Flip a coin?

I used to always advocate going with your gut when it comes to starting a new story.

“I can’t decide what project to start next. I don’t know which story I should focus on completing. . . .” someone would say.

“Oh, that’s easy,” I’d reply. “Just go with whatever story’s louder in your head.”

Easy.

Just.

The problem is that sometimes your head is really darn loud—and there’s more than one thing yelling. Especially, maybe, in the spring when the sap is running and new growth is exploding brilliant and green in every crook and cranny of the natural world.

I feel like one of my newly acquired chicks. Frantic with delight and distraction—everything is new. Everything is exciting. I can’t decide where to peck next, so I flap back and forth, take running leaps, then stutter to a stop—flutter up to practice perching, then flop back to the ground (sometimes face plant) to snack some more. . . .

The problem is that sometimes you can become so accustomed to working on a deadline that you know you can sit down to work, completely uninspired, and within minutes the muse will honour your commitment to your work and suddenly the story that seemed non-existent will roar to life. “Whatever’s loudest in your head” only half applies, because you’re a pro now (or some reasonable facsimile thereof, heh heh) and you can make your head turn up the volume on whatever story you want or need it to.

The problem is that sometimes two stories are completely different from each other in every way, yet are both engaging, tempting . . .

And before you suggest working on the stories in tandem . . . I can edit any number of works at the same time, it seems. And I can work on the odd short story while I’m in the midst of a novel. I can’t (yet!) seem to get into the worlds of two of my own novels simultaneously.

The problem is—I’m indecisive in the extreme the past few months, and now I’m being a big whiner and just making excuses.

Today (my last project, a.k.a. excuse, e-mailed away) was decision day. I came up with a solution. I’d flip a coin. Seriously. I even considered tweeting “Heads or Tails?” on Twitter and going with the choice that came back first.

And then, just short of hitting “enter,” a better idea finally it came to me. One of the stories, already started, is significantly shorter than the other will be and it has a brief chapter-by-chapter outline (something I never do) that will help me refresh myself with the plot almost at a glance. It will write itself quickly and be the perfect “break” piece once I’ve finished the rough draft of the longer novel and am giving it a 4-6 week rest before putting it through edits.

Tomorrow when I perch to write I’ll silence the loudest voice in my head—the stalling, but-what-should-I-focus-on one—and say, “Relax. You’ve decided, remember?” I guess in the end, I still believe in going with my gut. It’s just my guts are messy sometimes.

How about you all? Is it always simple for you to figure out your next project, or do you spend a bit of time lollygagging over the decision?

To Capture the Moon

The yellowed-ivory moon rose over the snow topped mountains in the near distance. Huge bellied and magnificent, she sat heavy in the periwinkle sky of the early spring evening, queen of all she surveyed. And I, a peasant beneath her, awed by her visage and her serene scrutiny, deserted my leaf-raking and flowerbed cleaning and ran for a camera—completely taken in: this was the night I’d capture the moon.

I fetched my camera, and . . .

Completely failed in my quest. I have seen gorgeous photographs of the moon. The people who take them are magicians. Or perhaps they too think, You call this image beautiful, breathtaking, magical? No, you should have seen the moon that night. I didn’t even come close.

I know in seeking that illusive picture of the moon, concepts (magic spells!) like aperture, ISO, and EV 1 or 2 units come into play, along with tools like telephoto lenses, tripods, and the like. I have heard that I can master them. And perhaps I will. Strive. Try.

My first pronouncement—“completely failed”—softened under her encouraging glow as the night darkened around her. I emerged instead with a lesson, applicable to my writing and so many other parts of my life. The attempt is the joy, is the success, is the purpose. The moon will never be captured fully, but she can be suggested, alluded to, conjured, imagined, dreamt. . . .

And as if to affirm that truth, I discovered that two of the twenty or so shots I took turned out . . . not bad. Though nowhere close to how beautiful the moon actually was on April 6, or how she overtook the horizon and my imagination, I hope they hint. . . .

So the aftermath of my night’s chase? Most often with words, but sometimes using picture, paint or other, I’ll keep seeking to express the beauty and mysteries that sometimes surprise us in the day or wait and appear only fleetingly at night. And most often I’ll miss the mark, not accomplish what I’m shooting for, but that’s okay. I accept the quest. I revel in it. I delight in it. And who knows? Sometimes I might come . . . close.

When words fail me

How’s that for a grabbing blog post title?

It’s a bit of misnomer, however, as words rarely fail me (more like I occasionally fail them!). I do, however, like to dabble in other forms of artistic expression and while I would never call myself an artist, more and more often these days, I find myself taking a black Sharpie (TM) to paper or playing with paint.

And seeing as I think this is going to be a regular part of my life, I decided to dedicate a page on my website to sharing some of my creations. There are only two pieces up right now (“Family Portrait” and “I am your mother!”), but I’ll add more as they come into being (and when I take digital images of existing ones).

How about you? Are you strictly a writer or do you create in other modes and mediums as well? If the latter, do you feel it adds to or detracts from your writing? How so? Inquiring minds want to know.

In the nick of time, a hero appeared. . . .

Sometimes I have days (or weeks, or months!) when I feel a little less than enchanted with the whole business of writing. Not the writing itself—sometimes I’m neurotic, insecure, impatient (etcetera, etcetera!) about my process, but that’s different. The work of writing, when I remember to refocus on it, is good. Is the whole point, actually. But the business part? The querying, submitting, receiving rejections—and the acceptances and publications that don’t magically change everything? Well, that whole affair can get a bit tedious.

Anyway, yesterday was one of those days. And then, out of nowhere, a hero appeared. He was wrapped in Manila paper and bubble wrap (Okay, get your mind out of the gutters. This is not that kind of story!), but it was, as ever, what was inside that counted.

(Okay, enough with the sexy, mysterious stranger metaphor.)

My friend Jen Brubacher had sent me a present from the UK: A book I’ve been dying for that doesn’t get released here in Canada ‘til May, 2012 (How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran—I figure, since I turn 40 in a few months, it’s about time I figure out this skill of being female), and—wait for it, wait for it—a total surprise book.

An ancient book. A treasure. A tome first printed in 1926. The Truth About Publishing by Stanley Unwin.

It’s hard to explain how gorgeous this book is—from his rough-edged, slightly discoloured with age pages, to faded, well-worn linen cover, to gold-lettered spine—gorgeous. And serious. (None of this author name and title and loud picture spilled gaudily across front and back for this fella.)

(Am I still personifying this book? I meant to stop! I seem to be unable to help myself.)

His soft, authoritative voice enthralled me from the very first page and I found myself oddly comforted, so much so that I was compelled to remove the shrug of discouragement I’d been huddling under this week.

Despite the book’s age, a surprising amount of details surrounding the business of writing (querying, submitting, presenting your work) are still pertinent.

And let me share just one inspiring tidbit—as timely and true to writers now, me thinks, as it was to writers 86 years ago:

“The growing commercialism of literature—inevitable though it may be—does not tend to promote more harmonious relations between authors and publishers. It is based on the assumption that manuscripts and books are mere commodities; dead, not living things. Such an assumption ignores the peculiar and indeed parent relationship of the author to his work, the realization of which is the beginning of wisdom in a publisher.” ~ Stanley Unwin

I found the above quote—in this day of doom and gloom about the future of publishing and rumours of the death of literacy, and so on—very encouraging. The future of books—the desire and “need” for their commercial success—has always been a source of angst and conflict between booksellers and book writers.

Yet if we question why we even bother to write then, turning to a quote on the title page reminds us:

It is by books that mind speaks to mind, by books the world’s intelligence grows, books are the tree of knowledge, which has grown into and twined its branches with those of the tree of life, and of their common fruit men eat and become as gods knowing good and evil.                                                                                                                               – C. Kegan Paul.

Us writers write what our hearts compel us to (or, at least, we should). But if we’re honest, often we have hopes of at least some sort of financial reward—if only so we can work less at a day job and write more.

Publishers also publish for two reasons (I really believe): to bring books into being that they believe should be read, should exist, should add to the world experience in terms of entertainment, pleasure, thought, growth and knowledge, but also to make money.

We authors may dislike the latter, especially if it appears to outweigh the other motivation in current culture, but that’s okay and is as it should be: we need to write regardless of what comes of it. By necessity, so it can continue, publishing has to be about dollars. Equally by necessity, writers need to be uncomfortable with that as a primary goal.

And so, another inner-writer crisis averted, the hero gently takes his place in her heart and on her shelf, snug amidst his brothers and sisters—all those reasons she keeps keeping at it.

Not the writer I wish to be

I was reading Louise Penny’s latest novel, A Trick of Light, the other night and as is the case with all of her Three Pines mysteries, I was completely moved and challenged by it, even while I was wildly entertained.

One of the continuing characters, 50-year-old artist Clara Morrow, after thirty-plus years of endeavour and dedication to growing in her art, has just become an “overnight success” and been given a solo show in the prestigious Musée d’Art Contemporain in Montréal.

Her description of the morning after the vernissage (or, in English, the “opening” of her show) captured me.

“Clara rose early. Putting on rubber boots and a sweater over her pajamas, she poured herself a coffee and sat in one of the Adirondack chairs in their back garden …

“She closed her eyes and could feel the young June sun on her upturned face and could hear birdcalls and the Rivière Bella Bella gurgling past at the end of the garden. Below that was the thrum of bumblebees climbing in and over and around the peonies. Getting lost.

“Bumbling around.

“It looked comical, ridiculous. But then so much did, unless you knew…

“Clara held the warm mug in her hands and smelt coffee, and the fresh-mown grass. The lilacs and peonies and young, fragrant roses.” (Louise Penny, A Trick of Light, Saint Martins Press, New York, N.Y. 2011)

Clara is thrilled and torn by her success (and will experience a myriad of other emotions as she faces jealousy from her renowned artist husband and the fall out from a murder that occurred in her garden during her celebratory party), but even before she sat in the early sun and pondered where she’d come from as an artist and where she was going, another of her inner observations kept coming back to me: “Art was their [her and her husband’s] work. But it was more than that. It had to be. Otherwise, why put up with all those years of solitude? Of failure? Of silence from a baffled and even bemused art world?”

Something in these passages that I can’t quite identify upon rereading and quoting in isolated chunks, in combination with comments a dear friend (and very astute, wise reader) made about one of my current works-in-progress triggered the recognition of a hard truth deep within me: I am not the writer I wish to be.

Now, this is not to say that I’ve ever felt that I was all that I wanted or hoped to be as a writer—not even close. But maybe what happened is that as the realization formed in my head and I saw all the colours and shadows and shapes and sounds of what I yearn to express collide with what I actually manage to get out—and that mess of thoughts bumped into Clara who I couldn’t separate from her author, Louise Penny, I realized that it will always be thus. It never changes. The great secret about aspiring to any Art is that you ever grow—and you ever fall short. There’s no arrival.

And maybe that sounds negative, but it didn’t feel like that to me. Instead it felt like some huge vice that had been holding my heart and mind—one that I was unaware of until I felt the pressure ease—unclenched. I think I’ve been operating under an unexpressed tyranny: “One day, I’ll get there—wherever there is—and all my writing dreams and aspirations will be met. Fireworks will go off. I’ll cease to be filled with self-doubt and lethargy. I will know I am good enough.”

Bunk! I have a lot of so-called successes (albeit they may seem small in some peoples’ eyes) and while I’m delighted and derive huge comfort and satisfaction whenever a reader identifies with, enjoys or connects to something I’ve written, I’ve never yet felt, “Aha, this is it.” Instead, I worry—when will the imposter police break out of wall yelling, “I’m sorry, Ma’am, you’re not a writer at all. You’ve been read and found lacking”?

But it’s not about that. It’s about, as Clara expressed, something more. It has to be.

It’s about striving, yes, but also being content to just be.

To diligently, joyfully—and sometimes sorrowfully or with anger—try to render every moment truthfully. To face (in real life and through my fiction) what I care about. What I question. What makes me rage, cower, cry and scream. What causes me to weep, laugh, smile, or take a deep contented breath and think, ahhhh . . .

It sounds so simple: Just be honest about what’s inside you, Ev!

But I find it so terrifying to face my naked emotional self—to not look away, to not avert my stare—out of discomfort, denial, fear of being revealed (and possibly rejected) for what I am, who I am. . . .

Yet as I pondered what I’d read, what my friend said, a warm coffee cup clutched in both hands, gently steaming as I sipped, and contemplated not just the pages immediately before but all those I written previously, I finally got it—get it. I am not the writer I wish to be. I am only the writer that I am. And it’s okay. More than okay. Perfect, in fact! (And after all, it’s the only possible option on any given day or page or part of a tale.)

I’ll continue to fight to remedy my failings, work hard to grow and change and be better as a writer (and a person), but there’s no magic day to wait for. The reason I write, the value of writing, the reward of writing is here right now. Found in the unyielding sheen of frozen-diamond snow, in the heavy contented sigh of my dog sleeping on my feet, in the questions I have as I stare at the sky, in breakfast with my adult daughter and the sweet complex flavours of conversation and freshly made pumpkin pancakes with syrup, pecans and whipping cream. . . .

The seemingly simple and obvious realization has me feeling a little awed—and strangely free and unencumbered: I am the writer that I am.

To bed, to bed Miss Sleepyhead

Well, I just told a lie. Inadvertently. And now I’m fessing up. (If one fesses up almost immediately, does it still count as a lie?) I told a writing forum of friends of mine that although I should do something writerish before I head out to my day job, I was going back to bed instead (and you know what, despite this post saying that I didn’t actually do that, the verdict’s still not an entirely sure thing. I’m tempted even as I type this to hit “save draft” then hit the sack for another hour.

I’m so tired! And worse, SO LAZY feeling. The lovely stupor induced by Christmas holidays seems to have settled as a permanent fog into each crook and cranny of my brain. Though I’ve eaten no turkey this season, I’m as soporific as if I’d just indulged in a six course meal of the stuff. Though January 1st usually finds me so eager to get back to my pages, so zealous over new goals for a new year, that I’m hyper to the point of literally bouncing around, this year . . . Nada. It’s January 3rd already and I . . . well, like I said. I just want to go back to bed.

Unfortunately, some part of me that isn’t as lazy as the rest of me (my spleen, perhaps? Yes, my spleen) piped up just before I crashed again and said, “You’ll just be tired again tomorrow.”

Sigh. And as ever, Spleen was right. I don’t need more sleep. I’ve been averaging 8 – 10 hours a night (before you judge though, it’s really dark and cold where I live right now; everyone, not just me, needs more sleep). And with that cold hard fact faced, I had to look at what I really need. What’s different between this lackluster new year and my happy, excitement-filled heralding of fresh annums in the past?

I think it’s a lack of one tiny, yet apparently crucial thing. For a long time (since I was 11 or so), part of my New Year tradition has always been to curl up with a journal and a yummy drink in the wee hours when everyone else is finally asleep after celebrating, to do some private recalling, planning, and dreaming.

I’ve done a lot of other fun stuff the past two weeks. And some important stuff. But I’ve neglected . . . . my spleen, apparently.

That truth unveiled and confronted, I still want to go back to bed. But not quite as badly. And tonight or tomorrow night, I’m going to curl up by the Christmas tree, journal in hand, wine glass nearby, and do some thinking. I know I have plans and hopes (thus latent excitement) for 2012. I just have to clear the way for it to crawl (okay, pour!) forth.

How about you? How’s 2012 so far? Are you already happily enmeshed in your writing and stories, or are you more like me, fighting not to go back to bed?

Can (should!) a writer ever really go it alone?

Déjà vu Thursday – This is a re-post of a fairly recent pondering (written originally August 5, 2011), but it feels timely because the Internet—and its friend and foe ways—has been a big part of my writing life again lately. Just last night I was thinking, Yeesh, if it wasn’t for my writing friends and cohorts, what would I do? Maybe you’re feeling a similar blessing (or a sad lack?). As ever, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

* * *

If you have other things in your life—family, friends, good productive day work—these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer. ~ David Brin

Last night I met with the Northwords Writers’ Camp writers and presented on how the Internet fits into/enhances my writing life. I mentioned how it’s a great resource for:

Support, Inspiration, Community
Education, Practice
Writing markets, Publishers
Marketing, Communicating and building relationships with readers

I also delivered the reminder that we all apparently need to hear on on occasion. Just like any super hero has their kryptonite, the Internet has a side that can cripple even the most stalwart writer. It’s called TIME SUCKAGE. Only writing is writing.

And I touched on a few other things to beware of online (in blogs or public forums):

Nothing is private
Nothing goes away
Published online (even “just” on your blog) is published.

But feeling that the pros of getting involved in the Internet writing community (how it can help one grow in and enjoy his/her writing life) far outweigh any small cons, I encouraged each attendee to start their own blog and we spent the rest of our time talking about Do’s and Don’ts of great blogs and did some writing exercise to per chance get us started.

As ever I was blown away by people’s creativity and how unique and highly individual each person’s results were, even with exercises as specific and guided as the ones we did together were. It reminded me yet again of why I write, why I read—to share, to learn, to grow. To think, to laugh and sometimes, though definitely not last night, to cry.

It also reminded me of how good it is to get together with other writers (in person, live!) and talk craft. The Internet is awesome and I’m incredibly grateful for it, but it doesn’t replace the value and importance (and fun ) of getting together in real-time with flesh and blood people who share your interests. (We talked about that too.)

If you’ve been writing in solitary confinement (as is, of course, the necessity and norm)—or perhaps are feeling that you’re not getting enough alone time with your words—re-read the quote I opened this post with. It’s good to have people and other activities in our lives. They refill the well.

Yes, only writing is writing, but sometimes to keep on track with our writing (in a way that brings joy, refreshes our inspiration, soothes our fears, etc) connection with other kindred souls—online or face-to-face—is just what the Dr ordered.

What do you think? Can any writer truly go it alone?

Day jobs—the good, the bad, the ugly!

About a year and a half ago, I decided to take a part-time day job—to supplement my writing and editing income, yes, but also (more importantly), because I wanted to free up my creative mind.

Nothing kills creativity like wondering how the mortgage will get paid and the freelance life (mine at least) was a bit feast or famine—some months were fantastic. Others—eek, not so much.

I’m not alone in extolling the benefits of working—at least part-time—for someone else when you’re in an artistic field. Over the years I’ve heard many professional authors and writers warn not to quit your day job too soon. Some even advocate never quitting your day job entirely—always keeping a ladle in the stew, so to speak. . . . Sometimes the recommendation’s based on the issue of money. The freelancer or novelist’s income can be irregular, like I mentioned. Sometimes it’s because the speaker feels that having a job in the “real” world gives inspiration to draw from, plus a much needed break (at times) from the solitary, inner realms that writers live in.

I can see both sides.

Most of us understand the comfort (and necessity) of at least a certain amount of dependable income, so I won’t spend much time on that. Ditto, we tend to be able to understand that having co-workers—both the ones easy to get along with and the ones that . . . aren’t—can inspire, perhaps act as sounding boards, etc. . . .

The big lure of going out one’s own is time. After all, what’s more tempting than the idea of business casual (or business professional) equaling pajamas? What could be more ideal than having an uninterrupted 8 hours to write—well, an uninterrupted 8 hours, minus the two hours for a cool lunch with other like-minded, pajama wearing intellectuals, that is. We romanticize (or I should say, I romanticize) the image of the madwomen in the attic a little too much. And there are, of course, days when the daily grind feels, well, like a grind—and we just want to be free from it.

I maintain, however, that if you really want to write a lot, to make your writing be your life’s work (a very separate thing from your primary source of earnings, by the way)—whether or not you have to do other work to pay your mortgage or buy groceries won’t stop you. It might even motivate you (when you have eight hours stretching ahead of you, it’s easy to wile away 6 of ‘em. When you want to get in 1000 words and you only have an hour or two, you tend to get on it).

And less than satisfactory days at work—even the occasional rotten days? Even better. (Just make sure that you’re not in a job you absolutely hate, because that could be muse-killing—though that’s a side tangent.)

If your “day job” is too perfect, too all-absorbing and fascinating, there’s the danger that you will feel, well, fulfilled by it and the desire, the drive, the compulsion to write will diminish.

If your job is creative and calls for imagining and envisioning and brainstorming—it could feed your writing, sure, but it could also easily satiate the part of your psyche that craves all that creating and thinking.

Chaffing a bit at work—whether it’s because the job doesn’t stimulate you mentally or inspire you creatively, or it doesn’t pay enough, or because of personality clashes with other staff members—is a good thing.

If you’re lucky enough to have job to go to that pays the bills, gives you fodder for characters (maybe even villains!), and you have the added benefit of not loving it too much, good on you! You’re in the perfect place to kindle your writing fire and motivate you to get your stories out. (Or that’s what I tell myself anyway. Heh heh.)

Quiet Daze

I wish I had some great graphic to post: a sprawling barren desert—its emptiness broken only by the odd three-armed prickly cactus here and there and errant ball of tumbleweed bumbling through every so often. (Add a whistling, lonesome soundtrack too.)

Or perhaps, more in keeping with a landscape I’m familiar with, perhaps I should insert a deep dark night with no recognizable landmarks, everything swathed in thick white snow—the only movement, the only sound, the occasional tree branch failing under its load, bending or breaking in a wet, heavy swoosh.

In both those scenes, the viewer would feel nothing was going on—and in both those scenes, the viewer would be wrong. Somewhere deep below the apparent nothingness, life would be stirring or going on full tilt—or, at the very least, hibernating, waiting for the exact right combination of natural elements to spring it forth. (Insert two new images here, please: the legendary bloom of desert flowers that occur after rare, precious rains and whatever greening, blossoming spring photo you have handy.)

That’s the case with my writing life these days too—outwardly things are pretty quiet, without a lot of news or action or ideas to go on about. Yet inwardly, I feel like I’m on the cusp. Any day now, new energy will flood through me, refreshing me and bursting my current projects to completion. Any week, new ideas—mere murky presences, buried deep in the compost of my mind for now—are going to sprout, and going into 2012 I’ll be overcome with plans and enthusiasm and questions about what’s to come.

But for now (Turn up the volume on that whistling, lonely gunfight showdown tune again.) I’ll just have to wait in eager (if quiet) anticipation.

Sticky Note Solutions

November—already, can you believe it? Some of you are probably happily bogged down with Nanowrimo this month. It’s early in, the inspiration is thick and humid, the words and ideas are growing like crazy, but despite your amazing work ethic and exciting word counts thus far, you’re ever cognisant of the reality that you need to log 1666.66 words per day (better round that up to 1667!) to nail this bad boy.

Others of you, like me, decided to forgo the 50 000 word extravaganza this month, because you have other writing priorities yelling loudly in your head that you don’t want to ignore.

Whatever camp you fall in, I suspect that because you have spectacularly lofty goals this month, life will throw a lot of unexpected distractions at you this month, including but not limited to things like: surprise visits from old friends, birthday bashes, baby showers, or other celebratory not to be missed events, extra work hours, a small family crisis or two, etc . . .

Wait? Am I talking about November particularly or the writing life in general? Rats, you caught me. Nano or no Nano, my writing life, despite my best laid plans, always gets interrupted. I still manage to get quite a lot done most months, however, and one of the easiest ways I’ve learned to motivate and focus myself (not to mention remind myself of what I actually want to accomplish) is to use sticky notes. And not the sticky note app—the actual, messy little pieces of paper that one scrawls notes on and sticks up all over the place.

The idea is not uniquely mine, of course. After all, sticky notes were invented to leave memos for yourself. And I took a class with author Kerri Nelson, called “The Book Factory—Produce Multiple Novels in a Year” that I raved about before in “Take 15 . . .”

Kerri advocated constructing a brief list of things you need to get done in a day or in a chunk of writing time, keeping it in a highly visible place, then before you got to bed that evening making sure you’ve accomplished each one.

There’s something powerful in the act of prioritizing (only so many goals fit on a sticky note) and then crossing each accomplishment with swift stroke of ink. The more specific the goals, the better.

When I jot down “Blog post,” it’s a little tougher to get down to, than if I write “Blog post + TITLE,” because just writing a title is consideration of an idea—and idea that stirs about in the muck and mire of my brain, and is then more than ready to muddy up the page once I sit down to it.

When I write “Edit TITLE,” it’s not as effective as when I write, “Edit three chapters of TITLE.”

“Write a chapter” is not as forward-driving as “Write scene where blah-blah-blah.” (Of “blah blah blah” is actually spelled out on the note—even if so cryptically that only I know at a glance what on earth I’m talking about.)

I also write mundane, non-writing tasks on my sticky notes (“Toyota Payment, “Park Optometry,” etc.), not because I consider them writing-related per se, but because my brain sometimes uses menial chores and other trivial “must-do’s” as a way to avoid writing. “You shouldn’t write right now. You should insert-silly-but-practical-distraction.” Once those chores make it to the sticky note, I can make my procrastinator shut-up. (It’s on the sticky note, it’ll get done. Now be quiet, I have work to do!)

I don’t know if sticky notes will revolutionize your writing days or the short sessions you try to sneak in around the other demands of life, but I know that when I’m using my sticky note system, I’m always a little blown away, by how I manage to get things done when I have no time.

I wish you crazy productivity this month—especially if you’re Nanowrimoing! And if you have special methods or tips for breaking down your big goals into smaller, manageable ones, please share.:)