It's January Again, Have You Ordered Your Planner Yet?
I love a good planner. I love the pretty colors they come in, and the cute calendar stickers they give you (though I rarely use them), the motivational sayings meant to keep you moving forward, and the reminders to set goals.
Actually I don’t love those reminders. I tolerate them, I guess you could say.
Are you a goal setter? Do you map out each week, month, year? I’m an intuitive worker, so I have to say that while I have general, ongoing daily, weekly, and monthly goals, I’ve always felt a little lame about not being an annual sort of thinker. Simply put, I am unable to map out everything I want to accomplish in a year in calendar form.
Do people actually do this? If you do, then I envy you.
I plan to publish at least one book, and maybe a second in 2023, and it would probably be helpful to have those editorial schedules inked into my planner’s next several months (as I recommend all indies do), but I know myself well enough to admit that I won’t venture past the current month of the year in my new planner.
Of course I have an idea of when I will launch my books, but until they make it through the editorial process, I can’t pencil in all of the important tasks and the dates upon which they will occur. Do you know when you’ll launch your next book?
For me, writing is the kind of thing that plows its own road. Sometimes that road flows, and sometimes it’s obstructed. People who write a certain number of words a day have always confounded me. How can you be sure you’ll write 1,500 words today? And what if you come up 200 words short? Do you just blah, blah, blah on the page until you reach the necessary amount? What if you write 3,000 words several days in a row? Do you have to go back to your calendar and readjust ... everything?
I write whatever I write every day, and I edit whatever I edit. Somehow that works for me.
In the meantime, I use daily and weekly to-do lists as well as an iCalendar for appointments.
In addition to writing novels, I am a freelance writer, editor, and instructor. Some weeks I have a lot of work to do, and other weeks I have less. People hire me to edit their books, and occasionally I don’t know their job is coming until a week before it lands on my desk. The more I edit for other people, the less time I have for my own writing.
So, you can see why it’s hard to plan. I guess I could pencil it all in and try to accomplish my calendar of tasks come hell or high water, but doing so will probably result in an outbreak of hives.
Third, I have a family. A teenager. A husband. Two cats. They have their own schedules and undertakings to strive for. Some of those happenings require my input, my assistance, my time. And often they are not on my calendar. They just walk up to my desk and fall on it.
So, you see my problem. Basically, it’s that life ebbs and flows, as it naturally should.
I do believe there is enough time for everything if you focus on what you want to get accomplished. I also understand that having goals motivates one to pursue those goals in a timely fashion. But mapping out a year’s worth of actions on a calendar is not the way for me.
And maybe that’s okay. It must be because this is how I’ve been “getting things done” for as long as I can remember.
Getting on the BULLET JOURNAL Train
Still, I wonder if I’m missing out by not being more goal oriented.
A few years ago, I looked into the growing-in-popularity Bullet Journal method created by Ryder Carroll (https://bulletjournal.com).
I bought a book about how to do it and then purchased a very nice-looking journal. It’s filled with dotted paper, not the lined pages I’m used to. But when I made an attempt to switch to that method, I experienced cold feet about the whole thing and parked both books on the shelf.
A few days ago I took them out again, and I think I’m ready to give it a try. For some reason, when I read over the basics of an “index,” a “future log,” and “rapid logging,” this time, something clicked.
I think it may be the method for me.
1) It’s customizable. It will be whatever I want it to be.
2) One of its primary purposes is to declutter your mind. That sounds like a tool I can benefit from.
3) It’s fast to use and becomes a record of everything that was happening in that portion of your life.
As each year slides into the next, blending and homogenizing, the idea that I could go back to this book in the future and see exactly what was happening when I published Bright Blue Planet in 2023 appeals to me.
So, the Bullet Journal, it is. Maybe you’d like to try it too. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Happy 2023!
Kim Catanzarite is the author of the award-winning sci-fi thriller series The Jovian Universe. She is a freelance writer and editor for publishers and independent authors, and she teaches copyediting for Writer’s Digest University. Her Self-Publishing 101 blog discusses the ins and outs of indie life as well as all things writing craft (www.authorkimcatanzarite.com/blog). She lives on the east coast USA with her husband and daughter.
