Shadow Side of the Spreadsheet Queen

This week's topic in ye olde Bordello is Keeping Track of all the details: spreadsheets, databases and coffee-stained notes.

Maybe it's autumn, with the whole back-to-school vibe going, but I did a post on my personal blog just last week for a friend's Get It Together blog hop. I revealed a whole bunch of my Secret Spreadsheet Superpowers in "Lessons from the Spreadsheet Queen." 

Guess I should have checked the Word Whores calendar, huh?

So, recapping my progress count spreadsheets and so forth this soon would be a little much. As for story notes... that's where I go all about-face, much as I do with my actual writing. As detailed, precise and relentlessly linear as much spreadsheets are, my writing and note-keeping is equally extreme - in the opposite direction. I satisfy my left-brain self with the numbers, which seems to free my right-brain self to create. I am NOT the keeper of the detailed series bible. It's a bit embarrassing, actually, when people at panels and such ask about my process. Not only do I not have an outline, I pretty much keep a single Word document that I dump all notes and ideas into. When out and about, I put notes in my phone or tablet, then type them into the Word doc later. I use a system of highlighting to note which I've addressed or how I feel about them later. Sometimes, particularly late at night, I leave myself sticky notes, that mostly conspire to make me wonder what my bedtime brain was thinking. Once I found one in the morning that said:

HUMANS??

Yeah - no idea on that one.

Mostly my notes are pretty cryptic. Here's some from the doc I kept for THE TALON OF THE HAWK. I don't think they're too spoilery if you haven't read it yet. If you have read it, the sharp-eyed reader might note what I did and didn't use.

Uorsin needs to pet her too – abuser who both rewards and punishes

Bring in opposing armies to encircle Ordnung, taking advantage of internal weakness – Ursula uses them to liberate.

Which way Danu’s breath blew

Danu stacked the challenge deep

Go back – Ash has worked with Rayfe, they know each other well.

Add in sorcerer to cover their approach.

Andi has letter from Uorsin? In collusion with Terin?

She presses lips together

 I would explain how the highlighting/font color works on this, but I don't recall. I use a different system with each book, just to keep up that delightful non-linear randomness! (And because I can't help myself.)

I also want to talk a bit about this very fun anthology I'm in with these amazing other authors. I've said before, but I don't feel like I can say it enough times - one of the very best perks of becoming an author is getting to hand with other authors. Being in an anthology with some of my writing heroes? TOTAL THRILL!

I put the cover above so you can see. The collection is DARK SECRETS: A PARANORMAL NOIR ANTHOLOGY. My contribution is a retelling of The Goose Girl. The others are an amazing range of cross-genre takes on the gritty and grotesque side of the paranormal, from the inimitable Megan Hart's deal with the devil story to Rachel Caine's crafty ways with ghost stories.

It comes out September 29, but it's available for preorder now! At 99 cents, it's quite the deal. I'm reading it all again this holiday weekend. :-)

Google play

All Romance eBooks

Kobo

Amazon

Tools to Track Your Word Count Goals and Averages

Yes, word-count lovers, it's that time of year!

Because we're into the second half of NaNoWriMo (or National Novel-Writing Month, for the uninitiated), the Word Whores are gathering around the table and throwing down on the topic of Word Counts: Goals and Averages.

Our table is draped with a red-velvet tablecloth and has a very large jug of wine in the center. James looks disconcertingly like Walter White as he gives us his "I'm a word-producing machine" stare-down. KAK, resplendent in her pimping purple, spills a bit of wine from her goblet as she gestures while talking. Linda is strumming her guitar and listening, nodding along, while Allison shuffles her ever-expanding novel that just might be reproducing as we sit there. Marcella, with her laptop open, is still searching for that article on improving performance, while her tea steeps and Veronica mutters something about faffing and refills KAK's glass.

This is the group I'm calling to order.

*Ahem*

~starts Power Point presentation~

 

This is my Excel Workbook that I call "Progress Count." I review and add to it every single day. I have tabs to track my priorities, my overall word count (which includes blogging and writing for other promo) and a sheet for each book that is not yet in the can - meaning totally through copy edits and finalized.

 I've been summarizing my weekly word count totals since October 2012, so a little over a year now. I tracked them before, but didn't save the totals. I thought I might see a pattern in my productivity and I have. This is heavily impacted by periods of revision and developmental edits (as in April, May and late September), but I haven't figured out a way to separate that out. I would likely have to track drafting apart from revising and I'm not sure I care that much.

I reset my "clock" every week so, this being Sunday morning, my slate is clean. My Word Whores blog post is always my first set of words for the week. No matter what else I'm doing, I go for a minimum word count of 1,000 new words each day.When I meet those interim goals the yellow boxes that say "Not Yet" turn to a happy green "Yes!"

 I've also been tracking my monthly totals since October 2012. November is, of course, in progress. Again, some months are hit more heavily by revision time. Still I do have a fairly regular pattern of higher word count pulses followed by lower word count months.

 Here's my progress so far for November 2013. I measure my percentage reached of 50,000 words, since that's the NaNoWriMo barometer. Right now we're 57% through November and I'm at 65% of 50K, so my progress box is a happy green.

 I track all of my contracted books with the Priorities spreadsheet. Working back from multiple deadlines, I figure how much time I have for drafting, cooling time, revision, CP review, incorporating comments and polishing. After that, editing timelines depend entirely on my publishers, so I don't even try to track those.

 I work with the three-act structure and, figuring out from my projected finished word count, I estimate where the major climaxes will occur in the word count. Then as I draft, which I do from beginning to end, I can get a better feel for how the in-progress structure compares to the predicted one and I can revise my timelines if the book seems to be coming out longer or shorter than I thought it might.

 Nothing yet today, but this section will track my word count for the day and the rest of the week.

 I like incremental goals, so this shows me how I'm progressing. Right now I'm working at 2,450 words/day to meet a drafting goal of done by 12/14. I'm doing decently in that I only have to get 1,972 words done today to be on schedule, but I'll go for the full goal. That gives me padding for bad days. And Thanksgiving.

That's tighter than I like, leaving me only 11 days to revise and meet my 12/25 deadline, but it's doable.

Finally, I can always refer back to my annual goal for daily word count. I've written 417,990 words so far this year, which already has me at over 1,000 words per day for the year, even if I stopped now. We're on day 321 of the year, so that's even better, giving me an average of 1,302 words per day. Let me meet my Christmas deadline and I shall be very happy!

I think the Word Whores have all fallen asleep, except for James who's been surreptitiously writing all this time. But if you want a copy of the presentation - or a blank template of my Progress Count workbook! - let me know in the comments. Also, I'm happy to answer questions - I know this was a fast presentation.

I'm off to turn some of those boxes a happy green.

The Disorganized Word Whore's List

How to managing multiple projects? Anyway you can. I don't say this to be cavalier. I say this because I'm the organizational polar opposite to Word Whore Jeffe. Spreadsheets are instruments of the devil. But like Jeffe, I dislike crunch time - those last minute pushes to complete something. The curse is that I'm good at crunch time. The problem? It comes with a price and not just one that impacts me. My family pays, too. And that's not fair. So while I'm pathologically allergic to spreadsheets and a particular type of organization, I do my damnedest to be the tortoise, NOT the hare.

The Less Organized Word Whore's List for How To Manage Multiple Partne. . .Projects:
1. Ritual - create a place where all you do is work on writing. I admit I get a little anal about it. Same begin time, same end time, same place, same chair, same tea. It's a great big hand reaching into my brain to flip the switch from 'the rest of my life' to 'creating now'.

2. Goals - Know what you want and when you want it by. Here's the big thing I struggle with - I'm good for a promise I make to other people. I am not quite as good with promises I make to myself. Why is that? What message have I absorbed that makes me less worthy of keeping a promise to? If you're not keeping the deadlines you set for yourself, this may be your issue, too. Examine it. Figure it out. Fix it. Recruit professional help if need be to work through that. This is the one place where those evil spreadsheets seem to help. My CPs set up a shared spreadsheet where we all input our daily word count goals and then what we achieved. Something that simple has made it easier for me to keep track of when and where I'm failing to keep my promises to myself. I can subsequently get back on track.

3. Lists - Usually, when there are multiple projects to be managed, the bulk of them are in my non-writer life. There are cats to get to the vet. Parents in hospitals (two this past week - it's been a messed up week - both are fine, thanks.) Groceries to get, gas to put in cars, doctor appointments, bills to pay, clients to call. But occasionally, I'm trying to get word count on one book while an editor is awaiting rewrites on another book. My lists go by the week - Monday to Sunday. So as a list of deliverables grows for the week, I can see at a glance whether I have the bandwidth to ADD extra hours at the computer for the rewrite, or if I have to set my word count goals aside. Something I can easily do because while Jeffe's 'Half Again' rule is excellent, I liked the Star Trek model - you know - Captain Kirk asking Scotty if he always inflated his work estimates by a factor of four. Scotty answered that of course he did - how else could he preserve his reputation as a miracle worker?)

So far, this system has worked well, even as I work to increase my productivity on a slow, steady basis. Granted, I have a prioritization system, too, one that resembles KAK's but it's much shorter. 1. Keeping life in the living 2. My sanity 3. Everyone else's sanity 4. Everything else in the world is gravy.

The prioritization system gets applied to everything on my list. Amusingly, vacuuming on a regular basis is a P1. Cause if the floor crunches beneath my feet? Someone's gonna die. But look. Writing isn't a priority 1 in my system. It's a P2.

I *treat* it like a P1 as long as I can, but when the phone calls about the parental medical emergencies came in, I could drop my writing schedule back to P2 and deal with the family issues. By treating writing as a P1 when I can, I develop a habit. Something that's easy to get back to so I can pick up where I left off in a story. Or a rewrite.

In the end, I think back to acting school and something my teachers all said. "If you can do anything else besides acting, you should." It turns out, I *could* do something besides act. Lots of things, as it happens. But the one thing I can't NOT do? Write. Even if I never published again. Even if no one ever read another word of what I wrote. The stories have to escape the confines of me. If they don't, I'm only half living.

If the stories start to drown you, too, when you aren't writing, then it won't matter how many projects you have going concurrently. You will find a way to juggle them all. Your sanity and your life may depend on it. I hope you'll tell us how you do it. Coping skills enrich us all.

Jeffe's Five Tricks for Juggling Multiple Projects and Deadlines

This time of year, all of my flowering vines blossom, like an end of summer special treat. They'll be the first to go when we get a frost, so they are all the more fleeting for that. Transient and precious.

Speaking of which, Dear Author is giving away three copies of Ruby.As of this writing, the giveaway ends in 36 hours, so hie on over if you're interested.

A lot of people seem to be out enjoying the long weekend - the three-day Labor Day Weekend, here in the U.S. and the traditional end of summer. All the kids are either back in school or headed that way. The academic types are kicking into the new semester. For many, this weekend is the last hurrah - camping, boating, barbequing.

For me?

I'm planning to write 8,000 words, review four sets of copy edits, critique two emergency contest entries and finish reading a critique partner's (CP) book.

Would I rather be out playing? Sure, on some level. Part of me wishes I could park myself on a lounge chair under an umbrella, drink adult beverages and read for pleasure. Except I also know I can't afford that time right now and, in the end, I'll be happier to get my work done. Having an extra day off the day job is like a gift of time.

And this, my friends, is how I do it. This week's topic is: Juggling Multiple Projects & Deadlines: How to Do It Well.

I was about to type that I'm not sure how well I do this, but then I checked myself. In a rush of self-congratulation, I have to say that I think I do juggle multiple projects and deadlines with a fair level of skill. But wow - it's been an acquired skill. So many things interest me that I want to do them ALL. Along the way, I've learned tricks to keep all those balls in the air.

#1 - Organize, organize, organize

Okay, you laugh, because you know I'm the Spreadsheet Queen, but I'm a huge believer in keeping organized as the key to getting it all done. I remember a time back in grad school - lo, these many moons ago, when computers were kept in a special room and we didn't have them on our desks, much less our laps - when I drew an enormous calendar on the blackboard over my desk in the lab. I plotted out my exams, both the ones I was taking and those I was giving, research, and various other projects. One of the professors walked by, shook his head and said "looks like displacement activity to me." But he was wrong. Making those calendars enabled me to plan my effort and keep on track.

Now I use Excel. I've written before about how I track wordcount. That's part of an overall effort to keep myself not just producing, but producing on schedule. In my Progress Count workbook, I have a tab called Priority List. I have all of my active projects listed there, from those proposed to in copy edits (the final stage of editing) - right now there are 13, though two are back-burnered - with columns for tracking. I note current status, next step, next step deadline, which is up to bat, what's on deck, estimated time required for the next step and the dates for delivery. Right now I have deadline dates ranging from 9/4 (those copy edits) to June 2015.

When a publisher asks me when I can deliver a proposed manuscript? This is the spreadsheet I go to.

#2 - Slow and Steady Wins the Race

I never used to be this way. Ask my mother. When I was in high school, I drove her CRAZY because I was always completing projects the night before they were due. I was absolutely one of those people who needed deadline pressure to get my off my duff and seriously working.

And I hated being that way.

The thing is - that deadline pressure that gets you moving? It's stress. The adrenaline response to that atavistic fear of HOLY SHIT, THAT TIGER WILL EAT ME IF I DON'T RUN LIKE THE WIND is what gets you moving. However, nature intended this to last long enough to get us the fuck away from the tiger. Not to last for our entire adult lives. Being under constant stress was bad for my health. More, it sucked in a big way.

These days, my incremental wordcount plans and spreadsheets are all designed to keep me balanced. If I do everything right, then I can get my work done - steadily moving forward every day - without stressing about it.

#3 - I Am Always Under Deadline

I don't quite get it when writers say things like "Oh, I can't do that because I'm under deadline." This makes no sense to me, because, ever since my third book, I've had deadlines. Now, as I noted in #1, I have eleven deadlines. Even before that, I used self-imposed deadlines to keep myself on track. See #2. Aren't all professional writers always under deadline?

Sometimes I think that, when people say this, they mean that they're feeling the deadline pressure. That they've glimpsed the tiger or feel its breath hot on their necks. To me, this is more saying "I'm under the gun." And sure, that happens. With these copy edits, they came in late last week and I hadn't known when they'd come in. Some publishers - it seems the bigger they are, the worse this is - don't tell you when edits will arrive. And when they do, the turn-around they expect can be unreasonably short. Often this is because the tiger is hunting them and they're tearing through the woods hoping to escape with their lives. I mean, jobs.

#4 - The Half-Again Rule

Okay, so, for my day job I work for an environmental consulting firm. We're forever tasked to estimate Level of Effort (LOE) to complete a job. This means both hours and dollars. It's not easy. Worse, if you underestimate, your project runs over and the company ends up eating the loss. Which makes the bosses UnHappy. (And they turn the tigers loose.) Quite some time ago I learned the Half-Again Rule and it has saved my tender hiney from the tiger more times than I can count.

The rule is very simple: Estimate how long you think a task will take and add half of that to it. So, if I think I can write my novella in 30 days, I plan for 45. Easy peasy. This allows for all the Unexpected Things. Like sick days, or goof-off days (hey - they happen!) or family celebrations or tragedies that demand your time. Or if your New York editor says "can I have these revisions back in 24 hours?" Don't laugh - that's happened to more than one friend.

Pad that schedule with the Half-Again Rule. You will never regret it.

#5 -  Deadlines Are Tools, Not Weapons

By all of this, I'm saying - juggling projects and deadlines is about planning, not panicking. I believe strongly that "I'm under deadline" should not be synonymous with "I'm under the gun." A deadline is a date on the calendar. It lets you count the dates between then and now (Excel even has a function of =TODAY() that you can plug into formulas for this very purpose) and figure out how much work you have to do each day to reach that goal. Number of words divided by number of days (plus half-again!) will tell you what you need to do.

Work the tool and no one will hold a gun to your head.