A Planning Addict - The Mslexia Diary

I've been a massive planning addict for a while now.  My first planner was an A5 Filofax Finsbury in teal.  It's a monster of a planner, but I loved that I could fit everything in one place when out and about.
Now that I work from home, I don't need to carry large amounts of information around with me, so I have swapped to a smaller planner.

My new planner of choice is the Mslexia diary.  For those who don't know, Mslexia is a writing magazine for women writers and I have been a subscriber for a good few years.  I've used their diary for the past three years' now, but up until this year, I've always used it as an extension to my main planner.

Before I go into the pro's and con's of the Mslexia diary, let's just go over the benefits of planning.  I'm a full-time writer with two girl's under the age of five, so I have to be super organised.  Having a planner and utilising it properly is essential to me if I want to get things done, on time.  Whether it's reminders for school events, bill payments due or a writing deadline, planning my day helps me to focus on what needs to be done.

The Mslexia diary is specifically made for writers and has many features to help make a writer's life easier, but it can be utilised by anyone.  It's the perfect size to fit into your handbag or a large coat pocket, but also gives you plenty of room to write inside.  Each page is set up with a week on one side and a blank page for notes on the other.

I like to plan my days in more depth, so I use Pinterest to search for handy little print-outs I can paperclip to the pages to give me more space to plan.  You can see an example of this in the images below.

As well as the usual features like a contacts section and information page, the Mslexia diary also features plenty of blank pages for scribbles, a period tracker for women (which can be used to track pretty much anything, in case you are of the male gender), writing exercises and loads of information for writers,  I can't recommend this diary enough.  You can purchase one from the Mslexia website for £15.99 or £13.99 if you are a subscriber.

Look out for my blog post 'How to make the most of a small planner', coming soon, where I will share my tips and tricks for getting the most out of a small planner, and my vlog version of this post where you will be able to see the Mslexia diary and my planning methods in more detail.

Please let me know if you have any planning tips or recommendations you would like to share.

Switching Genre

I'm closing in on the halfway mark of my current wip and the writing, so far, is going surprisingly well.  I wanted to explore that.  Why is the writing process much easier this time around?  Why am I enjoying it more than usual?

The answer is that I am writing what I enjoy reading.  My first book was in the women's fiction genre.  It wasn't my best piece of work.  I had only written short stories previously and all of them had been in the crime/thriller or horror genre.

So why did I turn to women's fiction for my first novel?  I suppose I thought it would be easier.  Very ignorant of me, I know.  The writing was a hard slog.  I wrote for two years', had a two year break, then wrote for another year until it was finally finished.  I hated every second I worked on that book.

I then took a break.  I wrote short stories, articles and a couple of non-fiction books - anything to stop me thinking about writing another novel-length piece again.  During this time, I was also reading a lot - as I always have.  My favourite author's include Stephen King, Mo Hayder, Michael Connelly, Gillian Flynn...  You can see the pattern here.  It was reading a Stephen King novel at the age of twelve that made me want to be a writer in the first place.

I asked myself why I like reading in these genres.  Why do I love to immerse myself in world's occupied by serial killers, stalkers, monsters and the odd killer clown?  It's because I'm interested in the dark side of human behaviour.  I want to know what makes the killer tick and what dark choices humans make to survive.  THIS is what I should be writing about!

And now, I am.  My new wip includes a serial killer, a stalker and a DI who also has a dark side.  And I'm loving it.

Even my short stories always seem to have a murder or crime involved.  I tried writing a story for The People's Friend a while back, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stop myself writing a murder and arson attack into the plot.  At least I tried!

Changing genre has been the best thing I have ever done.  It has made me fall in love with writing again.

Head Space

This post is all about organisation, de-cluttering and finding some head space so that you can concentrate on your writing.
I decided last weekend that I needed to have a massive clear out.  I'm quite monkey-minded when it comes to my writing, and it effects my productivity - so, tidy house, tidy mind.

I bought a book called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying by Marie Kondo.  She is the creator of the KonMari Method and this book explains the concept.  To summarise the book, you have to basically throw anything away that doesn't inspire joy for you, and instead of sorting by location, sort by category (clothes, then books, then paperwork, etc).  This is hard, especially when you have two children and a hoarder husband, but I gave it my best shot.

I ended up with over 20 black bin bags and six boxes full of  'stuff' to be thrown away.  I can't tell you how good it feels.  I feel lighter, and the house gave a huge sigh of relief.  I completed all that in two days, then spent another two days cleaning.  Now, with only things that inspire joy around me, I'm much better able to concentrate on my work.  It has also made housework a lot faster to get through, because I'm not having to move clutter to clean or tidy clutter away - so I get more time to write!

Do you have any de-cluttering or cleaning tips to share?

Magic

I'm reading Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert, and I feel like I'm reading a letter from an old friend, or a younger me.

In my teens and early twenties, I saw ideas as magical entities, like fairies that floated around until you caught them and did something with them.  I had the notion that writing was magical - that magic played a big part in how ideas came to me.  Over the past decade, I've had to grow up, and during that growing up, I've lost that notion.  Don't get me wrong, writing still feels magical, but I have lost that feeling that magic is involved and the hard slog has taken over.  When I was 'on a roll', or 'in the zone', when the writing just flowed, I used to think of it like fairy dust had been sprinkled all over my keyboard, pen or notebook.  That was inspiration.

I love the way Gilbert talks about ideas and inspiration.  It's inspiring to me. Reading this book made me realise that I wasn't the only one to think of writing and ideas in a magical way.  If you haven't read Big Magic yet, I'd highly recommend it.

I still firmly believe that hard slog has a huge part to play in getting work done.  I'm a scientific type of person and don't necessarily believe that 'magic' is real.  It's just a nice way to think of it - don't you think?

Winter Staples for the Writer

I'm full of flu and feeling very sorry for myself, so I thought I'd create my list of absolute essentials to get any writer through winter and/or illness.

I'm what some people would call a 'mard-arse' when it comes to cold.  I'm always cold, even when people around me are sweating.  I hate winter, and in my wildest dreams, I'd have a holiday home somewhere hot to escape to during the British winter.  But, I don't, so I have to suck it up and get through it somehow.

I have all of these items, and I firmly believe that I could not survive winter without them, and I most certainly wouldn't get any writing done.  Some writers have a lucky talisman - these are mine.

• Hot water bottle - I can't live without my hot water bottle.  Well, it isn't actually mine.  I broke mine by filling it with boiling water, so I've pinched my 4 year old's.  It's a giraffe called George, and can be found stuffed up my top during the day, or under my feet at night.  When I'm writing at my desk, I swap it between my lap and my feet.
• A good blanket - By 'good', I mean not itchy, not too thick and not made of any fluffy, 'artificial' fabric.  My favourite is a 100% wool, multi-coloured blanket I found on Amazon.  It's large enough to wrap around me, but not too large to be cumbersome.
• A favourite mug - I don't know about you, but when I'm writing I drink copious amounts of coffee and green tea.  I have a couple of favourite mugs, that nobody else is allowed to use...  And this brings me to my next tip...
• Drink lots of hot fluids - I find that when I have a cold or flu, drinking anything hot helps - it soothes my throat and clears my sinuses.  I tend to drink coffee during the day, then at around 4pm I switch to flavoured green tea.  If I'm feeling really poorly, I'll have a Lemsip in bed before I go to sleep.  So stock up on all of your favourite hot drinks.
• A warm cardigan/jumper - It's obvious really... Wrap up and feel warmer.  It's no genius tip, but an important one.  A scarf can also come in handy.  As a parent, I find wearing a long scarf comes in handy in a variety of ways.  My kids use mine as a comfort blanket, nose wiper, mouth wiper, hand wiper... mostly to wipe things.  They also come in handy if you spill coffee on your papers/laptop and there isn't a tea towel in sight... Just me then..?

Stock up on the essentials, and make writing in winter a little bit more bearable.  I hope every writer out there has a warm, cosy and productive winter.

Sunday is Funday for Mummy...

I work from home, so my week is pretty hectic.  After the school run, I work for a few hours' on my event management business, Pink Lace Events.  This is followed by a quick lunch, if I remember.  I then do my daily workout and squeeze in a quick shower before I'm out of the door for the school pick-up.
Once the kids are home, it's all cleaning, cooking and play, with the occasional trip to the park or play centre, until D arrives home in time for tea, baths and bed.
I record all of my favourite TV programmes (mostly soaps), so I can relax and watch them once the kids are in bed.  I will then have a couple of hours' to get some actual writing done before I collapse, exhausted into bed.
This happens from Monday to Friday.  Saturday runs along the same vein, but with more tantrums and mess (mostly from me).
Sunday, well, Sunday is heaven for me.  D is home all day, which means I can sit at my desk and write until the well runs dry.  I like to get some housework done early, so that I can write without guilt, and have a break to cook a roast dinner (again, to ease the guilt).  But, the most of the day is spent feeding my brain, writing and daydreaming.
Without Sunday, I'd have no energy to get through the following week.  It's my solace; my rest day; my day for filling up the well.

Dear Friend,

One of my New Years' resolutions was to write more letters.  Not emails or Facebook messages, but handwritten letters.

I love receiving a handwritten letter through the letterbox.  I like to analyse the handwriting to see if I can guess who it is from before I open it.  There's nothing better for me than curling up with a cup of coffee and a letter from a friend.

So, I decided to write some letters, with the hope of getting some back.  One Saturday afternoon last month, I sat at my kitchen table with some crisp white paper, envelopes and stamps.  When I was in school, I used to write letters to my best friend and send them to her house, even though I saw her every day.  She still has that bundle of letters, so I thought I'd add to it nearly fifteen years later.  I also thought that my Gran might appreciate a handwritten letter, so I wrote one for her.  The last person on my letter-list was my little sister.  She's only ten, but like me, she has a love of writing, so I thought it might give her something to do while she was off school.

For the next few days I was rushing to the door every time the postman arrived, expecting to find a letter or two addressed to me.  Unfortunately, the only letters addressed to me were bills and statements.  I resisted the urge to send off a quick text asking if they had received my letters.  That would defeat the whole point, wouldn't it?

A week later, I received a Facebook message from my friend, 'I received your letter, LOL.'  I was greatly disappointed.  My sister Skyped me, telling me she had received hers, and my Gran sent me a text message.

I'm not going to let it stop me from writing letters.  I'm going to inundate my loved ones with handwritten accounts of my week, every week until they start replying, via a handwritten letter and not Facebook, text message or Skype.  Or, they'll move house and not tell me...

To outline, or not to outline...

Until recently, the closest I had come to writing an outline was a few lines on some sticky notes.

This book is the first I have written in the crime thriller genre.  Whilst jotting down some notes in the idea stages, I quickly realised that if I didn't want to be bogged down with plot holes and extensive rewriting, I needed an outline.  I bought Outlining your Novel by K.M. Weiland, and the workbook that goes along side.
It's a nifty little book and it taught me how to outline my novel in less than a week.  Obviously, most of the ideas were years' in the making, but I also came up with new ideas and twists through the 'what if' questions and 'what is unexpected' questions.  I now have a full notebook crammed with scenes, character profiles, themes, what if's...

The most important thing having an outline did for me though, was it brought up lots of questions.  If I had ploughed straight in with the writing, I would have had to stop quite frequently to answer questions that I didn't know the answer to.  Most of these revolved around police procedure.  Luckily, I know some very kind people who used to work for GMP, so I compiled my list of questions and sent them off in an email.

By having an outline for my book, I have made the writing process much faster, easier and more fun.  I don't think I'll start a book without one again.

The Death of a Library

My local library (Hyde) has moved from a beautiful building (which should be listed, in my opinion) to the town hall.  I went to have a nosey on Monday and I was greatly disappointed.

Instead of a whole building, the library is now two small rooms.  Each genre now has a shelf or two, rather than a whole aisle.  Fiction consists of a few rows of small shelving, housing crime, romance and horror (that's it!).  The second room has three computers squashed up against the non-fiction which consists of history, true-crime and literature.

That's it.  Honestly, I've never been more disappointed.  If you want to borrow a certain book, you would have to ring up and reserve it, then they will have it shipped in from one of the larger libraries (which are miles away).  This defeats the whole object for me.  When I go to the library, it's because I don't quite know what I'm looking for.  I want to browse the shelves and choose books based on their content.  I might see the title of a book I think might be useful to me, but on flicking through it, it doesn't actually fit my needs.  That's why I like to browse the library.

Now, I have to search for a book online, see if I can get a preview or read reviews, then order it and wait 2-3 weeks for it to arrive at my local library.  I might even find that searching the internet for the information I need is a lot faster than waiting for a book.  This is okay for some people, but I enjoy browsing the library and gleaning the information I need from proper paper books.

To top it all off, the librarian was far from friendly.  I asked her if they might be getting any more crime books in (basically, I was trying to say 'is this it?' without being rude), and she shrugged her shoulders without looking up at me.

I'm hoping if I keep ordering more books and chipping away, they might stock more.  Or is this really the death of Hyde Library?

How do you rate your own success?

How do you rate your own success?  Do you compare yourself to others in your chosen field, or by how much money you bring in?

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about how I rate my own success, or failure as it might be in some cases.  I suffer from depression, and 2014 was a dark year for me.  It meant that my writing slowed, almost to a stand-still which in turn made me feel worse.

After some jiggling about with my medication, I'm feeling brighter and more optimistic.  I felt like I needed to take stock of my achievements and make a plan going forward.

I love a plan.  I'm addicted to lists.  Just seeing those boxes being ticked off, one by one gives me the motivation to carry on and achieve more.  An added benefit of making a plan and taking stock, is that I saw how much I had achieved already.  Even while I was being suffocated by the black cloud of depression I had managed to achieve something.  I sold a few of my books, I took on more editing clients, and I even outlined a novel.  I was making myself feel worse because I was feeling guilty for not writing, where I was in fact, still moving forward and achieving.

I rate my own success by how much I have achieved in the short term.  Every year I write a list of goals, long-term and short-term and evaluate how I did in the previous year.  I always find out I've achieved more than I thought.

Right now I'm working on my next book.  The outline is coming together and my characters are chattering away constantly.  This is a good sign.

As for success; if I get this book drafted by October, I'll consider this a successful year.  If I make progress towards that goal today, I'll consider it a successful day.