The Index Cards Cometh

First off: whew, it's been a little while since I posted on schedule. Things have been a bit busy, and my birthday was Monday so my plans involved naps and cake. Now, though, things have quieted down and I'm back on track schedule-wise, so here we go with today's post:

Index cards. A common tool of the writer. Some people use them for jotting notes, some people use them for organizing scenes. Some use them for the basic stuff, some find them vital to their craft. Some don't use them at all, and until yesterday I counted myself among that crowd.

The lovely Mireyah Wolfe and I have been talking a lot about plotting lately. I'm a lifelong plotter, while she's never had a lot of experience with sitting down and planning out where her story is going to go. I suggested a few of my preferred techniques and recommended a book or two, and the next time I went over to her place to hang out, her dining room wall was plastered with ginormous index cards covered with notes. I admit, it made me smile to have made a convert to the world of plot, but I digress. It was those index cards that caught my eye. They were big enough to fit plenty of information, but small enough that they could be easily organized and moved around. In short, they were exactly what I'd been looking for over the past several weeks, and I was determined to get my hands on some.

Mires told me where to get some giant index cards of my very own, and so we made the trek to the local drugstore. Five bucks later, I had two packs of my very own, and I've since started to take down character profile notes and brief chapter outlines. I've never used index cards before now, but I'm finding more and more that they're a cheap, convenient way to organize mountains of information into an easily-accessible fingertip database.

It may seem silly to some to gush over index cards, but these things are really, really nifty. I've got organized, accessible, physical copies of my notes, and I can flip through everything without ever having to tab out of my main manuscript file.

I may have converted Mires to the ways of the plotter, but she's accidentally converted me to the cult of the card.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some more giant index cards to shuffle around on my plot board.
'Til next time,
J.