Recently in The Organized Writer Category

Here's a fascinating series of photos of the writing offices of several well-known science fiction and fantasy authors. I'm always interested in other writers' offices. I can't believe how many books some writers have, and I like seeing that some offices are chaotic and others are spotless. My office is somewhere in between, I think. Wish this photographer would do a series on crime writers' offices. . .

Yeah, I know I haven't a) blogged much or b) written about being an organized writer in a long while. I've been working on multiple writing projects (hopefully some interesting news to come soon.) But here's a very good article about creating a minimalist experience  on your computer (either Mac or PC) so you can focus and work.

Judith Matzoff writes about having a perfect home office--one that's so perfect she can't work there. I don't have this problem. I vastly prefer my own office to writing in public, although I do like to write in a coffeeshop now and then just for a change of scene.

After interviewing me on their blog, and after I'd mentioned how much I love Clairefontaine notebooks, the wonderful people at the Quo Vadis/Exaclair blog offered me a chance to test-drive any of their planners. I wasn't entirely happy with my current Filofax setup (not enough room to write) and I asked them if they'd send me a Journal 21 planner. Not only did they do that, they included a bunch of bonus items as well.

I'm not turning this blog into a product review site, but I liked all four products and wanted to share my impressions.

Yes, it's that time of year again. I just handed off all my tax information for the year to my accountant. There is no way that I could do my own taxes but each year it chews up at least a day's worth of time to prepare all my records so the accountant (who is brilliant) can prepare the return.

I'm posting this as an Organized Writer bit because it's really only to interest of aspiring writers. Apparently there was a recent discussion on multiple literary agent blogs where several aspiring writers felt that they shouldn't have to master the skill of summarizing their book's dramatic premise into a single paragraph. Usually the first time this skill has to be brought into play is in writing a query letter, which is the first step in acquiring a literary agent (who in turn represents your work to publishers). Query letters basically serve very succinct introductions to writers and their book, and this is what determines if the agent asks to see the partial manuscript or the complete book or passes on looking at the book. The query has to give an idea of what the book is about, intrigue the agent into reading it, and give a sense of the writer's professionalism. The reasoning of these writers was that they're good at writing novels, not "marketing copy", and so they should hire out the writing of their queries. This wrongly assumes that once the query is accepted, these writers never have to know how to summarize their books in ways that make people want to read them.

Here is an interview with me, with Leah Hoffman at Quo Vadis (sister company of the awesome Clairefontaine notebooks) on how I use notebooks and paper planners to get my novels written and keep my busy life on track. The Quo Vadis blog is a great resource for thoughts on writing and time management; Leah and Karen Doherty do a great job on keeping the blog current and interesting.

If you still need a planner for 2009 and want a Moleskine, three of the formats are on sale at MoleskineUS. And with the money you save, you can buy one of my books. Or two. Or three.

This experiment worked. I get more done with no Internet around. Shocking! So I'm doing most of my writing now on an nine-year old Apple PowerBook that has no Internet connection. (I started working an old iMac, but there were some issues in getting the data off it and onto my more modern machine, so I switched to the PowerBook.) Banishing the Internet from my studio has not created many problems--I was rather late (by my terms) in answering a couple of important emails. But that was certainly NOT the end of the world--and I realized, when did I decide I had to be at the beck and call of the world? I DONT (sorry for shouting). 

I'm on antibiotics, my laptop decided to freak out on me, so I haven't been the paragon of organization that I am sure you all think I am. Actually, while in the throes of illness, I came up with about a dozen new topics, all scribbled in my notebook. Next week will be a better week. Because I just got six cans of Community Coffee Dark Roast straight from Baton Rouge, people, so I AM SET. (For the price of three! I am doubly set.)