No more lost notes: the author's guide to Evernote
The struggle to keep track of all your notes for your novel is real. If you're like me, you have a tonne of notebooks, and scraps of handwritten paper crumpled up in your bag or your jeans pocket, or the back of the shopping list on the fridge.
Evernote can be a lifesaver for writers, whether you are writing fiction or non-fiction. Not only does it provide an easy way to keep track of your ideas and thoughts, but it also helps you stay organised with research material.
I first came across Evernote via Maria Popova who writes the insightful blog Brain Pickings. Maria writes essays featuring quotes and wisdom from the world's best thinkers. When Maria was asked how she organises her research material, she said she uses Evernote to keep an index of her notes and ideas. In an interview with Copyblogger she described her research process: 'I use Evernote to save notes on various items I’m reading and to photograph the marginalia on book pages, which are then searchable thanks to optical character recognition.'
Evernote offers many different features that are perfect to keep writers organised:
The optical character recognition is a game changer. You can use the photo function in Evernote to scan a page of a notebook or marginalia in a book. You can also scan Post-It Notes! You can then use the optical character recognition to search for text within a photo.
Here I can search for my character Liza and find notes I have written - see how it's picking up the handwritten text in these photos:
Here I've scanned a page from George Saunders' 'A Swim in a Pond in the Rain' about his revision method. I've titled the note, and tagged it 'how to revise' - so I can keep this with my other notes about revision. Later, I can search for it by 'Saunders' or from a phrase within the text such as 'iteration'
I've scanned handwritten notes in my notebook from a brilliant The Writing University podcast on revising for one thing at a time by Kerry Howley . Again - I've tagged this 'how to revise' to keep these notes together with my other tips on re-drafting.
Evernote can also be used to scan Post-It Notes! Had a brainwave, and only have time to scribble it on a Post-It Note? Scan it, tag it, such as 'Poetry', and keep it in a collection on Evernote.
Again, more handwritten notes I've digitised. I can search this for phrases I may recall, such as 'beta block', 'tissue paper'.
You can also use Evernote to compile a large amount of research from multiple sources - eg. websites, photos from pages in books, emails and organise by tags.
Evernote has been called a 'digital filing cabinet' because it can help you keep track of all your research. The internet is a vast, and sometimes overwhelming place. It can be difficult to keep track of all the articles you’ve read.
Evernote Web Clipper is a simple extension for your web browser that lets you capture full-page articles and images. You can also do this from your smartphone. So say you are browsing the web - and find something of interest, you can clip it, and tag it - so you can easily find it later.
You can tag your research by the book project you are working on, or by themes or ideas. Evernote can also automatically tag notes that have a similar title and subject.
An Evernote Notebook by Moleskine is the first paper notebook designed for people to create digitised versions of handwritten notes. Smart Stickers, included with every notebook, make it easy to tag and organise your notes. Standard notebooks and manual tagging work just as well. No more flicking through hundreds of pages to find that brilliant idea!
You can also record voice notes and save them in Evernote.
Evernote is great for online storage - to keep all your research secure. You get 60MB on the free plan, 10GB monthly on the personal and 20GB monthly on the professional.
Explore how Evernote can improve your writing process - visit the website now!
You can try the free version or upgrade to get the search text feature in images, PDFs and notes and get extra storage.
