Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Confessions of a Former Plan-aholic

Tip of the Day: organizing one thing in your writing life can lead to a feeling of everything being organized.

Somewhere between college and now, I transformed from:


Color-coded-planner-and-loving-it Chick:

into

Not-quite-sure-what-this-mess-is-but-clearly-it’s-not-

anything-resembling-organization Gal:



I’m still unclear as to how this transformation took place. Or why this lack of organization only applies to tracking my personal life and not my work life.

In a short period I will be ready to query agents again and I’m getting ready by whipping out my trusted electronic spreadsheet and starting to create a sheet to track all my queries. Not only am I hoping it helps combat my inner unorganized self and be a much better system then my last one which resembled the scribbles above, but that it will help me to start treating querying more like I treat my other organized business activities. And for some reason it just feels like being organized with my writing will make it feel more professional.

Here’s to hoping anyway!

And for those that don’t like spreadsheets, I’ve heard www.querytracker.net has a wonderful system to help you keep track of queries. I’m sure other systems of organization work as well. I used to be a fan of note cards back in the day, too, and organized many things that way.

I know there has to be tons of other ways to organize who/when/how/what/response on querying. Any suggestions for blog readers?


--Emily, Miss Awaiting an Agent

5 comments:

Kate Fall said...

I love your tip of the day. It really is true that organizing one thing can make you feel so much better! I'm sure with your electronic media diva skills, you'll come up with a great tracking method. I'd love to find out what it is.

DeenaML said...

I just used an excel spreadsheet. Not the most specific way to go, but it allowed me to access it at home and work.

For my personal life, I'm all about the calendar! I need to see the days laid out together to know how many days I have left to get something done!

Ghost Girl (aka, Mary Ann) said...

Like Deena, I use a spreadsheet, but I used to use a database. It was an apple thing, and I don't even remember where I found it on my hard drive, but it was there. It had addresses and dates and what was sent, etc.

Personal life--can't live without my PDA! My whole life is on that little hunk of metal. Heaven help me if it deep-sixes anytime soon!

Emily Marshall said...

Kate, yep it's amazing what one little thing will do. That's why I'm a fan of the list. Crossing off even one thing makes me feel accomplished :)

Deena, I'm using an Excel Spreedsheet too. Seems to have everything that will work.

And ghost girl, I have yet to discover the PDA. I'm just not comfortable with one, I have to have something physical to write and check off. My husband has one and loves it because he can enter his grades for the classes he teaches and upload them easily.

Lisa Schroeder said...

I tried to use a PDA once and it just didn't do it for me. I don't carry any kind of calendar now, except one at work for appts, and one on the refrigerator, looking at the month, so I can write things down there.

The picture of your beautiful planner makes me want one! :)