Episode 219 - The Productive Power of Organization and Procrastination with John DeDakis
January 2, 2024
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John DeDakis discusses The Productive Power of Organization and Procrastination, including organizing content and research material and the value of compartmentalizing; organizational approaches with Excel, MS Word, and Scrivener (and alternatives to each), including pairing a draft document with a journal document; creating a synopsis as you write; tapping into AI for synopses and sales descriptions (a nice follow-on to last week's discussion with Kaylin Tristano about STORY BIBLES AND HOW AI CAN HELP); managing your writer business relationships, including a Dropbox tool for obtaining virtual signatures; not letting the (organizational) tail wag the (writing) dog; the power of percolation; and the value of procrastination.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
Listen to the full episode ...
Listen to and watch the interview ...
"What I've discovered is by keeping my my organizational system simple, it's not the tail wagging the dog, and I'm able to concentrate on my writing and not be preoccupied with maintaining my organizational system." —John DeDakis
John DeDakis is an award-winning author of five mystery-suspense-thriller novels, a writing coach and instructor, a manuscript editor, a former editor on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer," and a former White House correspondent. In his spare time he’s an amateur jazz drummer. John is also the host of the video podcast ONE-TO-ONE. His latest book is FAKE. In fact I got to talk about FAKE with John on my video series WHAT I LEARNED.
Links
John's Links:
https://www.johndedakis.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@JohnDeDakis
https://www.facebook.com/john.dedakis
https://twitter.com/johnDeDakis
https://www.instagram.com/dedakisjohn/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-dedakis-4b09a34/
Mentioned in the Interview:
John's conversation about his book FAKE in my WHAT I LEARNED video series
"Tools Cruise" with PLOTTR
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
https://www.johndedakis.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@JohnDeDakis
https://www.facebook.com/john.dedakis
https://twitter.com/johnDeDakis
https://www.instagram.com/dedakisjohn/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-dedakis-4b09a34/
Mentioned in the Interview:
John's conversation about his book FAKE in my WHAT I LEARNED video series
"Tools Cruise" with PLOTTR
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with John! What are your favorite tools or approaches for organization?
Please post your comments on YouTube--and I'd love it if you would subscribe while you're there!
Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!
AI-generated Summary
The Indie Author Podcast hosted a riveting session with the versatile and award-winning writer, John DeDakis, shedding light on how he handles organization for his writing. As the host of the show, I had the chance of delving into John's writing journey, discussing his organization techniques, and exploring the value of procrastination in the writing world.
Practical Organization for Writers
One of the main topics of our conversation was how writers can maintain an effective organizational regime. John shared his experiences from working in "The Situation Room" at CNN, discussing the importance of organization in such large-scale, information-rich environments.
In his writing life, John applies the principles of file organization he learned at CNN to his working approach. Each of his six novels has its dedicated folder on his computer, which are further divided into drafts and research sub-folders.
John emphasized the importance of having a dedicated draft folder, as every writer will go through multiple draft stages during the writing process. He also maintained a 'journal of the book', tracking the progress and history of each of his works. This practice came in handy, notably when he returned to his fourth novel, "Bullet in the Chamber," after a break of three or four years.
Understanding Your Writing Approach
Our discussion also revolved around understanding one's writing style. As John revealed, he doesn't maintain files of ideas, as his are typically embedded in his subconscious, always at the ready when he needs them. This approach may vary from writer to writer. The goal of an organizational system is to aid, not hinder, your productivity and creativity.
John also highlighted the effectiveness of keeping project-specific research folders. For his upcoming political thriller, John maintained research folders on various topics, housing extensive information on subjects from abortion to White Christian nationalism.
The Issue of Procrastination
A crucial aspect we touched upon is regarding procrastination and organization. As John noted, procrastination can be beneficial to writers as it allows ideas to ruminate and mature before they are put on paper. An immediate response or output isn't always necessary, where taking time to ponder and allow your subconscious to process things can lead to better, more refined outcomes.
Conclusion
Every writer has a unique organization style that works best for them. Whether it's keeping meticulous files and folders, as John does, or using advanced software and AI tools, mastering your organization process can significantly boost your efficiency and productivity, leaving you more time for what matters the most – the writing. As John DeDakis succinctly puts it, these tools and techniques ultimately serve the purpose of amplifying your creativity and helping you tell your story.
Practical Organization for Writers
One of the main topics of our conversation was how writers can maintain an effective organizational regime. John shared his experiences from working in "The Situation Room" at CNN, discussing the importance of organization in such large-scale, information-rich environments.
In his writing life, John applies the principles of file organization he learned at CNN to his working approach. Each of his six novels has its dedicated folder on his computer, which are further divided into drafts and research sub-folders.
John emphasized the importance of having a dedicated draft folder, as every writer will go through multiple draft stages during the writing process. He also maintained a 'journal of the book', tracking the progress and history of each of his works. This practice came in handy, notably when he returned to his fourth novel, "Bullet in the Chamber," after a break of three or four years.
Understanding Your Writing Approach
Our discussion also revolved around understanding one's writing style. As John revealed, he doesn't maintain files of ideas, as his are typically embedded in his subconscious, always at the ready when he needs them. This approach may vary from writer to writer. The goal of an organizational system is to aid, not hinder, your productivity and creativity.
John also highlighted the effectiveness of keeping project-specific research folders. For his upcoming political thriller, John maintained research folders on various topics, housing extensive information on subjects from abortion to White Christian nationalism.
The Issue of Procrastination
A crucial aspect we touched upon is regarding procrastination and organization. As John noted, procrastination can be beneficial to writers as it allows ideas to ruminate and mature before they are put on paper. An immediate response or output isn't always necessary, where taking time to ponder and allow your subconscious to process things can lead to better, more refined outcomes.
Conclusion
Every writer has a unique organization style that works best for them. Whether it's keeping meticulous files and folders, as John does, or using advanced software and AI tools, mastering your organization process can significantly boost your efficiency and productivity, leaving you more time for what matters the most – the writing. As John DeDakis succinctly puts it, these tools and techniques ultimately serve the purpose of amplifying your creativity and helping you tell your story.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is John DeDakis. Hey John, how are you doing?
[00:00:05] John: Hi, Matty.
Meet John DeDakis
[00:00:06] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, John DeDakis is an award-winning author of five mystery suspense thriller novels, a writing coach and instructor, a manuscript editor, a former editor on CNN's the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, and a former White House correspondent. In his spare time, he's an amateur jazz drummer, and he's also the host of the video podcast One to One, which is very fun. I had the honor of being a guest on John's podcast, and his latest book is FAKE. And in fact, in another connection, I got to talk about FAKE with John on my video series, What I Learned, and I'll include a link to that conversation in the show notes.
[00:00:43] Matty: And so, John and I are going to be talking today about organization for writers. This is a topic I nerd out on a lot. And I thought it would be fun to start out, John, asking you what, from your experience on The Situation Room, did you carry forward to your organizational approach to being an author?
[00:01:02] John: Whoa, I don't know if I did. I mean, CNN is huge, and so they're just normally organized to begin with. And so it was always easy to find what I needed to find to do my job as an editor. I mean, getting to the wires, being able to find video, but it's all about filing. It's all about file systems, I guess you could say. Even though I don't think I took anything consciously from my CNN experience, that is what actually is the similarity, and that's having folders and files where you can find them.
[00:01:41] Matty: So did you bring anything forward in the sense of it being like a downsized version of the enormous version that CNN had at its disposal?
[00:01:51] John: I think you could probably say that, as I say, though unconsciously. I think any organization that's successful is well organized. And I think that that is what I try to transfer over to my own career as a novelist, writing coach, and manuscript editor. If you've got so many balls in the air, you really need to be able to compartmentalize, which is what a file and a folder, what those things are. You need to be able to compartmentalize so that you can jump from one thing to the next, and as soon as you get there, you're oriented.
[00:02:30] Matty: And is your organizational approach mainly around content? As opposed to like your calendar or other organizational things?
[00:02:37] John: Got it. Yeah, my calendar is on my phone, and I don't do it on my computer or anything like that. And the phone is, I mean, the phone is my brain, basically my external drive. And so yeah, the writing stuff and all of that, the content, the creative stuff, that's all on the computer, compartmentalized in folders for whatever project I'm working on.
[00:03:02] Matty: So let's start with organizing information for fiction, because I'm going to have to go back and look. I just had this conversation with someone on the podcast, but I'm always interested in getting different perspectives. Oh, I think it was Art Taylor. And when I think of information related to fiction, I think that there are kind of three categories of information. One is, it would be cool to write a book about storm chasing. We were just talking about that a little bit before we hit record. Then there's the, here's a really cool way to describe clouds. Here's a verb, an adjective I want to use someday. And then there's, well, I said there were three, but there's kind of an infinite number. Then there are all the ideas that pop into your head that one might want to capture between those two extremes. Do you have approaches for segmenting that out so it's manageable?
[00:03:49] John: The things that you were mentioning are not things that I do. When I was at the very beginning of starting to write fiction, I had a notebook. It was a spiral notebook, and I called it a writing notebook. It's now my journal, and it was in longhand. Whenever I had an idea, I would write it in all caps, IDEA, and then I'd write whatever it was. I've gone back and looked at some of my old writing notebooks, and I look at some of the ideas and I go, I have no idea what I was thinking.
I really don't have idea files, but that's okay because I think it really depends on the writer and what it is they need. For me, ideas, if they're really worth anything, won't let me go. They just embed in my subconscious or in my thoughts and ruminations, and that's where I work with them. If I write them down and put them aside, they're usually gone, and I'll never be able to do anything with them.
Plus, I'm not a writer. I don't write a lot. I write long-form novels, and lately, they've been every four years. It's not like I just crank them out because the novels that I'm working on, I'm wrestling through something. The big idea has been with me. The other things that pop up happen during the writing process. So in that case, I'm not really trying to organize anything in terms of ideas and things like that.
So I guess the answer to your question is that the things that you use, the things that you want to capture and save are different from the things I want to capture and save, but what works for you is great, what works for me is fine, and I think that's sort of the takeaway, is that whatever organizational system you use, it needs to serve you, and it need not be something artificial, like, oh, I must do this, or I have to do this.
And I'm certainly interested in your perspective because this is your career, your organization.
[00:06:06] Matty: Well, I'd like to tap into your career because I just think that any platform called the Situation Room by definition is going to require organization, and I want to make sure that we get that. So what is the thing that identifies a piece of information or a piece of whatever you want to organize that signals that it is something that you want to make sure that you're handling in an organized way?
Organizing research material
[00:06:28] John: Well, one of the things that comes to mind is research. So whenever I've got a project that's going on, I have a research folder. And as the story is coming into view, and as I'm working through it, I come across issues that I don't know a lot about, and so within the research folder, I'll create other folders for the topics that I want to know more about. I've got a political thriller coming out next summer, and so abortion is a major storyline. So I have a folder on abortion, and in that folder, I've got links to all kinds of different news stories and other resources that I'll be able to access and I can go back to. And that's true for any number of other topics in the book. White Christian nationalism, mental illness, a lot of the QAnon. These are issues that are going to be playing out in my next novel, and so I have research folders, topic folders, for each one of those topics.
[00:07:34] Matty: And where are you keeping those? Are they just documents that you have in your computer's file manager? Are you using an app for that?
[00:07:41] John: It's a Word document, and each project has its own folder. So, I've written six novels. Each folder is book one, book two. And then within that folder is everything else. Sometimes it's just loose files, but more often than not, I'm creating folders within that project so that I'll be able to go to wherever I need.
Pairing a draft document with a journal document
[00:08:09] John: Probably the most important folder is the draft folder because any novelist or writer will tell you that you're going to do more than one draft, and so each draft remains separate. And I also keep a journal of the project that migrates from one draft to the other, giving me a sense of what's happening creatively in that particular project because in my novel, "Bullet in the Chamber," my fourth novel, I went away from it for four years or three and a half years. When I went back to it, I knew where I left off and what I needed to do, and I was able to pick up and go from there.
[00:08:55] Matty: So can you describe what would be in your draft document and what would be in your journal document? Like you're getting up, you've had your coffee, you sit down at your desk, you open the draft document and the journal document, and can you describe what would be the equivalent entries in each of those so we can better understand how you differentiate those?
[00:09:13] John: Yes, the journal document, which is basically the project document, I call it Journal of the Book. It has two components to it, and it's the very first thing I open up when I'm going to be working on it for the day. So the very first thing I do is, I do a word search for "dedakis." That's my last name. And, and as soon as I do that, it takes me to, I hit, I do the word search, and it goes to the last journal entry. This is a document, by the time the project is finished, it could be 175 pages if you were to print it out. But if you keep it in your computer, you're not killing trees, and it's easily accessible.
Organizing with MS Word
[00:09:54] John: So, as soon as I do the, "DeDakis stopped here," and that gets me to the next journal entry. And because I'm a journalist, I dateline it. I do the date, the day of the week, where I am, and the time. I don't know why. I just, it's history. Maybe the Smithsonian will care about it. And then I just do a little thumbnail of what's going on in my life. It's not my journal journal. It's just the context of what's going on either in the world, my life, or whatever, and what I hope to accomplish. Then let's say that I have a work in progress.
So I go to the draft file, and in the draft folder within that folder are a stack of files. Each one is a chapter, and I give the very first, the way you title it is 1, and then give it a name so that you know what's in it, and 2, Word knows how to count. So if you're doing it 1, 2, 3, 4, it's going to order it so each chapter is in its right order. And so then I do my work. And by the end of the session, I go back to the journal and do another time reference of this is what I did. And if there's a long session where I'm doing several chapters or if I'm doing a rewrite or something, every time I finish a particular piece of the puzzle, I'll note that in the journal entry, another time hack, and then this is what I did.
And then when I'm done for the day, you tie it up, file it back, and it's waiting for you the next time. The other thing that happens in the journal is that I create the scene outline. This is helpful when an agent says, I'd like the synopsis. You're building the synopsis as you write the book. And it basically gives the chapter number, whatever title I give it, just for the sake of being able to find things. I do. Because novels often cover a certain amount of time, either a week or a month or however long, you give it, you have a timeline in there so that you know what is happening on what day in the story, and then just a little thumbnail of what's happened, what happens in that chapter. So again, you can get a bird's eye view of your novel as it's coming together.
And I also mentioned, note, the date that I started the draft, or the, the date. I started at this date that I worked on the second draft so that you can see the evolution of the, of the project. It's history, I guess you could say. And, and so those are the, those are really the two main things. The journal, which is the project, and then whatever it is that you're working on in the draft folder.
Organizing with Scrivener
[00:12:53] Matty: I use Scrivener, and I think that between Word and Scrivener, we probably cover a lot of what our listeners are using. and I'm interpreting what you're accomplishing to what I, use Scrivener to do. So, for example, one of the things I truly love about Scrivener, and I, yes, I know there are other writing apps that do this, but I started out with Scrivener, is that you're capturing every component, however you want to, define component as a separate little thing in a nav in the left.
And so, if I have all the chapters and then I realize I want one chapter to be, in a different place, I just have to drag it up to the place where I want it to be, rather than like having to copy and paste, in, in one big, longer document. And the way I've used that is, in general, each of my components is a scene or a chapter, but I have one called notes.
And I'll use that to mark where I am in the story, because the way I write is, I write like an outline, then I write a more complete outline, then I write a more complete outline, then pretty soon it starts turning into a manuscript and I just keep running through it until it's all polished up.
[00:14:02] John: Is it one big, is it one big document or is each chapter a separate file for you?
[00:14:08] Matty: well, in Scrivener, there is a project that's the entire book. And then there are, scenes, they're called scenes in Scrivener, that are components within it. So it's almost like if you were in Word and you had the outline view on. It's like the outline view that you would see on the left in Word.
but the components more easily draggable and manipulatable than they would be in the outline view of word. And then I have this notes entry, which is all the things that I need to keep in mind in general across the book. If there are certain things like double check the timing of the scene or something.
I just put a note about that in that scene. component itself. But if there are things like, be sure to keep reminding the reader that it's spring or don't forget that,the primary motivation of this character is whatever, and then I use that component as, like, the marker between what I've, what I've already, worked through during that pass and what I still need to work through.
And the benefit there is that, before I start in on editing the next scene, I can reread that notes, component and remind myself of all those things that I need to be keeping an eye out for.
[00:15:12] John: did you discover that, learning Scrivener though, that the learning curve is almost vertical? I mean, you really need to spend a lot of time in order to master it.
[00:15:23] Matty: yeah, I, I don't think Scrivener, the, the tool is very expensive, but I did have to spend hundreds of dollars on classes. And also, I found someone named Gwen Hernandez. If anybody's looking for Scrivener help, that I had a couple of like one-on-one consulting sessions because it is hard, but at this point, I've identified the parts of Scrivener that I use, and I now know to ignore the ones that I don't.
So I'm obviously using just a tiny fraction of its possible utility, but I think that there are, if I were starting out today, I don't know that I would recommend Scrivener to people. I would recommend them to look at other things. But at this point, I've customized it so much that I've loathed to move off it because now I know how to tweak all the levers to make it do what I want to.
Don't let the (organizational) tail wag the (writing) dog
[00:16:08] John: Exactly. And that's why I haven't gotten Scrivener because of the amount of time you and apparently money you need to invest in order to master it. What I've discovered is by keeping my, my organizational system simple, it's not the tail wagging the dog, and I'm able to concentrate on my writing and not be preoccupied with maintaining my organizational system.
Alternatives to Word and Scrivener
[00:16:34] John: Yeah, if I were advising someone now, I would probably advise them to look at either Atticus or Dibbly Create, which are two newer and more streamlined, word, word processing, that sounds so old fashioned, but you know what I'm trying to, writing apps. What about Plottr? Are you familiar with that?
[00:16:53] Matty: well, Plottr, as far as I know from my last look at it, and there's actually on my YouTube channel, there's a playlist called Tools Cruise. And Troy Lambert from Plottr came on and gave a little demo of Plottr. And Plottr is great, but I don't think even Plottr would recommend it as something that you do, you're writing it. Plotting in it. and so it's functionalities optimized to, like tracking character profiles and, multiple storylines and things like that. I apologize, Troy and Ryan, if I'm downplaying what Plottr can achieve, but, I think it's aiming for something a little different.
But something like Atticus, which is from, Kindlepreneur, which, Dave Chesson is, the guy behind. is not only, I think, providing a nice, streamlined version of what I'm achieving with Scrivener, but also, the other big plus of something like Atticus is that you're, you can, do both your writing and your formatting in the same tool. So, back in the day, when I was buying my tools, I got Scrivener and I got Vellum, which I used for formatting,
So I can export a document from Scrivener into Word and then I can import it from Word into Vellum and then with a push of a button I can make beautiful ebooks for all the retail platforms and print, which is great. And again, I wouldn't move off it because I've optimized both of those tools for myself, but Atticus does that all in one place. And so you don't have to be moving documents from, one thing to the other.
[00:18:30] John: how do you spell, how do you spell Atticus?
[00:18:32] Matty: A T T I C U S. And then the other one that I've explored a little bit, but not in a great amount of detail, is Dibbly Create, and I think Dibbly Create's plug is that, among other things, it is more It's explicitly tapped into AI so people can use it more easily if they want to use AI to help brainstorm, or it's also tapped into a marketplace, so if you're done with your work in Dibbly Create and then you're looking for an editor, then you can easily actually from the app, Explore a marketplace of editors and book cover designers and so on.
[00:19:08] John: So, yeah, those are the things that I would recommend to people if they were starting out now. And I imagine that both Dibbly Create and, Atticus as well as Plottr would have this ability to more easily drag components around. But the thing that's the most interesting to me is the formatting.
[00:19:25] Matty: Yeah, I tried. There are ways, theoretically, in Scrivener to, create the epubs and the PDFs you need, but I don't think anybody uses them. I haven't tried using them for years, but they were horrible when I tried to use them.
[00:19:47] Matty: And all these things are evolving so quickly that, here we are in December 2023 recording this, and, I maybe haven't looked at these things for months, so if I'm saying something outdated, I apologize, but that's the kind of suite of tools that I would look into.
Creating a synopsis as you write
[00:20:00] Matty: But I don't want to get too far afield from your organizational approach, and I really liked what you were saying about maintaining a synopsis at the same time, because going back and writing a synopsis is just, is just a big pain.
[00:20:14] John: Yeah, it is. It, it's much, it's very hard because it's like, you've, you've been, all of the moving parts of this, of this book. How do you synthesize it? And make it, valuable for an agent to know that you know how to tell a story. And, so yeah, writing a synopsis can be really tricky.
Tapping into AI for synopses and sales descriptions
[00:20:37] Matty: Yeah, this kind of thing is exactly what I'm hoping AI will provide because I actually just had the experience of, finishing a novella that was about 18, 000 words and plugging it into Claude and asking Claude to give me not a synopsis but, like back cover sales text. And it did a really good job. I would not have used it as is, but
[00:20:59] John: are you saying that you, in a sense, copied the 18,000-word document, put it in like something like chat GPT and said, write a synopsis or write a dust cover blurb? And it did?
[00:21:12] Matty: Yeah, it was, Claude. So, ChatGPT, and again, every time I say something like this, I'm sure somebody's going to say, You just didn't use it right. But, my experience with ChatGPT is that it's more limited in the terms of the inputs you can provide. But Claude actually lets you attach a file, and I haven't tried it with a longer word than this 18,000-word novella. but yeah, I just attached the, the document that had the novella in it. And I said, I'm trying to think how I worded it, a sales description for this thriller. And it was very good.
And it was useful in the sense that it, it called out three characters, the protagonist of the story and two of her sidekicks, but they were not the two sidekicks I would have guessed. And I realized when I read that that the two sidekicks it had picked to mention in the blurb actually made more sense than the two sidekicks I would have picked if I had been writing it. And so things like that, I think any of those things where you put something into AI comes out and you go, Huh!
[00:22:25] Matty: And, on the, this is going a little far afield from organization, but I am starting to, recreate transcripts for the podcast using ChatGPT. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, you can only put in 4, 000 characters at a time. So because my transcripts are quite long, my transcripts are being Automatically generated from Descript, which is the tool I use for the audio and video editing.
But, and they're like, pretty good, but not great. However, I find that if I take chunks of 4,000 words at a time, put it into ChatGPT, and say, "Correct typos and grammatical errors in this," it does a great job. I'm sure that the 4000-character limit is going to go away. However, I found that ChatGPT was much better for those things that are like just correct stuff, and Claude was better for the more imaginative stuff. Because if I tried to fix the transcript in Claude, it would write an article or something.
I couldn't come up with a prompt that would say, "No, I just want you to fix the typos and the grammatical errors." So, again, another topic that everything is evolving so quickly that this is just a guideline. This is a point in time of how these things are behaving in December of 2023.
[00:23:40] John: Right? It's evolving.
[00:23:42] Matty: Yeah. So, we've talked a little bit about how we both organize fiction work. How else are you applying organization in your life as a writer that our listeners might benefit from?
Documenting your writer business relationships
[00:23:55] John: I think that the approach that I take is pretty similar for nonfiction as well. I do some ghostwriting, and again, I keep the project separate. With ghostwriting, you're going to need contracts. You're going to need to be able to deal with a client who you want to make sure you're on the same page with and avoid misunderstandings. So, having a ghostwriting contract is important.
I'm a manuscript editor, so I have a file, or I have a folder for manuscript editing. Each one of my clients has their own folder, and within that folder, there are the different projects that they've hired me to do. If someone hires me to be a coach, I have a log file so that the relationship is documented. Usually, people hire me for like a five-hour retainer of encouragement. I keep track of what I've been doing, how much time is left on the coaching clock, and they use the time strategically.
There are some clients who I've been working with for a couple of years, and they haven't depleted the five hours yet. Someone will surface after a year and it's going, "Whoa, what's going on?" I have to go back into my file. Being organized that way has really helped me stay up to date. Maintaining that log is just something, as soon as the conversation is over or as soon as the project is over, I update it. It's not something you want to put off because if you put it off, there are so many other things that can get in the way.
You don't need to spend much time updating the log. Just get it out of the way, file it, and you can move on with your life. But it's invaluable when someone resurfaces and says, "Hey, let's pick up where we left off." And you're going, "Who are you again?"
[00:25:53] Matty: Yeah, I think that's great advice, even for people who don't have clients. If you have an interaction with, I don't know, let's say a designer, editor, or something like that, make that kind of note and separate out the notes you're going to share with the person. What I do is, whenever I have—it's especially handy on something like Zoom or any kind of virtual meeting—I'll open a Word document. Then I'll have it be like "John DeDakis," and I'll say, "Oh, John and I met today and we chatted about such and such." I can use that if I actually want to send minutes. There are things that I want to share with the person, and then there are things that you might not want to share. For example, if you find that a cover designer is doing some kind of weird thing that's not what you're looking for, you could make your private note that says, "Remember to remind him that I don't want bloodstains on my cover" or whatever. Then you'd have the public, "This is what we agreed to do" kind of document.
Managing sign-offs
[00:26:54] Matty: You know, your comment about the contracts made me also think of another handy tool that I recently discovered. I needed to have a contract signed, and I always struggle with managing whole e-signatures thing. I have a Dropbox account, as I think many people do, and I discovered that there's an app called HelloSign, H E L L O S I G N. I think it probably used to be a separate app, but if you have a Dropbox account, at least a certain kind of Dropbox account, and you look in the left nav, there's a signatures option, and it's a very nice basic e-signature request and tracking app. With my account, I get like three signatures a month, which is more than I need, but I like that HelloSign on Dropbox.
[00:27:41] John: Okay, that's good to know. Wouldn't PDFs do the same? You can sign a PDF.
[00:27:48] Matty: Well, I don't think that I have the level of Adobe or whatever that enables me to make a signable field in an online document. So the nice thing about HelloSign is that you upload the PDF, list the signers, and then you drag a signature block over the PDF where you want each person to sign. It's just defined like, "This is where Matty's going to sign. This is where John's going to sign." You can designate the order in which you want people to sign. You enter an email address, then you hit send. HelloSign cycles it through the signers in order, and then the person just has to click into that sign on the PDF and type out their name or sign it with their mouse or whatever they want to do. I always tried doing that with a PDF, and it was probably user error, but I could never get it to work for me.
[00:28:43] John: Yeah, because I had to update my laptop and, on the old one, a PDF you could sign and everything was great. With the new laptop, it's like, you gotta buy this, buy that, and it gets a little discouraging.
[00:28:56] Matty: Yeah, I was definitely out for the free option. I didn't want to add yet another tool to my list of things that I would have to organize.
[00:29:04] John: Exactly.
Organizing with Excel... or not
[00:29:05] Matty: You know, I was thinking another organizational tool that I use is, I would recommend everybody keep an eye out for anything you have to access repetitively. I'm a huge Excel fan. But I have giant spreadsheets. Well, I have one super giant spreadsheet called William Kingsfield Publishers Pub Information, and over time it's expanded to include even more things.
But as an example, for every book, you're going to have an ISBN. And you might have an ISBN you've purchased through Bowker, or you might have—I won't get into a description of the pros and cons, but if you're publishing on Draft2Digital, you might have a Draft2Digital assigned ISBN, and then you might have, like, a Barnes and Noble assigned ISBN. There are also URLs on all your sales platforms for each of your books, like, anything like that that is repetitive. Just go ahead and stick it in a spreadsheet because if I want to post something online pointing people with links to my, let's say, my first book on my direct sales platform and on my Books to Read universal link, all I have to do is open up my pub info spreadsheet and filter on the book name, and there they are right there.
I do the same thing with book descriptions. I do the same thing with testimonials, so don't force yourself to go look for the same information over and over again. Just bite the bullet and put it in a spreadsheet. And I really haven't found anything better than a spreadsheet. If you want to use sheets or whatever, that's fine. I think that if people are willing to learn sorting and filtering, then the spreadsheet is the way to go.
So when you are looking for, like, let's say you have to provide a URL or an ISBN to somebody, how do you, how do you access that information? Do you have a non-spreadsheet alternative?
[00:31:02] John: Yeah. I go searching. I have in my AOL files. I hadn't really thought about that, but there are some draft files so that when people are looking for ISBN numbers and things like that, I've got a file where all of my books are listed with the ISBN numbers. And so I can go there. Usually when I'm pitching a writing workshop, I have a file that has all the blurbs for the writing classes that I teach so that I can pluck from there and create a class that will combine a couple of things. There's a file I have for bios because every writing workshop or writing conference, they want your bio, but they have different standards. Some want 50 words, some want 100 words. And so I've got a bio file that has all kinds of different lengths of bios that I've written and adapt. And that's just one file. And I can go and go, Oh, this is one and just copy and paste it from there. But again, that's Word again.
[00:32:11] Matty: Well, years ago, in my corporate life, I facilitated a kind of like a new employee orientation, and one of the modules was about behavioral styles. I think they were analyzing, supporting, controlling, and another one that's escaping me at the moment. But I really thought there were perfect analogies to Microsoft Office applications. Like there's just the Word personality, there's the Excel personality, there's the PowerPoint personality, and heaven help us, there's the Microsoft Access personality. So I think that, I think it's just an equivalent behavioral styles assessment.
[00:32:45] John: Yeah, exactly. It really, I think organization is a personal, these are personal choices that you make. And it's an evolutionary thing. I think I've learned a few things from you today, even, on how to maybe adjust and adapt and evolve my own organizational style. It's definitely been trial and error as I've gone.
The relationship between organization and procrastination
[00:33:11] Matty: Yeah, for sure, for every person, I think that's the case. And so, I thought it would be fun to close out with a question, and I think this is one we discussed earlier, but if not, it'll be a little surprise for you. So, I have the question here, what is the relationship between organization and procrastination? Is that a question you had proposed?
[00:33:32] John: I don't know if I proposed it or not, but I know I have procrastination nailed. I mean, I'm a master procrastinator. But the, but it's useful. Because what I tell my writing students is that, unlike what Stephen King tells you, you’ve got to write a thousand words a day or you're not a serious writer. I don't buy that. I think if you're ruminating, you're writing. And, you don't have to be moving your fingers on the keyboard in order to be a writer.
Granted, there comes a time when you really do have to get your butt in the chair and the fingers on the laptop. But, I think procrastination is incredibly useful because it's allowing your subconscious to process things, and so that when you do sit down, things have bubbled to the surface, and it's more likely that it's going to flow onto the page. So, it's not necessarily organization, but it is part of, I think, the creative process, and both procrastination and organization serve the same end, and that's to be creative and get something down on paper, or eventually it'll be on paper, so that others, you'll be able to connect with others with whatever your story is.
The value of procrastination
[00:34:53] Matty: Yeah, what you're saying reminds me of two things. One is that, this is something I always have to remind myself of, but I have found real value in procrastination in replying to emails. So, normally, my goal is always the zero inbox. My default mode is, reply to everything immediately because that's how you keep a zero inbox. But I realized, and this is a lesson that I learned and then had to relearn and relearn and relearn in my corporate life, that if you just wait, and I don't mean days, I mean like 12 hours, 24 hours, a little bit of time, oftentimes either your answer is different because you've had more time to think about it or, the problem takes care of itself.
[00:35:43] John: That, you've really tapped into something that I think is worth talking about. This is my to-do list, and it's handwritten, it evolves, there are some crossouts on it, and, some of the things that are on this list are based on emails that I've, that I have yet to answer. And some of them go back a month. I'm so sorry, anybody who's still waiting for an email, it's coming. And some of it is just they don't really need a quick response. Here's another thing that I'm doing that I've discovered. When I get an email from somebody and I look at it on my phone, my iPhone, I'm able to open it and then I'm able to mark it as unread. So that'll at least give me a first glance at it so that I can ruminate about it, as you mentioned. But then when I file it, when I go to my laptop, it's still highlighted as if it's brand new.
And that reminds me, okay, I need to pay attention to this, but I've already been thinking about, about an answer. And I've discovered too, that, a lot of people are surprised when I answer right away, and, and so I think we are at a point with email where you don't have to answer instantly, especially if it's an important topic or a potential conflict or whatever, or someone is asking for a lot of information, you can have some time to kind of think about it so that when you compose your answer, it's already been percolating a little bit and the answer itself then becomes easier.
And then again, anybody I've had communication with, I create a folder in my AOL file. Yes, it's AOL. Get over it. I have a folder in my AOL file of everyone that I'm in communication with and I file their email and my response, and everything just goes into that file. So the inbox indeed gets cleaned out. Well, I've got 9000 emails still in my inbox. A lot of it's junk, but, the important ones are getting answered and the relationship main is maintained. In its own folder, in its own email folder, with that person so that I'm able to keep track of the relationship. Do I go back and, and, and go through those? No, but they're there in case I need them.
Search or folders?
[00:38:09] Matty: Yeah, I think that another way to think about it, and I think this is a generational thing because I think you and I grew up in the age of creating folders in AOL, for example. but something that, a younger coworker pointed out to me when I was still in the corporate world is, search in many cases is just as efficient, if not more efficient, than filing things in a folder. Because let's say, you have an email that's related to me and Fred, then do you, do you put that in the me folder? Do you put it in the Fred folder? Do you copy and put it in both? But if you search for my name and Fred's name or my email address and Fred's email address, then you can find it. And I have found that I, in fact, I don't think I put anything in a folder anymore in email because I just find that a search is more likely to bring back what I'm looking for than looking through a folder of information. So again, just another perspective.
[00:39:01] John: I would amend that by saying, yes, definitely do the search because often the search has, has shown me things, has, has widened the net a bit. To show me other things, I think that your suggestion or your coworker's suggestion is probably more relevant in a corporate environment where you're just getting this gush of emails and, and so maintaining your own filing system, can be a full-time job in and of itself. But on, so that then means that a search, will do it. But my concern would be a search might also cause things to fall through the cracks. Whereas if you do file it in that particular relationship folder, then you really know you have it. It's not, you're not relying on the server in the sky, to keep track for you.
[00:39:57] Matty: Yeah, all just things for people to tweak as appropriate for their own circumstances.
The power of percolation
[00:40:02] Matty: And the other thing that your earlier comment reminded me of, and then you gave me the perfect segue by talking about percolating on an email, is that that idea of procrastination in the sense of, pondering what you're working on in your fiction writing, for example, or your nonfiction writing too, I'm sure, is, percolating being the third, to plotting and pantsing, and I credit that to Art Taylor, who had mentioned that, that he was a percolator, and I was like, yes, yes, I've never, I've never heard that term used in that circumstance, but I'm definitely a percolator.
[00:40:38] John: Well, and it fits with the coffee-fueled, all writers and journalists, mainline coffee. So, yes, I Percolate is a, is a perfect word. And it works for art because he's very successful as a writer and, and quite talented. So, that's a. That's a wonderful word to use. he's probably got her copyrighted now though.
[00:41:01] Matty: that's why he got on the podcast, because I was at a conference, and he was speaking, and he said percolator, and I wrote down, Art Taylor, percolator, invite him to the podcast. We talked about other things too, but the percolator thing is what, what caught my attention because it was, it sounded exactly right to my own experience.
Well, John, this has been so much fun. Thank you for sharing, your tips on organization. Thank you for being willing to, debate some of the pros and cons of, oh, let's say Excel. so please let the listeners and viewers know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
[00:41:31] John: Well, and thank you, Matty. I mean, it's always fun talking to you and I think I learned a few things today too. People can get in touch. I'm John DeDakis. it's Greek. You can probably best get me through my website, which is my name, johndedakis.com.
[00:41:56] Matty: Great. Thank you so much.
[00:41:58] John: Thank you, Matty.
[00:00:05] John: Hi, Matty.
Meet John DeDakis
[00:00:06] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, John DeDakis is an award-winning author of five mystery suspense thriller novels, a writing coach and instructor, a manuscript editor, a former editor on CNN's the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, and a former White House correspondent. In his spare time, he's an amateur jazz drummer, and he's also the host of the video podcast One to One, which is very fun. I had the honor of being a guest on John's podcast, and his latest book is FAKE. And in fact, in another connection, I got to talk about FAKE with John on my video series, What I Learned, and I'll include a link to that conversation in the show notes.
[00:00:43] Matty: And so, John and I are going to be talking today about organization for writers. This is a topic I nerd out on a lot. And I thought it would be fun to start out, John, asking you what, from your experience on The Situation Room, did you carry forward to your organizational approach to being an author?
[00:01:02] John: Whoa, I don't know if I did. I mean, CNN is huge, and so they're just normally organized to begin with. And so it was always easy to find what I needed to find to do my job as an editor. I mean, getting to the wires, being able to find video, but it's all about filing. It's all about file systems, I guess you could say. Even though I don't think I took anything consciously from my CNN experience, that is what actually is the similarity, and that's having folders and files where you can find them.
[00:01:41] Matty: So did you bring anything forward in the sense of it being like a downsized version of the enormous version that CNN had at its disposal?
[00:01:51] John: I think you could probably say that, as I say, though unconsciously. I think any organization that's successful is well organized. And I think that that is what I try to transfer over to my own career as a novelist, writing coach, and manuscript editor. If you've got so many balls in the air, you really need to be able to compartmentalize, which is what a file and a folder, what those things are. You need to be able to compartmentalize so that you can jump from one thing to the next, and as soon as you get there, you're oriented.
[00:02:30] Matty: And is your organizational approach mainly around content? As opposed to like your calendar or other organizational things?
[00:02:37] John: Got it. Yeah, my calendar is on my phone, and I don't do it on my computer or anything like that. And the phone is, I mean, the phone is my brain, basically my external drive. And so yeah, the writing stuff and all of that, the content, the creative stuff, that's all on the computer, compartmentalized in folders for whatever project I'm working on.
[00:03:02] Matty: So let's start with organizing information for fiction, because I'm going to have to go back and look. I just had this conversation with someone on the podcast, but I'm always interested in getting different perspectives. Oh, I think it was Art Taylor. And when I think of information related to fiction, I think that there are kind of three categories of information. One is, it would be cool to write a book about storm chasing. We were just talking about that a little bit before we hit record. Then there's the, here's a really cool way to describe clouds. Here's a verb, an adjective I want to use someday. And then there's, well, I said there were three, but there's kind of an infinite number. Then there are all the ideas that pop into your head that one might want to capture between those two extremes. Do you have approaches for segmenting that out so it's manageable?
[00:03:49] John: The things that you were mentioning are not things that I do. When I was at the very beginning of starting to write fiction, I had a notebook. It was a spiral notebook, and I called it a writing notebook. It's now my journal, and it was in longhand. Whenever I had an idea, I would write it in all caps, IDEA, and then I'd write whatever it was. I've gone back and looked at some of my old writing notebooks, and I look at some of the ideas and I go, I have no idea what I was thinking.
I really don't have idea files, but that's okay because I think it really depends on the writer and what it is they need. For me, ideas, if they're really worth anything, won't let me go. They just embed in my subconscious or in my thoughts and ruminations, and that's where I work with them. If I write them down and put them aside, they're usually gone, and I'll never be able to do anything with them.
Plus, I'm not a writer. I don't write a lot. I write long-form novels, and lately, they've been every four years. It's not like I just crank them out because the novels that I'm working on, I'm wrestling through something. The big idea has been with me. The other things that pop up happen during the writing process. So in that case, I'm not really trying to organize anything in terms of ideas and things like that.
So I guess the answer to your question is that the things that you use, the things that you want to capture and save are different from the things I want to capture and save, but what works for you is great, what works for me is fine, and I think that's sort of the takeaway, is that whatever organizational system you use, it needs to serve you, and it need not be something artificial, like, oh, I must do this, or I have to do this.
And I'm certainly interested in your perspective because this is your career, your organization.
[00:06:06] Matty: Well, I'd like to tap into your career because I just think that any platform called the Situation Room by definition is going to require organization, and I want to make sure that we get that. So what is the thing that identifies a piece of information or a piece of whatever you want to organize that signals that it is something that you want to make sure that you're handling in an organized way?
Organizing research material
[00:06:28] John: Well, one of the things that comes to mind is research. So whenever I've got a project that's going on, I have a research folder. And as the story is coming into view, and as I'm working through it, I come across issues that I don't know a lot about, and so within the research folder, I'll create other folders for the topics that I want to know more about. I've got a political thriller coming out next summer, and so abortion is a major storyline. So I have a folder on abortion, and in that folder, I've got links to all kinds of different news stories and other resources that I'll be able to access and I can go back to. And that's true for any number of other topics in the book. White Christian nationalism, mental illness, a lot of the QAnon. These are issues that are going to be playing out in my next novel, and so I have research folders, topic folders, for each one of those topics.
[00:07:34] Matty: And where are you keeping those? Are they just documents that you have in your computer's file manager? Are you using an app for that?
[00:07:41] John: It's a Word document, and each project has its own folder. So, I've written six novels. Each folder is book one, book two. And then within that folder is everything else. Sometimes it's just loose files, but more often than not, I'm creating folders within that project so that I'll be able to go to wherever I need.
Pairing a draft document with a journal document
[00:08:09] John: Probably the most important folder is the draft folder because any novelist or writer will tell you that you're going to do more than one draft, and so each draft remains separate. And I also keep a journal of the project that migrates from one draft to the other, giving me a sense of what's happening creatively in that particular project because in my novel, "Bullet in the Chamber," my fourth novel, I went away from it for four years or three and a half years. When I went back to it, I knew where I left off and what I needed to do, and I was able to pick up and go from there.
[00:08:55] Matty: So can you describe what would be in your draft document and what would be in your journal document? Like you're getting up, you've had your coffee, you sit down at your desk, you open the draft document and the journal document, and can you describe what would be the equivalent entries in each of those so we can better understand how you differentiate those?
[00:09:13] John: Yes, the journal document, which is basically the project document, I call it Journal of the Book. It has two components to it, and it's the very first thing I open up when I'm going to be working on it for the day. So the very first thing I do is, I do a word search for "dedakis." That's my last name. And, and as soon as I do that, it takes me to, I hit, I do the word search, and it goes to the last journal entry. This is a document, by the time the project is finished, it could be 175 pages if you were to print it out. But if you keep it in your computer, you're not killing trees, and it's easily accessible.
Organizing with MS Word
[00:09:54] John: So, as soon as I do the, "DeDakis stopped here," and that gets me to the next journal entry. And because I'm a journalist, I dateline it. I do the date, the day of the week, where I am, and the time. I don't know why. I just, it's history. Maybe the Smithsonian will care about it. And then I just do a little thumbnail of what's going on in my life. It's not my journal journal. It's just the context of what's going on either in the world, my life, or whatever, and what I hope to accomplish. Then let's say that I have a work in progress.
So I go to the draft file, and in the draft folder within that folder are a stack of files. Each one is a chapter, and I give the very first, the way you title it is 1, and then give it a name so that you know what's in it, and 2, Word knows how to count. So if you're doing it 1, 2, 3, 4, it's going to order it so each chapter is in its right order. And so then I do my work. And by the end of the session, I go back to the journal and do another time reference of this is what I did. And if there's a long session where I'm doing several chapters or if I'm doing a rewrite or something, every time I finish a particular piece of the puzzle, I'll note that in the journal entry, another time hack, and then this is what I did.
And then when I'm done for the day, you tie it up, file it back, and it's waiting for you the next time. The other thing that happens in the journal is that I create the scene outline. This is helpful when an agent says, I'd like the synopsis. You're building the synopsis as you write the book. And it basically gives the chapter number, whatever title I give it, just for the sake of being able to find things. I do. Because novels often cover a certain amount of time, either a week or a month or however long, you give it, you have a timeline in there so that you know what is happening on what day in the story, and then just a little thumbnail of what's happened, what happens in that chapter. So again, you can get a bird's eye view of your novel as it's coming together.
And I also mentioned, note, the date that I started the draft, or the, the date. I started at this date that I worked on the second draft so that you can see the evolution of the, of the project. It's history, I guess you could say. And, and so those are the, those are really the two main things. The journal, which is the project, and then whatever it is that you're working on in the draft folder.
Organizing with Scrivener
[00:12:53] Matty: I use Scrivener, and I think that between Word and Scrivener, we probably cover a lot of what our listeners are using. and I'm interpreting what you're accomplishing to what I, use Scrivener to do. So, for example, one of the things I truly love about Scrivener, and I, yes, I know there are other writing apps that do this, but I started out with Scrivener, is that you're capturing every component, however you want to, define component as a separate little thing in a nav in the left.
And so, if I have all the chapters and then I realize I want one chapter to be, in a different place, I just have to drag it up to the place where I want it to be, rather than like having to copy and paste, in, in one big, longer document. And the way I've used that is, in general, each of my components is a scene or a chapter, but I have one called notes.
And I'll use that to mark where I am in the story, because the way I write is, I write like an outline, then I write a more complete outline, then I write a more complete outline, then pretty soon it starts turning into a manuscript and I just keep running through it until it's all polished up.
[00:14:02] John: Is it one big, is it one big document or is each chapter a separate file for you?
[00:14:08] Matty: well, in Scrivener, there is a project that's the entire book. And then there are, scenes, they're called scenes in Scrivener, that are components within it. So it's almost like if you were in Word and you had the outline view on. It's like the outline view that you would see on the left in Word.
but the components more easily draggable and manipulatable than they would be in the outline view of word. And then I have this notes entry, which is all the things that I need to keep in mind in general across the book. If there are certain things like double check the timing of the scene or something.
I just put a note about that in that scene. component itself. But if there are things like, be sure to keep reminding the reader that it's spring or don't forget that,the primary motivation of this character is whatever, and then I use that component as, like, the marker between what I've, what I've already, worked through during that pass and what I still need to work through.
And the benefit there is that, before I start in on editing the next scene, I can reread that notes, component and remind myself of all those things that I need to be keeping an eye out for.
[00:15:12] John: did you discover that, learning Scrivener though, that the learning curve is almost vertical? I mean, you really need to spend a lot of time in order to master it.
[00:15:23] Matty: yeah, I, I don't think Scrivener, the, the tool is very expensive, but I did have to spend hundreds of dollars on classes. And also, I found someone named Gwen Hernandez. If anybody's looking for Scrivener help, that I had a couple of like one-on-one consulting sessions because it is hard, but at this point, I've identified the parts of Scrivener that I use, and I now know to ignore the ones that I don't.
So I'm obviously using just a tiny fraction of its possible utility, but I think that there are, if I were starting out today, I don't know that I would recommend Scrivener to people. I would recommend them to look at other things. But at this point, I've customized it so much that I've loathed to move off it because now I know how to tweak all the levers to make it do what I want to.
Don't let the (organizational) tail wag the (writing) dog
[00:16:08] John: Exactly. And that's why I haven't gotten Scrivener because of the amount of time you and apparently money you need to invest in order to master it. What I've discovered is by keeping my, my organizational system simple, it's not the tail wagging the dog, and I'm able to concentrate on my writing and not be preoccupied with maintaining my organizational system.
Alternatives to Word and Scrivener
[00:16:34] John: Yeah, if I were advising someone now, I would probably advise them to look at either Atticus or Dibbly Create, which are two newer and more streamlined, word, word processing, that sounds so old fashioned, but you know what I'm trying to, writing apps. What about Plottr? Are you familiar with that?
[00:16:53] Matty: well, Plottr, as far as I know from my last look at it, and there's actually on my YouTube channel, there's a playlist called Tools Cruise. And Troy Lambert from Plottr came on and gave a little demo of Plottr. And Plottr is great, but I don't think even Plottr would recommend it as something that you do, you're writing it. Plotting in it. and so it's functionalities optimized to, like tracking character profiles and, multiple storylines and things like that. I apologize, Troy and Ryan, if I'm downplaying what Plottr can achieve, but, I think it's aiming for something a little different.
But something like Atticus, which is from, Kindlepreneur, which, Dave Chesson is, the guy behind. is not only, I think, providing a nice, streamlined version of what I'm achieving with Scrivener, but also, the other big plus of something like Atticus is that you're, you can, do both your writing and your formatting in the same tool. So, back in the day, when I was buying my tools, I got Scrivener and I got Vellum, which I used for formatting,
So I can export a document from Scrivener into Word and then I can import it from Word into Vellum and then with a push of a button I can make beautiful ebooks for all the retail platforms and print, which is great. And again, I wouldn't move off it because I've optimized both of those tools for myself, but Atticus does that all in one place. And so you don't have to be moving documents from, one thing to the other.
[00:18:30] John: how do you spell, how do you spell Atticus?
[00:18:32] Matty: A T T I C U S. And then the other one that I've explored a little bit, but not in a great amount of detail, is Dibbly Create, and I think Dibbly Create's plug is that, among other things, it is more It's explicitly tapped into AI so people can use it more easily if they want to use AI to help brainstorm, or it's also tapped into a marketplace, so if you're done with your work in Dibbly Create and then you're looking for an editor, then you can easily actually from the app, Explore a marketplace of editors and book cover designers and so on.
[00:19:08] John: So, yeah, those are the things that I would recommend to people if they were starting out now. And I imagine that both Dibbly Create and, Atticus as well as Plottr would have this ability to more easily drag components around. But the thing that's the most interesting to me is the formatting.
[00:19:25] Matty: Yeah, I tried. There are ways, theoretically, in Scrivener to, create the epubs and the PDFs you need, but I don't think anybody uses them. I haven't tried using them for years, but they were horrible when I tried to use them.
[00:19:47] Matty: And all these things are evolving so quickly that, here we are in December 2023 recording this, and, I maybe haven't looked at these things for months, so if I'm saying something outdated, I apologize, but that's the kind of suite of tools that I would look into.
Creating a synopsis as you write
[00:20:00] Matty: But I don't want to get too far afield from your organizational approach, and I really liked what you were saying about maintaining a synopsis at the same time, because going back and writing a synopsis is just, is just a big pain.
[00:20:14] John: Yeah, it is. It, it's much, it's very hard because it's like, you've, you've been, all of the moving parts of this, of this book. How do you synthesize it? And make it, valuable for an agent to know that you know how to tell a story. And, so yeah, writing a synopsis can be really tricky.
Tapping into AI for synopses and sales descriptions
[00:20:37] Matty: Yeah, this kind of thing is exactly what I'm hoping AI will provide because I actually just had the experience of, finishing a novella that was about 18, 000 words and plugging it into Claude and asking Claude to give me not a synopsis but, like back cover sales text. And it did a really good job. I would not have used it as is, but
[00:20:59] John: are you saying that you, in a sense, copied the 18,000-word document, put it in like something like chat GPT and said, write a synopsis or write a dust cover blurb? And it did?
[00:21:12] Matty: Yeah, it was, Claude. So, ChatGPT, and again, every time I say something like this, I'm sure somebody's going to say, You just didn't use it right. But, my experience with ChatGPT is that it's more limited in the terms of the inputs you can provide. But Claude actually lets you attach a file, and I haven't tried it with a longer word than this 18,000-word novella. but yeah, I just attached the, the document that had the novella in it. And I said, I'm trying to think how I worded it, a sales description for this thriller. And it was very good.
And it was useful in the sense that it, it called out three characters, the protagonist of the story and two of her sidekicks, but they were not the two sidekicks I would have guessed. And I realized when I read that that the two sidekicks it had picked to mention in the blurb actually made more sense than the two sidekicks I would have picked if I had been writing it. And so things like that, I think any of those things where you put something into AI comes out and you go, Huh!
[00:22:25] Matty: And, on the, this is going a little far afield from organization, but I am starting to, recreate transcripts for the podcast using ChatGPT. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, you can only put in 4, 000 characters at a time. So because my transcripts are quite long, my transcripts are being Automatically generated from Descript, which is the tool I use for the audio and video editing.
But, and they're like, pretty good, but not great. However, I find that if I take chunks of 4,000 words at a time, put it into ChatGPT, and say, "Correct typos and grammatical errors in this," it does a great job. I'm sure that the 4000-character limit is going to go away. However, I found that ChatGPT was much better for those things that are like just correct stuff, and Claude was better for the more imaginative stuff. Because if I tried to fix the transcript in Claude, it would write an article or something.
I couldn't come up with a prompt that would say, "No, I just want you to fix the typos and the grammatical errors." So, again, another topic that everything is evolving so quickly that this is just a guideline. This is a point in time of how these things are behaving in December of 2023.
[00:23:40] John: Right? It's evolving.
[00:23:42] Matty: Yeah. So, we've talked a little bit about how we both organize fiction work. How else are you applying organization in your life as a writer that our listeners might benefit from?
Documenting your writer business relationships
[00:23:55] John: I think that the approach that I take is pretty similar for nonfiction as well. I do some ghostwriting, and again, I keep the project separate. With ghostwriting, you're going to need contracts. You're going to need to be able to deal with a client who you want to make sure you're on the same page with and avoid misunderstandings. So, having a ghostwriting contract is important.
I'm a manuscript editor, so I have a file, or I have a folder for manuscript editing. Each one of my clients has their own folder, and within that folder, there are the different projects that they've hired me to do. If someone hires me to be a coach, I have a log file so that the relationship is documented. Usually, people hire me for like a five-hour retainer of encouragement. I keep track of what I've been doing, how much time is left on the coaching clock, and they use the time strategically.
There are some clients who I've been working with for a couple of years, and they haven't depleted the five hours yet. Someone will surface after a year and it's going, "Whoa, what's going on?" I have to go back into my file. Being organized that way has really helped me stay up to date. Maintaining that log is just something, as soon as the conversation is over or as soon as the project is over, I update it. It's not something you want to put off because if you put it off, there are so many other things that can get in the way.
You don't need to spend much time updating the log. Just get it out of the way, file it, and you can move on with your life. But it's invaluable when someone resurfaces and says, "Hey, let's pick up where we left off." And you're going, "Who are you again?"
[00:25:53] Matty: Yeah, I think that's great advice, even for people who don't have clients. If you have an interaction with, I don't know, let's say a designer, editor, or something like that, make that kind of note and separate out the notes you're going to share with the person. What I do is, whenever I have—it's especially handy on something like Zoom or any kind of virtual meeting—I'll open a Word document. Then I'll have it be like "John DeDakis," and I'll say, "Oh, John and I met today and we chatted about such and such." I can use that if I actually want to send minutes. There are things that I want to share with the person, and then there are things that you might not want to share. For example, if you find that a cover designer is doing some kind of weird thing that's not what you're looking for, you could make your private note that says, "Remember to remind him that I don't want bloodstains on my cover" or whatever. Then you'd have the public, "This is what we agreed to do" kind of document.
Managing sign-offs
[00:26:54] Matty: You know, your comment about the contracts made me also think of another handy tool that I recently discovered. I needed to have a contract signed, and I always struggle with managing whole e-signatures thing. I have a Dropbox account, as I think many people do, and I discovered that there's an app called HelloSign, H E L L O S I G N. I think it probably used to be a separate app, but if you have a Dropbox account, at least a certain kind of Dropbox account, and you look in the left nav, there's a signatures option, and it's a very nice basic e-signature request and tracking app. With my account, I get like three signatures a month, which is more than I need, but I like that HelloSign on Dropbox.
[00:27:41] John: Okay, that's good to know. Wouldn't PDFs do the same? You can sign a PDF.
[00:27:48] Matty: Well, I don't think that I have the level of Adobe or whatever that enables me to make a signable field in an online document. So the nice thing about HelloSign is that you upload the PDF, list the signers, and then you drag a signature block over the PDF where you want each person to sign. It's just defined like, "This is where Matty's going to sign. This is where John's going to sign." You can designate the order in which you want people to sign. You enter an email address, then you hit send. HelloSign cycles it through the signers in order, and then the person just has to click into that sign on the PDF and type out their name or sign it with their mouse or whatever they want to do. I always tried doing that with a PDF, and it was probably user error, but I could never get it to work for me.
[00:28:43] John: Yeah, because I had to update my laptop and, on the old one, a PDF you could sign and everything was great. With the new laptop, it's like, you gotta buy this, buy that, and it gets a little discouraging.
[00:28:56] Matty: Yeah, I was definitely out for the free option. I didn't want to add yet another tool to my list of things that I would have to organize.
[00:29:04] John: Exactly.
Organizing with Excel... or not
[00:29:05] Matty: You know, I was thinking another organizational tool that I use is, I would recommend everybody keep an eye out for anything you have to access repetitively. I'm a huge Excel fan. But I have giant spreadsheets. Well, I have one super giant spreadsheet called William Kingsfield Publishers Pub Information, and over time it's expanded to include even more things.
But as an example, for every book, you're going to have an ISBN. And you might have an ISBN you've purchased through Bowker, or you might have—I won't get into a description of the pros and cons, but if you're publishing on Draft2Digital, you might have a Draft2Digital assigned ISBN, and then you might have, like, a Barnes and Noble assigned ISBN. There are also URLs on all your sales platforms for each of your books, like, anything like that that is repetitive. Just go ahead and stick it in a spreadsheet because if I want to post something online pointing people with links to my, let's say, my first book on my direct sales platform and on my Books to Read universal link, all I have to do is open up my pub info spreadsheet and filter on the book name, and there they are right there.
I do the same thing with book descriptions. I do the same thing with testimonials, so don't force yourself to go look for the same information over and over again. Just bite the bullet and put it in a spreadsheet. And I really haven't found anything better than a spreadsheet. If you want to use sheets or whatever, that's fine. I think that if people are willing to learn sorting and filtering, then the spreadsheet is the way to go.
So when you are looking for, like, let's say you have to provide a URL or an ISBN to somebody, how do you, how do you access that information? Do you have a non-spreadsheet alternative?
[00:31:02] John: Yeah. I go searching. I have in my AOL files. I hadn't really thought about that, but there are some draft files so that when people are looking for ISBN numbers and things like that, I've got a file where all of my books are listed with the ISBN numbers. And so I can go there. Usually when I'm pitching a writing workshop, I have a file that has all the blurbs for the writing classes that I teach so that I can pluck from there and create a class that will combine a couple of things. There's a file I have for bios because every writing workshop or writing conference, they want your bio, but they have different standards. Some want 50 words, some want 100 words. And so I've got a bio file that has all kinds of different lengths of bios that I've written and adapt. And that's just one file. And I can go and go, Oh, this is one and just copy and paste it from there. But again, that's Word again.
[00:32:11] Matty: Well, years ago, in my corporate life, I facilitated a kind of like a new employee orientation, and one of the modules was about behavioral styles. I think they were analyzing, supporting, controlling, and another one that's escaping me at the moment. But I really thought there were perfect analogies to Microsoft Office applications. Like there's just the Word personality, there's the Excel personality, there's the PowerPoint personality, and heaven help us, there's the Microsoft Access personality. So I think that, I think it's just an equivalent behavioral styles assessment.
[00:32:45] John: Yeah, exactly. It really, I think organization is a personal, these are personal choices that you make. And it's an evolutionary thing. I think I've learned a few things from you today, even, on how to maybe adjust and adapt and evolve my own organizational style. It's definitely been trial and error as I've gone.
The relationship between organization and procrastination
[00:33:11] Matty: Yeah, for sure, for every person, I think that's the case. And so, I thought it would be fun to close out with a question, and I think this is one we discussed earlier, but if not, it'll be a little surprise for you. So, I have the question here, what is the relationship between organization and procrastination? Is that a question you had proposed?
[00:33:32] John: I don't know if I proposed it or not, but I know I have procrastination nailed. I mean, I'm a master procrastinator. But the, but it's useful. Because what I tell my writing students is that, unlike what Stephen King tells you, you’ve got to write a thousand words a day or you're not a serious writer. I don't buy that. I think if you're ruminating, you're writing. And, you don't have to be moving your fingers on the keyboard in order to be a writer.
Granted, there comes a time when you really do have to get your butt in the chair and the fingers on the laptop. But, I think procrastination is incredibly useful because it's allowing your subconscious to process things, and so that when you do sit down, things have bubbled to the surface, and it's more likely that it's going to flow onto the page. So, it's not necessarily organization, but it is part of, I think, the creative process, and both procrastination and organization serve the same end, and that's to be creative and get something down on paper, or eventually it'll be on paper, so that others, you'll be able to connect with others with whatever your story is.
The value of procrastination
[00:34:53] Matty: Yeah, what you're saying reminds me of two things. One is that, this is something I always have to remind myself of, but I have found real value in procrastination in replying to emails. So, normally, my goal is always the zero inbox. My default mode is, reply to everything immediately because that's how you keep a zero inbox. But I realized, and this is a lesson that I learned and then had to relearn and relearn and relearn in my corporate life, that if you just wait, and I don't mean days, I mean like 12 hours, 24 hours, a little bit of time, oftentimes either your answer is different because you've had more time to think about it or, the problem takes care of itself.
[00:35:43] John: That, you've really tapped into something that I think is worth talking about. This is my to-do list, and it's handwritten, it evolves, there are some crossouts on it, and, some of the things that are on this list are based on emails that I've, that I have yet to answer. And some of them go back a month. I'm so sorry, anybody who's still waiting for an email, it's coming. And some of it is just they don't really need a quick response. Here's another thing that I'm doing that I've discovered. When I get an email from somebody and I look at it on my phone, my iPhone, I'm able to open it and then I'm able to mark it as unread. So that'll at least give me a first glance at it so that I can ruminate about it, as you mentioned. But then when I file it, when I go to my laptop, it's still highlighted as if it's brand new.
And that reminds me, okay, I need to pay attention to this, but I've already been thinking about, about an answer. And I've discovered too, that, a lot of people are surprised when I answer right away, and, and so I think we are at a point with email where you don't have to answer instantly, especially if it's an important topic or a potential conflict or whatever, or someone is asking for a lot of information, you can have some time to kind of think about it so that when you compose your answer, it's already been percolating a little bit and the answer itself then becomes easier.
And then again, anybody I've had communication with, I create a folder in my AOL file. Yes, it's AOL. Get over it. I have a folder in my AOL file of everyone that I'm in communication with and I file their email and my response, and everything just goes into that file. So the inbox indeed gets cleaned out. Well, I've got 9000 emails still in my inbox. A lot of it's junk, but, the important ones are getting answered and the relationship main is maintained. In its own folder, in its own email folder, with that person so that I'm able to keep track of the relationship. Do I go back and, and, and go through those? No, but they're there in case I need them.
Search or folders?
[00:38:09] Matty: Yeah, I think that another way to think about it, and I think this is a generational thing because I think you and I grew up in the age of creating folders in AOL, for example. but something that, a younger coworker pointed out to me when I was still in the corporate world is, search in many cases is just as efficient, if not more efficient, than filing things in a folder. Because let's say, you have an email that's related to me and Fred, then do you, do you put that in the me folder? Do you put it in the Fred folder? Do you copy and put it in both? But if you search for my name and Fred's name or my email address and Fred's email address, then you can find it. And I have found that I, in fact, I don't think I put anything in a folder anymore in email because I just find that a search is more likely to bring back what I'm looking for than looking through a folder of information. So again, just another perspective.
[00:39:01] John: I would amend that by saying, yes, definitely do the search because often the search has, has shown me things, has, has widened the net a bit. To show me other things, I think that your suggestion or your coworker's suggestion is probably more relevant in a corporate environment where you're just getting this gush of emails and, and so maintaining your own filing system, can be a full-time job in and of itself. But on, so that then means that a search, will do it. But my concern would be a search might also cause things to fall through the cracks. Whereas if you do file it in that particular relationship folder, then you really know you have it. It's not, you're not relying on the server in the sky, to keep track for you.
[00:39:57] Matty: Yeah, all just things for people to tweak as appropriate for their own circumstances.
The power of percolation
[00:40:02] Matty: And the other thing that your earlier comment reminded me of, and then you gave me the perfect segue by talking about percolating on an email, is that that idea of procrastination in the sense of, pondering what you're working on in your fiction writing, for example, or your nonfiction writing too, I'm sure, is, percolating being the third, to plotting and pantsing, and I credit that to Art Taylor, who had mentioned that, that he was a percolator, and I was like, yes, yes, I've never, I've never heard that term used in that circumstance, but I'm definitely a percolator.
[00:40:38] John: Well, and it fits with the coffee-fueled, all writers and journalists, mainline coffee. So, yes, I Percolate is a, is a perfect word. And it works for art because he's very successful as a writer and, and quite talented. So, that's a. That's a wonderful word to use. he's probably got her copyrighted now though.
[00:41:01] Matty: that's why he got on the podcast, because I was at a conference, and he was speaking, and he said percolator, and I wrote down, Art Taylor, percolator, invite him to the podcast. We talked about other things too, but the percolator thing is what, what caught my attention because it was, it sounded exactly right to my own experience.
Well, John, this has been so much fun. Thank you for sharing, your tips on organization. Thank you for being willing to, debate some of the pros and cons of, oh, let's say Excel. so please let the listeners and viewers know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
[00:41:31] John: Well, and thank you, Matty. I mean, it's always fun talking to you and I think I learned a few things today too. People can get in touch. I'm John DeDakis. it's Greek. You can probably best get me through my website, which is my name, johndedakis.com.
[00:41:56] Matty: Great. Thank you so much.
[00:41:58] John: Thank you, Matty.
