Getting Organised

If you're following me on Twitter you may have seen that I'm using a bullet journal to keep myself

organised. It's not perfect, but I'm remembering to do a lot more things and it's leaving my mind clear to think about writing.

I do not have the best memory to say the least, so I'm glad the bullet journal is working well.

I have now started using it to schedule when I'm writing. I've broken the book down into scenes that I've planned using the beat sheet from Save the Cat Writes a Novel. I cannot tell you how brilliant Save the Cat is and how much I think everyone should use this beat sheet. I have the book and I've been watching the You Tube tutorials and I've learnt so much about storytelling. I'm using a lot of what I've learnt from all the different elements of storytelling in my plan and finding it useful to refer back to my plan when pantsing it doesn't work out.

So, because I have these scenes prepared I know roughly how long my book is going to be. I can plan out which scenes I'm going to write when.

Of course, this isn't going to be a hard and fast schedule with no wiggle room. Creativity doesn't turn on and off because I've planned it out in my bullet journal. But now, I've broken the writing process down into managable chunks. I know how much I need to write to achieve my goal for that day. I know now, without worrying about it, that I will finish my novel before my self-imposed deadline, with room to go over if I need it. s

It's also a realistic plan for writing. I'm probably not going to write during the day, or when my husband suggests TV for us to watch, so I've planned around that and allowed rest times and times for playing with the kids. And still, I should be right on schedule.

Fingers crossed, it actually works and I manage to stick to it. It all went according to plan yesterday, with 5000 words across two scenes added to the WIP.