Writing Planner Thoughts

I've been rethinking my writing planner lately.

The big one I'm using is a 7x9 dashboard planner and I don't like the order of the days. Instead of going down and then across, it goes back and forth on the across side. This means I have to buy stickers to cover every single week.

I'm not the only user of this planner who has had trouble with the layout. Others on YouTube have complained about it and also reorder their days like I do.

But stickers get expensive and the best bang for my buck is a small business in Ohio, I believe. And the post office is a major headache. My last order went missing on March 31st (after being mailed on March 24th) and then it sat with no updates. I filed a missing package report on April 7th and nothing.

After waiting for a while longer, I contacted the small business and she sent out a second order. And then on April 23rd, the original package was finally delivered and I had to refuse delivery to get it returned to the woman I bought the stickers from. Not fun at all.

I'd been testing out a different planner to be my writing planner. This one is a pocket size Tomoe River Paper planner with a horizontal weekly layout. It's not bad, but it's too small for the circles that I color in for every 250 words I write. With ADHD, I'm very reward oriented, and yes, coloring in circles is a reward. Go figure. :-)

The plus with this planner is I don't need to buy any stickers at all. The minus? there are a bunch of blank pages at the back that I'm not using. So now I'm not going to be able to throw away the planner at the end of the year because I can't waste that paper, and yet it's not something I need or want to use. If I put writing notes in there, I'll just have to transfer them at the end of the year and what else am I going to write in there?

The writing planners other authors have created just don't work for me no matter how much I wish they did. I really only keep track of a few things that help me keep moving forward.

I really am thinking ahead to 2027's writing planner. I know I want one, I just don't know what I want to use. Maybe a bigger version of the pocket planner I'm using if the company releases the horizontal layout in their Core planner, then it will be perfect because Core has almost no extra pages, but it only came out in vertical this year and vertical weekly doesn't work for me.

And yes, sorry, I really am thinking aloud here. I'll stop now. 

Broken Block

Well, well, well. Guess who started knitting again?

A friend was working on a shawl called Nightshift and it looked so awesome that I wanted to knit one, too. I had already purchased the pattern moons ago, so all I needed was the right yarn.

And then there was a big yarn sale on the type I needed for this shawl

I did watch a couple of videos on how to start the shawl and pick yarn colors. The one on how to start the shawl was very helpful.

The picking yarn colors? Well, I still messed up on a couple of choices and they ended up being too close to each other in shade. I decided I can live with it. It's sort of a tone-on-tone thing and transitions into the second part of the shawl, so it's fine.

The best part? It's an easy knit, but not boring. At least I'm not bored. It lets me listen to podcasts or watch television while I knit.

The bad part? I was already way behind on my reading for the year and this made it worse. Now I'm knitting instead of reading.

 

I'm actually a little farther along than this, but this is the last picture that I've taken.

Do I use shawls? Almost never, but I keep knitting them because I'm still afraid of sweaters. I really need to gather up my courage and do a sweater. For real.

Cover Reveal: Wicked Attraction

Newsletter subscribers got the reveal last month, so if you're not a subscriber, head over to my website and sign up on the Coming Next page!

Wicked Attraction is the 2027 release in the Paladin League series!

The pre-order is not up yet. That will go up in June, closer to the release of Wicked Temptation.

Wicked Attraction is Book 9 in the 10 book Paladin League series.

This is Ian "Rusty" Sinclair and Ellis Vandenhoff's story.

We're starting to wrap up the big arcs in this book as we head toward the final story in 2028.

Here is the cover copy I currently have for the book:

He’s a soldier clawing his way back from disgrace.
She’s a scholar desperate to prove she’s more than a prodigy.
Together, they’ll face a mission that could cost them everything.

Special Forces Sergeant Ian Sinclair has fought to rebuild his career and the trust of his team. One wrong move could send him back to probationary status, and he refuses to risk it. The last thing he needs is a civilian complication—especially Ellis Vandenhoff. Brilliant, restless, and bold enough to follow the trail of a centuries‑old treasure map she never meant to find, Ellis is determined to step out of her ivory‑tower life and into the real world.

But her discovery has put her in the sights of Jorge Torres, a ruthless arms dealer who believes the Lost Treasure of Trujillo will secure his legacy—and make him untouchable. Twice the Green Berets have tried to bring him down. Twice he’s escaped justice. This time, failure isn’t an option.

Now Ian’s mission is clear: protect Ellis, even if it means risking the career he’s rebuilt. For Ellis, survival means trusting the soldier whose relentless focus on safety both infuriates and tempts her. As bullets fly and passions ignite, they’ll discover the greatest danger isn’t Torres or the treasure—it’s the attraction that could shatter their defenses and change their lives forever.

Influential

If you're a newsletter subscriber, you've already heard this story, but it's one that makes me smile, so I'm sharing it here, too.

I've talked over and over about how my characters come in and take over the story. I make one wrong move and they go on strike until I do it their way, not what I was planning on doing.

But it gets better.

When my characters come in, I acquire their interests. It's so weird the way it happens.

While I was writing Logan's book, I developed interest in classic muscle cars. Yeah, the person who doesn't care about cars at all, was into muscle cars for about eight months.

Then there was the character in an unpublished work who was into Polynesian dance. Guess who has an entire collection of DVDs with Hawaiian and Tahitian dance?

Now I have characters who play musical instruments and I suddenly have this burning desire to buy an electric guitar. I am not going to do it, even if I did price out the Fender Jazzmaster. Just long enough to see the prices and then I noped out of there.

Because I know the interest will die when the characters leave. Been there, done that, have the DVDs to prove it.

I also have a history with musical instruments that is lengthy and filled with fail, including acoustic guitar when I was in grade school (and piano and viola and drums and more!). I know better than to think this interest in electric guitar is mine.

So I will content myself with giving my characters awesome musical instruments and pass myself. 

Knitting Block

I haven't been knitting very much lately. Actually, not very much for probably a year or so. I was working on these little squares for a blanket, but I kind of got tired of that, and I just never picked anything else up.

But now I want to knit...something. I'm just not sure what.

There was a shawl that I had the pattern for and had bought the yarn for years and years ago, but I realized why I hadn't knit it when I tried to start it. The setup rows are tough knitting and I had issues. I ripped it out and started over so many times, I just gave up.

And then my search for something else to knit fizzled.

I do have a partially completed shawl that I would like to finish, but I can't find the pattern I printed out. I could print out another copy, but the problem is that I keep track of where I am in the knitting by marking off the row with a pen. Without my marked up copy of the pattern, I don't know where I left off.

I have another partially knit shawl, too, but the next section of the shawl is not something I'm excited about knitting, so I've been ignoring it. Maybe I'll try this one? Or maybe I do another search for the marked-up pattern on the other shawl.

Or I could attempt a sweater. Which is something I always wanted to do, but am hugely intimidated by. But maybe this is my opportunity?

Maybe I should just go back to the little squares.