A Tale of Two Carts

Organizing is what you do before you do something so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.
— A. A. Milne

Getting organized is a sign of self-respect.
— Gabrielle Bernstein

Organization isn’t about perfection; it’s about efficiency, reducing stress and clutter, saving time and money and improving your overall quality of life.
— Christina Scalise

Did I say I was feeling more writerly? Well I lied. At least for the past week I lied.

Last week I did a lot of shopping, I got my presents all wrapped, I got the tree up and decorated, did crafts with the grandbaby, and did pretty much everything except write, bog posts not withstanding.

Tis the season to be busy, fa la la la la, la la la la

My office has become the storage place for all things Christmas. It’s a little hard to get it organized when you’re buried in a sea of gift bags and tissue paper. I sit at my desk maybe once a day to check Facebook, maybe do a bit of surfing, and dream of the holidays being over so I can get serious about organizing the piles of books and papers all over the place.

One of the worst paper collectors is the stand beside my small filing cabinet. This stand is an old telephone stand I picked up at a thrift store. It has a basket on the top to hold my blank printer paper, and an overflowing basket on the bottom shelf that holds my papers to be shredded. I have my shredder sitting beside it, the idea being that I’d shred papers as I discard them. Which would be a great plan if I ever adhered to it.

Anyway, one of the ads that popped up during one of the games I’m fond of playing, was for this neat metal cart from Staples. It was about the same size as my telephone stand, but it had three shelves that had three inch sides to them. You know, like this one:

It came a LOT earlier than my confirmation email said it would, but I didn’t have time to put it together. Turns out, this was a good thing because a few days later I saw an ad for an even better cart. This one had baskets and a file drawer.

After hemming and hawing and measuring the available space, I went ahead and ordered it. It should be here tomorrow, but it’ll still have to wait until after Christmas before I have time to put it together.

The fact that this new cart is like, three times the cost of the other one it kind of a moot point for me. This one has a file drawer. And the baskets pull out like drawers. And because it’s made out of mesh, I can see what’s in what drawer.

Of course the down side to that is I can’t hide my chocolate in it, but hey, you can’t have everything. ;-)

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Wordage Report

This is going to sound weird, but I kind of miss writing all those flash stories for NaNo. In fact, Friday night I was missing it so much I started thinking ahead to next Christmas, and how I wanted to do a Christmas story advent calendar – a scene or page or something a day leading up to Christmas. So with this in mind, I started downloading Christmas story prompts. Nine pages of prompts.

Now I had in mind a longer story that I could serialize in the calendar, maybe a novella or novelette. But many of the prompts were geared to be really short, like flash or micro flash, and then I got the idea of doing a themed anthology of Christmas stories for next year’s book flood anthology.

What the heck has gotten into me, thinking so far ahead, getting all organized . . . I hope it sticks with me.

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 992+518+1256=2,766
Total = 2,766 words

I managed to get all the blog posts up on time, which is a minor miracle in itself because last week was a busy week.

EDITING:
Oh, seriously. Did you miss the part where I said it was a busy week? I did have to edit Friday’s story, but that’s as far as it goes.

WHAT I’M READING:
One of the days last week was so grey and dismal and warm, that I plunked myself in my recliner and finished reading Treasured Find, by Nancy Corrigan, on my Kindle. Although I had a slight problem with the hero’s domineering personality, it was just part of the kind of shifter he was, and didn’t detract from the story itself. This is going to go on the list of books I want to get the rest of the series in when I get a new Kindle.

GOALS
The blog posts were done, and up on time, so I guess that means I did better. My over all total word count for blog posts was up, anyway.

Elemental Spirit is still in mothballs, and realistically it’s going to stay there until after Christmas at least.

Doing a freefall exercise to start my day seems like a good idea in theory, but the truth of the matter is by the time I remember I was going to do that my morning is pretty much gone. Maybe it’ll go better once I get the office organized again.

THIS WEEK’S GOALS
1. Start planning ahead for next year.
2. Get my office organized.
3. Make time to write.

Write on.

A Work In Progress

I swear, I’m going to become organized if it kills me. And it just might.

I finally had to admit the Kanban board was a bust. It’s not that it’s a bad idea, it just doesn’t work for me. I’ve been in such a dry spell that I don’t really have enough on the go to make it worth the trouble, and I’m pretty single-minded in my efforts to get my creative mojo back in gear – blog posts, prompt stories, and finishing Blood Ties, with a little editing thrown in.

See, the problem with spending all of your time at home is you have all the time in the world. There are no limits or deadlines, just endless time. So I got thinking about all this time, and what I was doing with it as opposed to what I should be doing.

I started with my old friend the list. I listed things I do daily, I listed things I do weekly, I made sub-lists and figured out the amount of time I spend on various tasks. Then I made a list of other things I could/should be doing.

I had the idea to figure out how much time I spend on necessities, like sleep or meals, and how much time I had left over, and then figure out a way to incorporate the other stuff I should be doing instead of spending so much time reading and/or gaming.

Honestly, it makes a lot of sense in my head!

What I’m hoping to come up with is a kind of loose schedule, not so much assigning a specific time for things but an approximate amount of time. This way I’m not stuck in a carved in stone daily routine, but I can be as flexible as I want - maybe spend a little more or less time on something as needed.

I have a nifty ‘to do’ pad that shows a week at a time and I’m thinking that I can sit down on Sunday nights and fill it out, listing things I want to accomplish for the whole week instead of just the day. It just might work.

You know, if I put half as much energy into finishing Blood Ties as I do in trying to get organized, I’d have the book done by now.

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Wordage Report

Editing – 5 pages
I ignored Visitation Rites in favour of The Bone Moon, and seeing as I got the story finished, I think it was a wise choice.

Blood Ties – 625 words
Did I say I was over the hump with them having arrived at the castle? Ha! That’ll teach me to speak in haste.

Blog Posts – includes the post for my regular blog, but not the prompt story.
580 (regular blog)+ 894 + 331 = 1,805 words total

Weekly Prompt – 615 words

Total Words – 3,045

New Prompt
This week’s prompt is from Springhole
One night, a nurse has a fit of insanity and finds a creature from the depths of the ocean.

Goals From Last Week:
Not nearly as many words on Blood Ties as I would have liked, but I got a few in and maybe the story’s moving along at a snail’s pace, but at least it’s moving. Maybe, like a snail, it’ll leave a beautiful, silvery trail . . .

The prompt story took me by surprise. I really, really wanted to do a horror story, but it just wouldn’t go that way. And then I thought maybe some kind of origin story about the dreamcatchers, but I didn’t want to step on any aboriginal toes. What I ended up with was kind of a folk-tale, but I incorporated a lot of my research on dreamcatchers in it.

I found the copy I’d started to mark up for The Bone Moon, and just continued to work on it until it was done, adding around 300 new words to it. It’s so satisfying to call a story done!

Goals For This Week:
1. More new words on Blood Ties. I may have got over the sticky part of them reaching the castle, but Jessica still hasn’t exactly met her father. The worst part is, I don’t even know how much of this whole section is going to make it into the final book.
2. New prompt story – This week’s prompt looks a little challenging – I’ll have to try and get an early start on it.
3. Continue with the edits but not, I think, on Visitation Rites. It almost needs to be rewritten, which is fine, but I don’t want to get into that while I’m still working on Blood Ties. So for now I’m going to edit some of my back log of flash fiction.

And there’s what I’ll be up to this week. How about you?

Writers Tears

In my little corner of Canada things are slowly starting to re-open, but I seem to be more closed off than ever. If there’s a reason for it then it’s doing a pretty good job of eluding me. The writing still isn’t coming and there doesn’t seem to be a reason for that, either.

It occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that it’s June (yeah, I know, brilliant deduction) and that means the year is half over.

Seriously?

On a whim I pulled out some of my old writing journals to have a look at my progress over the last several years, and what I saw wasn’t good. Naturally there have been ups and downs, but gradually the downs started out-numbering the ups until pretty much all I’m seeing are the downs.

Occasional prompt stories aside, this hasn’t been much of a year, creatively speaking. Despite my plan of my fortune-telling series being a repeat of a non-fiction series I did ten years ago, I found myself up-dating and in most cases re-writing the posts, especially the wrap-up. But while it was definitely “writing” I don’t really consider it “creative” writing. Just the facts, ma’am.

And I realized I never did set any goals for 2020, other than “write more,” which I haven’t been doing. So then I thought maybe I should set some goals, but that involves making lists and the problem with making lists is that I forget to check them.

AND THEN I happened to see a blog post by author Patti O'Shea where she was talking about something called a kanban board. Being unfamiliar with this term, I looked it up and discovered it’s a project management tool that (to me) looks like a list, only on a board instead of just a piece of paper.

So I’m looking at it and I’m thinking this would be so much better than a list. I could use a piece of bristol board and stick it up on the wall of my office and use stick notes to keep track of everything I want/need to do, and maybe shame myself into doing some of it. AND, as an added bonus, it would give me an excuse to buy more stick notes.

We’ll just have to wait and see if it works or not (doesn’t it seem like I say that a lot?). One way or another, I want to feel worthy when I crack open that bottle of Writers Tears. :-D

P.S.

Also, I think I might be due for a schedule change. I'd still like to do my progress updates on Sunday, but for now I think I keep it strictly to that – a progress report, no prompt stories. I’m going to move my non-fiction posts to Wednesday, making it a Wildcard Wednesday instead. And my prompt stories (if I do any) will move to Friday for a Fiction Friday thing.

At least if you’re looking for something specific you know which day to check back. Or you can just “like” my page on Facebook because I usually post links there.