I am ridiculous about notebooks. I have so many that I could start my own stationery store – as long as people would buy notebooks that either have a few pages used in them, just a few pages left OR that are too pretty to use.

I think the notebook thing goes with the writer gene but I had the notebook tendencies for long before I realized that I was a writer*. That long term affection for notebooks makes it super-odd that I have spent so much time trying to make digital methods of planning work for me.

Notebooks, pen, lipgloss, timer, candle.
It’s the stuff I need to get stuff done.

I love the *idea* that my tasks can be easily shifted and that I can plan on a huge scale but, in practice, when I get overwhelmed, I avoid turning on the computer. Sooooo, that leads to me not having my to do list in front of me and that leads to me not doing it.

I have trying to use a bullet journal for a while now but I find that I don’t really like having the various scales of planning (big life stuff, yearly, monthly, weekly & daily) all jumbled in together. Soooo, in a move utterly uncharacteristic of me, I have bent the rules a bit**

Here’s the system I am working right now.

The open notebook with my name on it is my bullet journal – that’s got big picture stuff in there. The fancy notebook in the middle has brainstorming and meeting notes in it. The black one, which is going to be decorated with metallic markers after this weekend, is a calendar with a day for each page. I am currently using that as a daily to do list but I am hoping to turn it into a bit of a daily log as things go on.

I also have a Trello account so I can keep track of individual projects in a way that I can easily replicate for repeated things. And I put links to articles I want to read in Google Keep.

The benefit of all of these notebooks (and Trello) is that I have a space to put each type of information so I don’t worry about losing track of things and I have a record of stuff that I did.

The downside is that my purse is rather full!

* I mean, I always knew that I could write, I just never thought of myself as a WRITER.
** Even though I generally march to my own drummer, I have always struggled with systems because I (unconsciously) thought that a system would only work if you did it all EXACTLY right, me bending the rules about things like bullet journalling is HUGE and a credit to my ADD meds. 😉

Ages and ages ago, I let gmail switch me to Inbox. I mostly like it but it always bugged me the way it bundled things beyond my control. I routinely missed messages because they would get nested beneath a heading and I wouldn’t see it until it was too late to respond properly.

I tried writing a reminder to myself to look in the bundles each day but it only took a few days of not finding something relevant before I would (unconsciously) decide not to bother checking. Then I would forget entirely.

So, this has been bugging me the whole time that I have been using Inbox but it never occurred to me to check and see if I could change it. I just tried to remember to look in the bundled messages and when I forgot, I just dealt with the resulting frustration.

On Monday of this week, though, I read an article about to create effective folders in Inbox and in trying to set those up, I happened upon the Bundles settings.

I have no idea why I didn’t look for them before. It’s completely logical that the settings should exist – and gmail does tend to be pretty accessible like that. I just didn’t look.

Since I made the changes, my experience with my email has VASTLY improved.

Now, I am wondering how many other small annoyances I have been putting up with for ages.

AND I wonder what kind of small tweaks I can do to eliminate them.

You know when you go to the supermarket for a few things and next thing you are in the line juggling a huge pile of stuff on your arms because you got way more than you meant to?

And you know how you often end up with a weird feeling in one of your hands because you were holding on to something with a pinkie or a thumb and it was too heavy for one finger – or too heavy across the palm of your hand?

I’ll admit, this image is only tangentially related to this post but they both give me the same feeling of ‘Ah, yes. Right!’

And you didn’t realize that your hand was hurting until you put everything down because previous to that point you were focused on the balancing instead of on what you were carrying?

I’m kind of finding that with a lot of things in my work/volunteer life lately.

I mean, I knew I was juggling a fair bit but over the past couple of months I have brought my attention to all of the things that were actually in my hands.  And, I have been laying them down one by one and seeing how much I actually want to be carrying.

And my hands feel weird because I had stuff hung off all of my fingers and they were hurting, but I didn’t realize it.

I had no idea how much I had in them until I put the stuff down – my focus was on keeping the pile balanced.

I am being VERY careful about how much I pick back up.

Does this feel familiar to you?

Has your focus been on the balance, too?

Can you turn your attention to your hands instead?

You know how there are some songs that are just stirring?

AFP’s In My Mind is one of those for me.

It’s the perfect combination of wistful and ass-kicking and it makes me want to jump out of my chair and just get some shit DONE.

After all, I don’t want to be one of those people who is pounding the lid, wanting to get a tattoo that says they are living in the moment.

What song makes you feel all stirred up?

So, as many of you may recall, I have a novel called ‘Breeding Demons’ that I wrote back in 2010. It was a NaNoWriMo novel and while the STORY was a good one it wasn’t even close to being publishable.

I have struggled with it ever since.

Shortly before I discovered what I needed to do with my novel, I discovered another important thing:
If you take a draft of your novel to read in the tub, make sure there are no loose pages. #IDidNotCheck #WaterEnhanced #DoesNotCleanUpWell

I had no idea how to revise it. I knew that I didn’t really have a ‘book’ per se – I had a really strong outline of the basic plot written out into scenes. I knew this but it still didn’t help.

I couldn’t see how to break apart the scenes I had to add in the necessary pieces to make it into a book.

It’s not that I thought it was too perfect the way it was. It’s not that I was too intimidated by the changes needed. It’s not that I was afraid of the work.

It’s that I literally had no idea how to get from where it was to where it has to be.

Last spring, I took it with me on a writing retreat and I worked hard on the layers that I needed to add. I didn’t write any more of the actual scenes, I wrote ABOUT the scenes* and about the characters, and about the plot. I clarified what the novel was about.

But still, I couldn’t figure how how to start weaving those layers in.

This week, though? Thanks to a commitment I made with my friend, Kate Newbill, I revisited the manuscript. I got ten pages in and it struck me…

I can’t use any of this for my book.

I mean, I can use the ideas, I can use the scene framework, but the writing itself is a bit too snappy, a bit too inside-jokey. A bit too off-the-cuff.

Sounds like a crisis, hey?

It’s NOT! It’s TERRIFIC!

I’m free from figuring out how to make what I have better. I’m free from figuring out how to piece two sets of ideas together.

Instead, I can read a scene, figure out the most important points, and then write it the way I want to now. I can include the threads that will lead to later developments. I can write the book I want to write now – I’m not bound by the one I wrote over six years ago.

VICTORY!

I can already see how to proceed and I will be starting today.

More updates as events warrant.

*A concept I learned from Joan Clark in a terrific workshop last winter. If you ever get a chance to take a workshop from her or Bernice Morgan, do it. Right away.