Welcome, Spring

It has felt like spring summer here since Bo and I got back from our vacation, but today is the first day of spring. The Wheel of the Year continues to turn.

It sort of sneaks up on you in Florida because there's not really a winter here like there is elsewhere in the country. We haven't had the snow and ice and cold like others have. We only ran our heat a couple of nights the whole winter.

But today is more than just a shift in nature on the calendar, a day marking the coming of warmth and flowers and the new life after everything has spent the winter resting and recovering. Everything is getting ready for the change that comes with spring.

This is a spring of change.

My winter has been a bit odd. There's been a lot of chaos in our lives this winter, and a lot of planning and adjusting and anticipation for the next stage of many things.

So this year, spring really is a bit of a rebirth for me. I'm focusing on letting go of all the things that have been weighing on me on all winter. I'm focusing on embracing this moment each moment, living mindfully in the present so I can not only enjoy it, but so I can be much more at peace.

I'm looking forward to what this spring and summer has in store for me and for our family.

There has been a lot of chaos, but I still believe that 2015 is going to be a damn good year.

Family Holiday Plans

This time next week we'll be happily celebrating Thanksgiving with family. Puck and Tink are greatly looking forward to seeing Mimi and Papa G, and I'm very excited about this kick-off celebration for our holiday season.

I love spending time with family at the holidays. As much as I am an introvert, I still love having family around sometimes.

When I was a kid, we'd go up to my paternal grandparents' house for holiday meals. When everyone showed up, there were about 20 of us crawling all over the house. (I have seven cousins on that side, and now more since a couple of them are married with kids of their own.) It was a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with family, make memories, and play 500.

Now that I live states away from my extended family, and so many of my family members are going off in their own directions, family holiday meals aren't as...rambunctious (though Puck and Tink are pretty rowdy). I miss the chaos of those events.

That's why I'm so excited about our holiday plans this year. We have a lot planned, and it's going to be a good chance to make memories to carry us through until Easter, when we can make more.

It's going to be a great holiday season.

Going back to "my book"

I'm a day planner person.

I'm the type of person who has to write everything down or I don't remember it. So I use task lists and my paper calendar daily to stay organized and on top of everything that needs to be done.

The day planner I've been using through most of this year (which I like) doesn't have enough room in it for my weekly and daily task lists, so I also have a spiral notebook I use for my daily task lists (usually one page per day). It gives me the room I need to stay organized, but it means I have two books to keep track of, neither of which fit in my bag, which makes it hard to add to my schedule (or check it) when I'm not in the office.

So I've decided to transition back to the refillable day planner I bought at the beginning of the year to use. Not only does the planner fit in my bag, but it has room to keep everything together in one place.

This will make me feel much more organized and on top of things, and I'll have easy access to my schedule no matter where I am. It fills my need for pen-and-paper tracking of my calendar and my task lists, and it's refillable, so I can add to or take away from the book as needed. (For example, I take out the daily pages at the end of each month to reduce the bulk of the planner.)

There will likely be a period of adjustment as I move everything over to my book and figure out the best way to keep track of my task lists, but I'm hopeful that this will be a much better solution for keeping myself and my career organized.

How do you keep track of everything?

Editorial calendars

As 2012 draws to a close, part of my day job involves creating an editorial calendar for the department for 2013. The calendar will outline the marketing team’s plan for the year, focusing on projects (and their deadlines) and messaging throughout the year.

As I’m working on this project at work, I’m also working on creating a personal editorial calendar for 2013, focusing on blogging and the collection. It will likely be more flexible than the one for work, but it will help me stay focused throughout the year and meet my goals.

There are different ways to use editorial calendars in writing. You may have one for a particular (large) project, or for blogging, or for whatever else you need to organize and track. Your calendar may be simple, outlining themes each month, or it may be more complicated, listing weekly (or daily) tasks and projects.

As is my advice with lots of things in the writing world, you have to find a method that works best for you.

The editorial calendar I’m creating right now is a month-by-month overview for blogging and fiction-ing. I’ll have specific goals for each month, and my blog will have a general theme for the month (that may not be the theme for every single post that month, but gives me a starting point as I work).

In addition to this overview, I will take time at the end of each month, beginning with December 2012, to create a more in-depth editorial calendar for the following month. The in-depth calendar will be a daily calendar, outlining the blog posts for each day, specific deadlines for writing, and what tasks for the collection I have each day.

I know this is a lot more involved than many of you need (or want!), but it’s what works for me. Because of the craziness of my life, I have to stay organized and keep meticulous lists to stay on top of everything. It’s worked well in 2012, so I’m continuing it in 2013.

There are a lot of advantages to using an editorial calendar. It can allow you to look ahead to and prepare for upcoming content (and events, such as NaNoWriMo), it can show you when your busy months and weeks are, and on the days you simply have no inspiration, you can use your editorial calendar as a sort of writing prompt to give you a starting place.

The difficulty in creating and implementing an editorial calendar really depends on how involved you want the process to be. If you simply come up with content themes for your blog each month (which is done for you if you participate in NaBloPoMo), it takes little time and effort. However, if you want to come up with blog post ideas and specific writing goals for each month/week/day, it’s going to be a bit more difficult. It’s up to you to determine the best way for you to proceed.

Will you be creating an editorial calendar for 2013?

How I use my calendar

Not my calendar, but very similar

I've written about my organizational methods before. I've talked about my task lists and my day planners. But that was when I was a freelance writer. Now that I have a traditional job as a marketing writer, my methods have changed.

I'm the type of person who has to write things down. That's why I make lists (almost) compulsively. And now that I work part of the week in the office and part of the week from home, it's even more important for me to keep track of my projects and deadlines. So my calendar has become a task list and planner in one.

The planner I use has monthly and weekly pages. I use the weekly pages for everything from appointments and birthdays to my tasks and deadlines for the day. I use the monthly pages as an overview of deadlines, appointments, meetings, and events.

It looks messy, but it helps keep me on top of everything. It also helps me see what days I have time to do other things (coffee with friends, for example). Days that aren't completely full of scribbles might have room for something.

Of course, there are things that need to stand out (like Tink's doctors' appointments), so anything that's important and personal gets highlighted in yellow, and anything that's important and work-related (like a conference or retreat) gets highlighted in pink. That's just enough to allow those items to stand out on my calendar.

Examples of my task lists

I still make weekly task lists, and then use those lists to create my daily lists within the planner. I've started keeping my weekly task lists in my planner with a paperclip so everything is together.

It may not be the most effective organizational method, but it works really well for me. I'm able to keep everything together, stay on top of my projects and deadlines, and have it in a format that can come with me everywhere I go.

How do you stay organized?

NaNoWriMo Aftermath: What I learned

I didn't finish NaNo this year. There was, unfortunately, just too much going on in my life to write. I did make time to write about 16,000 words, which I'm happy about, because I did learn a lot in exploring the story I was writing.

I was super-excited about the story I wrote, and I'm glad that's the one I worked on. But in writing it, I realized that it's not really what I want to write. I may still go back to it someday, sure, but it's not who I am right now, at least.

Once again, I'm returning to the coffee house book, but I'm approaching it from a slightly Pondered in Her Heart (this year's NaNo novel) perspective. That is, I'm thinking about how the coffee house book intersects with all the other books I've been thinking about that will be in the same vein. Some characters will overlap, some of the setting will overlap in at least one other book, and they'll be written in the same style.

I'm taking this month to sit down and reorganize the information I have for the coffee house book. Outlines, character biographies, and even the story arc are going to be tweaked this month, and I'll jump into writing on January 1, 2011.

I'm also going to work on a realistic writing calendar for the coffee house book this month. I know that, technically, I can write a novel draft in a month. But I also know that if I take more time it'll be of better quality, and I'll lose less sleep. However, with a writing calendar, I know I'll be able to stay on task better, and you, dear readers, can help keep me accountable for where I am in the writing process.

2011 is going to be a good writing year for me. And it all starts right now.

The Writer's Calendar

Freelance writers write on a very different schedule than people read. Since many publications request that writers send submissions as far as six months' in advance, what's on my desk at any given time is very different from the mindset of "regular people."


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The Writer's Calendar

Freelance writers write on a very different schedule than people read.  Since many publications request that writers send submissions as far as six months' in advance, what's on my desk at any given time is very different from the mindset of "regular people."

I have this calendar in my quick file that helps me remember when I should be submitting what to help me keep on track.  (Keep in mind this is a rough submission calendar, so writing would begin before what's listed.)

January: Fourth of July/summer

February: End of summer/back to school

March: Back to school/end of summer/football

April: Halloween

May: Thanksgiving

June: Christmas/New Year's

July: New Year's

August: Valentine's Day

September: Spring/Easter

October: Easter

November: End of school year/Mother's Day

December: End of school year/summer/Father's Day

A little different, isn't it?

This is only a rough calendar, of course.  Writers should check the individual submission guidelines of the publications to which they're submitting.  You have to make sure you're submitting within the individual publications' timeframe.

It's great to have this little calendar, but when I'm working on seasonal pieces sometimes, it makes it difficult to get into the proper holiday spirit.  After all, when everyone else is cleaning up their Thanksgiving decorations and getting out the Christmas decorations, I'm writing about summer!

So if you're not sure what you should be working on this month, count forward about six months and start there.

Happy scribbling!