A Writer's Record Keeping Habits
Many writers, especially the beginners, are able to retain all information about their writings in their memory. However, very soon the data to be remembered exceeds the capacity of most writers because each new writing gives rise to four to eight items of information with it. Consequently, many writers end up submitting the same piece of writing more than once to different or even to the same publisher. This, along with many other reasons, dictates that everyone develop a systematic and meticulous record keeping habit.
In this lesson I will tell you the following things about record keeping:
1--Why Should You Keep Records
2--Keeping Records About Your Writings
3--Clipping And Filing Useful Items
4--Indexing The Information Gathered
Let us discuss each point:
Why Should You Keep Records: Every writer has to keep two types of records. Once a record of what he has done and second, a record of information that will help his writing. One must keep a record of his writings because once he becomes a successful author, his writings will go into hundreds. Each writing has several items of information associated with it like, date of writing, length of writing, title, date dispatched for publication, date of publication, and detailed information about the publication. No one can carry this kind of information in his head. Even if you have a prodigious memory you should employ it to retain information useful for your writing, and not this kind of routine data.
The second reason why should develop record keeping habits is to enrich your writings. Many times one comes across rare pieces of useful information, data or other information that is not easily available. At other times you will pick up points of great interest, inspirational thoughts or quotes, and interesting anecdotes. These can be very useful to you in future, and you should not let them perish soon.
Carrying this kind of information in one's head is impossible, impractical, and even foolish. Most writers will, in fact, forget such information very soon. Once it is lost, it is lost forever because it was rare piece of information.
Once you get seriously into writing, and once your creativity is stimulated by success, you will be struck frequently with inspirational thoughts, special insights, and many bits and pieces of thought that can be very valuable for your future writing. At other times you will suddenly realize how a thought or statement can be written in better ways. All of these should be recorded immediately. In case you do not have anything at hand to note it down (do not let such a situation come), then note it down on the earliest possible occasion. Better yet, write it down on any piece of paper that you can spot, like train tickets, envelopes, and even bits of newspaper. (This is what successful writers do).
Recording one's spontaneous thoughts is very important because they have only a short life span. Most writers forget them in a few hours. Some thoughts will elude your memory even after a single hour. Once lost, these are lost for ever. If you are not convinced, ask any honest writer!
Do not treat bits and pieces of useful information and inspired thoughts lightly. They have great power to enrich your writing. Follow a systematic plan to record and recall them.
Keeping Records About your Writings: You must separate a diary or note book for this purpose. Let it be for this purpose alone, not to be used for anything else. Make several columns in this diary. The following are some of the entries to be made: serial number, title, date when you commenced writing it, date when finished, approximate length, theme, date submitted, name of publication, date published, along with volume number of the publication, etc.
Not everyone needs all of these information, and therefore you should feel free to add, omit, or modify these categories. What is to remember is that too much information will not harm you, while too little information can always hurt at a critical occasion.
Initially you might feel bored at all this information keeping, but believe me there are plenty of writers who regret their careless record-keeping. They never thought that they would succeed so much or so fast, and therefore they neglected an important activity.
Every writer has the potential to become a successful author. None can predict who will succeed and who will not. Perhaps tomorrow it will be your turn to enjoy fame and therefore do everything in such a way that you might not have to regret.
If you produce many kinds of writings, say poetry, articles, stories, etc., then indicate that too in the diary. You might do that in a column devoted to classification, or you can even add suffixes to the serial number to indicate the type of writing. For example, I use a number and then suffixes AR, R, ST, PO, etc. to indicate article, review, story, poem etc. Thus a typical serial number might look like J300AR. This indicates to me that this is the 300th piece of my writing, and it is an article. The prefix J is added only to distinguish my writings from my wife's who uses the prefix S, these being the first letters of our names.
Recording Your Spontaneous Thoughts People who have just entered the field of writing will not get a lot of spontaneous thoughts, but they should realize that this will not always be the situation. As they advance in their writing, and as their powers of observation, analysis and reflection develop, they will start getting a lot of ideas and insights that are special to writers and thinkers.
Further, if you ever enhance your creativity by using any of the methods that are available now, you will get so many creative thoughts that recording them will become almost impossible. If you ignore these insights, you will be the loser. What is the use of learning creativity if one is not ready or willing to tap the fruits of creativity.
Plenty of methods are available for record keeping, and none of them is perfect or suitable for everyone. You should therefore try as many of them as you want and them modify them according to your needs. You might even be able to devise something that is not mentioned in these lessons.
Whatever the methods you try, there is one precaution to be observed from the beginning, and that is: be systematic and do it carefully. If this is not done, notes collected with great enthusiasm will elude you precisely at the moment when you need them most. For example, if you note down these things on odd bits and pieces of paper, you will never be able to develop a proper system for classifying and indexing them. What's worse, they will drop here and there from your files and someone will show them the way to trash can assuming that it is another bit of waste paper. Believe me, this happens every day to countless writers whose wife, housemaid, or friends do not find an odd bit of paper as exciting or meaningful as the writers do ! Be sensible, and use a notebook, diary, or a file.
SOME GOOD METHODS: Some of the most helpful and well tried methods are to use diaries, loose leaf notebooks, tear-away sheets, or card files. You can use ordinary diaries or the spiral ones, depending upon your taste and the availability. Spiral diaries contain a spiral on the binding end, making it possible to open them completely to lay them flat on the table. Most diary users consider these superior to other diaries, but the ultimate choice is yours. Most cities and towns will have them. Both types of diaries come in two types: the fancy ones and thee normal ones. The fancy ones are quite expensive, and the added advantages of using them are so little that you should avoid them. It is better to invest that money to buy two ordinary ones than buying a single fancy one.
LOOSE LEAF ones are not yet as common as the spiral diaries mentioned above, but you might be able to get them if you look in some of the bigger stationary shops. These help you to add, remove, or rearrange the sheets, giving you a lot of flexibility in what you want to retain and what you want to file away.
TEAR AWAY pads are special letter pads used for taking notes for later filing. They do not contain fancy pictures or art paper, and they come cheap compared to the letter pads used for letter writing. They come in many sizes and you should choose them according to your needs. You might even choose different sizes at the same time -- the larger one for use at home and the smaller one for carrying in your handbag. You should, however, be very regular in placing the torn sheets into appropriate files so that they are not lost.
CARD FILES are a special item, useful for writers who pick up a lot of references and who then want to arrange these in alphabetical order. (In a few decades it might become obsolete because of the ever increasing availability of portable computers, but right now there is no threat to it in most countries.) Card files are special cupboards that can hold a bunch of 3-inch by 5-inch cards. You do not need an expensive cupboard to use them, though. A strong shoe-box is as good as a cupboard for most writers.
These cards are often called Reference Cards because they are used by researchers to keep an alphabetically arranged list of reference and quotations that are to be used when they write their thesis. These are not very common, but many stationary shops that cater to universities and colleges stock them. If you are unable to find them, you should try asking anyone who is involved in research.
Card files have the advantages of convenient size, and the ability to be arranged alphabetically. One can always carry a few blank cards in one's handbag.
Most writers will discover that they have to use a combination of the media mentioned above to meet their needs. That is perfectly all right as long as you don't lose them and are able to keep track of what is where.
The secret is not the possession of diaries, but the availability of writing media whenever and wherever they are needed -- whether you are travelling, standing at a bus stand, or waiting for a friend in his home. The second secret of the creative use of diaries is a "willingness" to write whatever inspiration comes to your mind as soon as possible. The best thing to do is to write down it immediately without caring for the spectators who might be amazed at the sight of man who is not killing time like them.
If you own a computer, then use a database to keep a record of such inspirational thoughts and also factual information that comes to you. However, you must be careful to avoid one pitfall. If the computer is not on, do not wait till it can be turned on. Note it down in the diary. Many are the precious insights lost because neither the computer is on nor the writer is willing to commit it to a diary. By the time he sits in front of the machine the next day or the next hour, the precious insight has disappeared.
Clipping And Filing Useful Items: Many times you will find interesting articles, poems, quotes, and other printed matter that are of interest to you. It might be part of a bulky magazine, or it might be just a small portion from a 24-page newspaper. You don't have to preserve the whole publication for the sake of the small piece that you need. Saving an entire magazine for the sake of a single article might not look too difficult in the beginning, but when this kind of material starts to accumulate, you will face considerable difficulty. It will be difficult to locate a given piece of information from the bulk of unrelated and useless papers. What is worse, the lazy human nature will force many to abandon the task when the search becomes too tedious. Nobody enjoys wading through a ton of old and dusty periodicals to find a small piece of information.
If the same information is clipped out and added to a file (or files), you have to worry only about the maintenance of a file, the contents of which are more easily accessible. The same approach is needed when you find an interesting bit of information in a publication or book that belongs to somebody else. You will need to make a photocopy and place it in your files.
Do not let important information slip by you. The little time invested in clipping and filing will save a lot time when locating that information becomes crucial. What's more, at times that insightful bit of information might turn out to be the most important piece of information needed to brighten your writing. Initially you might start with one or two files, increasing their number as the need arises for it. Experience will tell you whether you should have several files with different headings, or no classification at all.
Indexing The Information Gathered: Almost every writer wishes to have a filing system where each conceivable (and even inconceivable) topic in the world has a separate file into which he could automatically drop the clippings according the their subject matter. While the dream is good, it is neither practical nor necessary. What most people need is a system of indexing the existing files.
One of the best things to do is to keep adding clipping sequentially to a file till it is full and then switching over to the next one. At the time that you add a new clipping to a file, you must make an entry in notebooks where the index is located.
If you buy a thick address book, it will serve as the best index-book in the world. Pages are already provided for the 26 letters of the alphabet, and all you need is to make entries alphabetically. Suppose you are adding two clippings, one on present population of the country and the other on the education system, then you can enter 'Population" in the pages for P and 'Education' in the pages for E, and then add the information File5, page... All clippings in the file should be numbered according to some scheme that you choose. These will become the page number using which the clipping is located.
A dedicated collector will soon run out of pages in the index, and he should than add another one. If they are kept systematically they will help you to locate almost any information as fast as you wish.
At times you will notice that there are a lot of clippings related to a particular subject. You might then consider placing all of them into a single file. The entries in the index diary should be changed to reflect this new status.
Original article contributed by Dr. Johnson C. Philip. Revised by:
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