If you’re going to write a newsletter about organizing your writer life, you should probably organize that endeavor from the get-go. Here’s the tools that helped me get to launch:
Notes app on my iPhone
This project actually began last year when I was recovering from foot surgery and had a lot of time to think. I had an idea for a newsletter about organization for writers, but I didn’t know if there would be enough to write about to keep this up week after week. So I started with a simple list on my phone. And having it on my phone meant I could easily add ideas as I trudged from home to PT and back.
I began with the tools I use in my own writing life (Todoist, Airtable, Scrivener, etc.) and topics I thought I might like to write about, such as why I give nearly everything deadlines. Then I started adding tools and topics that fit into the umbrella of the planned newsletter. And once my list had hit more than 40 items, I realized I had enough ideas to keep me going for quite a while. I could move on to the next step.
A product plan
In 2017, a group of us at work took a course in product thinking from the Knight Center and then formed a product thinking team. (For a basic primer on product thinking, check out this toolkit I helped produce for a session on the topic I ran at the ScienceWriters 2021 conference.) One of the key pieces of product thinking that we implemented was making product plans for new endeavors, such as when I revamped the newsletter for my publication in 2020. A product plan creates a roadmap for your project, helping you think through your idea, the resources you’ll need (including people involved), timing and potential roadblocks.
For this newsletter, I didn’t include some aspects of what I’d normally put in a product plan for work (I didn’t need to worry about who was signing off on the project, for instance, since this is all on me). But it did help me think through what was in and out of scope, audience, potential for monetization and project milestones. And I can refer back to this document later to be reminded of my original intentions and plans.
Google Docs and Drive
Google Docs is a pretty obvious choice for drafting text, and I generally prefer it over Word. Automatic saves can be a lifesaver, and I can access the documents from any device. And I can easily link to a document in Airtable (that’s next). In Google Drive, I have a folder devoted to this project, and while I’m generally pretty terrible at organizing there (the Search function is just so easy), my goal is to keep everything from The Systematic Scribe in that folder to make it all easier to find should I ever need those files in the future.
Airtable
Airtable will get its own newsletter at some point (probably several, as this is one of my favorite organizational tools), but I’ll be brief here. For The Systematic Scribe, I’ve started with a fairly simple free base with only two tables. The first is for the newsletters themselves, listed by Subject line. Then I have a spot for the preheader, publication date, status (written, scheduled, published, etc.) and a link to the text in Google Docs. I’ve also added columns for keeping track of performance statistics. And then there’s a column that links to the second table.
In that second table, I’m keeping track of fodder that I can potentially use in future newsletters, populated with that list I started last year. For now, it’s just ideas, some of which I need to research. As I use ideas from here, I can note that they’ve appeared in a newsletter so that later on, I’m not repeating myself. This table is definitely a work in progress. But I plan to change and add to my system as this project progresses; Airtable will let me be nimble.
What I wished I’d done differently
This is my own fault, but I moved up the launch of this newsletter by at least a month or two. I’ll be speaking at the DC Science Writers Association Professional Development Day on a panel about newsletters, and I wanted to be able to talk about starting one up for myself as well as the one I work on at my day job. That loss of a month and more meant I left a few things undone.
If I’d had time, I would have created a template for this newsletter, to help me make sure I have all the pieces I need in each one I write. I would have developed a more detailed timeline for launch. And I also would have come up with a plan for promoting The Systematic Scribe rather than going at it haphazardly, like I’m doing now.
But this is real-life organizing. Sometimes you can’t get everything in line in time and you just have to ride a little by the seat of your pants. It’s probably good for the soul or something to not live quite so rigidly.
Next week: why I’ve moved away from written lists and organization to digital apps and programs.
— Sarah
P.S. If you’ve got a question, comment or idea for a future newsletter, please email me at sciwriter.sarah@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you. And if someone forwarded this to you (hint, hint), check out my first post and what you can expect from The Systematic Scribe.
The Systematic Scribe is free. I have no current plans to have paid subscriptions — but if you like what you read and would like to support this work, you can Buy Me a Coffee.