Since I retired from teaching, one of the silly things I have really missed is stationery. Sad, I know. But I love stationery. And, if you want to be organised in your writing life, you could do worse than develop a love for it

Let’s dispense with the ‘goes without saying’ stuff first: pens (in different colours), highlighters, posit notes, somewhere to keep your writing other than your main computer. Make these things part of your life if they are not already. And yes, I think you do need pens in different coloured inks – which I will explain later. 

The next thing that I highly recommend is a ‘to do’ list. I do it in the form of a notebook: have done for years. I put everything that I need to do in there, not just writing stuff. Because, let’s face it, we all do more than write. So we need to know just what we have on our plate each day/week/month. If something must be done on a certain day, I double asterix (**) it. If not, it just gets one. And I mark each one off as I do it. I don’t always get everything on the list done: but at least it is there, I know it is there, and I simply add it to another day. But you have to add it to another day, otherwise it get’s lost in everything else you do. 

The next recommendations are new for me but I think they will work well. Firstly, I have a wall planner – just for writing deadlines. For me at the moment, that really means competitions. But by putting them up on a wall, I can see just how much time I have before each one is due. Which means that I may decide not to enter some of them (which I did today actually). But at least I can see what is coming up. Not much on it yet, I must admit – but the photo was taken on 1st January 2018. 

The other new thing I have done is a diary – just for writing also. Same type of stuff goes into that as what goes on the wall chart – but I also add things like joining organisations, checking competition coming up, any workshops I decide to do etc. It’s a double check on the notebook system – and all I need to put in the notebook for each day is to check the diary. I also have a diary for the pet rescue organisation that I do administration stuff for so I can keep track of what animals are going in/out etc. And ALL of these entries are colour coded – but that me. 

And I’m open to suggestions for refining this stuff as well. It’s all a learning process for me and, I hope, you guys can pick something useful up along the way. But it has certainly kept me focussed to this point. I’ll let you know if it stops working! Lol!

Cheers

Kerry

Categories: getting organised getting organised to write stationery Uncategorized

Tagged as: color coding colour coding stationery

Kerry A Waight - Author

A writer of historical fiction and paranormal stories.