I am not organized. I lose everything. If I need to take something with me for some reason, I check it three times so I don’t forget and half the time I still forget. I make lists like crazy when I have to plan things. When I planned our Thanksgiving, I had three lists, I taped recipes to my cabinets, I didn’t sleep well for days and I had a stress headache for a week, not to mention the anxiety nightmares.
And don’t get me started on packing. Because if I pack on the fly, I forget things I really need. Like clean underwear. (Zomg, I’m totally the first person to say underwear on this blog!) And deodorant. And pens. I remember notebooks, but forget the pens.
I am not organized.
I’m stressing this because I have posts like this and this, and nights like the other night where I scheduled a dozen or so blog posts (so my blog won’t die when/if I attempt to NaNo). When I do things like that, people tell me I’m so organized. I’m not. And I feel like such a phony when people say things like that. Because if I appear organized, it’s only because I’m so disorganized that I need to be organized to function. You know?
Anyways, so my latest attempt at battling #TheGenieBook includes spreadsheets. I totally stole this idea from Justine Larbalestier and her post is far more brilliant than mine.
But here’s my take on it.
I have a column for the chapter number, an “events” column where I list pretty much anything I think is important to remember. Things like, “She got a drink of water,” not so important. Things like, “She found a frog in her shoe, kissed it, and it turned into a prince,” are important. Make sense?I’m also keeping track of when I use a break, to see if I’m overusing them, as I tend to do that, the word counts of each chapter, and I will fill in the day column once I figure that out. (I currently have no idea what day it is in #TheGenieBook… or several characters’ last names… and a couple characters’ first names.)
I have another spreadsheet that’s just one fat column with my outline of things I plan on happening for me to incorporate as I write. Really, that could have been done in a document, on a piece of paper or pretty much anywhere, but the spreadsheet worked and the ideas came so I ran with it.
But I’m still not organized. Honest. I don’t even normally plot. I’m a pantser and a scene-sewer (thank you, Tina, for that AWESOME phrase). I (somehow) managed to come up with a 70 something K novel doing that, but #TheGenieBook is not so co-operative with my pantser style… so I’m adapting.
I’m still not organized. :P
Peace and cookies,
Laina
