Screenshot courtesy of www.Evernote.com
If you’re a writer, whether it’s creative or business, you know that the bulk of a writing task is doing research and/or making notes. When you sit down to compile that research and start your writing, it helps to have those notes, web clippings, photos, etc. organized.
Having a good organization system for your writing can help so much with getting inspired, getting started, and saving time.
I suggest using Evernote for this. (You can read my blog post on Evernote here: Use Evernote For a New Level of Organization).
There are multiple ways to use Evernote to organize your research. You can start with a notebook for “Research” with tags for each type of research. This is helpful if you won’t know the structure of your writing ahead of time. If you do have some structure in mind, it may be more helpful for you to have notebook stacks. For example, you could have a stack for each chapter, or a stack for each article.
Use the Evernote app on your computer and mobile devices to write up your notes. You can add web clippings using the Evernote “Web Clipper” add-on in your internet browser and use the Evernote app on your smartphone or tablet to take photos.
Tags can be very helpful to search for all of your research on a particular subject.
You can assign multiple tags to each note, web clipping, or photo. For example, if you’re writing a piece about wellness and you find a web site dedicated to healthy eating, you can clip it and tag it “wellness”, “eating”, “diet”, etc.
Using Evernote for research gives you a tool to keep all of your research in one place. Evernote’s great search tool can help you to bring up references quickly so that the most tedious part of writing goes quickly and smoothly, leaving you more time for creativity and even more research!
Are you a fiction writer? Here’s a great article on Lifehacker: How to Use Evernote for Writing Fiction.
Need help with Evernote? Contact me.
