Calendars for Productivity

Motivation and the Writing Life, Uncategorized

Woman in a blue top holds a monthly calendar and the post title, "Calendars for Productivity" is superimposed on the top.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Happy 2018!

I’m never much of a fan of resolutions, but I do like making sure at the beginning of each year that I’m organized.

With that in mind, here are the calendars that help me stay organized and on top of everything for the year.  Since a writer’s life intersects with their homelife, there are also calendars listed that help organize my personal life.  If both parts of my life are organized, there’s a hope of retaining writing life-personal life balance.

Production calendar for publishing

You don’t have to overthink this, and it can always be changed!  Plan what you want to accomplish for the year: one book?  More?  Then pencil in those dates on your calendar for completion.  Even better, get on your cover designer’s, freelance editor’s, and formatter’s calendars.  Now you have something to work toward.

My cover designer always designs a book ahead for me.  This ensures that I don’t run into any scheduling snags.  (I do have to write back cover copy for a book that I haven’t written yet.)

Editorial calendar for blog (I use OneNote)

I used to put my blog’s editorial calendar on my Google calendar, but I found it more difficult to see upcoming posts and to make date changes.  Now I use a page in OneNote (you could just as easily use Word).

Again, try not to overthink this.  This is simply a place where I can list ideas for posts and resources to write them (or at least a note as to where my mind was going when I came up with the idea in the first place).  I list all the dates that I blog and then put the ideas/blog titles beside them.  This way I never feel as if I’m at a loss for what to post.Continue reading

Twitterific Writing Links

Twitterific

Bluebird with beak open and 'Twitterific Writing Links' by ElizabethSCraig superimposed on the image

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Twitterific writing links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 43,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.

Have you visited the WKB lately?  Check out the new redesign where you can browse by category, and sign up for free writing articles, on topics you choose, delivered to your email inbox!  Sign up for the Hiveword newsletter here.

Happy New Year!

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Twitterific Writing Links

Twitterific

Bluebird with beak open and 'Twitterific Writing Links' by ElizabethSCraig superimposed on the image

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Twitterific writing links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 43,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.

Have you visited the WKB lately?  Check out the new redesign where you can browse by category, and sign up for free writing articles, on topics you choose, delivered to your email inbox!  Sign up for the Hiveword newsletter here.

Happy Holidays to all who celebrate.   I will be taking a blog break until I return two weeks from today for an especially long Twitterific that will include my top shared links for 2017.

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Creating ‘Best of 2017 Tweets’ Posts

Promo Tips, Uncategorized

Man standing on mountain top with arms stretched out and post title, "Creating 'Best of 2017 Tweets' Posts" is superimposed on the top.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I posted on this last year, but I thought it was worth another mention.  If you’re on Twitter, it’s pretty easy to find your best-performing tweets of the year and retweet them (I like to add a hashtag like ‘TopTweets2017′).

There are a few good things about doing this.  For one,  you can revisit content that’s proven popular for your followers on Twitter.  For another, if you share other authors’ posts, it gives you the opportunity to highlight their content again, providing networking, along with goodwill.  It can also be nice to stay active on social media during the holidays without being constantly online…simply schedule your top tweets using a service like Hootsuite or Buffer.Continue reading

Sleep Better with a Shutdown Routine

Motivation and the Writing Life

Sleeping orange cat on the right with the post title, 'Sleep Better with a Shutdown Routine' superimposed on the left.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I am a horrible sleeper, and I always have been.  One of my earliest memories is of  watching a backlit, analog clock for hours and hours waiting for the little hand to get to seven and the big hand to twelve (my parents didn’t want me running around the house before then).  I must have been three.

One of the reasons  I sleep poorly is that my mind is spinning with things that need to get done.  I’m frequently so busy during the day that my brain doesn’t have time to process upcoming tasks until I’m finally lying down.

I’ve realized for a while that I sleep better if I review my calendar before going to bed (making sure that I won’t wake up in the middle of the night wondering if my dental appointment was for the morning or the next day).  I also sleep better if I do a brain dump of upcoming tasks: everything from errands to housework to writing to promo.  Then I organize those tasks into a to-do list (more on my to-do lists in this post).

I hadn’t thought of a name for this process, but author assistant Mel Jolly recently referred to it in her newsletter as a ‘shutdown routine.’

What I especially like about Mel’s approach is that she has instituted a sort of ‘office hours’ setup at her house.  She’s not always available nor always working on something.  I’ve found that one of the troubles of being a working writer is that I might still be playing around with something at nine o’clock at night.

Mel states:

(You need) something to tell your brain that it’s time to rest now and that there’s no need to keep thinking about work. You’re on top of everything, even if things didn’t get done, they’re on the list. You’ve checked your calendar and you know what’s coming up next.

I like the thought of the last check of email, the last look at the calendar.  I like feeling that I’m on top of everything and that I can pick up where I leave off the next day.

As an additional part of my shutdown routine, I shift anything that didn’t get finished that day to the next day’s to-do list. That way I make sure that nothing falls through the cracks.

Do you have a shutdown routine?  How’s your sleeping? :)

[bctt tweet=”Use a shutdown routine for a better sleep habit: ” username=”elizabethscraig”

Photo via VisualHunt

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