On Organization and Ivy

by Janis Patterson

How on earth did it get to be the 15th of December of 2021? In contrast to last year, which seemed to go on for aeons with no end in sight, this year has whizzed past like a hummingbird who spots a newly filled feeder - and not nearly as prettily!

Don’t worry - I’m not going to wax sarcastic or angry about politics (at least not here) - I’m just saying that time didn’t go as quickly when I was younger. In my defense, as a full-time writer I tend to live my life in a cocoon - The Husband says I live only half-way in the world of reality - and that makes time slip away even more easily.

All my writing life I have been sort of a do-it-now and bounce-from-one-project-to-another kind of person. Great fun, but not very businesslike. Disorganization is not efficient, but although I could set up really nifty organizational systems (something I used to do for all different kinds of businesses) but after setting up one for myself (one of many over the years) would never keep up with it once it was done. Sigh.

You might know that I have been a very happy member of Novelists, Inc. (NINC) for years, and have learned so much from it. However - this last conference I attended a workshop that literally changed my life. I don’t remember the speaker - a very nice woman writer who is apparently quite successful - but she spoke on organization and one of her centerpieces was a planning board. Apparently these organizational boards have been around for a number of years in all kinds of industries, but I confess I had never heard of such a thing.

It’s a fairly big whiteboard, divided into 9 boxes of equal size. The three vertical columns are for the months - her version of the board was set up to cover a quarter, which makes sense to me. The horizontal columns are (going down) To Do, Doing, Done. How incredibly simple!

After NINC I bought a piece of whiteboard and some thin, pretty lining tape. After a lengthy session with a tape measure (you do know that I am numerically-challenged, don’t you?) I divided the board into 9 roughly equal oblongs. As the quarter had already started, I slapped a bunch of stuff up, thinking that was all that was needed.

It was not. Oh, the board was nice-enough looking, if somewhat amateurish. There are very pretty boards, all color coordinated and perfect-looking available on line, but - hey! - I’m a writer, and therefore poor. I did spring for some colored post-its and markers, which made the board look sprightly. Blue for the first month, pink for the second, green for the third, all with matching felt tip pens. Very impressive.

But I am learning that there is more to organization than just slapping down some things I want to have done, which is very different from actually doing. Now that there is a fresh quarter to say nothing of a fresh year staring me in the face, I’m giving more thought to what I want to put on my board. Not what I want done, but what I should do. And what I can do.

I find myself breaking down each task into component parts. Instead of just ‘publish My New Book’ I find it much more helpful to have a post-it for doing final edit, one for getting copyright, one for setting up ISBN, one for cover, one for uploading, one for deciding on pre-order and release dates... all the necessary minutiae for a release. So much easier than trying to remember everything at once - you can’t afford to miss a single step, and yet private life is a beast which sometimes seems determined to upset everything.

As I begin each step I move it into the Doing box. When the task is completed, the post-it is moved into the Done box. Maybe it’s a small thing, somehow related to the pretty stickers given out by kindergarten teachers as a reward for each task accomplished, but it gives me a little lift to see the Done box filled up with completed post-its.

Nor do I wait until the night before to work out my quarterly board. Remember I said I was a do-it-now and bounce-around type person? I find that in trying to fill out my board with the next quarter’s tasks I find I have been making notes (albeit general ones, to be fleshed out when I actually write up the post-its) in a dedicated notebook. Apparently organization is like ivy - once it gets a foothold it spreads everywhere! I have even been found recently cleaning out the kitchen cabinets!

Now I fully admit that this last quarter’s board was an intense learning curve, punctuated with several Family Situations that had to be attended to. Life happens. The board helped to keep me on track, as winding and overblown as it was. I expect better from next quarter’s.

It’s true - you are never too old to learn something, and when you learn something that actually works it’s wonderful. I greatly anticipate what this next quarter’s board will do for me.

PS - this is my last blog of the year. I want to thank you for your support this past year and look forward to seeing you all next year. I wish all of you the Happiest of New Years!

In Praise of Sticky Notes

by Janis Patterson

Many years ago I was living in an apartment on the east side of town. I had been typing (yes, it was that long ago!) a manuscript and the ribbon I had been hoping to nurse along for another day or two simply gave up the ghost. The impressions on the paper were so faint they were almost invisible. I had already tried refreshing the ribbon with glycerin, which had worked fairly well for a while, but there simply wasn’t enough ink left to refresh.

Giving up, I jumped in the car and ran to the nearest drugstore. This was an independent store that carried a little bit of everything and, as it was fairly late at night, I was so grateful they carried a selection of typewriter ribbons.

Next to the ribbon display was a basket full of thin, 3x3 square yellow pads wrapped in cello. I’d never seen anything like them. Obviously they were scratch paper, but the pads could not have been over 10-15 sheets thick. They were called Post-Its. The price was ten cents.

I’ve always liked strange things, so I picked up a couple of pads and went to pay. Over the years I shopped there the store owner had become sort of a friend, so I asked her about these new things. She sniffed disdainfully and said something about them being a market test of the newest thing from 3M, but she was sure they’d made a very expensive marketing mistake. Who would buy a note with sticky stuff on the back?

Truth to be told, I kind of had to agree with her. I had a corkboard beside my typewriter, and a small chalkboard, and a roll of tape with which I could hang notes from other surfaces. Besides, who would pay good money for scratch paper? I had grown up in my parents’ office, and as far as we were concerned, scratch paper was the inside of the envelopes that came in the mail. Matter of fact, one of my very first jobs (I think I was seven or eight) was to take the discarded envelopes, cut them to roughly the same size and stack the resultant slips in a shoebox in the supply closet. Then whoever needed scratch paper could come in and grab some. Recycling did not begin in the ‘80s or the 90s in our family!

Fast forward to today. That wonderful old store has been closed for at least a quarter of a century, typewriters and their ribbons are almost antique artifacts, and sticky notes – now brought out by a myriad of companies under various names – are ubiquitous. From a lukewarm first usage I have come to love them to an almost fanatical degree. I have different colors for different things. Different sizes for different usages. On some days there are so many sticky notes covering my desk it resembles some sort of rainbow-scaled sea creature.

When an office supply store near us closed not too long ago, I bought almost their entire stock of sticky notes. One entire drawer of my desk is devoted to a sticky notes collection of unimaginable variety. There are the shapes – an apple, a daisy, a star, and more – and of course the classic 3x3 square, but it doesn’t stop there. I have long thin ones, little square ones, round ones, some half the size of a sheet of typing paper. Some even have lines or whimsical designs. Some are pastel, some are violently neon. The only color I have never seen in a sticky note is white. I have also discovered one of the great secrets of the universe – a quick print shop has a big paper cutter that for very little money will cut these pads in halves or thirds, giving you a custom size. You can even buy preprinted ones that say “Sign Here” or “Note Change” and other industry-specific things.’

Sticky notes are nice, convenient and have myriads of uses, but they aren’t the end-all or be-all. As with most modern luxuries we could live very well without them, however much we might protest. Cork boards and chalkboards and cut-up envelopes still work, but they are nowhere near as colorful – nor as fun.