I Need To Make A List Of Lists To Make….
Remember that post I made about organization a few days ago? Well, this post kind of goes along with it…lists. Lists are pretty much a way of organizing. It’s not organizing physical things, but it’s organizing all the thoughts that are floating around in your head. You make a list of all those thoughts and you have them neatly and visually on a piece of paper that you and read and check off.
I make a list for just about everything. My oldest sister got me into that one. She makes a list of everything possible and I’ve started to do that, too. But in a way, I’m glad, because I feel as though I don’t have to remain on my memory all the time. I have a good enough memory, but I tend to remember the things that I want to remember…which usually isn’t a lot.
Anyway, just like the sub-title says, I need to make a list of the lists that I need to make. It sounds OCD, but it’s true. When I clean my bedroom, I make a list of all the things that I need to do before I finally deem it clean enough to leave alone. When I help clean the house, I make a list of every room that I need to clean and sub-lists for everything that I have to clean in each room. I work at a pre-school. Nap time is 1-2:30 in the afternoon and I usually go into work around one. That means I have an hour and a half to do basically nothing but watch the kids sleep and get paid for it. Of course, there are a lot of times when I clean up the classroom and prepare for the next day or week or something, but on the days that there really is nothing to do: what do I usually do? I make lists. Lists of things I have to do, I have to clean, I have to buy…lists of my writing.
Making lists for your writing (especially if you have a lot like I do) is very helpful. Seriously, I can’t stress enough that lists are the best when it comes to organizing your writing. I have a three-page list of all the ideas I have for novels. I have them broken down into categories: young adult novels, middle grade, children’s books, essays, movie scripts, TV scripts. That’s the list of the ideas that I plan on getting published someday. I have a separate list for the stories on my FanFiction account that is much, much longer. Sad, but true.
You can make a list of novel ideas, a list of ideas that you want to happen in one novel, a list of characters, a list of titles, plots, etc. You can make a list (like me) of which order you’re going to write these novels and another list for which order you’re going to edit these novels. If, for whatever reason, you get stuck on something, go back and look at your list. Trust me, it helps.
Now let’s just see if you can keep track of all the lists…
