In praise of the A5 Domino (2)

In my last post, I wittered on about how many A5 dominos I now have, but what keeps bringing me back to them so often?

1. The price
They are frequently on offer in WH Smiths with either 40% or 50% off. (No affiliation, just always had good service from them. I have bought every single A5 domino I own from them!)

2. The 30mm rings
Huge. Just huge. And since I am generally not hefting these binders about on a daily basis, the fact they have huge rings and are stuffed (and heavy) doesn’t matter.

3. The rigid cover
I may well be using these to make notes whilst out and about (not all that common an occurrence) or whilst balancing the binder on my knee (much more common occurrence!) and the rigid cover makes this an easy task.

4. Pared-down interior
I am largely using these as binders and never as wallets and so the pared-down insides work well. The notepad slot in the back is brilliant.

5. Two pen-loops; both elastic
I surely don’t need to explain any further do I?

6. The fill
Although I bought this to use with home-made contents, I still like the fill it comes with. The one I just bought had an academic diary (July 2014 – December 2015; week to view, vertical) which will be used in 2015; A-Z dividers (okay, I’m more ‘meh’ about this as I have about a zillion sets of these now!); several sheets of coloured paper; some address sheets (okay, fairly ‘meh’ about these too); some ‘to-do’ sheets; a top-opening envelope; a ‘today’ marker’; a note-pad.
The address sheets and dividers are no use to me, but the rest of the fill is pretty good, especially the note-pad, which unlike the atrocious diary paper, handles a fountain pen okay!

For the price (£22) I think this is a great deal!

In praise of the A5 Domino (1)

I'm either addicted, or they are breeding.
I counted how many I have (sad but true). I appear to now possess six of these things (having bought another red one, reduced price, from WH Smiths - £22).

Six???
Indeedy. Four red and two ultraviolet.

Er... why so many? What are they used for?

Two are used as ‘book-o-fax’ binders
One is a letter-writing binder
One is a ‘me’ binder
Two are writing binders: one for admin; the other as a book-planner

Book-o-Fax (2x red)
I have an ever-growing set of book reviews. I only started doing these in 2009 but am now having to move to a second volume (the reason that I needed another new A5 domino from WH Smiths!). I keep a list of all the books read in a particular year (not including things read for work) and also a review of each of them. I use a set of A-Z dividers to sort the reviews by author. This post describes the book-o-fax.

The Letter-Writing binder (red)
I write a lot of letters to friends. I love getting a hand-written letter in the post and I enjoy writing proper letters to people too. In the letter-writing binder, there are envelopes, letters from people in the filopal set-up, notes that I have made on what I have written about to people (so I don’t keep repeating myself!) and in the note-pad slot in the back is a block of writing paper.

The ‘Me’ binder (ultraviolet)
Other than a print-out of an e-book, this is disappointingly rather empty! There are a few notes I made whilst reading through a few ‘change your life’ type books and some things cut from magazines or papers etc., but I really should use this a bit more!

The two writing binders
1. Writing admin (red)
This houses notes for blogs, story/novel plans, notes on agents, which of my books are at what stage, research notes for magazines etc. As I say, general admin. I posted about it here (though the set-up has changed a teensy bit since then).

2. The book-planner (ultraviolet)
I used this one to plan the last novel, but then switched to a bound notebook. I blogged about it here, here and predominantly here. I still hum and haw about using it for book-planning but then I always prefer using a bound planner (even though I know that using a binder is more sensible in so many ways!). I might use this as a book-planner again for book 6 (which is currently getting scribbled about in a Ciak notebook, but once I get more serious about writing it, I might move into the binder). If I don’t use it as a book-planner, I may start to store character notes in it. Every character I write about gets a ‘character dossier’ and I might put them all in one place (either organised by novel or by character name – not quite sure which would be better).

So, that's why I have six of these things! Anyone else have multiple versions of the same binder (domino or other)? What makes you keep buying them? And what do you use them for?

Still loving my book-planning filofax!

A few weeks ago, I bought another domino A5 in ultraviolet in the WHSmiths sale (£18) to use as a writing filofax. Not like my other writing filofax, which covers almost everything – this is specifically for planning the new novel. (The original contents of the filofax are for sale on here (and on the Philofaxy site) by the way, if anyone is still after a 2012 WO2P diary or dividers etc!).

So, with a now completely empty binder, I set up my ‘book-planning’ filofax. A (small) part of me had wondered if I was using ‘book-planner’ as an excuse to buy another filofax (surely not!) but I can happily report, a few weeks down the line that this is absolutely not the case and I am really loving using the filofax for planning. Having it A5 is big enough to write in and also is perfect for printing out my own templates for the planner.

I set up new dividers in it (sorry – filofax ones are just too dull) using some lovely purple card stock and a silver gel-pen (see here). The sections are shown below. 

the sections (using top-tabs)

In each of the sections:

Plot: this has a mind-map like chart of the different plot-lines on an A4 sheet, trimmed slightly and folded and punched to fit, plus several sheets of notes about the plot and the forensics etc. (it’s another murder…)

Timeline: I always have to have a timeline to make sure that someone doesn’t end up pregnant for 12 months or that they know things before they should (or indeed have happened!). I downloaded the DIY planner widget today so that I could print out page per day lined diary sheets. What a fantastic resource for writers (amongst others)! You can set the date range to almost anything you want, which is always handy for when you’re writing something set in 1998 or whatever. The current novel is set in 2011 so it wasn’t quite as tricky to sort out, but it was great to know I have that resource should I need it. I made up a couple of months of page-per-day sheets (simple lined so I can scribble lots of things on them) and I have also printed out the same time-range on week-on-a-page, so I can have an overview too.

page to day on left; weekly summary on right

Scenes: this is a section for detailed scene planning – from the order in which the scenes should come, to details of the scene. I used some modified templates from DIY planner for these, booklet printed to make 4xA5 sheets. This is the real heart of the planner in many ways.

Notes: things to check or look up; odd phrases or things to remember in a scene; various other notes…

Paper: several pages of blank paper. Although I have got filofax paper (as an A5 pad which came with the filofax) I’m still tending to use home-made lined paper because then it is fountain-pen friendly. There is of course, a pad-slot in the back of the domino which would have worked okay as a place for paper/capture, but then I wouldn’t be able to use fountain pen and I don’t like my writing in much else.

Character notes: a series of notes plus character dossiers for each main character. Minor characters just get a page of notes. The character dossiers were designed by me and run for 12 pages and list all the things I need to reference about each character (from eye/hair colour to background/back story/names of pets etc. etc. etc.). The notes pages are jottings or an expansion of the dossier.

Right at the back I have a plastic top-opening pocket to protect the back pages and put scraps of paper/things in as needed.

The benefits of using an A5 domino filofax for all of this are :

a) I can print all my own sheets for using in it (on fountain-pen friendly paper)

b) I can re-file and move things as and when needed. When I used a bound A4 Moleskine for planning, the inability to be able to move things around did annoy me! 

c) the domino has a hard enough cover to be able to lean on it whilst out and about and was cheap enough for me not to get precious about it banging around in a bag (though in fairness, it tends to live on my desk)

d) the 30mm rings let me put huge amounts in it without it all getting squished.

Anyway, I’m still delighted that it’s working out so well and I hope you enjoyed reading about it.

Now back to writing the book!