“Writing Tools: Literary Scrapbooking”
One of the trickiest things about writing anything of length is finding the time to commit to the piece at hand. Most of us have jobs, friends and families, all demanding time from us. So how do we give our all to art when we’re pulled in a myriad of directions? This is still an unanswered question, one that keeps any artist worth his or her salt striving for better. There are, however, tools and tricks we can use to help us manage our art in the midst of our busy lives.
Last year, I finished my first novel. It began in 2003 and was written and rewritten over the course of the next seven years. During that time, I went back to school, worked, got married, built a house and completing my novel was always on my mind. In the last three years of the work, I threw myself into it as hard as I could but it still wasn’t enough. I would be pulled away from my book and have a hard time jumping back into it on my next free day.
So I began using a journal. I would write a summary of what I hoped to accomplish that day, plot and character-wise, the time at which I began, the music I was listening to and so on. After writing for the day, I wrote down what had happened, problems I’d encountered, problems that needed to be solved the next time I wrote and where I wanted the story to head next time I wrote.
This article is about how Macjournal software kept me fully engaged in my art, despite leading a really busy life outside of my novel.
I’m really happy to share about it because I feel that writers have a bad rap for not being able to commit fully to their arts AND lead good personal lives, especially where relationships are concerned. I love defeating stereotypes though, and this technique has helped me to do it so far.
