Work In Progress Notebook: The keep-everything-in-one-place manuscript organizer.

by Jeannie Ruesch

Keep your manuscript details organized!Do you have sticky notes everywhere with details about your characters or plot points? Do you have computer files, notebooks, loose leaf papers, even napkins with the valuable information you need to keep control of your manuscript? Have all the Information you need at the tip of your fingers with this wirebound notebook. From start to published, keep track of the details of every step of your novel with this notebook of outlines. With a combination of detailed outlines, questions and character profiles as well as plenty of blank, lined pages for your notes and thoughts, this notebook makes the perfect companion to finishing your novel.

109 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2008

About the author

Jeannie Ruesch wrote her first story at the age of the six, prompting her to give up an illustrious, hours-long ambition of becoming a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader and declare that writing was her destiny. That journey to destiny took a few detours along the way, including a career in marketing and design.

Her first novel, a fairy-tale like historical romance, was published in 2009, but the darker side of life had always captivated her. So after a dinner conversation with friends about the best way to hide a dead body, she knew she had to find a way to incorporate suspense into her writing. (The legal outlet for her fascination.) Today, she continues writing what she loves to read - stories of history, romance and suspense. She lives in Northern California with her husband, their son and an 80 pound lapdog lab named Cooper. She can be visited at www.jeannieruesch.com or found regularly on Twitter or Facebook.

She is also the creator of the WIP Notebook, a writer's tool to help stay organized while you write, which you can find at her website.

Reviews

[Don Incognito · Rating 3 out of 5]

After being interested in this notebook for some time, I have purchased and examined the electronic version that Jeannie Ruesch sells on her website. It's a 110-page Microsoft Word document with pre-made fields, and contains many different types of worksheets a writer can use for writing down and organizing their thoughts and tracking their novel's practical progress toward publication. If you know how (or learn how) to manipulate tables in a Word document, you can copy and duplicate the worksheets as many times as you want. You can also modify the worksheets if you want to by changing the text or format of the tables.
It's designed for viewing and using on a computer screen, not on paper; Ruesch sells a separate version of the document designed for printing and filling in with handwriting.

Two caveats:

These writing worksheets are designed with some sort of novel in mind. If you're writing another type of book, this notebook would not be very helpful.

Like many writing worksheets I've seen, some of the various writing worksheets in this notebook were evidently designed to create some sort of mainstream fiction involving characters in our world; you will see that in the character profile worksheets, which have fields like "Education/IQ," "Financial Status," and "Marital Status." If you're writing something that might not fit that category (such as science fiction or fantasy), you might have to modify the character profiles to fit your needs.