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Organizing NAs and textlets/ideas that aren't NAs

I've been flirting with GTD for some time now, but my incipient stress-related breakdown has made me more serious. (Of course there's nothing attractive about desperation when dating or when working.) What's stressing me is keeping tabs of 2 current writing projects (research done, with deadlines), 3-4 incubating writing projects (much research done, no deadlines), 2 incubating research projects (research about to begin), as well as the usual gamut of tasks associated with my job. I'm generally satisfied with my level of organization, but have trouble keeping tabs of the bits and pieces that are generated out of order --draft sentences/parargraphs for sections that I'm not working on yet, references that may be relevant and that I want to look up and read, ideas that I want to pursue further. In the past, I've tried to integrate these text snippets into draft document files, either as highlighted sections, or marking them otherwise, but I feel that I just have too much going on now to continue to manage this way. I find that GTD has helped me manage different aspects of my work/home life quite well, but not the writing/researching part, which not coincidentally is what causes me the most stress. I just don't feel that I can keep all the little bits in my active memory -- too many bits, too many other commitments. Does anyone have tips for adapting GTD for writers/academics?

Robert Daeley's picture

Have you thought of looking...

Have you thought of looking into a desktop wiki system? I've been using one (VoodooPad) for some time now that has really empowered my ability to organize material.

A concrete example -- a novel I wrote in 2004 is set in a facsimile world, the special details of which are legion. Gaggles of characters, groups, events, history, geography, and whatnot that need tracking. By using a VoodooPad document, it made creating and interlinking among bits and pieces actually *fun*, believe it or not. Thanks to the automatic linking of terms, I was able to see relationships immediately, without trying to keep it all in my head. I also used it for the research side of things, pasting in text from different sources into their own articles.

Other wiki systems would also work, naturally, but here's a link if you want to check this one out:

http://www.flyingmeat.com/voodoopad/

 
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