Let Me Make a Note of That

I've always been very organized. If my mother were here, she'd tell you that when I was an infant she'd often see me putting all the yellow blocks together and the red blocks together and so on. During my career in television, being organized was the backbone of each job. I was very good at creating systems and forms and ways of keeping track of things.

So why is it that I've never been able to apply any of this to my writing?

• Why do I make notes in so many spiral bound notebooks? For some inexplicable reason I am incapable of keeping my story notes in one, but have them spread over many, interspersed with shopping and to-do lists.
  

• Why do I write things down on little pieces of paper that emerge, like shrapnel, from my purse or my desk (that I never use) at the least expected moments?

• Why do I find chapter or scene printouts in various places with notes all over them, but with no way of telling if I actually incorporated them into my manuscript until I look, and then sometimes it still isn't clear because I have been known to change my mind and not agree with myself?

:long heavy sigh:

The longer the gap between writing days, the worse this gets and the more I forget what I've already worked out and where I've put the clues to it.

My writing program is Scrivener,* and I admit that without that I'd be completely lost. But it can't follow after me picking up little scraps of paper and incorporating them in the right places--especially since some ideas need to float around until they find the right scene to go in.

Question to my blog readers . . . how do you manage to stay organized while writing a book? Do you have any suggestions for me?

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*For an excellent writeup of Scrivener, see what Justine Larbalestier has to say about it.