My year of writing…

Most of my friends have heard me talk about National Novel Writing Month, and its spinoffs.  I have attempted it for several years, and technically won it this year.  The problem is that my grand opus is utterly worthless.  No, I'm not just saying that.  The novel that Johnny wrote in the movie, "The Shining" was better.  If I had randomly repeated letters, it would have been just as good.

BUT…  I still in the kernel of an idea that I want to attempt to do justice to.  I just know that 50,000 words in a month does not work for me.  Not in November.  Not in July or August for Camp Nano.

I found something that might provide a different framework.  It's an attempt to write a novel within a year. WriYe seems to allow a good kind of flexibility.  For example, in the able to begin my goals at a lower level and move up.  I'm starting at 50,000 for the year.  If that looks like it's too easy to reach, I can modify it.  If I get cocky and decide that I can do 250,000 words per year, after I attempt it and realize that I'm just being ridiculous, I can modify my goal at any time.

I don't have to adjust the finishing the first draft of the novel.  Novel planning counts towards the goal.  Short stories count.  Nonfiction books and articles count.

Blogging does not count, which is probably a good idea.

 

I will let you know how it works for me…

All you Facebook experts out there, I HAVE A QUESTION!

Sometimes, I have trouble making out what Facebook encourages, permits, discourages, and forbids.  The legalese it is virtually incomprehensible in places.  It makes me feel stupid, and I know that I'm not…  At least not most of the time.

So…  I'm hoping that some of you can help these sort this out.

If I have several affiliate stores, is it permissible to set up a Facebook page for them?

How do You Organize Yourself?

Happy Wednesday!  I am so behind today, that I don't know if I will ever catch up.  I'm going to Bible Study later, though.  Maybe if I didn't finish it, it wasn't worth doing.

;-) That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

It does have me wondering how to keep myself on track, though.  I am considering several options, some I've used off and on over the last few years.  For example:

• Pomodoro Technique  -  I like this.  Sometimes I have the attention span of a gerbil who drank too much caffeine.  Breaking a task into small, focused efforts helps me tackle those jobs that look overwhelming.  To do it right, though, took me a lot of paperwork.  I DO NOT NEED MORE PAPERWORK in my universe!
• Kanbanflow  -  I like this.  I think the idea is originally from Japan and was used by auto workers.  Minimal paperwork.  You can drag each item in your ToDo into different columns, depending on your level of the completion.  This is not particularly good for recurring jobs.
• Chains  -  I just started with this one today.  I think that this idea came from Jerry Seinfeld.  It takes 60 days (depending on who you talk to) to establish a habit.  He, apparently, would mark on a calendar each day that he did the desired behavior.  The goal was to create the chain of 60 days without forgetting.  This website lets you tackle several chains at once, and have built-in "skip days." This is perfect for the type of things that you want to do every Tuesday-Thursday, or whatever.  It looks good.

Criteria I used for choosing these techniques are: 1.  Not cell phone based.  I have to be able to use the computer.  2.  Free.  Maybe when I'm making 100,000 a year, I'll budget for this kind of thing.  Until then…  3.  Fairly simple and quick to do.

How do you organize yourself?

How did you choose this method?

How well does it work?