Now that I’ve gotten my home life organized, I’ve got to do some novel housekeeping. I thought The Courier’s website was in order, but I found this weekend that it’s a mess and the chapters don’t progress properly. Not only that, I’ve been bad about backing up my research, planning and drafts…oops. I wonder how many index cards it will take to get organized…LOL!
I can’t say that I have anything else to whine about. I got enough of it out of me last week in my Wicked Writer’s post. So short but sweet this week.
This week’s post over at the Wicked Writer’s blog was a little difficult, yet fun to writer this week. Our topic was where we are in completing our latest novel. My post was a little mouthy. We had our first guest blogger this week, Bethany Cagle
Read about the other writers progress:
- Gregory Marshall Smith, from “wip”-ed to “published” (i hope)
- Supriya Savkoor, Nailing Mercury
- Steve Liskow, Where Do We Go Now
This Week’s Tour
- Romancing the Book: Tall, Dark & Dangerous Heroes over at Book Lovers Inc. Reading this post was great research for my protagonist, Barry, as he grows from wimpy to tall, dark and dangerous.
- And don’t forget to drop by the Wicked Writer’s Blog, where we’re blogging about the progress we’re making on our latest works.
- Over at the Overbury Ink, “I love it when fiction is built on the far stranger truths of real people, real history, or real science.” ME TOO!! Aspects of Blank – forays into the disturbing, eerie, gruesome and macabre, more on Ian LeWinter, the writer behind Blank Must Die.
- Death Becomes HIM (and Poem featured) over at the VampirePhile. Silly me commented that Gerard Butler would make a great vampire in a movie, forgetting he was in Dracula 2000.
- Warning: Do Not Attempt to Answer This Device over at the Writers Gone Wild blog.
- Writer Wednesday on Nicole Hadaway’s site includes a book review on The Tale of the Vampire Bride by Rhiannon Frater. Thanks for your review of Legion too, Nicole, in your Movie Monday post. I’m even more interested in seeing it based on your critical review of the protagonist.
Other Blog Tours
- Hey, I found a blog tour this week over at the Women on Writing Blog. Check out Elisa Lorello, author of Ordinary World, discusses genres
Note: If you’d like me to drop by and read your blog, DM @by_wjhoward and include a link to what you’d like me to read.
Geeze, that title ought to bring in a few disappointed readers, especially when they realize this post is actually about re-organizing my life.
This will be short and boring because this post is about the elaborate and organized task management process I created last week, although I doubt it’s unique in any way. Everything I do on a daily basis is now on index cards. Yes, your read me right, everything I need to do on a daily basis is on index cards. I hope you’re laughing, because I’m also about to add that tasks are separated by categories and color coded. Okay, now shut up because it’s working. Ask me again in a month it it’s working and the answer may be different, but for now I’m happy with what I put together, and my head is no longer spinning…so there.
If you’re interested in what I created, read on:
- I got the following supplies: about 500 4×6 index cards, a few packages of dividers, 6 different colored highlighters, a Sharpie and a box to hold the cards.
- I divided everything I need to do on a daily basis into categories and color coded them: writing is yellow, administrative is purple, networking is orange, health & beauty is blue, meals are green, and housework is pink. The color white is reserved for one-time task.
- The dividers were used to separate the days of the week, with two dividers used for each day. One divider is for unfinished tasks and one is for finished tasks.
- Three dividers were also added for to do items that are one time tasks. I labeled them To Do, Today & Done. You can probably figure out what they mean.
Everything I need to do each day was added to an index card along with the day of the week I need to accomplish it. I used the highlighter to color the top of the index card based on its category. To the right, you’ll see an example of a card. When a task has been finished, I add the date and if someone besides me did the task, their name. The card then gets put back in the box behind the finished work tab.
You ask why so much paper? Well, I had moved my tracking system to a spreadsheet on my computer a couple years ago, but it was too easy to ignore stuff. I now have all the tasks I need to accomplish sitting beside my computer, staring back at me, just begging me to get them done. I also find I move quicker to deplete the cards and get them back in the box.
I debated on getting an old fashioned day planner, but then I’d have to sit down daily and plan my day and rewrite stuff I didn’t accomplish the day prior. The way this new system works, all I have to do is pull out the index cards for the day and away I go. If I don’t finish something, the card can carry over into the next day without rewriting it in the book.
So like I said earlier, the system seems to be working pretty well so far. Now I’m off to file away the “Write Monday’s Whine” card and finish up my “Write 2000 New Words a Day” card. Don’t forget to drop by for the Writer’s Wednesday Blog tour in a couple days. Yes it has a card too. 
This Friday the Wicked Writer’s blogged about our experience with query letters, or lack there of, mine being the later with A Different Approach. Read about the other writers processes:
- C.J. Ellisson, Don’t Send as an Attachment
- Gregory Marshall Smith, What the Hell is a Query Letter?
- Supriya Savkoor, And the Joke’s on…
- Steve Liskow, Why Didn’t You Say So?
Welcome to week two of my new blog tour featuring blog posts submitted by bloggers and about books, writers & writing and other literary blog tours. I’ve also included links to posts that weren’t submitted, but I’ve enjoyed this week. It’s still a little short on content, but I’m sure the word will get out soon enough. Hope you enjoy the tour this week!
All About Books
- Darn
nothing new this week, but here’s an old interview with creators Ian LeWinter & Don Richmond of Blank – The Graphic Novel you’ll definitely enjoy over at the Overbury Ink. While you’re there, you also might want to check out Nancy’s review of Awakening.
All About Writers
- Writer’s Wednesday featuring Soni from Vampire Phile! over at Nicole Hadaway Vampire Blogspot
All About Writing
- Breathe the Surface, Getting to the words that are just below the surface, by Mary Rajotte
- And don’t forget to drop by the Wicked Writer’s Blog, where we’re blogging about query letters this week.
Posts I Enjoyed This Week
- Revisiting the Sentinel over at the Horror Digest Blog
- What Would Atticus Finch Do by Catherine Karp
- Where Do Vampires Come From by guest blogger Gina Maxwell over at Fang-tastic Books
Other Blog Tours
- Darn none this week.
Note: If you’d like me to drop by and read your blog, DM @by_wjhoward and include a link to what you’d like me to read.
Sorry for posting so late today. I’ve gotten too involved, preparing for next week’s post on organizing. Oops! Maybe I should have done that this week.
Just as a reminder, I’ve decided to use Monday as a whining day, but in a more constructive way. Basically, last week I posted, Started 2010 with My Head Spinning, and whined that I just can’t seem to “get with it” this year. As a way to help myself, “get with it,” I’m blogging about things I’m doing to leave the whining behind.
My journey begins with reminding myself that I’m not just a writer and desperate housewife. Well, not exactly desperate, but the other half of my day is spent as a housewife/domestic goddess and mother to my 15 year old, who is working on completing his high school diploma, online at home. Yeah, it’s me and him, together all day, how I’d wished it had been when he was preschool age. Let me tell ya, being a stay at home mom for a teenager who’s home all day is less a walk in the park, not that it wouldn’t have been easy when he and his older bother were young. It is a topic for another post though.
Every year, the holidays get a little too domestic for me, because I absolutely love decorating and cooking and baking and playing hostess. And by the end of it all, I’m a total zombie. As of last week, I realized I’m having a hard time pulling out of my zombie state. So, when it came time to choose an area of my life that needed a pick me up, the choice was easy. I added woman back into the mix.
I invited a friend over for lunch, who also happens to be a Mary Kay lady, and we played with makeup. How much fun was that!! She gave me gobs of samples that I tried all week long. I have to admit, I had gotten a little lazy about making myself beautiful every day. What a difference in feeling, going through each day looking your best. So THANKS to Kristin Henning for reminding me to put some effort back into appearance.
Also gave myself a pedicure rather than going out for one. There’s something really rewarding about doing it yourself. I always feel I do a better job anyways. Oops, there’s that perfectionist in me, rearing its ugly head.
Best of all, I planned a sexy night in with Michael. I won’t fill you in on the details, but I will say it more than made up for all the $$$ spent on Mary Kay cosmetics. 
All in all, it was a great week of reminding myself that fulfilling womanly desires can easily wipe away the pressures of writing.
Nicole Hadaway, a fellow author and friend has been devoting her blog posts on Wednesday to other authors. I commend her for this and would like to offer up my blog as a link for hers and other authors and readers doing similar posts. Going forward, each Wednesday, I will include a post with links to blogs discussing books and authors in the same genres I write. So that’s Horror, Fantasy, Paranormal, Sci-Fi and Comedy…a pretty diverse selection. I’ll also gladly link to your own blog tour, if you happen to be doing something similar to this.
I’ve added the page, Join the Tour, to this website with past links and entry directions and rules. Please spread the word so Nicole’s blog is not the only blog listed here next week.
This Week’s Lonely Tour
- Catherine Karp of Suburban Vampire Fame, by Nicole Hadaway
Pardon me for a moment while I use my blog as a pseudo-psychologist.
This morning I tweeted, “Is it really the 20th of January already?” That’s nearly 2/3 of the first month of the new year and I’ve accomplished next to nothing after the holidays…ARGH!!
Okay, maybe it’s not that bad. I have rewritten the ending of The Courier, and I started writing weekly in the Wicked Writer’s Blog. Still, I can’t get organized to start the year no matter how hard I try…DOUBLE ARGH!!
I had planned on returning to blogging regularly, but that didn’t happen. Also planned to structure my online networking time so I have more time to write short stories and finish The Courier, but that has yet to happen too. Setting priorities and following through are supposed to be a big New Year’s resolution for me, but I already feel like giving up…TRIPLE ARGH!!
I think part of my problem is I can’t seem to picture, in my head, what I’d like to accomplish this year. Gosh, I haven’t written it down until now either, not that it’s actually helping me organize.
Notice the picture of the girl playing the violin above. My dad used to play air violin every time my sister whined or cried, so that’s why I added it to this post. I can here him in my head, “STOP WHINING! GET IT DONE!” It should be that easy, shouldn’t it??
Yesterday I started to wonder if I was trying to impose too much structure on myself. Maybe an unorganized mind and plan is a productive one? Okay, maybe not.
Anyways, I typically begin each new year with a list of things I’d like to accomplish. Last year’s goals were completing the first draft of Purloin and writing another novel in a month (No not NaNoWriMo). I accomplished both. Add another novel, The Courier, nearly completed last year and it co-won a writing contest. Pretty damn good year I’d say.
So what’s next? Hell if I know, but this actually might be a good topic for a weekly blog post…whining on Monday seems suitable. Stay tuned and find out if my head is still spinning next Monday. For now, it’s nearly 4:00 P.M. and screw the 5 o’clock rule. I’m ready for wine with my whine.
