Organization

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Are you asking us how to edit? How to rearrange material? Without knowing the book, that's not so easy to do. And what you're actually needing is unclear.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Hi Carly! I can relate...in most areas of life I am seriously disorganized

When I'm writing longer pieces (books in particular), I tend to keep everything on my mac. Although I've been tempted to print out to edit/review, I've found that simply saving each draft lets me go back and cut and paste, make changes, additions, etc. as needed. And, it keeps everything nice and neat, and I don't lose anything (and trust me, if I printed them out I'd lost them so fast lol). So I keep one main document, and then supplementary documents like draft 2, draft 3, notes for chapter 2, notes for chapter 3, etc.

Hope this helps!

Ghost Girl

I agree with Siri Kirpal. I'm not quite clear on what help you need. But I will give it a try based on my hazy impression.

In fiction writing we sometimes talk about "pantsers", who just start writing with no outline or direction and that works well for them, and "outliners" who begin with an outline and a clear direction of where they are headed, while staying open to the possibility that things could change along the way and that works for them.

From what you said it seems like you either started your project as a pantser, or you are not happy with the way your outline worked out. I am an outliner, and while I accept that being a pantser works for some fiction writers, I can't imagine it would work for non-fiction. You didn't say, did you start with an outline and proposed table of contents? If not, there is still hope . . .

If I were you, I would open a word doc and jot down the central themes from each chapter (divided by paragraphs). Then I could look at them all, and with the magic of cut and paste--move them around.

If you are a more hands on person, you could to the same thing with index cards.

Either method would give you a bird's eye view of your book and help you see how you could improve by either reorganizing, filling in holes, cutting, or even doing a bit of re-writing.

Another possibility to consider is that your book is just fine the way it is and you are just stuck in an overly critical mode. No matter what I am writing whether it is a short or long, fiction or non-fiction, I am either excited about what I am writing and feel positive about it (other wise why do it?) or (and this usually comes after I have spent a good amount of time on it) I swing to the other side of the pendulum and think that my writing is a big pile of slop, boring, pedantic, whatever . . . Since I have learned that this is a pattern for me, I either wait and see if the feeling passes, or I ask another writer for an honest opinion. So far, most of my projects (except for blog posts and a short story or two) survive and live to see an audience.

Hope that helps.

What literateparakeet said!

For myself, I start with an outline (with the understanding that items may be moved around as I discover it's more appropriate to cover them elsewhere--updating my outline when I move subjects keeps me from accidentally duplicating them elsewhere).

When I begin writing, I take the outline for each chapter and save it in a separate Word document. I then begin expanding chapter by chapter, writing what I know, adding notes on sections that I need to research or think about more before actually doing the writing. This means that I don't feel I have to complete any one section. If I'm just not ready to write a section, I move on to something else that I am ready to write.

My work involves a lot of illustrations, which I try to develop/take scrap photos of/take notes on whenever I'm doing substantial work on a section of the text. This saves me from having to figure out later what I planned for illustrations. I also list illustrations with tentative numbers (chp#-section#-illus#). Numbering them by chapter and section lets me add or delete illustrations without renumbering the whole book every time I add or delete a section. If I know what the caption will be, I'll add it when I list the illustration within the text.

Later I go back and make a master list of illustrations in Excel, with notes for the editor and photographer.

As I work on the text, I update an Excel file where I have the desired word count for the book (broken down tentatively by chapter), adding the current word count for whatever chapter I'm currently adding to. This gives me an overview of whether I'm writing too long or too short, so I can adjust how much detail I include, or I can contemplate eliminating whole sections of the book (or even chapters--I tend to write really long).

On my computer I create a folder for each draft, with the separate chapters within it. As I accumulate images to document the illustrations, I create a folder for each chapter that will have the text, the images, (eventually) the master list of illustrations, and any notes on what still needs to be done.

When I start a new draft, I make a copy of the whole thing into a new folder and begin the next round of revisions.

Hope this helps.

I definitely outline. And I also save each version of my document, in case I want to go back or re-visit something.

But, I recently discovered Scrivener. I am only using the free 30 day trial period right now, but I think I will be purchasing it. I am sure many here can give you the scoop on it (it may even be owned by someone on AW, I do not recall).

What I absolutely love about it is being able to move sections around without cutting and pasting- and to see the entire table of contents as it changes on a sidebar. Wow!!!

So if you do like to outline, and you are feeling like it is slop, perhaps check if it just needs to be mixed back into organization?

If you are a pantser, however, I am of no help- not my skill