#ROW80 is A Round of Words in 80 Days. It’s a quarterly writing challenge where you define your personal goals and blog each week about your progress. It’s made to be flexible and allow for tweaking.
Man, I totally missed Sunday’s check-in and I’m late to the party today. It’s been all about priorities lately, and with a book out this last Friday, promo has been taking the driver’s seat to my schedule.
I’ve been thinking a lot about deadlines and managing my writing life. One of the things that’s made me so productive lately has been scheduling.
I schedule on a few different levels.
1) The daily schedule. I know what time I have set aside for writing every day. For me, this boils down to an hour before work, an hour at lunch and about two hours after work before I go do social things or veg out. I keep track of my tasks per book, be that word count, promo owed or anything, via a to-do-list application called Todoist, which can also be used in browser form.
2) The year at a glance. This has become very helpful. It’s part and piece of the long term schedule, but having a project priority mapped out on a year long calendar helps me keep the projects moving, aware of what time I have for the project I’m working on and what’s next on my plate.
3) The long term schedule. I’ve contracted two series on a full length, written book plus proposal. This puts me at four and a half books I owe publishers that have to be written. With these promised books come deadlines, and I get a hand in setting these. A calendar helps me figure out when I can write what books, where the holes are to work on something new or take a break are.
As far as tools for how I record this, Google calendar is one option that synchs easily with a lot of applications or other programs. I’ve been using a tool called VueMinder, which actually puts the calendar as a transparent overlay to my desktop. It’s kind of cool.
All of this has helped me really make the most of this latest #ROW80. Currently I’ve seen the release of So Inked #2, The Harder He Falls, I’m venturing into the last 1/3 of So Inked #3 and I’ve seen a few books contracted. I’m also waist deep into a blog tour, so that’s exciting. All in all, it’s been a really productive round thus far.
What tools do you use to keep you productive?
The though of “owing books” would scare the living daylight out of me :S *yikes* It’s good stuff when we learn what works for us and what doesn’t. I’m going to check out that todoist app thingie. Sounds great! Good luck with your projects!
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