Hello dear DevonThink community!
I own DT, DTP and now DTPO for years but I never really did use it. I was unable to cope with this wizard of a program.
Now I am willing to use DTPO to get my work and life structured. Due to the wide aspects of my work alone I need some advice how I should organize my work in databases and how to structure them.
Maybe my description of my writing helps to find what databases I need.
I am a writer.
I do write: books, screenplays for tv, for comics and for the web (e-learning); quiz for tv, for boardgames and for apps; I do invent games for tv-shows, for boardgames and for apps; I write different other tv-stuff; I write edutaining scientific stuff for magazines and for the web (facebook-groups).
There are loads of companies, publishers, producers, advertising agencies, cartoonist, illustrators, co-writers, trade unions and so forth, I have to deal with.
There are projects in progress, projects I would like to do in the future and projects that are successfully done and others that are “dead in the water”.
As every writer I have to research (books, magazines, the web, life and fantasy), some projects need more research others less.
Until today I did my project planning using Circusponies Notebook: For every project in progress I have one Notebook, to which I clip my thoughts and snippets from the web and where I write ideas and outlines. At a certain status I switch to Nisus Writer and do write my chapters, articles, whatever. Moreover I have a Notebook with ideas for books, games, screenplays, quiz, I want to realize in the future (if one idea becomes a project I create a new notebook). This has been alright so far, but since 2011 I am writing magazines for children about scientific and technical issues, for example: spaceflight and astronomy, inland navigation, snow, bicycles, maths. These issues need a lot of research and cooperating with illustrator, designer and scientists and here the notebook becomes somewhat unclear. The NB contains all the magazines I am writing, but only some research-stuff and outlines and first ideas. In addition I create a related folder in the finder, a new workspace and favourite links in Omniweb, I have got tons of e-mails in my Mail related to the magazine, invoices in an other finder-folder, scientific books, magazines and newspapersnippets in a shelf and boxes (not searchable of course). So everything is widely spread over my iMac (and my bureau) and it is really painful to remember which information, file or address is where.
To make it even worse: sometimes I have to write outside, in librarys, at the agency, in meetings, or even cafés (when I am climbing the walls of my bureau), so I use an MacBook as well, which I sync via Dropbox.
I would love to bundle all this into DTPO so that I always know where I find all the stuff that is relevant to one project. Is there anyone out there who has got some ideas how to structure that mess?
Many thanks in advance Matze
Edit: As I am creating databases right now, questions evolve:
Should I create a group with links to the web inside the database the belong to or should I create a database with all links and tag these links? What are the pros and cons?
Edit2: The same for scans and webarchives. All the scans in one database or devided in groups in databases they belong to?