heterodox ways, lean into nonsense, and have the mental flexibility to string random often unrelated details together into inspiring ideas without automatically dismissing the silly or outright dumb steps I run through along the way. There's a time and place for dignity and it's not when you're trying to create. If I was too self-conscious to let myself experience wonder, play, and generally goof around I wouldn't be able to write like I do. I'd still write, but without the ability to take something and make it weird it wouldn't be the same. All my attention and curiosity is worth absolutely nothing without the whimsy to back and power it.

Being Active
The equally important counterpart of curiosity is doing things. I don't really enjoy doing nothing. Just vegging out isn't relaxing to me at all and I've never been able to take naps (I just end up actually sleeping). So I'm usually doing something. From the time I wake up to when I grudgingly go to sleep I'm almost continuously engaged in one activity or another. Not for productivity's sake but because doing things is fun. And a happy side effect of being in motion all the time is that the things I enjoy doing either generate a ton of ideas on their own or give me time to think. It's why I always carry a notebook and pen with me, because while I might not be actively seeking ideas in the moment they still show up and when they do I want to be able to corral and record them.

The main things that help me get ideas are:

1 Going out. Getting out of the house to visit museums, parks, libraries, and other places beyond normal work and errands. Paying attention and being curious about the world around me is important, but if there's nothing new to pay attention to then it's not worth much no matter how observant I am. Going places and seeing things other than the inside of my house is vital for my creativity and mental health.

2 Talking with people. I like to shoot the shit. Whether it's a specific topic or just general conversation about nothing in particular, chatting is fun. I don't go into conversations specifically angling to get ideas, but they show up. More often than not just getting a different perspective or a random offhand comment will spark an idea or inspire me to connect things in a new way that leads to something cool. A lot of times I'll share those ideas and give them to whoever I'm talking with because they're more fitting for/directly related to what they're working on, but just as many stay with me.

3 Reading. I read a lot. It's easily the main way I consume media. I read every day and even then it feels like I should be reading more. I also read widely. Whatever I can get my hands on, if it sounds interesting I'll read it. (I may not finish it because life is too short to waste spite-reading a work you're not enjoying, but I'll at least give it a try.) My taste in fiction runs to the speculative and unreal: Sci-fi, fantasy, horror, weird fiction, westerns, folklore, and mythology. I'm sure that doesn't surprise anyone. I tend to avoid stories in mundane modern settings, but I'm not entirely opposed to them. Still I'll usually only pick up realistic stories on a very strong recommendation from someone instead of seeking them out myself. My non-fiction reading covers everything though. That's not an "I listen to all kinds of music"-type over-generalization either. The world is fascinating and I love learning about it, so if you put info in front of me I'll sink my teeth in. My main areas of interest are the natural world, science, and art (again, not surprising), but everything's interconnected so I'll regularly end up wandering into adjacent topics while pursuing others. I can kill hours tearing through wikipedia for fun, grabbing the cursory-level info as mental popcorn and marking subjects I want to dig deeper into with better sources later. It definitely beats doomscrolling as a way to spend time.

For the actual experience of reading I prefer audiobooks for fiction, physical books for non-fiction, and try to avoid screens unless that's the original or only way to get the info (ex: blogs, websites, vintage creepypasta, scholarly papers/articles that it's not feasible to print, etc.). I love books as artifacts, but the innards are what's really important, not the form factor.

4 Other media. As much a I love words they're not the only (or sometimes even best) vehicle for communicating ideas. It's important to experience and absorb mediums beyond the written word because they're good and worthwhile and because they land in the brain differently than text. It sounds obvious but the way we interact with sound and images is different from how we parse words. It uses other sections of the brain and makes me think about what I'm experiencing from another angle than when I'm reading.

My consumption of non-written media is still much lower than written. I don't watch movies very often (usually only when someone else organizes it) and my exposure to current TV is basically nonexistent. I don't really play videogames anymore. I also can't really do large gatherings, so live theater is out. I do like watching things and playing games. When I get the chance to it's always fun, I just don't have enough free time to engage with that type of media regularly. (I'm also spared from really crap media because my friends essentially curate what we watch/play and have excellent taste.)

What I do draw from often is music, album covers, art, and images in general no matter how refined or banal. (Plenty of people would think digging through scans of old survey maps, scientific journals, historical blueprints, and government photo archives is boring but I think it's fascinating.) Cartoons from all eras and comics, the whole swath of the medium from things like The Far Side to mainstream serialized books to indie productions. (I can't begin to describe how much of my sense of humor was shaped by The Far Side growing up.) There's always something that can spark an idea no matter how basic, all of it has potential.

The goal (beyond just doing things I enjoy) is to get a wide variety of experiences and thoughts/concepts/ideas in my head. Like I said at the start, creativity is taking what you know and connecting it in new ways. Everything I see, do, and learn builds up as background knowledge to reference and pick through for inspiration. The more I know, the more I have available in my head to draw from later.

It's like a collection of legos where the number of bricks and variety of different types/shapes/colors you have in the bin determines and limits what you can build. A larger collection has more options, so I collect and try to keep a continuous stream of new things coming so I don't get stagnant.