A Writer’s Organization

I attended a writer’s conference several years ago to meet and listen to one of my favorite authors. Not only did I meet and like her, but I met other published authors and those that are struggling to get published. We all hung out together over the course of four days. Lunches and dinners were filled with me sitting almost dumbstruck, or awestruck as they passed around tales of their writing experiences and hassles and tricks of the trade. All of a sudden they all get quiet and turn to me and ask how I organize myself before, during, and after my writing.

I was thrown off, to be honest, I had no clue there was a process of organization I needed. Then I began to freak out, what if I was missing a very key element? OK, apart from the fact that I never finish anything I start…..but we’ll get back to that. What if all I needed to become a successful author was a great organizational process? My process up until then had always been to sit down and pound out the story that was in my head and do a little research when the need arose.

The writer’s around the table began to tell me of their different methods and rituals and I was doing my best to memorize them all, because I had none and wanted to incorporate theirs. Writer A was definitely a type A, she mapped out everything, started off with an outline, made charts, graphs, the works, and then used a nifty little writing software. Writer B would brew a huge pot of coffee, buy special pens and write in notebooks, where she left the margins open for notes. Writer C did everything by his computer where he kept meticulous files of research. At this point in my life I was handwriting all my stories, so I felt a bit outdated.

I came home from the conference with a new resolve. I was going to get organized. I invested money in buying every book on writing known to man. To call me obsessed was an understatement. I read all the books, underlined passages, highlighted things for months, until a writer friend of mine asked when the last time I wrote anything was. I realized then that I was spending all my time reading about writing and not writing. So I felt like I was back at square one. I then emailed a writer from the conference about my dilemma. She told me that I had to find my own way and use what works for me to get my writing done. I didn’t need a fancy system. Just doing what I was doing was probably good enough.

My life is cluttered, but my writing life is all in my head. It’s all there for me to pluck out into my computer or onto the page and I don’t have to spend a ton of money on how to write books. I already know how to write, I just need to do it.

30 Day Blog Challenge

In the interest of keeping up with every other internet blogger fanatic, I have decided to issue myself the 30 day blog challenge. The goal is simple: to post a blog every day for a month. I figure this will benefit me in a number of ways being that I love to write and have decided for the new year that I will write at least 1500 words a day. What better way to knock off some of those words than to find things to blog about! I am told constantly that a writer needs to write everyday in order to keep the blocks away and when you think about it, it makes sense.

So I have outlined my next two weeks with a nice brainstorming session. I researched writing prompts and journaling exercises to better help me into my foray of blogging. I have an intense and grueling writing schedule tentatively mapped out and with a little help from my new Bubble planner, I will be able to keep myself on track.

While I don’t have any kids, just a husband who can be a big kid, I do have a real life and work to write around. But that’s the beauty of it all, being able to find a way to incorporate writing into my life. I’m not sure when I wanted to become a writer, maybe it was my intense love of books growing up, or perhaps it was truly the wild tales, or lies as my mother says, that I spun. My mother told me I should put my creative mind to a more productive use than lying to get myself out of trouble. Mind you, I couldn’t tell a small lie, they had to be grand whoppers filled with things so far from the truth that about half the time they were unbelievable. Now, as an adult I can look back and see how I began my journey into my writing career.

I belonged to a writer’s group for a long time and the group was amazed that I could be given a sentence and just run away with it creating a world filled with characters, action, drama, suspense, and of course good old fashioned romance. They would often tell me that it would take them weeks to construct what I had done in a matter of an hour or less. I didn’t really see anything special about that ability as it was always just there. I have theses stories, characters, plotlines just running amok in my head and with me at any given time.

I’m going to call myself creatively blessed and leave it at that, because to delve too deeply to find out the center may be more traumatic than I care to deal with.

So, you may ask, what exactly is my goal? Simply, to write, and become a famous author with books littering the best seller lists, of course. OK, realistically, I’d like to get something published. I’ve dabbled in poetry, but I know that’s not my particular talent. I’d much rather focus on people and the stories they need to tell and their interactions with each other.

OK, so my goal for this year is to rewrite and edit my novel I just finished in November as part of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNo WriMo) and get it ready to be shipped off to a wonderful and talented agent and or publisher, who will then race to get my book read in one sitting and be knocking on my door the next day with a check.

While some of my blogs will keep you all updated on my progress, most will be about other things, including my struggles in life and in writing. So stay tuned, pull up a chair, a good book, and something nice to drink, and join me as I begin my journey into the next chapter of my life.