A Time For Everything

Which sounds more ridiculous than it really is. Maybe, lol.

Some of it has to do with Personality Strengths and how our minds are wired. Some folks just don't need planners at all, some prefer electronic versions. There is no right or wrong -- just what works for you.

Last year I had a planner... I hardly used it, but I didn't experience the "nope, not for me thought" that some folks in my Strengths Facebook group would say they had.

Sometime in November, I ordered another planner similar in layout as last years and definitely by the same company for that reason.

After a little pondering and a little trial and error, I figured out how to utilize the pages to keep track of stuff.

It's a lot of writing when I need to transition from one week to the next, but that's okay because that means I'm less likely to forget certain things.

I'm sure the details and the process will evolve as the weeks and months go by, but for now, things are working, and I'm happy to have been able to consolidate a lot of information into one place and keep track of what I need to do and what I've done.

Are you a planner user or do they give you hives when the rubber meets the road?

I'm thinking about trying the Bullet Journal system for being more organized and more productive. It looks to be the advanced version of my general list making and requires a little more pre-planning and forethought and organization.


That's not a bad thing, but is it going to be more trouble than it's worth? I have one friend who uses a physical journal but has tweaked it to suit her needs and I have another friend who is more electronically minded.

Now I'm all for electronic but there's something to be said for grasping a concept with a physical book, tweaking it to my needs, and then going virtual. Possibly. Depending on my needs and the tweaks--going virtual might be "out of sight, out of mind." And I'm thinking this might also help me get back on track with daily tasks.



I have yet another friend who uses the happy tracker. She has a physical notebook with printed pages, sorted into various categories, and she rewards herself with stickers on the days / for the tasks she completes. I did that for a while and it worked for me as well, so I'm thinking I could combine the concepts.

Which means going virtual might not be the best option because if that journal--whatever form it takes, and right now it's a composition book I had lying around--is not in front of me, reminding me to open it, to read it, to look ahead, to plan, and to reward with stickers, then it might not happen. And that would defeat the whole purpose.

This year has flown past and the beginning of next year is going to be busy, busy, busy, and I feel like I could use some help in staying on top of all the moving parts.

And so here is the beginning of my journal...



I doubt I'll get too artsy with it...some people like to do decorate their journals, and whatever works for them. But for me it's wasted time. I'd rather be reading. :0)

It's an interesting concept and we'll see how it works for me.

Have a great weekend...

Let's start with the writing first. A friend of mine shared an opportunity to participate in an anthology. At first I dismissed it out of hand because the deadline for the 1st draft is just over a month out. There's no way I could write 10-15K in that time frame--is there? Well, yes there is. I can actually produce that many words in that time frame if I'm super focused.

But to get super focused and know where this story is going requires some pre-planning and that has been a struggle for me.

Another hurdle is the synopsis requirement. I have never written a synopsis in my life. I probably could if I knew the trajectory of the story because that's all a synopsis is--a quick and dirty road map of the story along with a few extra details.

That circles back to the pre-planning.

Like I said, at first I just told myself I couldn't do it. But as I worked on a proofreading job, ideas started niggling at me. I didn't allow those ideas free reign because I really needed to finish that proofreading job and send it back to the author.

But once I completed my responsibilities...I opened the floodgate. I thought about the characters, as well as about the main requirement of this submission--that one character be dealing with a disability. That was the easy part.

Could I spew out 10K in a month's time?

Can I come up with well-rounded characters and a plausible plot that I could pull off in those 10K to 15K words and the 1 month I've been given?


I really want to do it because it's sparked an excitement in me about writing that's been lacking.

I have until Monday to decide. No pressure.

One of the reasons that writing has taken a back seat and been hard to focus on lately is hockey. (This is the trouble part of the post's title.)

Now that I'm a partial season ticket holder, I pay way more attention to the team. I mean obviously, right? I have these tickets that I pre-paid for, I'm going to the games. Going to that many games means I'm even more invested in the team and their progress through the season, their place in the standings.

Last year by this time, the team had gone on a ten game losing streak and had lost any hope of making it to the playoffs. I was only attending a game here and there. Not much investment on my part. The rest of the season was for individual players to better their stats as much as they could.



This year, though! Partial season tickets! New coach, new system, new hope!! We've been in a playoff position all year, despite a revolving door of injuries to key players.

Now we're staring down the last fifteen games of the season and in a dog fight every day for our place in the standings. There are four teams vying for those two wild card slots I talked about a couple of weeks ago. There are five points separating those four teams. We beat one of those teams last night. A team we hadn't yet beaten this year. It was a huge win on more than one level.

So, yeah, my head is full of hockey hockey Stars hockey and not very full of writing writing writing.

I need to learn to balance, manage, and compartmentalize....

Today and this weekend...working on characters and plot for this anthology. If I can get a good enough head start, I might just throw my hat in. Also, though, this weekend >>> HOCKEY!!

Be loud. Wear green. GO STARS!!

Have a great weekend.

Do you use spreadsheets? Do you love them?

I do and I do. I have one labeled "The Master Spreadsheet of Stuff" and I keep track of all kinds of random information that I want to have available at the drop of a hat. Like my daily writing word counts, like how many words I've read and where those words came from. Remember those 13+ million words I read last year? This is a screen shot of a random section of that page. I used four columns and a few mathematical functions. My spreadsheet has about a dozen tabs, although some are previous years' info and are just there for occasional reference.


For the past three years (2016/2015/2014), I have run one of my writing group's two contests. Spreadsheets are a contest coordinator's best friend and (mostly) one-stop location to keep all the various data on hand and organized. Here's a peek at a random page of my contest spreadsheet. All personal information has been changed to generic filler.

The first fourteen columns hold entrant information: name, email address, book title, and assigned book number. Those columns on right side hold scores once they start coming back. In addition to rows and columns, I've utilized the power of fill color. The highlighted book titles (the wide column in the center) means that one author wrote both books. We try to refrain from sending judges more than one book by any given author. The brighter green at the top of those two columns just to the right of the book titles is just a visual indicator to me that every book has at least (in this case) two judges assigned. Our goal is five reads/five scores. So I've been working column by column.


Now, the other half of the spread sheet, the judges' half is a bit more colorful. You can see we've a got a bit of crossover because the scores are the crossover data. I won't bore you with explaining what all that color means, but suffice it to say, it's a handy to know where the contest stands at a glance.


As treasurer for my writing group, I have yet another spreadsheet that I use to track all the money. I have a tab for each category of income and expenses (membership dues, contest one, contest two, etc). A hand feature for this particular job is that I can reference cell data from one tab into another.

So, tell me, are you a spreadsheet junkie like me?

I have all these things I want and need to do, but -- like everyone else -- only so many hours in a day.

Many people, like DH, tend to give up sleep to gain some time. Unfortunately, that's terribly counter-productive for me as my body requires a certain number of hours of sleep every night to function properly during the day. I mean, I can stay up late every now and again, but if I stay up too late or do so too many nights in a row, I pay for it in the end and I find, unless there's no help for it, that it's really not worth it.

Over the holidays, my proofing jobs dried up. I wasn't that upset about it as there was a lot going on and I was glad to not have deadlines. Now, however, though I haven't advertised, the jobs are trickling in again. It's good since I can use the money, but I'm not ready yet! I have some ideas and some research to do, but, alas, time and work wait for no woman.

I guess it's time to really get serious about my schedule, especially the early morning. I need to make a detailed list of the jobs I need to work on and make a plan to get them done.

I'll do that first thing tomorrow morning!

I read this book called Rebooting Your Life: A 12-Day Program for Ending Stress, Realizing Your Goals, and Being More Productive by Paul Gibbons. It's a twelve step/day process for strategic planning of your life and getting all the data you keep in your head on paper (to ease the stress of trying not forget anything) and breaking down your projects into tasks based on how long they take and/or the type of task they are (phone calls vs. research, etc). You can get a pre-organized and formatted spread sheet (spread sheet, YAY!) to use for each of the daily exercises.

I saw the book for free on that blog I visit every couple of weeks or so and thought, what the heck...

The whole thing took me a bit longer than twelve days, fifteen or sixteen maybe. Some of the exercises took more than one day and I probably skipped Sundays.

Was it helpful? Well, a little, yes. I put everything down on paper and felt a slight ease. I even remembered a few things that had been relegated to far reaches of my mind. I worked on breaking a couple of projects down to workable tasks. But with so many things out of my control and so many things on my plate, the whole process didn't produce as good results as I had hoped. On one hand, I have a definite list of things to do. On the other hand, I realized how much stuff I have to get done in a short amount of time. Yikes.

But that's okay. I can go back in a few weeks or a month and do it again. Re-think long term goals and aspirations (I haven't forgotten the strategic plan for my writing.). See what I've accomplished in the meantime and move forward.

How often do you re-think and re-envision and re-evaluate your goals? Only at the beginning of the year? Or more often to adjust as things happen and gather more data?


Just thought I'd add the picture for fun...