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.