Organize Your Writing Life: A Topic Workbook, #6

Introduction

Welcome to Organize Your Writing Life. We’re all overbooked and underpaid, and it seems like we don’t have the time to cover the basics, much less get organized. However, taking just a few hours to set up a system allows you to make the most and best use of your writing time when you sit down at the computer.

For this workbook, you’ll need a large calendar for this year and next year, where you can write in items as we work. It’s easier to work in paper format first, and then, if you like keeping an electronic calendar, transfer it.

You will also need different colored pens. How you choose color is up to you—you can put every writing project in a different color, every type of project in color, or pick a different color for a different facet of your life. Whatever resonates with you, personally, is the right choice. We are customizing a system to how you respond to particular stimuli, to help ease your way into keeping things organized.

The more organized you are—without feeling imprisoned—the easier it is to drop down into the zone and get things done. Got a spare 15 minutes? You can write a scene or spend the time meditating or get out the knitting.

While this workbook is primarily designed for writers, it can work for anyone from accountants to artists to potters to environmental scientists.

The important thing to remember, whatever your calling is that you actually do it. Not maybe-someday-if-you-happen-to-get-around-to-it, but regularly.

Those of you who’ve worked with me before know that I am an advocate of writing a minimum of 1000 words per day at least five days per week. If you are a writer, you write. Period, end of story. You don’t talk about the writing you will do someday when you have time. You make the time, and that time is inviolable. If you constantly let other areas of your life push out the writing, you don’t really want to write. That’s fine. But admit it, own it, and go on to do the things you want to do. EVERY career requires learning the protocols of the industry and putting gin the time and the work. Whether it’s learning how to do carpentry or accounting or teaching history or becoming a doctor or any artistic discipline, you have to put in the time and the work, or it won’t happen. Writing isn’t easy and it’s not for everyone, any more than any other career (or hobby) is for everyone. It takes time and learned skill, as well as creativity.

The workbook is a series of exercises, with a topic and then the exercise. Brainstorm. This is a good workbook for a writers’ group to work on together. One can never have too many good ideas. I’m sharing what’s worked and what hasn’t for me. There are still plenty of other good ideas I haven’t yet explored. There’s no limit to creative possibilities, which is part of the joy of the work.

The exercises/lectures are numbered. It is helpful to do them in order, especially the first 7.

Most of the early exercises you can do as you read along, with your calendar beside you. Some of the later ones require more thought and you may wish to ponder them before committing to paper. These topics offer you a structure that will help you stay organized and make the most of the time you have, and help you juggle the different aspects beyond the writing itself that make demands on us in our lives.

Physically writing something into the schedule or physically removing it is an act with a positive psychological impact. It is about choices, decision-making, and taking positive responsibility for those choices in a way that improves ALL aspects of your life.

Writers write. Plain and simple. There is no such thing as no time to write. Writing is ALWAYS a choice. Not writing is ALWAYS a choice. Even when life becomes overwhelming, and the writing has to be pushed to the side, it is still a choice.

If you choose to write, sit down and do it.

This workbook will help you align your schedule to make it easier.

EXERCISE #1: Color

Color is a strong stimulus for us. We respond to colors based on both archetypical responses hardwired into the human psyche over generations, and on our own individual frames of reference.

Some people are afraid of black; some are drawn to it.

In some cultures, white means pure; in others, death.

Red means caution to some people and no to others.

Blue means sky and outdoors to some, depression to others, and healing to yet a different group.

Green means grass to some, money to others, sick to others.

Yellow means joy, energy to some, and cowardice to others.

One of the decisions you need to make as you set up your calendar is how you want colors to resonate with you, and how you want to assign those colors.

Do you want each writing project to have its own color, and then cycle back through them? If you need to juggle three or four writing projects at a time, with deadlines for different stages of each project, that might be the right choice for you. Would you rather keep one color for the day job, one color for family, one color for writing, one color for other? Do you want deadlines in one color, such as red? Do you want freelance copywriting/editing projects in one color and fiction projects in a different color? If you have a pack of kids that have to be ferried around, do you want to put each child’s schedule in a different color? Again, it’s YOUR choice. What resonates particularly strongly with YOU?

Do you want to put birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays in a color to differentiate them from the rest of the calendar? Yes, those influence how we organize our writing lives, and are added into the calendar.

I’ve tried different variations on all of these. What I’ve found most useful is