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Getting Things Done

I woke up at 4 am from a nightmare of the bad guy trying to get me…:wtf: Anyway, after an hour of my mind going full speed ahead with everything I needed to get done, and things I was worrying about I gave up and got up.

Part of this is Danica’s fault She is getting organized and explains her new notebook system this week. I used to use the Getting Things Done method by David Allen. (scroll down on that first link to where it says Five Stages of Workflow if you want to see what this system is about) I bought David Allen’s book. I did a lot of things from it. I got organized. But of course, eventually it all fell apart.

I have GOT to get a grip on things. Suzanne McMinn has a post up on Romancing the Blog today (which I’m not going to link to, because they have some kind of ping thing /track back going on that quotes a big chunk of your own blog post on the pingback–and I don’t particularly want the first part of this blog post posted over there, though possibly that’s controlled by MY wordpress and the excerpt field…) But go read the article. It’s good. It’s about treating your writing as a career. Which we’ve discussed on my blog before here.

Anyway, I do treat writing as a career now. Even though I haven’t sold. But I have GOT to get myself more organized to have more time to write. A full time job, raising kids, and writing. That’s a lot to get a grip on. So do any of you use a particular method to get organized? Random lists? A notebook or dayplanner? A Palm Pilot? Wing it?

I’m thinking of dragging out the Getting Things Done book and trying that again. But maybe a streamlined process. I have GOT to get a grip. Oh, I said that. HELP ME…(I need that help me smilie)

Proposal Hell

Okay, I swear. Proposals drive me insane. I get an idea. I roll it around in my head for awhile. I come up with the basic idea. Usually a secret or two, but not real suspense. You know, what Amy’s calls my relationshipy romance ™. But then I get all balled up in WHAT the secret is. How it’s revealed. I bounce some ideas off of writing friends and my youngest son…the best brainstormer in the world.

But I spend a lot of time :wallbash: and then a little more :wallbash: . I have found that if I can really nail the proposal. The main turning points of the story, and the conflicts in the proposal I can write the book fairly quickly. So I spend a ton of time nailing down the proposal. I think I finally have a workable idea for the first proposal.

I write out the first three chapters. Rewriting chapter one a few times as I get into the characters heads. Then the blurb. Then the synopsis. Then I sometimes tweak the 3 chapters after the synopis. My downfall is showing the emotional growth of the characters in the synopis. My rough draft of the synopsis is usually plot driven. Then I go back in and add the emotional arc.

Who knew that writing and plotting was so complicated ??? :crazy2:

How do you do your manuscripts? Do you write out the complete and then go back and make up the proposal with the blurb and synopsis? Start with a synopsis? My method works…but I swear it drives me INSANE! :mad2:

Satellite TV….goodbye stupid cable

Internet has been down. Again. And again. Bastards. :wtf: I’m tired of it. I’m switching from my cable down-all-the-time-service (Charter) to DSL. And I have analog cable TV service and they keep taking more and more channels off analog and moving them to digital in an effort to make subscribers move to digital $$. They have ticked me off one time too many. So, do any of you have Dishnetwork or DirectTV. Do you like it? Which one do you have?

Talk to me about satellite TV. Was wiring your house a big deal? Did the installers do a good job? Do you lose your signal during storms?? Did you order from their website, or did you go to a retail outlet and get it from there? HELP ME!