Want to jump start your writing habit, and turn it in to something sustainable and consistent? Draw some boxes, and then, number and label them. Simple steps.
For a long while now, I’ve been the proud supporter of the larger than life Post-It – i.e. I trek to the office supply store once a month and buy a pad of these gigantic rectangles. I come home and then I use the sticky stuff and up it goes on the wall in the kitchen. Every day, I put a family to-do list on it, and included in that list are all of my tasks for the Book Writing World, my responsibilities as blog editor, my commitments to the craft and workshop classes I’m enrolled in, and the art-a-day challenge I started more than a year ago.
Lately, though, it hasn’t been enough to have the list going – I’ve doubled and tripled the sheets (especially while I was preparing to move across these United States), and I’ve forced myself to write in smaller font. ☺ I simply cannot cross off all of the items on the list by the end of the day, and that sense of accomplishment isn’t springing forth.
I have been experimenting a bit and have stumbled upon a visualization technique that just might do the trick, so to speak. In addition to my daily “to-do” list, what I’ve started doing is creating a makeshift calendar. An entire month before me is too much and one day at a time is too little, but a single week’s days, side by side, really do work. I make five boxes on a single sheet of paper and number them with the date (for example, this week’s boxes started with Mon., 10-15) in the corner – I cannot vouch for the weekends because it is soccer season and I’m the harried mother of three kids who play sports. Then I label each box: on this day I will do x, and on this day I will do y, and if I’m not finished, then I have until Friday (and my trusty Sharpie that makes a lovely pointed arrow) and off I go.
This week has been stellar so far, I have made my to-do list and am working on the concept map for my latest work of fiction. I have mapped out how much I need to do every weekday in order to finish by Friday. Here’s hoping.