Friday 8th October 2021
Given that I’ve come to a natural pause in my writing with several first drafts being completed, I’ve spent a lot of today both learning and making notes.
Notetaking is something I’m still trying to master, if I’m honest. I used to be the type of person who would see something useful and then (if I remembered) bookmark it. The trouble with that (as I have found over the years) is that it soon gets cluttered. Links to stores and applications mixed with information posts.
And then you go back after a couple of years and find that the site is dead or they’ve changed their URL structure and the content isn’t accessible any more.
So in the last few months I’ve moved to keeping copies of interesting info in Notion.
I like Notion over something like Evernote as it’s got a lot more features. I use it for all my planning and work tracking, due to the fact that it has simple but effective databases. However, it’s possible to use it like Evernote and keep text notes.
I’ve done videos on Life Pillars, but this is how I organise Notion. It’s a very basic filing system for me. So if I read a really interesting bit of Marketing advice, I’ll stick it under the Marketing page. I’ll always do a new page rather than just have one big page with loads of notes, as I’ve found that over time, things get messy.
My fiction section used to be simple but now I have articles on craft, stuff on Screenwriting, ideas and a host of other things. What I’ve done is as a section gets cluttered I’ll start to organise it into sub-sections. So all the craft will go under a newly created section on craft, screenwriting under screenwriting and so on.
At some point I know I’m going to need a page such as Screenwriting ideas and then wonder whether it should go under ideas or Screenwriting but I might use the synced blocks feature to put it in both areas or create some sort of backlink.
Aside from the information I used to keep in bookmarks, I’ve also picked up a few courses during the pandemic. Places like Udemy will often do promotions where they will put certain courses up for free for 24 hours. I picked up a load of those. But what I’ve been doing is after I watch them, is to leave what I’ve learnt in those courses. Sure, I could go back to them, but then it’s a case of getting back into the course and finding the bits that are relevant to me.
So what I’ve started doing is making notes on any courses I do. I find the act of making notes helps retention, plus I have my own handy cheat sheet if I need to refer to it months or years later.
I’m doing the same with instructional Youtube videos. I’ll create a page in Notion with a link to the video and my notes on the content.
What I don’t know is if I’m taking notes in the right way. I saw some videos where people spent a lot of time making their notes look ‘nice’, I can understand the appeal but I’m more interested in the content than the presentation and everything I’ve seen on effective Notetaking has focused more on the aesthetic rather than ways to ensure you’re capturing the right information.
As I said, my notetaking is something I’m evolving, but whereas I once never took notes, even for story ideas, I’m doing it a lot now. I try not to get too wrapped up in it (which is why I prefer understandable rather than pretty) and disappear down a notetaking rabbithole. But I hope the work I’m doing helps future me by having all the info in one easy searchable place.
I managed to outline a couple of shorts today as well, so whilst a lot of the day tomorrow will be consumed by Pokemon Go Community Day, I’m hoping that come Sunday I’ll be doing a load more writing again.
I also got a few ideas for the next first draft after The Accursed and might start plotting those out sometime next week.
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