How to Organize and Manage Your Correspondence

Introduction


Imagine all the correspondence you do as a professional writer. If you’re a freelance journalist, you have to contact publishers, pitch, follow-up, and more. Copywriters and technical writers may have ongoing relationships with clients or have to pitch to new ones. Bloggers often guest write for many blogs.


And every person you work with is on a different stage in the pitch, write, publish, follow-up system. How do you keep up with so many email correspondences at different stages?


Scrivener makes that easy. Using your Binder, Labels, and Statuses, you can track and manage all of your communications.


Tutorial


  1. Create a folder for each target audience that need different materials. Materials might be:


    1. Cover letter


    1. Resume


    1. Warm and cold email templates


    1. LinkedIn connection dialogue and pitch


    1. Synopsis


    1. 1 paragraph pitch


    1. First three chapters


    1. 300-word excerpt


    1. First 10 pages


    1. 50-word author bio


  1. Create folders for each agent, publisher, or client approached


    1. Each folder with files for profiles, correspondence


    1. Each of those subfolders with posting guidelines


    1. Correspondence with replies layered inside


    1. The post


    1. Follow up


  1. Create a folder for Troubleshooting


  1. Create a folder for Frequently Asked Questions


    1. Generic answers for common questions


    1. Edited versions of answers layered under original question


  1. Create a Template folder for:
    1. Copy Briefs 


    1. Contracts


    1. Invoices


  1. Create a Swipe File folder of successful content related to your work for inspiration.

Conclusion


These are some suggestions on how to organize Scrivener to use and manage correspondence. Depending on which industries you write for, some of these suggestions won’t be directly useful, but you should still have an idea of what to change for your needs. If you’re new to professional writing, you’ll be surprised how many little things you will want to have on hand or keep track of. Hopefully, this helps you with this complicated side of the writing business. 


In the next tutorial, you learn how to use Labels to track your progress. You can apply this to your workpieces, but also how far along your correspondence has gone with a particular potential publisher or client.


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