Organising my 'Catch-All's

Over the years, I've kept these sort of 'catch-all' notebooks for collecting the ideas that appear in my head every now and then. Those ideas could be related to stories or projects that I've had in mind for ages, they could be for new stories, or they could be connected to nothing at all and just be something I'd like to keep for later. 

I don't know how often I go back to read those things I've written, especially after I've finished a notebook and moved on to the next one, and all that just leaves those ideas, even if written, alone to be forgotten about until somehow they're picked up again.

Just recently, I've found a solution to prevent that sort of thing from happening.

This might seem excessive or overwhelming

Since I have plenty of spare notebooks in my storage, I've decided to put them to use here (especially the ones that are less practical to bring everywhere I go). What I do with them is this: I dedicate one of them to a specific category that I tend to write about.

Afterwards, with my old catch-alls, I read through them thoroughly and then if I find anything I like or find that seems relevant to something I'm writing (or could potentially write), I copy that idea down into the notebook dedicated to the category that ita fits in.

So far, I have five books.

#1 is for my first major universe/group of stories: my sci-fis set in the planets revolving around Star Piaros (and beyond).

#2 is for my second major universe, where one of my other main projects is set. This is where the characters from Gone Unsupervised! and Agonie Island's other inhabitants live.

#3 is for my other stories that are not set in any of those two major universes of mine. Those stories could be one-off narratives or be set in a universe with multiple narratives, which isn't as 'huge' or as ambitious as my main two.

#4 is for any of my ideas for stories that I'm in the middle of writing that I'm not sure about keeping or leaving out. There are some ideas that I like, but I'm not exactly sure how -- or if -- I should weave them into the story that I planned them to be part of. Sometimes, I rewrite information and come up with new ideas, and I don't know what to do with the old ones that I still believe have potential.

Finally, #5 is for anything that isn't tied to any story that I'm working on, or anything huge set and/or set in stone. This book contains loose ideas, prompts, and just anything that I've written that could potentially inspire something in the future.

Now, because I've organised the things I've written in my old catch-all notebooks by copying sets of writing into their respective notebooks, this makes looking back at my old ideas much easier. This way, I can assume that nothing I've thought about and written down gets buried under assorted compilations of text, never to be read again. And also, this puts many of my spare notebooks to good use.