I don’t show it often, but I have a big white board (it’s actually white board vinyl taped to the wall) where I sort out my next writing steps.
I let it get a little dated and only updated to show when I finished a How to Revise Your Novel section. Note that this link leads to her class but is NOT an affiliate link.
For each section of the class, I wrote the completion date.
Here’s a photo of the outdated version:
You can see where I petered out and started working with beta readers.
The first draft was completed in November 2019:
Now that I’m further along in the process, I decided to redo the board. I wiped it clean except for the permanent marker guidelines I put it in and went to work.
The first section used to be for short stories, but I haven’t been writing any lately, so that got wiped and turned into a scene by scene break down of have-I-or-have-I-not revised this scene.
The second area is allocated to planning and outlining the second novel in this series. I sorted by the rough idea, a scene by scene outline, and a Holly Lisle check on the scenes to make sure they’re a complete scene. I do this in advance because then I’m not wasting time later trying to fix it.
The third was allocated to the first draft of my second novel. I sorted it into 5,000 words sections so it didn’t get out of hand.
The final section was all personal goals.
So this is what it looks like now:
It was a lot of work, but it does give me a chance to look at what I need to do next and motivate myself. I know a lot of Kanban boards use sticky notes on them, but there simply isn’t enough space on mine.
Checklists don’t work well for me, but I like this system so far.
How do you organize your writing, or if you don’t write, how do you order your tasks? How do you ensure you get everything done? Inquiring minds want to know!
