Is ONE NOTE really a Writer’s Tool? As I writer, my answer to this question is definitely YES.
For quite a while I had been looking for a way to take my notes with me. As many people nowadays I adjusted to modern technology. I work on my desktop at home, I’ve got my tablet to work when I’m on the road, and occasionally in small breaks, I might take a couple notes on my phone. But my smartphone isn’t a very practical work tool. Don’t misunderstand me. I love it, and I wouldn’t give it away, it connects me to the world, like so many others. But as for writing: nearly useless.
When taking notes, I might as well carry my paper scratch book and write a couple sentences down there. I’m faster, and I can write as big as I want without ruining my eyesight.
A while back I had tried to find another way to take my notes with me. With all notes I have made so far I could as well buy a suitcase on wheels, so notes in paper form to carry around are out of questions. The notepad on my phone is a little small, the one on my tablet is fine, mostly the notes even stay on. But what if I need them on my computer? No chance to even send them within the app, since it’s only a smartphone app. I would have to copy the notes, paste them into an email and email them to myself, copy them out of the email, paste them onto – whatever document and save them into a respective “notes” file.
Until I discovered ONE NOTE – what a magic tool this is.
It’s extendable, I can have as many different notebooks on there as I want, I can have as many tabs as I want and within the tabs as many pages as I want. At first, it seemed a little confusing until I discovered it can be extended within itself.
Let me show you:
In my personal Notebook on One Note I’ve got this different kind of notes:
· ‘to do’ lists
· quick notes like shopping lists
· blog ideas, character descriptions for my current series
· writer infographics
· places I discover and might maybe want to use in another story or book
· and a new section (we’re getting to that)
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I opened the program within the writer infographics, which are absolutely cool to take with me. In case I’m working ‘on the road,’ in a train, bus or the doctor’s waiting room and need to look for a word, a particular body language, character flaw or whatever comes up, I can peek.
It took me a while until I got all of them copied into One Note, but I personally find the use justifies the effort big time.
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Now, let’s get to the way to work with a new tab and the respective pages on One Note:
I took screenshots of the “New Section.”
1. New Section
2. Add Page
3. Title Section for the new page
1 NEW SECTION
As you can see, on the right side there’s a new tab with the ‘+’ – if you feel like opening another “section,” click on the ‘+’ and you will have one. The ‘New Section’ cannot be named within the tab. At the moment you have just opened a new section and prepared it for use
2 ADD PAGE
Here, on the right side, you can add as many pages as you like to each chapter. Every page, once named, or titled, will show up with its title here, on the right side, where it’s easy to find.
3 TITLE SECTION FOR THE PAGE
The blue Section marks the place where you have to name the page. Once that’s named, it will show up on the right side.
Name the page – and you’re all set, you can start working and taking your notes.
You don’t even have to “save” by clicking an extra button. One Note does automatically. Once you close the program, on whatever device you’re using it on, it will save whatever notes you took.
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Please keep in mind that there are two major things for One Note to work flawlessly:
a) Have a Microsoft Account!
b) Make sure you add the Microsoft account to all the devices you would like One Note to work on.
If you have done so, you can add notes on your desktop, add your grocery shopping list at home, drive to the supermarket, open One Note on your Smartphone and there it is! The program updates and adds as soon as you open it.
And now, I wish you tons of fun with your new organizational tool One Note.
There are so many choices for an author to make when embarking on a novel. What time period? What setting? What structure? What genre? What characters? What events? How true should it be to real history? What is the time frame? What is it all really about? 
Original image courtesy of flowcomm, via Flickr Commons 
Image via Flickr Creative Commons, courtesy of Noemi Galera. 
Writer's Treasure Chest 
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