Organize Your Blog Notes

Here is one you have really been waiting for. Haven’t you always wanted to know how I organize my notes? I have a very complicated system (not really) and I’m going to fill you in on it right now. Are you on the edge of your seat?

First of all, I keep a notebook with me at all times. I carry it in the Tomato so I have it at Church, at the store, in bed, everywhere! Any time I get an idea I want to remember, I write it down. Either in my notebook or in my planner: buy eggs, call the electrician, blog about blogging. I’ve got it all. When I sit down to write a blog I go through my notebook and type up my notes. Sometimes they are a couple words and sometimes they include an entire post. Those are my favorite!

Next, we all know that we must NEVER compose our posts in a blog editor don't we? You are just flirting with Dr. Disaster if you even attempt it. You know Dr. Disaster right? He’s the Super Foe who deletes award winning posts just as soon as you hit that Publish button. Use Word or some other editor that allows you to save every five of your precious words before your baby can come along and obliterate it all with a touch of her little paw.

I keep all my ideas in one file called “The Lazy Organizer”. As of today it is 112 pages long with each entry dated. Just a note about writing blog comments: I’m not weird enough to write them in Word but I am weird enough to copy (Ctrl C) my thoughts before I publish them. We all know how priceless a good comment is and I wouldn’t want to deprive anyone of my sacred words (ya right) before I can deliver them. I can't tell you how many comments this has saved me. One of them was probably for you!

The next thing is to write down all your thoughts. Even the dumbest ideas can turn into stellar, comment worthy blogs once you’ve had enough time to think them through. Cutting and pasting all these ideas together works wonderfully. One story about your baby dropping a library book in a sink full of water might be boring but you put that with a story about the time you LOST your baby in the Library and you might have a hit. Heck, while I’m thinking of it, just head over to Julie’s place because she has some great posts. If you change a few names and add your own photos no one would ever remember where they had read it before and she won’t mind a bit. (Please don't be dumb enough to really do this ok?)

Here’s the really exciting part: I type everything in black until I post it and then I change it to some random color so I can skip over it when I’m looking for a particular old blog idea. All my unused ideas are in black and all my published ideas are in color. Make sense? It makes things very easy to find.

Let’s not call it weird, let’s call it colorful and cheery and organized! Weird would be color coordinating your posts. Like all the green posts are about organizing, yellow would be for your workouts, blue would be for Mommy blogging, etc. Wait that is a great idea! I am totally going to start doing that! But that changes everything! I'll have to write my notes in their assigned color and then change them to black after they are published. Whatever. Just have fun organizing your blog notes you weird compulsive organizer/blogger!