Yesterday I had a massive writing AHA on a project I’ve been working on since September 2022.
Thank you digital organization!!
I was at the library doing something totally different-a mid year review. I read through some old notes about my past writing goals. Luckily I already had those written out in a specific area.
As I read, I clicked between various documents I keep in my favorite writing application.
I used to keep all of these in folders in my computer, or Google Docs and then in Scrivener. I still use Notion and Google Docs for certain things, but my writing HOME is a new application I’ve used for a year.
Also it’s free.
It’s where 90% of my writing goes and where I write daily.
I can make a million files because it’s easy to organize. The files are small so it doesn’t take up much space. I have everything from daily journals to book drafts to article ideas to business ideas in there. Even my todo list is there now.
And it’s synced on all my computers AND my phone. (I do pay a small fee for that/the cloud storage I already use.)
Everything is linked so I can see where ideas connect across the hundreds of documents.
I’ve been doing this for a year and every so often I have an experience that really shows me the benefit of this system.
Case in point: the AHA moment I’ve waited for.
Reviewing my writing goals for the season led me to a really powerful write up I had done in my journal.
There was a conversation I had with Kate in Paradise last July on voxer. I’d transcribed part of it.
Something we talked about perfectly related to a project I have been working on since October.
This is for a vlog series on Life after Loss, a sequel to the video about lessons from a year grieving my father. It’s about my personal journey grieving and what I’m learning.
Because I have everything connected, I didn’t even have to remember this conversation happened or that I had it written out, it just naturally came up.
I didn’t have to go into a year of paper notebooks or look through endless folders. The exact entry of the conversation popped up with a click.
What’s crazy is how much that conversation from a year ago still resonated today, which led me to the answer I hadn’t realized I was looking for.
I’ll be working on my vlog over the summer.
But I love how I can work on multiple projects and keep them all in one application, dance between one and another and connect everything to everything.
This picture above is what all my writing looks like in “graph” view where you can see all the connections between ideas and documents.
If you’d like to learn about how I’m doing this sort of digital organization process,I’ll be teaching more about it in the upcoming Summer Writing Group. It’s been truly life altering.
