I’m sure we writers hit a spot during our writing career when we feel overwhelmed. We’ve done a great job developing that plot, the foreshadowing and characters, but it’s too much. We can’t keep track, what with all the scattered Word files and notebooks full of unorganized scribbles. Let’s face it:
It’s tough being a writer. It can be depressing, writing about people, who, even though they are fictional, have serious problems. Delving into those problems and developing them, crafting them into a story, can lead to fictional stress (a real thing). It’s like you’re making sure ten different people are all taken care of and happy at the same time. Unorganized and dislocated, all these story tidbits, the tiniest scenes, the snatches of dialog, a character’s arc, etc. etc. all come tumbling down on your poor cluttered mind and distracts you, forcing you to lose your confidence. Your wits. Your sanity. Your nut.
Sound familiar?
For a while, this fit me to a T. When school started, it got worse, and I found the root of the problem was disorganization. I like keeping notes about my writing, but they’re all scattered in one tiny notebook I bring with me everywhere. There are a lot of ways to keep your writing organized; I’ve heard Scrivener is a very popular and handy resource particularly for fiction writers. But I can’t take a laptop everywhere I go. A notebook? Check. And that’s where all my writing ideas go before I log them onto a Word file.
I started researching how to gather up all my ideas into one place (in this case, a single journal) where I could find them easily. Now if that doesn’t sound like heaven to a plotter, I don’t know what does. In my research, I came across a term called “bullet journaling” and I was very happy with the article I found: Bullet Journaling for Fiction Writers
I bought a notebook. I fell in love with it. And I started to bullet journal. (Cue suspenseful music.)
I’m really loving it. And not only do I get all my flurries of ideas organized about my one WIP novel, I also get to arrange other story ideas, new characters and plots, and anything slightly writing related. All in one place. I read a couple articles on how to do it and then decided to experiment. Seeing as my experiment worked, here’s the results: Keep Your Writing Organized with a Bullet Journal.
As a side note: I JUST started bullet journaling, and haven’t had a ton of experience. I haven’t seen a lot of step by step articles on how to bullet journal for writing fiction, thus this blog post. So, learn with me!
Step 1: How to Bullet Journal Anyway?
Short answer: Take notes with lots of bullets.
Long answer which is still kind of short on my part: Take a look at this page on the official bullet journal site. It summarizes the basics of what these nifty noteboks should incorporate and tips to help you get started. “All you need is a notebook and a pen.” In my opinion, there’s no right or wrong way to bullet journal. Organization is key.
Any notebook works, really. People are highly recommending the Leuchtturm1917, Moleskine
, Piccadilly
, and Midori Traveler’s Notebook
to name only a few.
I bought a travelers notebook that looks and functions exactly like a Midori notebook, but it’s cheaper. It’s called the ZLYC Travelers Notebook, made with good-quality leather, and is refillable for only 15 bucks. Not only is it leather and authentic, it also looks like something Bilbo might bring with him on the journey there and back again (and I can recommend it for that one reason alone). Ever since I got it in the mail, it’s been my absolute favorite thing and writing this post was a good excuse to take lots and lots of pictures. You know the drill.

I highly recommend this one, though if you want something bigger, I’d definitely go with the Leuchtturm1917 if you were me. But you’re not me, so don’t feel like you have to go with my judgement (I’ve never used the Leuchtturm1917 but it is the “official” bullet journal; can’t go wrong there).
Step 2: Organize Before you Write
As soon as I got the journal, I held it, hugged it, and looked at it from all the different possible angles before the temptation hit me full force: I MUST WRITE IN THIS THING. But then, I remembered the reason I’d gotten it for.
Er, yes. Bullet journaling.
Which means I had to plan how to format the notebook, write an index, etc. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any post, not even with pictures, that showed step by step how to organize and what to include in a bullet journal specifically for fiction writers (particularly of fantasy and sci-fi). As I said before, because of this, I came up with my own layout, divided up the segments/categories accordingly with the amount of pages, and I’m quite satisfied with it. Behold, the visual guide.
The Title Page
Every bullet journal needs a title page, particularly if you’re going to have a bunch of them.
This bullet journal is specifically for writing and everything related. But the calander pages gave me some extra room for other stuff. We’ll get to that in a sec.
Index and Organization
The index is the beauty of bullet journaling and is the Cornerstone of all Organization. The notebook comes with three sections: One with lined paper, another calander, and the other blank, each with about 60 pages at least. The first section I titled NETHERWORLD and did some math to divide the pages among the different categories. For example, the pages for my Characters got 16 pages (2-4 pages for each character, depending on depth), Dialog got 4 pages, etc.
I did the same thing with the calander section. The months September-January each got about 5 pages each with one page for wrting goals, another for reading goals, and so on. The third section, all blank, got the categories assorted such as Writing Prompts, Movie Shot Ideas, Character Sketches, and Additional WIP Inspiration.




The tricky part was alloting each section to a certain number of pages. It took some math, but in the end, everything fit well.
So there you have it. A non-in-depth guide to bullet journaling for writers. Feel free to pop any comment down there with questions or opinions. Do you bullet journal? Please leave some tips!!! Particularly if you bullet journal for your own fiction writing. Teach me your ways. Thanks for reading and good luck with your writing organization!
26 responses to “Keep Your Writing Organized with a Bullet Journal”
What a helpful tool! I didn’t know such a thing exists! I guess it could be used in many ways, other than for writers. I had to google “fangirling”……lol We love you!!!
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Thanks for the comment! Yes it can be used for practically anything. I started another bullet journal for daily stuff, such as school schedules etc.
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This looks fascinating! I had heard of bullet journaling, but I never actually figured out what it was. I love notebooks and organizational things, and this sounds right up my alley. Thanks for sharing this, you might have just gotten me hooked! 😉
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Thanks! So glad it’s appealed to a fellow writer. 😀 I hope you try it and find that it works for you! Thanks for the comment. 😀
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Very informative post, thanks for writing it up! I love the leather of your journal and the fact that Bilbo would carry such a journal is 100% the best reason to have one! Though I always feel I’ll never write anything epic enough to grace its pages.
Best of luck in your future writing, and bullet-journaling endeavors!
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Thanks so much! Yes, I feel like a medieval fantasy character whenever I open it up to write in it. 😀 Though it deserves words more beautiful than quick idea jots, I agree. Thanks for the comment and best of writerly wishes to you as well!
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This is a great idea! I can tell you truly value organization. I personally have a folder of Word documents and a few physical notebooks just because things can really get out of hand with my ideas. But I do like this idea!
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Thanks! I probably value organization because I’m so bad at it and realize I need to really knuckle down and tidy up. 😛 I like your folder idea … I have yet to set that stuff up. Thanks for the comment!
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I couldn’t keep all the sticky notes and scraps of paper that I was accumulating, haha. But your way is much more stylish.
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[…] also set up a new system for recording story notes. I stumbled across this post and liked the general idea, but also modified it. I decided to devote a whole notebook to […]
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[…] Keep Your Writing Organized with a Bullet Journal from S.M. Metzler @ Tea with Tumnus. I just started a bullet journal myself, and I love it! I really like this idea for using it to organize writing. Oddly enough, I’m organized in just about every area of my life aside from writing. One of these days, I’ll give this a shot… […]
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Ooh, your bullet journal is looking awesome! I’m so glad my post was able to inspire you. \^-^/ I’d love to know how this is working out for you, a few months in!
I’ll be writing again about bullet journaling for writers in the new year, with more specifics about how I lay out certain collections. Would you like me to drop by with a link when that goes live?
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Thanks so much! It’s been working out pretty well, but it turns out I have to reorganize … this is just my first experiment. 😀 I’m really glad I found your post! I would absolutely love to read more of your bullet journaling articles! Please do leave a link once it’s live, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks!
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[…] Keeping Your Writing Organized with a Bullet Journal […]
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Hi! I do use bullet journalling for my writing too. I tried the traveler’s notebook, but that didn’t work for me. I’m now using Stalogy, which is a notebook with 365 pages slightly thicker than half inch. I use the A5 size, which is big enough to write comfortably, and carry around too. I have a section for characters, world building, notes, etc.
Your post is really great! Love that someone is doing the same thing like me!
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Thanks for reading! I’m going to have to look into the Stalogy notebook when it’s time to buy another bullet journal! 😀 Glad it worked out for you!
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I bullet everything!…but it never occured to me to make a bullet journal. So far I have about a bazillion notebooks scattered just about everywhere an idea could possibly strike and need to be captured. And I have never coordinated one of them. Sigh.
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Bullet journals have always stressed me out 😮 Well, organization stresses me out in general…I’m always afraid I won’t leave enough space to write stuff about characters, for example. But I also get stressed by disorganization, so maybe I should give this a shot.
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Yeah, one of the problems I have with bullet journals is leaving space for everything. I give a certain category 20 pages … but what if I need 21?? I guess that’s why they tell you to keep an experimental notebook first, so you can see how many pages you need for what. But yeah, both organization stresses me out because I need to get it absolutely perfect, but it’s better than clutter, so 😛 Hope these ideas will be of some help to you!
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Here I am researching Bullet Journals and find this blog with the amazing title, “Tea with Tumnus” (because Tea with Tumnus would be the ultimate experience) and I click on it and find YOU! What an amazing surprise. I loved your suggestions and am in love with the traveler’s notebook you purchased. You are right, the very fact that Bilbo would have purchased it is reason enough to buy it. I will definitely be visiting your blog again 🙂 Miss you guys!
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Oh wow!! That’s so awesome you just happen to find my blog!! 😀 I’m glad you like the post and suggestions. I miss you guys too! Say hi to Sophie and Bea for me. 😀
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[…] Keep Your Writing Organized with a Bullet Journal from Tea with Tumnus. […]
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I bullet journal. I started at the beginning of this April (so I’m a newbie to the whole thing) but I’m thinking of starting a second bullet journal for writing stuff. I use Scrivener (I was going to suggest it before you brought it up) but I understand how I need somewhere to write down stuff without my computer.
My current bullet journal has to do lists for each day, goals, and other snippet stuff. Some writing things, but not the amount I’d like to work on. For school, I’ve been color coding my classes (green, red, orange, purple, and light blue), while writing things are a separate color (dark blue) and everything else is black. Oh, and verses or other things like it are in brown.
I love bullet journaling because typical planners have too small spaces for each day for me. I need a more, unique, way of organizing stuff. That’s what bullet journalling is for, I guess.
I’m thinking of putting a post on my blog about bullet journalling, especially if I take up a second one for writing only.
…What do you think?
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I love the color coding idea!! I used to bullet journal excessively, and then kinda got tired of my layout and everything was kinda disorganized. But I do want to start it up again. It’s such a fun easy way to customize your own schedule and organize your life all in one place! You should definitely post about your bullet journal!! I love getting tips and tricks from others. Thanks for reading!
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I used to attempt bullet journaling, but I could never do it consistently, so I end up going through phases where I do it a lot and then not at all. But, I love this with my whole heart. I’m so glad you found a creative and super aesthetic way to organize your writing thoughts, notes, and calendars. It looks super cool. ❤
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Thank you!! I’ve been there with the inconsistency. This bullet journal was actually a phase I went through for about a month and I kind of dropped it. I’ve more recently adopted a layout I love and it’s been fun to do it every day, which is what’s kept it consistent for me. Bujo isn’t for everyone, but it sure is fun with all the lettering and artsy elements. 😀 Thanks for reading!
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