Did I mention I bought a laminating machine?
I tried to get by with the laminating sheets that do not require a machine, but they are 1) expensive and 2) only seem to stick on one side. Maybe I just did it wrong, but it looks like one side is floating loose.
I keep track of where I am in my book using sheets. I want to record some basic information for each chapter. The lamination part comes in because I don't need to keep these sheets after the book is done and printing them out over and over is kind of a pain.
Instead, I use a wet erase marker and wipe the sheet. It works perfectly. I even found some extremely fine tip wet erase markers that make it awesome to write down things.
But sometimes it becomes hard to locate the information I'm looking for because it's all bunched together on a sheet of paper with 12 boxes. I know I mentioned this part--I found a template in my files by accident that had the same general idea, but laid out differently.
Only the creator of this document wanted to keep track of different things than I did. I tried to use their form and just put my information in the wrong boxes, but that got annoying because there wasn't enough room in a lot of the places.
So I created my own form, printed out twenty copies, and laminated them two to a sheet. I started using that instead.
And discovered that my own worksheet isn't exactly right.
Because the circle takes up space in the Event box, I need a little more space there. I need less space for day/time and the characters box. I also need to add Point of View (POV) box because I've been writing the POV character's name in the character box. The character box is also a little too big.
I'd also like to add another box for side notes. For example, in chapter 6, I mention that Cal speaks at least six languages. Do I need that in my Event box? No. Is that information I'd like to remember? Yes. Do I have some logical place to put it on my form? Again, no.
Things I like about my worksheet: The Chapter/Scene circle. Previously, I'd been using the 12 box worksheet with one box per chapter and it became crowded if there were two (or even sometimes three) scenes in a block.
I like the day/time designation being on the form. This is not my primary way to keep track of timeline because I use an actual printable calendar for that. I actually have the one for the Paladin League series in a binder because it encompasses about three years at this point. However, I like having it on the laminated sheet for one-glance reference.
When I have some spare time, I'll do version two of the sheet, print those out, and give it a try. Before I laminate them. Because when I finish Cal and Io's story, I'm probably going to throw away this version of the form and I hate tossing laminated paper when regular paper can be recycled.
