Random Writing Tips for Organizing and Keepin’-a-goin’

• Never stop writing for the day at the end of a section or even a sentence. Always end midway through a sentence, so you know basically what you were thinking about when you left. Chances are you'll change it anyway, but it will give you a solid starting place.


• Use footnotes or Word's note feature to make yourself little notes about where a particular piece of information came from or something you'll need to check later in the writing. Do it here and now, so you don't forget later.


• Always save a separate copy of your footnoted file before you send it to the editor, which probably won't have footnotes. Give it a unique and clearly identifiable filename for easy reference later.


• Do some writing everyday. It doesn't have to be actual writing, it can be just research or line editing already written work, but do something on the project everyday. The longer you're away from a piece, the harder it is to get back into it.


• Back up your work at least every week, if not everyday, to a separate drive. And I don't mean a thumb drive either, I mean a real, honest-to-goodness external backup drive. They're cheap enough, get one and use it.