Lately I have begun a thing where, once I get a story idea, I go out and buy a journal specific to that idea to start outlining in. I have one for When Heaven Was Blue, When Stars Rise, a new novel idea I came up with, and another for short story ideas or promotional stuff for When Stars Die. I had one for WSD, but my cat threw up on it, and so it was rendered completely useless. I then got another one for WSD, but I frankly have no clue what happened to that one. Needless to say, I have decided to make sure I keep them all from now on. Here they are:
This one is for the newest WIP that I am mostly just going to outline for now.
This one is for When Stars Rise. I had hoped to be able to fit the outline of the third book, When Stars Collide, in it, but WSC will need its own notebook.
This one is for misc. writing things, like short stories, promotional things, future novel ideas, ect…
This one is for When Heaven Was Blue, which is currently on hiatus while an editor looks over the first 1/3rd of it.
So those are my journals. Where do you guys store your outlines?
Neat idea. I just use plain old spirals for my story ideas, but I like the themed ones. May have to try it.
“I had one for WSD, but my cat threw up on it, and so it was rendered completely useless.” This made coffee come out of my nose. Luckily, it was sufficiently cooled. I think this is such a genius idea for its obviousness and simplicity–and yet, I never thought to do it. All my ideas for all of my different WIPs are scattered and mishmashed together in numerous notebooks. I should put a sincere effort toward doing something more along these lines. I love your journals. They look like they fit so perfectly for the novels. 🙂
I’ve been doing that for quite some time now. Demon has a book, Unbroken has a couple actually. I started one for The Breeders and I have loads of other for different things. One for poetry, one for randomness, one for personal crap. One for Monday. One for sunny days. The list goes on. 😉
I love notebooks.