Managing Projects

Managing Projects

12/26/2011 10:25:28 AM

 
I use a program called Jarte Plus to keep notes on many things, not the least of which is the JadedWalker blog that appears on my website. It is a simple word processor built on the Windows Wordpad program and enhanced with a spell checker and other very nice features I find indispensable.

I have documents for many projects filling tabs at the top of the program, from writing projects to Christmas lists to baseball statistics and on to the current list of pixilated gear  I want for my World of Warcraft character.  I love it, but I am a hoarder of words and can't seem to get rid of anything I write. You see, I not only have a document for my blog posts, I have one for random thoughts, one for crazy ideas, one for jotting down random things that occur to me, as well as the expected documents having to do with actual stories I'm writing.  Crazy, I know.

My propensity to hold on to even the smallest bits of prose has finally succeeded in unbalancing what little organization I had in preparing posts for the blog. I've totally lost control. Since I can't bring myself to delete anything, I took the next best, somewhat cowardly approach - I started a new document, promising myself to be more organized about it this time.

What you are now reading is the first entry.

The annual NaNoWriMo challenge to write a novel in thirty days ended in December. I didn't get very far, but it was fun to be a part of that and I made a few contacts I hope will help me get more engaged with other writers and organizations that support writers.  I've been catching up on some of the posts from that event and came across one that touched a nerve. Audrey Niffenegger, an accomplished visual artist and writer who helped support the project, commented on her own writing style: "I’m a very slow writer. Slow works for me. I have all the bad habits my fellow writers warn you not to fall into: I procrastinate. I write a bit and wander off to think it over and come back two weeks later. I have no schedule, no regular habits, no fetishes, no daily word quota. I incubate ideas for years and once I start to work on them I can spend more years happily researching esoteric bits and bobs that may not even end up in the novel. I am terribly caffeine dependent. I edit while I write. "

That description is me, in a nutshell. Although I'd replace the caffeine with diet caffeine free pepsi. I also have to add that, in addition to enjoying the research as much as the writing, I enjoy writing about writing almost as much despite how little I actually know.

A new year is on the horizon, and "The Incursion" is still getting some love and a few paragraphs added while I fuss with plot issues that I haven't been able to wrestle into something I like, yet.

Thanks again to those who have come by the website and checked out my short story collection, "Raised by the Fox."