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| DAY TWO: YOUR MASTER LIST |
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Sample
chapter from |
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What
should writers do? With so many ideas floating around in their minds, it's
impossible to keep them all organized, right? Maybe not.
Today we are going to take a major organizing leap, and create a cheat
sheet of the types of information you use. The
Master List Cheat Sheet is your organizing bible—it drives nearly
everything you do. |
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The
Master List is based on a pyramid scheme. At the top of the pyramid
are only a few Main Categories. They can be subdivided into Subcategories.
At the lowest level are your Ideas and Topics. You should
have lots of these.
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For
example, a main topic could be Parenting. Subcategories include
Safety, Infant, Toddler, and Discipline. Ideas and Topics under Infant
include Feeding Formula, Bathing, and Bonding. You can see how easy it is to work your way up or down the pyramid when sorting your information. Did you find a newspaper clipping which describes bonding between an infant and his father? You instantly know it should be in the Subcategory of "Infant." Did you find a guideline for a new parenting magazine? Under Parenting, select the subcategory called "Guidelines." The beauty of this system is that the categories and subcategories are predefined for you, and stored on your handy Master List Cheat Sheet. What could be a thirty second (or longer!) decision about where to file has just been reduced to a couple seconds. You will be using these categories everywhere—in your filing cabinet, on your computer, in your notebooks—so make sure you like your choices and they do not overlap. |
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