Members Only: Join a writing organization

 Hello, readers! 

At least once a quarter, I stand on top of the bleachers and shout into the gymnasium about the importance, nay, the necessity of writers joining writing organizations. 

Writing is a lonely endeavor, and I don't care how introverted you think you are, writers need camaraderie. And help. And scrolling through writing forums is only going to give you so much. These organizations benefit authors in so many ways. I can only speak for my favorite group, Sisters in Crime, but we offer educational opportunities by the buttload (professional term). Webinars and podcasts--we got 'em. Craft. Marketing. Publishing advice. Amazon ads. Editing. We have a webinar for that. And if we don't, we even give grants to help our members take classes. Want to network? Actually chat with people again? Most writer organizations have regional chapters with virtual events, and almost of them have conferences for writers to network, present, and learn. Some organizations also offer mentorship programs and awards.

Membership dues are typically low. Some may be tiered based on publishing status, but don't sweat that. And don't wait until you publish something to join. Pre-published writers have the most to gain from these organizations. The educational opportunities alone are worth the cost of membership.

And there is an organization for every genre. Historical Novel Society. International Thriller Writers. Horror Writers of America. Western Writers of America. Mystery Writers of America. Romance Writers of America. All the Of Americas. 

There may even be smaller, more regional ones. For example, PennWriters is an group for writers living in Pennsylvania. And just with some googling, I found an organization called Women Who Write, a group in New Jersey. So if a big group feels intimidating, try checking out smaller groups or writing circles.

These groups need young blood, so don't be shy, pay the dues and get involved. Take a webinar. Attend an event and volunteer. It may just be the best thing for your career.

Making the Switch

For the last four years, all of my writing has been done in Word. I came from the corporate world so it was familiar to me. As a whole, I like it and I’ve learned how to use certain formatting techniques to make final edits for both e-book and paperback a little easier. Once I was well into this writing gig, I started hearing about writing programs, such as Scrivener. I was intrigued, but I was comfortable with what I knew. I didn’t want to waste time learning a new platform—and what if it made it more difficult to get my books into their final forms? But, I’m a sucker for a good program and so it stayed on my mind. I figured I’d make the switch after I finished my current manuscript so I wouldn’t have to transition in the middle of a project. 

Well, Christmas came early.

No—I haven’t finished the manuscript yet for that book I told you I’d finish by the end of May. But I did finally get a new laptop. I didn’t realize just how much the old one was holding me back. I kinda feel the way I did back when we made the switch from dial-up to WiFi. Oh, hello, Productivity. I’ve missed you.

I figured since I have a new laptop, I might as well go ahead and download Scrivener. Even though I haven’t finished that epic manuscript yet, I plan to learn how to use it through other projects. Such as this blog post. I’ve always written all my blog posts in Word first and then copied them over to the website to post. I did this because my Internet would often crash at random times and I didn’t want to lose all my work. The other reason is I like to keep a record of all my writing and back it up to my external drive. Anyway, I converted my Word document for this blog into a Scrivener project. This is my first use outside of the tutorial, but my first impression is:

One of the things I’m loving so far is that I can split each topic into a document. And each document is sorted into the year that I wrote them. I can now easily go back and see what I’ve written about before. I often look back over my topics to make sure I’m not just regurgitating the same ideas over and over again. Previously, in Word I’d have to scroll through to find the titles. It was doable, but not efficient. And I like efficiency. Some of you are probably yelling at me through your computer screen/phone telling me that I could just filter down to my posts on the blog itself. Yeah, I could, and I have. But remember my computer problem mentioned above? My connectivity was so poor and sporadic that I got used to working off-line until the last possible moment. Now I don’t have to worry about it. It’s all listed on the left side of this screen.

In the screen shot you can see that I also insert notes to myself in my post draft telling me where to insert graphics. Another thing Scrivener allows me to do is drop images or other document types down in the ‘Research’ section. I’m not yet sure if I’ll use that feature for my blog posts, but who knows. At least I can do it if I want to. 

Another thing I think I’m going to love about Scrivener is the way I’ll be able to keep track of ideas for future blog posts. Back up in that screen shot, you can see I created a section called ‘Future Ideas’. I sometimes write a post I won’t need right away. Like I did for my next BJHJ, which won’t be scheduled until sometime in 2019. I had an idea and didn’t want to lose it, so I went ahead and wrote the post now. I don’t know when Steve will put it on my schedule, so here in Scrivener it can sit nice and safe in the ‘Future Ideas’ category until I know. Then I’ll slot it into the 2019 category when my time is up. I sometimes also draft out other ideas that I don’t know if I want to make a topic or not. I’ll keep a draft of the post or outline until I decide. Again, I’m loving Scrivener for helping me keep it all organized. 

Now, my big challenge is do I want to group all my blogs into this one Scrivener project, or do I want to create one for each blog? I see pros and cons for each. There is no wrong answer, and the cool thing is I can play around with it and try it both ways to see what works best for me. 

Oh, and I should mention that the conversion from Word into Scrivener and splitting each post into a new document was super easy. 

Now I’m off to see how easy it is to transfer this document into Blogger. If you see a well formatted post then you know it went off without a hitch :D 

~ Carrie

Getting Organized

Remember this post back in April? The one where I said I’d be done with my current WIP by the end of May? You may not be surprised to hear I didn’t make that goal. And exactly what I feared would happen did—we’re almost to the end of the year and I’m still not done.

Sigh.

There’s a whole host of reasons it’s still hanging over me, but the bottom line is I haven’t made it a priority. In fact, I haven’t made my writing a priority. Outside of my regular posts here on Across the Board, I can’t remember the last time I posted to my personal blog. And that’s okay because I quit my very well paid, secure job to spend time with my daughter and run our household. Writing was supposed to be the thing that kept me busy when I had nothing else to do. Well, the last few years I’ve had a lot of other things to focus on. Writing got pushed to the background.

Now I’m ready to bring it back to the front. I was ready in April, but what I quickly learned was that it had been so long since writing was my focus I didn’t know how to get organized around it.

Recently, my daughter started talking about bullet journals. She was annoying me with trying to find her a very specific kind of journal, so I finally Googled what this bullet journaling was all about. Here’s a link to the basic concept if you’re not familiar.

During my research, I got to thinking I could use this system for my writing, so I narrowed my research. The result was lots and lots of links out there with suggestions and tips on how to use bullet journals specifically for writing. There’s a short list at the bottom of this post, but if you’re interested I encourage you to do some of your own research. For example, you might want to research bullet journals for your specific genre. And for those of you doing NaNoWriMo, there are even layouts to help you organize your month of frenzied writing.

Over the weekend I ordered our journals (her’s will be a Christmas gift) and I started to brainstorm what I’d put in my writing journal. Below is what I’ve come up with so far. This may change once I get into the journal, but I like having an idea of where I’m going to start.

- 2019 Goals

- 2019 Memory Bank

- Habit Tracker (writing/editing/exercise)

- Word Counts

- Reading Challenges (yearly/quarterly)

- To Be Read (monthly)

- Book Ideas

- Blogging (dates/topics)

- Collections: one for each book to include plot outline, characters, setting, beta/critique group feedback, plot holes, ideas, titles, cover ideas, etc.

- Book Promotion

- Querying and Submissions

I’m already tracking some of this, but it’s all in separate locations such as Word files, printouts, Excel files, and notebooks. One of the standard items in a bullet journal I don’t plan to incorporate is the monthly/weekly calendar. I have another calendar I use that I’ll keep. That calendar gets bogged down with all my mom/home responsibilities and I don't want to mix all that in with my writing life. That’s how I let it get to the back burner in the first place.

I’m hoping that having a specific bullet journal for my writing will keep it in front of me and help me make it a priority. And besides, I’m addicted to journals (remember this post?), so I loved having a reason to buy yet another one. I’m planning now so I can be ready to hit 2019 running. I’ll update you in a later post once I’ve been using it for a while. I should note that if you do some research on bullet journals you’ll find that some can be really creative and involved. I plan to start simple. I don’t need this to be yet another distraction to my writing by spending all my time creating ornate pages...

Oh—and I’m getting a new laptop soon. I really will have NO excuses for not getting back to a regular writing schedule. It’s time to make it my job again, and not just my hobby.

Have any of you used a bullet journal for your writing? If so, what has worked for you? Any tips or advice?

Helpful links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRxbUWy4tj0

https://writersedit.com/fiction-writing/complete-guide-bullet-journaling-writers/

http://www.10minutenovelists.com/bullet-journaling-for-writers/

https://www.somethingdelicious.co/2016/08/bullet-journal-writing-novel.html

https://www.tckpublishing.com/bullet-journal-layouts-for-writers/

~ Carrie