October News & Getting Organized in Preptober

Did I not score the perfect Halloween coffee mug?

Happy Fall, Y'All!

HOLY moly, this autumn is off to a fast-paced start! Between out-of-town visitors, 6 family/friend b-days in a week (plus two anniversaries), a workshop I gave (see below), a Nov. 1 release on the kidlit front, and my regular writing schedule, I am scrambling to catch up ~ as you can probably tell from this blog only being posted now! Yikes...

SCROLL DOWN FOR ANNOUNCEMENTS &
"PREPTOBER" ADVICE ARTICLE FOR WRITERS...

Here's me with the wonderful Three Rivers Romance Writers chapter of RWA. Such a great group! Thanks for making me feel so welcome. I so enjoyed talking to these fabulous writers about "Characters In Motion." Photo credit courtesy of historical romance author Sheridan Jeane (in yellow behind me!) Thanks, Sheri!

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October News

1.) Huzzah, UK Readers! ~ DUKE OF SHADOWS has been selected as an Amazon Featured Monthly Deal for Amazon UK throughout October. Until Halloween, you can download my latest release for only £0.99. Trick or treat! :)

2.) Also, for the first time ever, the entire Moonlight Square series is now enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, so if you are a member, you can read the whole 5-book series for FREE.

3.) Those following my family-friendly Gryphon Chronicles series of Victorian-era fantasy adventures (same genre as Harry Potter, for Ages 10 and Up ~ *MANY* of our readers are adults!), you'll be happy to hear that, at long last, Book #6 is finally ready to hit the shelves. The Black Fortress is on Pre-Order and will be released on Nov. 1!

FYI -- The Gryphon Chronicles is also enrolled in Kindle Unlimited for the first time ever. So if you're a member and you want to check it out, I'd be delighted. I really enjoy alternating between romances and these kidlit adventures. It helps keep my creativity fresh! :) For more info, see EGFoley.com.

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Currently Writing:

With THE BLACK FORTRESS done & done, my primary project right now is historical romance ~ Moonlight Square Book #5 to be exact! And, yes, as some of you might have suspected, it's Major Peter Carvel's story. Woo hoo! You know I love writing warrior heroes, and this one's even MORE fun than usual because it has... A TREASURE HUNT in it!!! 

I can't believe that, with all the adventurey romances I've written, I've never sent a couple on a treasure hunt before. Well, Peter and his spitfire of a girl will be doing just that. Super fun.

This book is *tentatively* titled A MARQUESS BY MOONLIGHT, and I'm aiming for a Spring 2020 release.

As I'm working on this story, this lovely fellow has been helping to inspire me for Peter's general "look." Yes... I know. What I go through for my readers! *gg* Very well, I'll suffer for my art if I must...

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Preptober Is Here!

How to Get Organized for a Successful NaNo:
My Top 5 Tools & Tricks

NaNo! What the heck is it? Contrary to popular belief, it's not a greeting you'd exchange with Mork from Ork.

​NaNo, or NaNoWrimo is shorthand for National Novel Writing Month, which is November every year. Next month, writers all around the world will dive into writing their books with the goal of getting 50,000 words written by Nov. 30.

Anyone can participate, it's fun, and it's free! (For more info, visit www.nanowrimo.org.) 

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With the huge popularity of NaNo in November, October has gained a nickname as Prep-tober, because now's the time when we need to prepare all the stuff that goes before the actual writing starts. Character creation. Plotting. Research. All that good stuff.  That way, we can dive right into the writing on Nov. 1.

Preparing to write a novel is really such a huge subject (for me, anyway, as a plotter) that I'm just going to attack one small area of it ~ small but vital to your success as a writer. It's called...

Staying Organized!

Okay, not the sexiest topic, I'll give you that, LOL. But, boy, is it important. After all, when you're writing a book, it doesn't do you much good to come up with the most fascinating characters and exciting plot twists if, a month from now, you can't find all those brilliant ideas you devised.

I can personally attest that it is the MOST frustrating waste of time to have to scan through old, chicken-scrawled notes trying to find that one stray line you needed. To say nothing of getting mixed up between drafts of manuscripts, or ~ every writer's worst nightmare ~ losing work because you didn't save as frequently as you should or in both physical and cloud locations.

So, this 5-item list-icle is all about setting up orderly "buckets" where you can put All The Things to keep you organized, from images to research articles to drafts, and tracking your output, etc. This will speed up your productivity and make it easier to jump right into the story again when the next writing session comes.

Before I dive in, let me just say that I chose this topic because I am NOT a naturally organized person. Quite the opposite. Creative chaos is my middle name. So I had to learn all this the hard way.
Putting these measures in place requires a time investment, but I can tell you from experience that NOT being organized is way worse. You're flirting with disaster if you have a computer crash, for example, and haven't saved EVERYTHING on a regular basis.

Disorganization also brings unnecessary stress (not good for creativity!), and actually wastes time when you can't find that one sticky note with the detail you needed. Or when the research article you were counting on has vanished into cyber-space.

Now, if you're a naturally organized person or are highly tech savvy, you may already have a better system than this in place with apps I don't know about. But this is what I've got, and it's reliable and fairly easy for those of us who, left to our devices, would tend toward clutter. If you're not so great on the organization and need some tools, this should cover all your bases. So let's dive in.

1. PINTEREST

it's SO much easier to describe faces, places, and things when you're working off a model (especially when historical accuracy is a priority.) That's why one of the first things I do when I decide to write a new books is to create a private/secret Pinterest board for all images related to the novel.

I divide the board into Sections (using the plus sign at the top of the board's page): People, Places, and Special Objects (things like murder weapons, key props, unusual historical objects that come into play in the story can go here, etc). You could also add another section for Cover Ideas when you see images or other book covers similar to what you envision for this novel when it's done.

PRO TIP: when you are hunting around online for images of a suitable model for your hero/heroine (and villain, if you have one), try to choose a famous actor or model so that you can pin pictures of them in various moods and poses. Obviously, your character won't be identical to the famous person, but being able to collect pictures of the man or woman looking serious, smiling, etc. will help you envision them physically all the faster. For secondary characters, just one image is usually good enough.

If you don't already have a Pinterest account, it's free. Visit www.pinterest.com. (Warning: it's addictive!!)

2. EVERNOTE

​Next, you'll need an orderly place to capture your online research.

I use Evernote, another free online app. See www.evernote.com. [Paid subscriptions available but not necessary.]

What makes Evernote great is its intuitive setup and, better still, the web clipper add-on Be sure and download that, too -- it's kind of the whole point. It'll add a little elephant head icon next to your browser bar where you should already have the red Pinterest "P" for anything you want to pin from the web.

Evernote allows you to capture any article you come across online in the form of the full article with pictures included. (I've heard others say they use OneNote for this kind of thing but I have no experience with that program, so I can't comment.)

The nice thing about Evernote is that you can read your articles that you have clipped when you're off-line.

Within my Evernote, I create a simple folder tree. They call main folders "Notebooks"; I create one of these for each different series I'm writing. Then I make a subfolder for each book within that series.

From that moment on, I religiously make sure to put ALL of the pertinent articles I find for that novel into the correct folder. Because I never know if/when someone is going to question my research. Then I can whip out the article and say, "Here's my source/s; suck it." *grin* Or, later, I might want to share interesting historical tidbits I learned with my readers. 

​Clipping my finds to Evernote has become as second-nature to me as pinning great pics for my book in the appropriate Pinterest boad and section.

3. EXCEL
The next thing I set up for my novel is an Excel sheet so I can track my word counts for each scene, among other things, as you'll see in the downloadable template I've provided for you below. (Who loves ya, baby?)

I also copy in a couple of calendar pages that will become my no-fuss story calendar. (I also use an app called Aeon Timeline 2 for tracking time through my series, and though it's great, it's more elaborate than most writers probably might want to deal with. They have a free trial, but it's not an expensive program, anyway. It's not an online app, btw. You download it and use it offline.)

But a simple calendar page/s added on to my Excel sheet keeps me from getting mixed up about when story events are happening. I'll often print out a copy of the calendar, add it to my 3-ring binder with my outline, and track time in the story on paper, shrug. Easy is good!

So, here's the Excel sheet I've developed over many years of trial and error below. Feel free to adapt it to your own uses. I gave you some notes about how I use the thing, highlighted in yellow on there, and also filled in some lines so you can see an example of how I use the different spaces.

You can download it off the Scribd doc below. Note that this Scribd widget only allows you to view the Excel sheet in Page mode, but when you view it in Normal mode, there aren't those page breaks. It's seamless.

BTW, here is my source for the calendar pages I've used in the Excel doc. These are free downloads from the wonderful Vertex 42 site:
https://www.vertex42.com/calendars/printable-calendars.html 

Psst: To Download the Form, Click the ICON Above!      

4. SETTING UP FOLDERS ON YOUR COMPUTER

Feeling brave? Good. Because this section is about setting up your computer folders in a way so that you know EXACTLY where to find everything in your computer without having to run a search, or heaven forbid, having to rely on simply clicking the Recent Documents under the file tab.

I cannot stress enough the importance of setting up a filing system in your computer that will prevent you from getting confused about which similarly-titled document is the one you meant to use. A trusty file system will increase your productivity and reduce your stress by a lot. (And, remember, too much stress kills the spirit of play that is the essence of creativity.) But I digress.

The credit for the following goes to my logical, orderly, math-and-science-brained, brilliant husband, Dr. E, who gave me this system. God bless the man! I shudder to think how many hundreds of hours I've lost over the past 20 years in scrambling to find which version of my manuscript I made those few changes on... 

If you have a background in the academic or corporate world, you may have already learned a good, reliable system, but I went from starving artist/waitress to (finally!) author, so I never got those kinds of lessons from The Man. *grin*

As a result, it took me AGES of bumbling around in writerly clutter and confusion before Eric stepped in and ended all the drama with a good, clean, organized system. 
 
So, here's how my book folders are now set up on my PC. Like I said, I know it's not sexy, but these are the kinds of things that will make a huge difference for you over time, or even better, start you off right if you're a new writer.

Adapt all the following to suit your own genres and needs.

Allrighty then! When you click Documents on my computer, here's all you see:

#1. Historical Romance
#2. Middle Grade Fantasy
#3. Business
#4. All Future Story Ideas
#5. Personal
#6. Gael's Old Stuff

So let's click #1. Historical Romance. Here you see all my series (or is it serieses? I never did learn!) in order:

01-The Ascension Trilogy
02-The Knight Miscellany
03-The Spice Trilogy
04-The Inferno Club
05-Moonlight Square

It's important to put the numbers or it'll come out alphabetized, and that's no good. You must use the 0 first for 1-9 or the numbers will get out of order as soon as you go over 10.

So, let's choose a series. We'll click 05-Moonlight Square. Now we see:

01-Series Overall
02-Novels WIPs
03-Finished Books

Info that pertains to the series as a whole goes in 01. The finished, published manuscripts as I complete new installments to the Moonlight Square series all go into 03.

The one we need to look at for you guys is 02-Novels WIPs (WIPs stands for Works In Progress). Here we see a list of the individual titles in the series, with their correct abbreviation, MS for Moonlight Square, and the book number in the series:

MS0-One Moonlit Night (the prequel novella gets a zero)
MS1-Duke of Scandal
MS2-Duke of Secrets
MS3-Duke of Storm
MS4-Duke of Shadows
MS5-A Marquess by Moonlight
MS6-Title TBD
MS7-Title TBD 

Okay, now we're really getting somewhere! (I did not use zeroes before the book numbers because I won't be going over 10 novels in the series.)

Now let's choose an individual book to see how its sub-folders are set up. We'll click my current wip, MS5-A Marquess by Moonlight. The sub-folders are: 

01-Manuscript
Excel
Images
Pkg & Promo
Research
Scrivener
Voice Files 

Allow me to explain:

01-Manuscript 
Any actual text of my novel goes somewhere under this first folder. Note that I put 01 in front of Manuscript be/c I wanted it to be at the top for convenience. The rest of the folders here are just alphabetical.

Excel
All Excel docs related to the book go here.

Images
Here's a place to put all downloaded pix related to this book (but not book the cover! That goes somewhere else. This is for character faces or settings or vehicles or props -- stuff you might want to download off your Pinterest board. There's no law that says you have to put these images in your Pictures folder provided by your operating system. It's better to put them with the book folders that they go with. Just be mindful not to publicly use any images you don't have a license for. You could have a subfolder under here with images you've paid to utilize, like my hot warrior guy above. And keep a record of the license agreements, wherever you got them from. This is all just basic CYA so you don't get docked for copyright violations.

Packaging & Promo
Everything related to the book cover will go here, along with drafts for the back cover copy and any marketing materials, like special Facebook banners or bookmarks you want to have printed.

Research
This is where to put downloaded research articles. True, your Evernote has them for offline viewing, but it's smart to DL a copy and save it to a flash drive for posterity. Plus, you may want to upload some key articles to your Scrivener, and I don't think you can upload directly to Scriv from Evernote. (I haven't tried it yet, so I could be wrong. Maybe it's possible, shrug.)

Scrivener
The next subfolder is where I house the all-important Scrivener document for this book. (Scrivener was life-changing for me. It's my favorite program in the Whole Wide World next to Dragon. xoxoxo to Scrivener! I will share more about how I use Scrivener in the future.)

Voice Files
This is where I store the MP3's of me as I'm out on a Walk & Talk at the park, dictating my first draft, to be later transcribed using Dragon Naturally Speaking.

Now things are about to get very interesting as we crack open the 01-Manuscript folder. We're finally down to the bottom layer of the system. Ta-daaa!

Here we are going to see some actual FILES, not just sub-folders. And here is where Dr. Eric's 2 Rules come into play:

Rule #1 -- ALWAYS put the date at the end of your filename.
This will save you so much headache and heartache, I'm not even gonna explain it, just trust me. Don't rely on the little thingy under the info tab in Word (or whatever) that tells you when the doc was created. Spell it out for yourself with a consistent style of numerical dates.

Rule #2 -- ALWAYS drag the OLD, NO-LONGER CURRENT VERSION OF YOUR FILE into the appropriate OLD folder (as seen below) when it's not the correct, current version anymore. 

Leave the current, correct file right here in the main 01-Manuscript folder. Thus, the only file/s you see when you open this folder are the FEW that you're actually using. The good ones!

All the old stuff has been dragged off into the OLD folders where it can't stress you out or confuse you.

Now, if you need to go back and look at a previous version of your verbiage, there won't be any confusion as to which one was which, because the dates are clearly marked right there in the filenames.

You might not need to break down your OLD folders as finely as I have here, into Chapters, Acts, and Completes. It just depends on how big of chunks of story you like to work on at a time.

NOTE: My main writing app is Scrivener, but when I've got a batch of scenes done in Scrivener, I bring them over to Word either as chapters (around 4000 words apiece) or I'll assemble several chapters into Act-sized chunks, 100-150 pages. It's one of the later steps in the process for me, but Word is where my material will eventually need to end up for printing and publishing.

In any case, here are the sub-folders and an example of the files you'd find under 01-Manuscript:

01-OLD Chapters
02-OLD Acts
03-OLD Completes
And files:
MS5-Act I_09-01-19
MS5-Act II_10-01-19

Let's talk about those last two, the files. As you can see, I'm working in Acts. I've got my series abbreviation and book number first, what chunk of the story the file contains, and the date in my preferred numerical style.

When I finish Act III and the book is done, then I'll combine them into what New York publishing simply calls "a complete."

I'll make a new doc, Select All for each Act, and paste them together, naming this new file:

MS5-Clean Complete_10-31-19.

Then I'd DRAG those few Act files into the 02-OLD Acts folder. Away with thee!

Now that new "Complete" file is the only one I'll see sitting here beneath the list of sub-folders.

But I know after a couple days off that I'm going to want to get in there again and run through it one more time, tweaking it here and there, so you know what I do?

Make a duplicate of the Complete file, add the new date to the end of the filename. Make my changes in the new one, and DRAG the old one off to the OLD folder where it won't confuse me. 

So you see, it's really pretty simple once you get used to using Eric's 2 Rules. Date at the end of the filename, drag the no-longer-correct versions into the OLD folders and you're golden.

Lastly, on this point, it's key to save to a physical backup drive of some sort as well as the cloud (we use Dropbox) after every writing session.

JUST having local backup at home isn't going to help you if, like happened to a famous author friend of mine -- you'd know her name if you read historicals! -- your house is ever burglarized. The thieves took her computer, and it had her thumb drive sitting in the USB port. Horror story. Beyond the trauma of the robbery, she also had to deal with losing months of a work on a book.

Whew! Going through all that file stuff was tough, I know! If you're still with me, you are one serious writer, and I salute you. 

But your reward for all this is that you never need to waste another second of your life wondering where you should save something, or where you put something. 

If your computer files are currently in chaos, I can tell you that Eric had me create a #6 folder under Documents called:
#6. Gael's Old Stuff

I dragged and dropped all the chaos of my non-system into that folder. I hate having to venture in there and find stuff -- it's like poking around in Grandma's dusty old attic -- but at least I don't have to worry about that kind of clutter in the future. It's a whole new organized world! :)

5. WORLD ANVIL

After all that heavy stuff, here's a gem of a find ~ the answer to  every writer's world-building, series-bible tracking headaches. :)

Ready to have some fun? Then pop on over to World Anvil and sign yourself up for a free account.

Check out World Anvil.

Every writer needs a world book for their series, and this online app is beyond cool. The wonderful World Anvil people have thought of EVERYTHING writers need for tracking all those vexing little details of our imaginary worlds, whether contemporary, historical, or fantasy.

It can be really addictive working on your story world with World Anvil.

With World Anvil, you can create a fully searchable and fully linkable wiki with maps and timelines and clever templates that you just fill out for all your people, places, groups, special objects, laws, customs, important made-up books in your stories, artifacts, 
etc. etc. etc. Whatever your imagination gives you.

If you have monsters or shifters, you can record the details about their species, or hash out the fine points of the disease that turned half the world into zombies in your dystopian.

You can create jump links between characters and the places they usually appear, like the duke and his various homes, (and who's the butler at each one), then you can add, say, jump links to his family members with a mere mention. Or create a page for the nearby village at aforementioned estate. 

You can either keep your world private for yourself or share the whole thing or just parts of it with your readers. There's so much to say about World Anvil, that maybe I should just let the one and only World Anvil Janet explain. She and her brilliant husband created this online feast for writers and RPG gamers. Enjoy

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That's all, folks!

Hope this has been helpful. I wish every writer out there a happy Preptober and a successful and fun NanoWrimo. I'll be joining in!

All the best. If you have any questions, fire away below. :)
​~ GF