What are the best ways to save and organize favorite articles from the internet?
Wow. That is a mouthful. As a writer, I'm always coming across articles to help improve writing or help me in my self-publishing endeavors. Especially marketing, where I'm less than knowledgeable. Like everyone else, well most people that use the internet, I come across that I want to read later or save for later use. How do I do it? If I'm on my phone, I keep that page up and don't close it until I get to my computer or I email the link to the page to myself. Sometimes, I do that anyway.
Saving
The best way I've come up with is to copy – literally – the contents of the web page. If it's allowed. Not every web page will let you do that. I paste it into word and change to the font to my liking before saving it. When I grab something from the internet, whether it's a blog or information, I always make sure the document has the following:
- the author
- the web page I got it from
- the date it was published
Don't get me wrong, I'm not pirating peoples stuff. It's for my own personal use, but I like to know where I initially got it from. I get a lot from Writer's Digest.
Organizing
Organizing articles is a whole different animal. I've worked at it over the year to figure out what works best for me. Most of what I'm saving has to do with writing. To that end, I have a folders specifically for writing on my folder (backed up by a USB drive, of course). For instance, I have a folder named Editing and Revision Information. Within this folder, I have a sub-folder called Articles where I saved several word documents. 5 Questions to Ask During Revision, How To Self Edit Like A Pro, The Power of Process – Prewriting, Writing, and Rewriting. Do I need all these? Probably not. I've forged my own self-editing process. But I have them, in case I ever want to breeze through them to see if I need to add something to my process. Or if another author asks for help!
I've tried my hand at printing and saving, and that does not help at all. The only binder that I grab is when I'm character building. The rest of them are sitting on the shelf gathering dust so I've wasted a lot of paper trying to organize that way. Best to have them on my computer to use. I use my computer every day.
Happy organizing!