Oh great, another new-year new-me newsletter
Well, sort of
For the last few years, I’ve been in a state of (seemingly!) endless and overlapping deadlines. I mean, I’m not anymore. I’ve mostly fulfilled my contracts and now it’s a matter of the books releasing. And while that deadline state is a state I’m desperately relieved to be out of — it’s also one I’d desperately like to get back into. Writing as a job is filled with strange and contradictory feelings.
But because I’ve shifted into this different phase — one with first drafts and a thousand possibilities ahead — I’ve been thinking about what I can do for my writing: how I can enjoy my time more, recapture lost focus, and work with varying energy levels rather than working in spite of them. I want a routine, but I want freedom within that routine. And mostly, I want to be able to write like I did years ago, before I became my own unpaid PR and social media person,1 and before publishing began to creep into every part of my day.2
So here’s what I’m doing.
Stepping back from socials
Over the years, I’ve (somehow!) allowed myself to develop a lot of unhealthy habits and coping mechanisms. I’ve made strides in fixing some of them, largely by using Screen Time on my phone to limit the amount of time allotted to social media apps. And years ago, I quit Twitter.3
When I did that, I did not feel immediately free. Instead, I found myself reaching for my phone. To check my notifications. To see what was going on. I realized I was doing it whenever I needed to stop and think about my book — but I wasn’t thinking about my book. I was thinking about whatever was happening on Twitter. That was when I began to understand the cost to my ability to focus. Instead of working out a story snarl, I was simply allowing myself to become distracted. And that distraction had become wired into my brain.
It took months to stop wanting to look, but eventually, I managed to reclaim some measure of focus. My hand no longer reached for my phone before my brain realized what was happening. Finally, I could feel those pathways closing off, growing wild with my own thoughts once again.
But that didn’t mean I was cured. Other things were able to take the place of that habit.
When I created a TikTok account, I felt those old pathways clearing just the same as before. I wanted to scroll scroll scroll. My hand reached for my phone, even knowing my ten minutes were already up. Social media was doing exactly what it was designed to do — keep my attention. I experienced the same trouble with Threads.
So I deleted those apps from my phone: Threads, TikTok, BlueSky.4 And then I found the setting on my computer to limit the time I spend on on the desktop versions of those platforms, because I know myself.
Honestly, that’s the main thing. Taking a huge step back from social media. As you can probably tell, it’s been on my mind for a long time. I only waited until after DAWNBREAKER released because I didn’t want to regret not giving the book the best chance possible. But by then, I already knew social media wasn’t going to make a difference. It was only causing more mental clutter than I could keep up with.
This, as you can imagine, is not my first attempt to get my life sorted. Over the years, I’ve learned how to lay traps for myself — the good kind of trap — to get things done and make life easier for Future Me. Like setting out breakfast stuff before I go to bed — so it’s harder to forget in the morning.
A few things I’ve been doing or have added recently:
Hydrate better: I set up three timers to remind myself to finish the water I have and go get some more (usually I don’t need this, but sometimes I do)
Exercise regularly: for me, it’s walking and light weights
Removed a bunch of unused apps from my phone
Unsubscribed from newsletters (that I didn’t subscribe to intentionally — this happens a lot to me!)
Signed up for informed delivery so I don’t have to check my PO Box in person
Cleared out blurry photos, unneeded videos, and random screenshots of my phone’s home screen
Turned off all pop-up and sound notifications on my computer and phone (except for texts and calls); why Photos ever needs to notify me of old pictures I took, I will never understand
Look at the birds: last year, we got bird feeders, and every morning I spend time watching the local wildlife gather at what we call Phil’s Diner (Phil is a chickadee; he was the first bird to come eat here)
Used a cloud-connected calendar for appointments, birthdays, and deadlines, so those dates show up on both my phone and my computer
Added tasks (including reoccurring tasks, like exporting my email list, sending quarterly estimated tax payments, etc) to a digital to-do list
Take notes about what I do throughout the day, from word count to vacuuming to a call with my agent
While those are all things that have helped me so far, there are still a few more things I want to add over the next few weeks:
As I mentioned above, I keep . . . whatever the opposite of a planner is. I just track what I’ve done and sometimes write a bit about how I felt throughout the day. I start a new notebook at the beginning of every year and the only plans I’ve written in them come at the beginning, which I break down into two categories:
MUSTS and MAYBES, as seen here in my 2021 notebook.
The MUSTS are contracted works, and I have all the steps I could possibly reach by the end of the year included.
Every time I complete one of those milestones, I give myself a star sticker. As you can see above, I didn’t get a star for DAWNBREAKER edits, bonus edits, or line edits. Nor did I get one for pass pages on MY IMAGINARY MARY. So I just rolled those over to the next year.
For MAYBES, I do the same thing with projects that aren’t contracted. Those get milestones like develop worldbuilding and characters, outline, draft, revise, give to my agent, submit. Sometimes there are a lot of MAYBEs because I don’t know what I’ll be able to work on. For 2023, I knew it was going to be a busy year and I don’t think I added any!
Separating the MUSTS and MAYBES helps me prioritize without putting hard deadlines on something before I actually know when those deadlines might fall. Publishing timelines change, and this allows me to be flexible. As you can see above, where I didn’t get to everything!
This system has worked well for a few years now. Next year, I think I’m going to try to add to it — just a little.
I’m going to try, every Sunday night, to write down a few things I intend to accomplish that week. Just like my yearly priorities, but weekly.
Some of those will be work related, like writing for this newsletter or meeting a deadline that falls that week. Others will be smaller tasks that just make my life a little more pleasant: tidy my desk, answer outstanding work emails, answer personal emails, put away random balls of yarn that materialize out of nowhere, manage the digital clutter on my desktop, and so on.
I will probably set time limits for certain tasks; I’ve been known to procrastinate on work by reorganizing my entire office. But if I spend a few minutes a week just tidying, my physical space will feel nicer and I will be able to cross something off my list.
The other thing I like about this method: it will allow me to have blah days. If my list is for the whole week, I can do more on days I have high energy and brain power. And if I’m not feeling good one day, then it gives me space to do the minimum. It’s the same kind of flexibility that my yearly plans have.
Overall, I want my goals to be achievable, not aspirational.
If there’s a planner person wondering what planner or system I’m using for this: I’m not. This is all just blank notebooks. While I’ve used planners before, and of course I enjoyed the pretty layouts and designs, I found I didn’t use them like they seemed to want. It ended up being a more expensive version of what I described above.
I’m also not using a system I draw myself, like the bullet journal. That doesn’t fit me, either, and I’d spend more time making the various spreads and lists than actually working. Or — as with the planner — I’d default back to what I’m doing.
My life doesn’t fit in a planner. And that’s okay.
I just want something to help me track my work. And this is simple enough that I’ll actually do it.
A few other ways I’m hoping to help reduce my mental clutter:
I want to use Reminders more. For example, “In an hour (when I’ll be at my desk), remind me to start a newsletter about author blurbs.” That will let me get it out of my brain (so it doesn’t rattle around while I’m trying to work, or it doesn’t fall out when I’m starting dinner or something), and I’ll get a notification at the appointed hour. And since I have all my other notifications turned off, these notifications will actually mean something.
I also intend to use the do not disturb/work mode while I write, turning off everything that isn’t Scrivener. At least for an hour or two at a time. If I need something for research, I’ll just write a note to myself and move on. The only notifications that should get through are emergency phone calls or texts from my husband or agent. I know this might sound extreme! But I’m hoping it will help tame my wild ferret brain.
As I said at the start: I want to write with the same focus and joy I had when I first started.
In her 2023 retrospective,
shared her word for 2024. Go read her post to find out what it is. In her comments, I mentioned that I don’t usually choose a word for the year, but I’ve found in the last few months that I keep telling friends they deserve peace. And it turns out, I want that for myself, too. If I were choosing a word — and I guess I kind of am — it would be PEACE. That’s what all this is working toward, after all. also has a letter about quitting social media here. Give it a few minutes of your day, if you haven’t already. And has a newsletter about focusing on the writing that made me feel very seen and understood. I hope you’ll read it.Button things:
Both full-time jobs of their own! And was I trained for them? No. lol no.
I mean, I desperately wanted to be published, so it was always on my mind, but it was more of a shapeless desire, not a thousand different worries and details I needed to work out.
I mean, I kept my account, and every now and then I posted an update, but I stopped looking at the feed; I checked my notifications only once a week. I’d long quit Facebook in the same manner. The accounts are still there — I have my names parked to protect myself from impersonators — but I rarely use them. I’ve even made my account on Twitter private and removed the link from my website, so no one looks for me there in the future.
Instagram is still on my phone, just because some of the functions I use don’t work on the desktop version and I don’t intend to stop using it completely. But I’ll delete it too, if I find I need to.
“achievable, not aspirational” THIS!!! If our goals are things outside our control, we can potentially set ourselves up for failure. (And in publishing, many of our goals/dreams are just that. Like, you can do the achievable thing of writing a book and revising the ms, but snagging a book deal is out of our control. It’s the aspirational dream.)
I build in flexibility for blah days too. It helps me not to feel guilty when the blah days roll around! Congratulations on stepping back from social media, I can imagine that was hard.