Organization

When I started writing for the first time I hoped that lovely prose and poetry would just spill out, and people would read it and they'd love it and I'd never have to work again. Something like vomiting gold.

Fast-forward many years, and now I'm coming back with a vengeance. I know there's going to be piles of work and very little in the way of epiphanies, but all of that's fine because it's work with a lot of purpose to it.

So just like any other job I need to be organized. Here's a list of tasks to complete over the next month:

-Make up a 'care-packet' for my friends and family. A number of my big-hearted friends have agreed to read and comment on whatever writing I want to send them, and I feel they might appreciate reading my most successful earlier works, as a 'thank-you' but mostly to provide them context for the works to come.

-Start and keep up:

• a list of quotes
• a list of descriptions
• a list of character portraits
• a list of story ideas
• a list of miscellaneous brick-a-brack. Stuff in its elemental form, ye ken.
  

-Type in all of the stories and poems I've only written in longhand (I write longhand first for most things--Computers often make me think 'academic writing').

-Edit all newly-typed works


This is pretty much in order of importance, and all of it comes after the 1000 or so words I'm writing six days of the week.

Later on I'll start studying the fiction market again, learning what magazines might purchase my stuff, then reading each of them thoroughly. But I need to get an organized structure to how I relate to my craft before I can even think about publishing. By the time I'm fully organized, in six months or so, I might have the first new stories ready to send out.


Regarding the lists: I'm not yet sure where to put them, or how to keep them updated. I don't want to find that I spend all of my writing time updating my lists (or blogging about my writing). I want lists that I can easily update, easily add to, and easily garnish from. Tall order, eh? It's surprising there's so many good creative arts programmes for making art, but so few for brainstorming and embellishing . . ..