Organization Tricks

Terry Shames, here, giving some hints about how I deal with:

BUSINESS:  Tricks for staying organized.

Hahahahahahaha.

Excuse me while I try to gain control of my hysterical laughter.

Tricks? No. Hard-won methods? Sort of.

I used to be organized. I used to write lists, do tasks at once so they wouldn’t back up, and generally have control of my life. That was before I became a published writer. Who knew being published took up so much time and energy. Here’s how I thought it worked: write a book, get an agent, find a publisher, turn over everything regarding the book to the publisher. Do the book tour the publisher organized. Collect the money. Repeat.

Now a pause for me to wipe my eyes from weeping.

What follows is a list of what I have done to stay at least somewhat organized:

1)         Start a new file folder for each book. Seems easy, right? The problem is what to call the folder: Book Three? Possible Africa mystery? France? I was halfway through writing a book before I realized I had another whole folder of notes for the book that I had forgotten about.

2)         Flag emails that are important. Seems easy, right? A few hints: different flag colors for different categories (I wrote the colors down and promptly lost the cheat sheet). There need to be flags for things that need to be done soon and those that will occur eight months from now. Another hint: remember to flag things. If you have forgotten to flag one email that is relevant, your whole system is useless. Guess how I know this.

3)         Write things on your calendar. There are actually calendars that have ways of color coding what you are writing down (i.e, personal, business, family, urgent) I actually have one of those calendars. If I bothered to use it, I bet I’d love it.

4)         Drop emails into separate folders with useful names. Sorry, but “To Do” is not useful unless, unlike me, you have the discipline to look at it every day, not once every six months.

5)         Keep a file cabinet for paper documents. Especially helpful if you file things in it, instead of “filing” papers in a big pile on one corner of your desk.

6)         Send remainder emails to myself. Only useful if I actually read them, instead of thinking, “Oh, I know what that is. I’ll get to it.”

7)         Keep a list with the names and email addresses of: book store contacts to set up readings; publicity department contacts for newspapers and magazines that publish notices when I have a new book; all the miscellaneous people I meet who might be willing to give me a plug, an interview, etc. I have such a list. If I kept it up-to-date, it would be really useful.

8)         Keep a running list of blogs that I enjoy reading and that might be willing to host me when I have a new book coming out. See last line of #7.

And here is a list of things I wish I had done or hope to do:

1)         Keep a book bible—a list of names of people, places and things that crop up in each book with a short description. Great idea. Instead, I seem to enjoy spending tedious time looking back through books, trying to find out what I called “that barbecue place on the road to Bryan,” or the name of Samuel Craddock’s banker, or… In my search, first I have to figure out which book it was in, and then where it was in the book. I seem to enjoy this because if I didn’t, I would have kept a book bible, right? I actually start one with each book. Start one. Not finish one.

2)         Hire an assistant. What keeps me from this? I don’t actually insist that the person has to “think like me.” No, what I think is, he or she has to BE me. Also, if I hired an assistant, I’d have to give her instructions. Enough said.

3)         Learn how to use the following effectively: my computer, my word processing program, my printer (ha!), Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all other social media. Gosh, it’s so much easier to stumble around making stabs at being effective, finding something that works sort of okay, breathing a sigh of relief, and failing to write down the discovery.

4)         Go through all those folders, deleting or pitching out everything that has become irrelevant. Of course that requires deciding what is and is not relevant.

Don’t even get me started on photos. I have some wonderful photos from readings, meetings, and conferences. However, would it really be interesting to anyone if I were to publish a photo from a reading I did three years ago and never got around to sharing? How about that zany photo of a favorite author whom I posed with back in 2013? If I posted it now on Facebook, would he think I was stalking him? I must have 200 photos of conference panels with tiny little faces on the panels because the photo was taken from the back of the room. Do I really need to keep these? I will delete them. Eventually. Just give me time to get organized.

And speaking of photos, here is one from my fabulous vacation in British Columbia: