Organizing Your Computer Workspace

Your working habits have a direct impact on the quality of your writing. Organizing your computer workspace will increase your productivity, making it easier to find the files you need when you need them. This article provides some tips on organizing your computer workspace. The tips provided here are only suggestions and are by no means the only way to organize your computer workspace. It covers the following topics:

Laying the Groundwork
Creating Project Folders
Tracking Your Progress
Wrap Up

Laying the Groundwork

If you plan on doing a lot of writing, you should create a single folder for all of your work in the root directory of your computer (typically C:\). This is a good idea for two reasons.

It makes it easier to find a specific file because you only have to search one main folder and not every folder on your computer.
It makes it easier to burn backup CDs of all of your work. You simply select one folder and you're done.

Call this main folder something you'll remember. I generally call it Archives for no particular reason other than that's what I've always called it.

If you're going to be doing a lot of different kinds of writing, you might want to create subfolders in your main folder for each type of writing, such as a Contracts folders for contract or consulting projects, an Articles folder for articles, or a Fiction folder for stories. These subfolders can be very useful in helping you find a specific file if you happen to be a prolific writer and are working on several different kinds of projects at once.

Creating project folders

After you've set the main folder and its subfolders, you should create a folder for each project you are working on. For example, if you're writing two articles, you should have a folder for each article. This helps you to keep all of the pieces of a project in one place. You should name each project folder something that will remind you of what the project is about. I generally name the project folder an abbreviated version of the name of the article, story, or contract that I'm working on.

Depending on the size and nature of the project, you may need to create subfolders in your project folders. The most common folder I create is a Graphics folder, into which I place all of the graphics that a project uses. I also create a Research folder that I use to store any notes or documents that I have gathered through research.

You should name each file in your project folders something that will let you know what it is at a glance. For example, if I had to name a single file for this article, I'd call it something like OrgWkspce. There are some guidelines you should follow when you're naming both files and folders. You can read an article I wrote about this on TECHWR-L.

Tracking your progress

Having all of your work in neat little folders is pretty pointless if you can't figure out if you're done with a project, if you've been paid, or who you've submitted manuscripts to. You should remember to track your projects at every important step.

A good thing to do is keep track of your revisions. You should also note who you've submitted manuscripts to and what their response was. You can decide to keep this information in each project folder, or keep it in a central location, such as a database in your main folder. It doesn't matter what you do, as long as it helps you keep track of what's going on with your projects.

Wrap up

This article provided some tips on organizing your computer workspace to make it easier for you to manage your projects. It included tips on:

laying the groundwork for your workspace
creating project folders
tracking your progress

While I suggested some very specific things to do, what you do should depends on your own working style and what makes sense for the kinds of projects you're working on. Remember, the whole point of organizing your workspace is to make it easier for you to write and keep track of what you're doing. If my suggestions don't help you in this way, don't follow them. I won't mind.