Planner Lessons Learned: Part Two

On Tuesday, I talked about how I set goals and how my ADHD‑friendly planner system works. Today is all about the practical lessons I learned this year--and the changes I’m making for 2027.

1. I Do Not Need a Pocket Planner

I thought I’d use a pocket planner for appointments, but I always ended up checking my phone instead. The real lesson was that I need to update my phone’s calendar immediately and consistently.

For 2027: No pocket planner. Just my main planner and my phone.

2. My Writing Planner Needed Simplification

The writing planner I created for 2026 wasn’t used the way I imagined. I didn’t do monthly previews, reviews, or any of the extra sections. What did matter was:

• coloring circles (dopamine)

• tracking daily word counts

• tracking weekly word counts

For 2027: I’m re‑dating a monthly Erin Condren planner I already own. I’m decorating it with sticker art--clumsy, imperfect, joyful sticker art--because even though I’m bad at art, I enjoy it. In future years, I might switch to a bullet journal or stick with another monthly EC.

(Not affiliated with Erin Condren; just using what I have.)

3. I Found a Nearly Perfect Planner

I finally found a planner that works for me better than anything else ever has. The weekly dashboard is perfect, and when I need more space, I tip in extra pages (Tomoe River Paper from a 2025 planner I abandoned).

The A5 size gives me room to decorate and still have space for lists.

For 2027: I’m buying this planner again. I may experiment with others, but this one is my foundation.

4. Daily To‑Do Categories Need Space

Midway through the year, I started dividing my daily to‑do list into categories. I loved it, but adding tasks later became a problem because the categories were stacked vertically.

For 2027: I’m splitting the page into quadrants. Top quadrants = categories that don’t change (Exercise, Writing). Bottom quadrants = categories that do change (Life). This gives me room for additions without crowding.

5. Journaling Needs a Smaller Space

I didn’t need the B6 size this year. I’m a little burnt out on journaling, and between my five‑year diary and my journal, things feel redundant.

For 2027: I’m re‑dating a discounted A6 planner to use as my journal. Smaller space, less pressure.

6. My Gratitude + Currently Journal Is Perfect

I experimented with sizes--Standard TN, B6, A5--and A5 won. It has the height of a Standard with the width I need. The only drawback is stamping out each month because I’m terrible with ink, but I love having these monthly records of:

• what I read

• what I listened to

• what I wrote

• what I was grateful for

No changes needed.

I'll always experiment with planning systems the same way I experiment with new pens, but this is the first year where I really felt as if I had a good handle on my life. The systems as they stand are working and it's a relief. 

Planner Lessons Learned: Part One

Every year I refine my planner system. As someone with ADHD, what works for neurotypical people rarely works for me. I’ve learned that if a planner requires too much structure, too much reflection, or too much “future thinking,” my brain simply checks out. For years I thought this meant I wasn’t a “goals person,” but that wasn’t true--I just needed a different way to set them.

How I Actually Set Goals

The goal‑setting sections in planners? Completely wasted on me. My brain shuts down the moment I try to fill them in. But I do set goals--just not in the traditional way.

Long‑Term Goals: My Kanban Board

My kanban board is where my long‑term writing goals live. Each book gets a column, and each chapter gets a Post‑it Note. If I write more chapters than expected, I add sticky notes. If I write fewer, I toss sticky notes. It’s flexible, visual, and ADHD‑friendly.

Short‑Term Goals: My Planners

My everyday planner has one simple daily instruction: Write. I must write 600 words to cross it off.

My writing planner is more detailed. I have eight circles I can color in--one for every 250 words. If I write 2000 words, I color all eight. While my everyday planner only requires 600 words, the writing planner’s goal is 1000. This is the only habit tracker I use in any planner I own, and it works because it gives me a dopamine hit every time I color in a circle.

Refining My System

Last year I worked hard to create a system that supported my ADHD brain. This year was about fine‑tuning--adjusting what didn’t work, keeping what did, and letting go of anything that added friction.

In Part Two, coming on Thursday, I'll share the lessons I learned and the changes I'm making for 2027. 

Re-Learning

From 9th grade through my freshman year in college, I took German classes. I was actually dreaming in German about the same time I quit, which IIRC someone mentioned is a precursor to fluency. Of course, I didn't know that at the time and 19 year olds shouldn't be allowed to make life decisions. :-) Or at least me at 19 shouldn't have been making these types of decisions. By the time I realized my mistake, the university wanted me to take the placement test again (I'd already taken it before my freshman year because of my 4 years of high school German) and the cost of this test was expensive for a full-time student.

Since then I've entertained the idea of taking German again because it can't be as hard to learn a second time as it was the first, right? But while I did buy a computer-based German language program, one lesson showed me that it was going to be a challenge to relearn. This was at the same time that I was dealing with a house in Minnesota while I was living in Atlanta, aging parents who were still living in Minneapolis, and later, moving, my mom's death, moving my dad in with me, writing, etc. It went on the back burner.

In June, I received an email that I could get two audio programs for one credit, and of course, I went to check it out. There at the bottom of the page was a language learning system. I perked up. One credit would get me lessons 1-5 and 6-10 in German. I decided it was worth a shot.

At the time, I figured since it was audio learning only, I could listen to it in my car while I commuted. But I tried out the first lesson at home one evening and decided it required too much focus and I needed to keep my attention on the road. I decided to keep it to the evenings.

I'm through lesson 2 now and this method seems to be working for me better than the computer-based program did. Words started coming back to me and I was able to understand the rudimentary conversations on the audio. I'm not getting too excited yet. Lesson 2 is pretty darn early in the learning process and things will only get more difficult going forward, but I'm heartened that I am managing to re-learn.

The One Where She Says, "Let's Try Knitting"

With crochet being a reasonable success, I said to myself, "Why don't you try knitting?"

First, let me remind you (or inform sporadic readers who might have missed my original confession) that I am probably the least crafty person you'll ever meet. My mom didn't knit or crochet or do needlepoint or anything like that and all my grandparents were dead before I was six, so there was no on in my family to show me how to do any of these things.

Second, I'll mention my previous attempts at craft-type things were all dismal failures. Knitting was particularly a memorable failure when I was in either junior high or high school. I can't remember which one, just that it didn't go well. The only thing I was worse at--we're talking complete failure here--was sewing.

So when I had the brainstorm to learn to crochet, I didn't expect it to be more than a lark. I chose crochet because I wanted to crochet the tops for kitchen towels so I could have the towel, color, and length I wanted, but I didn't expect to go much farther than that.

Needless to say, I was shocked with how much I enjoyed crochet. The chief benefit was that it helped me tremendously with my anxiety issues and my stress levels were off the charts by January when I took my first crochet lesson. Once I realized this wasn't one of my projects I was going to start and drop, I replaced my cheap hooks with good ones, bought a yarn valet and an yarn bowl, and started creating a stash of yarn.

But Patti, you're saying, what about knitting? This post is supposed to be knitting.

Two things happened that kind of got me going with knitting. The first was that as I was looking for crochet patterns, I'd find super cool patterns that were for knitting. If I couldn't bear to lose them, I'd save them, but I still didn't plan to ever knit myself. Sure, crochet was going well, but that's manipulating one stick. I was pretty sure I wasn't coordinated enough to do two sticks at the same time.

The second thing that happened was that I started a Facebook group for authors, editors, and other publishing-related people who knit or crochet. The group is overwhelmingly knitters and as they shared their work, the desire to try knitting again grew stronger.

I finally decided to give it a shot. After all, if I could crochet now--something I also failed at as a teen--maybe knitting would go better too. And I already had the yarn and assorted yarn things, so it would only be a matter of finding a class and buying a set or two of needles. The straight, metal 10" needles were under $5 so why not?

As it turns out, I enjoy knitting, too, and while I'm a failure at continental knitting--I was like a seal (the aquatic kind) trying to knit with two flippers--I stopped feeling lost when I switched to English style knitting.

I'm still a rank beginner, and I haven't finished my first scarf yet, but I decided to invest in interchangeable needles. I didn't get the real expensive ones, but good, solid, middle of the road needles. So far I've knitted, purled, and made lace. Oh, and when I started the Marly Bird Knit ALong, I learned to do garter tab. At first, it was hard, but after ripping my work out probably six times and starting over, I finally got that, too.

Here is the first half of my first scarf. I'm still working on the second half.

Addicted to Learning

Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I'm addicted to wanting to learn. You see, I have this really bad habit of buying online classes and then not actually doing them. I have computer classes 1-5 to learn Spanish. And German. (Although the German would be more of a refresher since I took it for five years in school.)

I've signed up (and paid for) a ton of classes on Udemy--mostly computer software classes, but a few others as well. I really need to do them. I really should do them. But I don't.

Writing organizations have online classes as well, most of them conducted through Yahoo Groups and I have most of the emails tucked away to read later. Not all of them. I actually did manage to complete some of these, but in all honesty, I have more left to read than ones I already have read.

Free classes--they're out there too and I have them bookmarked on my computer. Somewhere. Free is particularly dangerous because I sign up and then feel zero obligation to do them because they didn't cost me anything. That doesn't mean I'd do them if I had paid for them--it simply means that I'd feel guilty about not following through. :-)

And now I have a new place to sign up for classes that I'm not taking. Craftsy. I did complete the Crochet Basics class, and proud of my accomplishment and wanting to learn more, I started signing up for additional classes. Craftsy also has fed my addiction by wantonly sending me emails letting me know that their classes are on sale. I'm so weak when it comes to learning anyway, but on sale, too? I'm helpless against this double whammy.

I still have hope that I'll get back to these online crochet classes. I only stopped after the first one because I felt as if I needed to complete a few projects and get some experience before taking more advanced lessons. I think this was a good decision. After I finished the first class, I frequently had to refer back to various lessons to remember how to do some of the stitches or other basic stuff. Now I don't have to do that. It's time to move forward and finish another class. Because darn it, I can't keep paying for classes I don't take and I do want to learn all these things. For real.

Taking Classes From Yale

I love learning new things and I have an eclectic range of interests. Over the weekend, I spent some time exploring iTunes U and found some classes from Yale that sounded interesting. The one that grabbed my interest the most was titled Epidemics in Western Society since 1600. First up was the bubonic plague.

I learned something right off the bat. While I knew the plague had hit Europe more than once in the middle ages, I didn't realize that plague had continued beyond that. In fact, there were outbreaks right up to the 20th century, IIRC.

The class comes in an audio version and a video version. I was using the audio version, but the third lecture on the bubonic plague involved artwork of the time and depictions revolving around the plague, so I'll have to go back and watch the video in order to see the paintings that the professor is talking about.

The plague is a particularly fascinating epidemic to me--I'm not sure why--but I've watched a number of television shows about it. The best of the lot was one I saw on PBS about how a certain gene helped the people who survived.

Waiting in the wings are about three or four more Yale courses. I love that the internet has given me (and anyone else who has access) the opportunity to take classes from universities across the world, especially one like Yale. In the past, I've found other classes online like the class on earthquakes from Berkeley and the ones on geography from Stanford.

The best part? I don't have to do the papers or take the tests. I can just learn without pressure. Seriously cool!

Organization Tech

It's no secret that I love taking online classes. I'm always ready to learn something new, and since I'm a geek, who loves to make technology work for me, a lot of the classes I've signed up for are related to some computer program or another.

One of the programs I really would like to learn is Microsoft Access, but it's not an intuitive program at all. For years, it's sat--unused--on my hard drive. I found a class, though, that claims it can teach me Access by comparing it with Excel and I do know Excel kind of well because of my day job. And since this class was on sale, I signed up.

I've hardly gone through any of the lectures yet, so I can't review how well the class is working for me, but I did see the overview of what Access can do, and it could potentially be a great tool for writing. I'd love to create a form for my characters--not only the hero and heroine, but all the secondary characters too. Then I could punch in what book they're from, what their general appearance is, other details I need to remember, and best of all, it would be quickly searchable when I needed the information.

Or how about creating a form to record my book collection? I have more than a 1000 books all listed in a spreadsheet, but once upon a time, I had a form in Microsoft Works that was so slick. I'd love to have that back again. Music collection, movie collection, the possibilities are endless.

But first I actually have to take the class, something I'm notoriously slow about doing even when I'm enthusiastic about one of them. :-/

Language Geek

As a word geek, I've always had an interest in language and linguistics. I even took a linguistics class as a freshman in college. I've listened to several History of English books and podcasts, but recently I found a college-level linguistics class taught by a professor on Audible. There's actually a whole series of different lectures in different disciplines.

One of the lectures was about how languages change through semantic drift and vowels/consonants soften over time. A T becomes a D sound for example. What was really interesting to me, though, was when he discussed Shakespeare.

The professor said (and apologies because I don't remember his name and I'm too lazy to look it up) that if he goes to see a Shakespeare play at the theater without pre-reading it, he doesn't enjoy it and it's difficult to understand what's going on. He talked about seeing the faces of people in the theater at intermission and how so many of them didn't appear to be enjoying the experience. He said it's because the English language has had so much semantic drift from when Shakespeare wrote his plays to now.

As a Shakespeare geek, I'll confess this is true. I always pre-read his plays before I go to the theater because the professor is exactly right--the meaning of words has changed a lot.

The example he gave was Romeo and Juliet. That scene when Juliet stands on the balcony, Romeo on the ground below, and says: "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" He said that we take this as where are you, Romeo and we think it odd because he's right there.

But that isn't what she's saying. According to the professor, in Shakespeare's time, wherefore meant why. What she is saying is: Why are you Romeo? Which makes a lot more sense with the lines that came next about "deny thy father and refuse thy name." She's lamenting that he's a Montague and she's a Capulet, that their families are enemies, that they can't be a normal couple.

I ran into something similar in my Shakespeare class. In Hamlet, he tells Ophelia, "Get thee to a nunnery."

Of course, I took nunnery to mean convent and that made a kind of sense in context. Then I learned that nunnery was slang in Shakespeare's time for a whorehouse. That totally changed the meaning of that scene.

Even today, we see words change their definition. To my great dismay on some things, on others, I think it's a good thing. Like the word decimate. To me it means destroy, more than destroy. It means to all but wipe out the enemy or whatever. And I was corrected by someone who said decimate means to reduce by 10%.

Okay, maybe it meant that once, but look at dictionary.com now. That's a secondary definition, a signal of how the meaning of that word has shifted over time.

This kind of thing fascinates me--like I said, word geek--and I love regionalisms like pop vs. soda vs. Coke, etc. As you can imagine, I'm totally geeking out listening to this audio university lecture series and I have hours more to go. Yea!

Guten Tag

Right before Christmas, I received an email offering a huge discount on computer language programs. This is the same company I bought the Spanish program from and I was impressed with their program, but I'd done the one thing I was afraid I'd do. I stopped doing my Spanish lessons.

But oh, look, German 1-5 is available for way cheaper than I've ever seen it and I want to relearn the German I learned in school.

No, I told myself. Look what happened with Spanish. You really wanted to learn Spanish, too, and you got squeezed for time and never picked it up again. You sure as heck aren't spending all that money on another language until you learn the first one.

Um, yes, I talk to myself. Anyway, I strongly resisted the desire to buy the German language program. Besides, if I really wanted to relearn German, there are podcasts and I still have my old textbooks. (At least I think I do. I did purge a lot of books before moving to Atlanta.)

Days go by, maybe even a full week and I'd think of that offer on and off, but I would repeat the reasons why I couldn't buy it.

And then the company sent out a reminder email and that the offer was only good through Dec 23rd. The added enticement of free overnight shipping was tossed in. You know what happened next.

Guten tag. Ich bin Patti und Sie? Wie geht es Ihnen?

At Random

Kind of in keeping with the education/learning theme from Tuesday, that audio book I'm listening to that mentioned brain acuity had a great suggestion. Set up a random Wikipedia page as your browser home page. This way every time you open the browser, you have a chance to read something new.

The link to do that is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Randompage

I'm going to try this out. It's actually an intriguing idea since I'll never know what's going to turn up and it's an opportunity to expand my horizons in directions I wouldn't think interesting. When I stretch, I usually do end up learning something interesting.

Like the time I was flipping through the stations on television and ran into the show about container shipping. I never expected to actually watch the full hour. What could be more boring than watching a program about shipping goods around the world?

It was riveting. I learned things I'd never considered. I'm hoping for the same thing with the random Wikipedia page. And who knows? Maybe it will percolate itself into an idea some day.

Brain Aerobics

I was listening to an audio book last week that talked about mental acuity and how it declines after we're out of school. The fall off is gradual, and people who've attended for college delay the issue for about a decade, but it happens with subjects you don't use. Like algebra.

I did notice the math decline, but I guess I really don't care much about that. Math was never my best subject and I had to work my tail off to get As in that class. In high school. I never took any math in college.

This is something I hadn't read about before, but I knew it happened. When I considered going back to college I decided against it both times because I didn't think I could study like I did while I was still in school.

(The first time I considered going back was to get a second degree. This was a few years after I finished college. The second time, I considered going back for a masters degree, maybe about five years ago. I ruled that out partly because of fiction writing and partly because they didn't have a part time program in the masters I was looking at.)

But I felt better about all of this when I realized how much learning I continue to do. The audio books I listen to are nearly all non-fiction. There's all the research required as a writer. I've read up on all kinds of things including nanotechnology and M Theory (physics) to name just two topics.

Then there's my decision to take Spanish lessons and I've signed up for Excel classes. Through iTunes U I've taken multiple geography classes from Stanford and an earthquake class from Berkeley. I'm listening to podcasts on the history of English and I have some science podcasts up next in queue. Then there's my constant computer geekiness and how I troubleshoot everything myself--both at home and at work.

I don't do any of these things because I'm worried about my brain atrophying. I do them because I really am a geek. I love learning and I always have. I'm also pretty anal about getting facts right in my books. I figure with these things in my favor, I don't have to worry too much about losing mental acuity. Unless the Spanish Ser form of To Be makes my head explode. And it might.

Dos Cervezas Or Something

A year ago--or maybe longer than that now--I'd mentioned I wanted to learn to speak Spanish. I did some research on the computer programs available and picked the one I thought would do best for me, but I didn't buy it.

You see, I was working on this story with two characters who both spoke Spanish fluently and I was afraid it was one of those things I'd picked up from them. I can't even tell you how many weird interests I've developed because my characters have them. Then, when I'm done with that hero and heroine, the new interest wanes. Rapidly. Since the Spanish software wasn't cheap, I thought I'd let this one stew for a while. Just in case.

I was successful at letting it rest for a while, but I had the software on my wish list and I kept checking the price. Regularly.

Keep in mind that the price per disk to buy Spanish 1-5 was considerably cheaper than buying just Spanish 1 or even Spanish 1-2. The difference was huge enough that I knew I'd be buying the 5 disk set. This also meant that if I didn't follow through and use it, I'd feel like 5 times as guilty.

I managed to resist the urge to buy the software, and the price was a big deterrent. Then, at Thanksgiving, it went on sale. It was marked down $80. I tweeted about it, but the enablers on Twitter encouraged me to buy it.

Despite this, I couldn't quite pull the trigger. Even with the sale, it was still a lot of money. I hemmed and hawed enough that it went back to regular price without my buying it. And for the next week, I regretted this so much that I knew the next time it went on sale, I'd have to buy it.

Not only did the strong remorse help make up my mind, but it had also been more than a year since I'd written anything with my Spanish speaking hero and heroine. Definitely long enough for their interests to leave.

But this was the first time the software had been on sale and I resigned myself to waiting until Thanksgiving 2013.

And then I came home from Christmas in Minnesota and breezed through my wish list. The Spanish software was on sale again for the same price I'd passed up in November. This time I bought it with only a small hesitation.

So far I'm on my third lesson. The first two went relatively easy and I'd hoped my language learning abilities had improved since high school and college when I struggled through German. Lesson three convinced me it wasn't going to be that easy.

It doesn't matter. I'm going to learn Spanish. I have five levels I bought and I'm getting through all of them.

Archaeological Myths and Mysteries

I've been listening to an audio lecture series called Myths and Mysteries In Archaeology. It's given by a professor of archaeology at George Washington University and promised to look at things like Stonehenge, Atlantis, and whether or not aliens King Arthur really existed as well as other topics. The lecture series was a total of 8 hours. Most lectures were about half an hour long, so there were good breaking points in the audio.

The opening lectures covered archaeology in a general sense, giving basic information about the field. I found this part fascinating and picked up a lot of things I didn't know. For a year while I was in elementary school, I wanted to be an archaeologist, but I never bothered to learn much about it and moved on to other dreams.

I think the general information was the first three lectures and then each subsequent lecture covered a different myth or mystery of archaeology. This was also interesting...to a degree.

To say the professor was a skeptic was putting it mildly. She shot down pretty much everything, although she did concede that King Arthur probably was a real person, but maybe just a military leader who became a folk hero or something.

TBH, I didn't expect her to believe much in any of these myths. Traditional archaeology strikes me as very conservative and staid. The professor also did make an effort to include information used by the supporters of these more exciting theories. Unfortunately, though, even as she offered the details, her skepticism came through clearly and it made her attempt to offer both sides seem pointless.

I'll admit that I enjoy some of these outlandish ideas. Hey, I write fiction! And I find them exciting even if they're not true. The professor clearly did not share my sense of wonder as she debunked myth after myth. Her arguments were largely compelling, but it disappointed me anyway.

The professor clearly knew her stuff and laid things out concisely, so that even people who were unfamiliar with archaeology could follow easily. I did listen to the entire 8 hours and it held my interest, although by the last couple of lectures, I was almost able to cite the phrase she used right before she shot holes in any theory that didn't adhere to the status quo in the field. Overall, though, I liked the lecture series and I'd definitely check into more along these lines.

¿Habla Español?

I've blogged before about how I pick up the way my characters speak, that I end up with words that I rarely (or never) used myself...until they came. I've also blogged about how I end up acquiring some of my characters' interests--for a while anyway. Yes, I'm definitely influenced by them and I'm aware of it. Which kind of leads me to my problem.

I want to learn to speak Spanish.

I did some research and found a computer-based program that comes highly recommended. They have a trial lesson up and I ran through that and I did learn. Not perfectly, but I wasn't going as carefully as I would if I was really doing the class.

My problem? I have a hero and heroine who are both fluent in Spanish. What if I'm only interested in learning the language because of their influence? I've had a bunch of interests crop up in the past that waned rapidly after that particular character left.

On the one hand, learning some Spanish would definitely help with this book. I wouldn't be able to use much of the language because I couldn't assume most of my readers would be familiar with it, but I could drop little bits in. At the very least, it would give me a flavor for how people are speaking even if I never went far enough to get good at it.

On the other hand, this program isn't cheap. If I buy units 1 through 5, it's a little over $500. That is a lot of money. I thought about only getting unit 1 and then buying the others if my interest remains, but to buy the first segment on its own costs nearly $180 and unit 2 is well over $200 bought alone. The next bundle is 3, 4 and 5 together. So I do want to continue, I'll be paying considerably more than if I'd bought the full bundle.

So this is my dilemma--do I try to learn Spanish for real? And if I do, do I assume I'd go beyond the first unit? Or is this another character-induced interest that will wane after I finish the proposal for this hero and heroine?

It makes me crazy! I wouldn't mind (too much) spending the money if I really did have an interest in learning Spanish. I believe that education is an awesome thing and that all of us should continue learning long after school is over. However, if this is because of my h/h and I lose interest, I know myself well enough to understand that I'll quit doing the lessons, especially when each one takes over 2 hours and time is so tight for me as it stands.

Now I just need to figure out who is interested in Spanish. Is it me or is it my characters? Sigh.

Childhood Dreams

This summer, not long after I bought my new iPod, I was over at iTunes U and saw one of the top free downloads was called Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. Cool, I thought, and downloaded it. For months now, it's sat on my iPod without my making any effort to listen to it. What kept stopping me? It was an 1:16 minutes long. Yesterday, though, I finally played it--and was blown away.

This is one of the most wonderful, uplifting lectures I've ever heard. I've already listened to it twice and I printed out the transcript--That's how incredible it was.

The lecture was given by Dr. Randy Pausch, a professor from Carnegie Mellon University. You might have heard about him on the national news over the summer when he passed away from pancreatic cancer. Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams has another title, one that it's better known by--The Last Lecture.

Before you think, wow, how depressing was that speech, I can tell you it was the farthest thing from depressing. Dr. Pausch was upbeat and funny. He didn't talk about cancer, he talked about dreams: His own, how to enable others to pursue and achieve their dreams, and what he'd learned. I'm going to recap a couple of things that I found especially important.

...the brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.

Wow! That's just incredibly profound and very true.

I've always wanted to draw. I can see beautiful pencil sketches in my mind, but my attempts at drawing are, frankly, pathetic and I'd do one or two, see the results, and give up. The brick wall there was my lack of interest in practicing, in putting in the time and effort it would take to get good enough because I didn't want it badly enough.

Now let's look at writing. I started my first story when I was in 8th grade and I kept at it no matter what. From time to time, I'd let it lapse, but I always found my way back to it, and if something wasn't good enough, I kept working on it until it was. And if I couldn't fix that story, I'd move on to the next and the next. I was on the school newspaper my freshman year, the school yearbook my Sophomore, junior and editor my senior year. I majored in copywriting at the University of MN. I kept at it. My first rejection in my mid-twenties stopped me for about six months, but then I decided that if the editor thought I wrote two-dimensional characters, then by God, I'd learn and grow and become good at characterization. And one of the comments I get over and over from readers, reviewers, and others is how real my characters seem. I love hearing it.

Brick walls. Check. I didn't want the art badly enough, but I did passionately want the writing and no brick wall stopped me for too long.

So my next piece of advice is, you just have to decide if you’re a Tigger or and Eeyore.

This is something I need a lot of reminders about--attitude. I tend to be a glass-half-empty person and I'm farther toward Eeyore than I'd like, but I can learn and change and grow. I can take a step back when I'm going down the Eeyore path and try to be more like Tigger.

I'm going to stop here, but the entire speech is filled with great life lessons. It's definitely worth a listen and I've been telling everyone and I do mean everyone that they have to watch this video. Most of it is audio, so if you're like me and not able to watch, you won't miss too much. The second time through I saw the graphics and there are some funny shots, so if you can see video as well, that's even better.

You can find the lecture at iTunes U, just search for "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" and it's from Carnegie Mellon. If you don't do iTunes, you can find it on Google Video at Randy Pausch's web page on the CMU site. It's about halfway down the page. There are also links to other videos, the transcript of the speech, and the PowerPoint slides among other things.

Please, listen to this talk. It's that cool!

Character Sketches

Last night, I was chatting with my writing buddy who's doing NaNo with me. She didn't feel like she knew enough about her heroine and we spent about 45 minutes going through and filling out a grid from a workshop we'd both heard. She attended an all-day version and I'd listened to an abbreviated version from one of the RWA conferences. We managed to make a lot of progress before she needed to log off. Before she went, though, she said she just didn't feel like she had a grasp on this hero and heroine like she's had with her other heroes and heroines. I offered to send her my character sketch after I warned her not to be scared by it. :-)

This got me thinking about character sketches. Someone a while back accused me of not being a character-driven writer because I will fill out a sketch when I feel the need to do so, but she was completely wrong. I am a character-driven writer and I always have been. My characters come in as fully-formed people from minute one. They're not flat or cardboard even the first minute they're there. Take Mika for example. She showed up and told me her name and didn't say one more word, but I knew she was mischievous just from that three second interaction.

That doesn't mean there aren't times I don't fill out character sketches. For one thing, the information my hero or heroine passes along might not be everything I want to know. Like most people, there are things they'd rather not talk about and if I don't put the questions to them, I'm not going to find out about those items until I'm writing the book. If I need to foreshadow something, I'd like to know about it at the start instead of figuring it out midway through the book and having to go back and add it later.

Hell, I do whatever I have to in order to ferret out my character's deep and dirty secrets. I'll interview siblings, parents, friends, co-workers, whoever is handy if I have to. I want to know more than what they're open about. And sometimes characters aren't being reticient, sometimes they really have a skewed vision of themselves (and why wouldn't they since so many real-life people can't see themselves clearly either). Talking to other people my h/h know after doing a character sketch gives me a whole knew perspective of the character.

I've also filled them out because I've had characters who lie to me. That doesn't mean they're going to tell me the truth when I put the sketch questions at them, but because I've asked the same questions of characters who have told the truth, I'm better able to gauge when someone is fabricating.

The third reason is a big one--sometimes I proposal won't sell right away and I'll work on other projects between when I put together the chapters and synopsis and when I'm actually able to write the book. (In the case of In the Midnight Hour, it was 2 years between proposal and being able to start the book and in the meantime, I finished 2 other books.)

Or when I end up doing a spin-off book when I didn't plan on it. Eternal Nights spun off of Ravyn's Flight, but I wrote three other books and several proposals between RF and EN. I couldn't remember things from four years earlier when I'd written RF and the character sketches were a life saver, especially for Alex and Stacey who were the secondary romance in both books. Even with the sketches and time lines I'd drawn out, I still had to go back and reference RF a few times, but I shudder to think how many times I would have needed to reread if I didn't have the sketches handy.

Of course, just because the sketches are useful doesn't mean I fill them out on every book. I don't. Sometimes I'll just fill in the facts about the h/h's appearance--height, hair and eye color, age and stuff like that. Other times, I'll fill in parts of the sketch, usually if there are areas where I think I could probe a little deeper than what I'm being told.

Sometimes I don't fill them out at all. I didn't on Edge of Dawn and I don't think I'm going to do it for the WIP either, but then I didn't need to. Logan and Shona are both open characters and I learned a lot about Logan's brother Kel and his heroine while I was working on EOD. In fact, Kel was talking to me while I was trying to write Logan, so not only did I get to know him from his own point of view, I got to know him from Logan's point of view as well. I love the different perspectives and that's been one of the cool things about writing a series is seeing not just different characters from varying viewpoints, but also seeing their society from different viewpoints.