Balancing Holiday Chaos: Tips for Planning and Productivity

November 25, 2024annabowling Leave a comment

This is technically last week’s post. This week, besides dealing with Thanksgiving, and Black Friday, I am focusing on the final details on getting ready to pull the trigger on putting A Heart Most Errant out there. Real Life Romance Hero is making ham for the holiday, and I am chomping at the bit to put up not only the family Christmas tree but Storm’s as well. Since Housemate and I shopped an early Black Friday sale online, that initiated the launch sequence, and we are now in Holiday Prep Mode. This does, of course, include my desk.

The three-drawer unit in the wooden crate has dot markers (dual tipped) in the top, Tombow brush markers (also dual tipped) in the middle, and then the bottom has my favorite size lined sticky notes and glue runner refills. My small black pouch in front of the laptop is currently a lot more Christmassy-looking, because the blues and purples were making me cold. I live in New York. I’m already cold.

The end of this week is the start of December. How did we get here this quickly? Do I want to know? Since I am on the last month of the year in my planners and journals, that means time to think about next year’s lineup, as I want to be prepared for the coming sales and temptations, because I love all the formats. Bound books, disc bound, rings, traveler’s notebooks, spiral bound and wire-o, twin loop, reporter style, all of it. It’s easy to get dazzled, lost and overwhelmed. How do I sort it out? I go back to preschool.

Let me explain. I went to a Montessori school for preschool, and I loved it. I studied early childhood development and education in college (where the most important thing I learned was that I am not suited for that career) and once in a while, it does come in handy. What do I find myself naturally gravitating toward? What do I reach for first? What do I actually use? When I get in a groove, what is going on that helps me stay there? It’s been a while since college, and even longer since preschool, (and Early Childhood Education students also worked in the college’s preschool) but I am still going to call the method to my madness Montessori-influenced. Providing I remember it right, that is, but Maria Montessori started out with cats, and I have a cat, so I fgure I am on the right track.

Anyhoo, there is probably a video in this, because that feels more natural than blabbering here, but refer to the opening paragraph about this being last week’s entry. Domestic tornadoes do happen this time of year, but everyone is fine and bonus points, we have a mystery pumpkin that showed up on our stoop around the same time our downstairs neighbors left.

Some of my discoveries:

Even though I love my A5 rings, I am mostly in disc bound planners this year. Folding the pages over is a must, and I need to be able to move things quickly when Storm decides it is time to supervise.
I love my everyday carry traveler’s notebook, but don’t need a weekly calendar in it; all it’s doing is copying what I have in my desk planner. A monthly insert will be fine.
The bells and whistles, aka accessories, aka dashboards and charms and tabs and pen loops and pouches, et al, are part of the planning process.

Some of those bells and whistles actually serve a practical purpose. Since I am visually impaired, I need high contrast. If the lines are light, they may as well not be there, and my eyes generally view dot grid (unless the dots are dark) as “blank.” The solution? Line stencils. Pencil or fineliner, stencil, and we are in business. The decorative tapes at top and bottom aren’t just for pretties, either. They help anchor my sight on the page.

green inside border was already on the paper

Okay, I do also use the borders as a visual signal what section I am in, for multi section notebooks. I also like the process of preparing the page. I like the whole stationery process. Case in point, the current state of the EDC or at least the pouch and TN cover:

Pouch could probably be more Christmassy, but we’ll see.

That’s enough rambling for one week, especially since I need to stay on track with the whole publishing thing. I have forms to fill out and a release date to pick. I am waffling :;mmmm, waffles:: on whether I need a pre-order, but probably not, as this is a re-entry which means I am basically new again. Can we spot the overthinker? Yes. Me. Got it in one.

My reward for posting this blog is a cup of tea and some shortbread, so time to wrap this and move on along with the day. How’s your week looking?

My 2024 Reading Goal: 25 Books and Beyond

November 12, 2024annabowling Leave a comment

My reading goal this year is down to twenty-five books, which is down from forty, which is down from fifty-two, which is down from, well, you get the picture. These things happen. The thing is that I would prefer they not happen again. That is where I want to take the reins early, and that means now, before 2025 is upon us and I have new releases and two blogs to manage and all of that good stuff.

Enter the current iteration of reading journal. The cover is by Dyan Reavely, and made of canvas. It fits very nicely into a small canvas bag, along with whatever paperback I am reading at the moment and has two inserts at present.

Insert one (needs cover embellishment, but the faux leather cover is textured) is from Pen + Gear, and is for my daily logging. Right now, that is date, title, and what page I started reading. If needed, that’s also where I can put notes. The faux leather cover is refillable, so when I fill this insert, I can slip another right in there. I haven’t decorated these pages yet, but I know me, so I probably will at some point.

Second insert is a hardcover notebook by Archer and Olive (similar) and is for long-term planning. I find I work best visually for this aspect, so here is how I am keeping track of my long term TBR:

My goal here is to group books that I want to read together: series, the works of particular authors, specific settings, etc. I am still working out the exact information I want to record for each book, but this is not a place for in depth reviews; more like the essentials I want when I need to jog my memories. So far, this is working pretty well. I want to say the book tape is from Paper Studio, but it might be Archer and Olive. Having a visual representation of future reading probably does scratch some of the browsing a bookstore shelf itch.

These days, I get most of my books electronically or from a similarly inclined bookish friend. I still want to dig my books out of storage, because yes, I can get most of the books I want elsewhere, but there is something about having one’s own books on hand in physical form. I am working toward that. I will also be leaving space for group reads chosen by some of the historical romance reading groups I follow on FB. Discussion is a good motivator.

In the meantime, the next float in this parade is to make a regular, consistent reading routine. I am looking forward to that. My reading nook is almost ready for its closeup, and it’s pretty darned comfortable. I don’t know yet what my reading goal for 2025 will be, but I do want to set one. I am fairly confident I won’t need to move the goal posts any more before the end of this year, especially as I am trying out audiobooks to multitask with when doing other things. I’ll decide closer to the start of next year.

How does your 2025 reading look?

Indie Publishing Journey and Current State of the Desk

October 29, 2024annabowling Leave a comment

Right now, there is a possible cover for A Heart Most Errant sitting in my in-box. Am I writing this blog to postpone actually looking at it because it is exciting but scary? Yes. Absolutely. Wil it be okay? Also yes. It is an intermittently blustery day here in NY’s capitol region. There is a cat (Storm) on my desk, formatting and uploading forms sitting in my hard drive, and have hauled our grocery delivery upstairs and put it away. The only thing left on my schedule today is publishing prep and this blog.

My birthday was last week, and it went really well. Many expressions of love both in person and online. I had lunch out with Housemate, received some lovely stationery gifts, and Real Life Romance Hero got me both a glass dip pen (yes, with ink) and a gorgeous hourglass with black sand, perfect for timing breaks when using a Pomodoro inspired schedule.

Keeping nothing but the necessities on my desk is working well. Cup is for tea. Today it’s vanilla chai. The new addition is an unfinished wooden crate turned desktop bookshelf for my most used planners and notebooks. Though I love the A5 rings format, I am mostly in disc bound right now, because folding them in half makes it a lot easier to prop open the particular page and refer to it as needed. Right now, this is the lineup for planners and notebooks:

daily planner
household planner (month/week)
writing planner (month/week)
Poison box contains 20 count Crayola Supertips, pastel edition
Current historical projects notebook
??? Love the cover but still need to decide on fillings and purpose.

I am planning some Anna Log videos to go through the above and my favorite pen pouches and the like. I find what works best for me is when I can pick up everything I need for whatever project, so if I need to pick up and take my show on the road, it’s one thing, and I don’t have to reach or search for anything.

Now that I am effectively my own (and my and Melva’s) publisher, there is a learning curve and a lot more work, which means it’s an excellent thing I am good at organization. It’s fun. Taking something from chaos to order, it’s not that different from taking a bunch of wild squirrels of ideas and snippets of scenes and turning it into a kickline of chorus dancers. Maybe that’s not the best analogy, but I am sticking with it.

One of the things on the forms is the name of the series. While Melva and I plotted out the ongoing Love by the Book contemporary series together, this is the first time I have intentionally set out to write connected historical romances. I had decided that all stories in this series will follow the pattern of A Heart Most _______. Picking “errant” for the first blank-filler was easy, as the hero is a knight errant. After that, though? :blink blink blink: Ummm….

Now, I have settled on “Ardent” and “Wicked” for the next two , which do capture the spirit of the respective stories. The plan is to put all three together in an omnibus, with a bonus short story, probably holiday themed, when they are all out, which will be another project altogether. All together, they are the Ravenwood series. Trust me, it’s better than “Heart Most” series or “Medieval Hearts” because I am new at this series naming thing. Right now, I am looking at what is on my plate at this moment, which is The Forms. Organization is essential for me to keep track of this sort of thing. I know what I need to do and when I need to do it. One thing at a time, not DO ALL OF THE THINGS RIGHT THE HECK NOW.

Yeah. Long story short (hah, pun unintended) I am entering new territory here. Do I know what I am doing? Ehh, sometimes. That’s okay. Everything anybody is good at, they did for the first time once. This, for publishing, is mine.

Indie pubbed writers, share your wisdom. Readers of indie pubbed romance, what are your favorite aspects/pet peeves? Drop them in the comments for possible discussion in future posts.

Fall Planner Revamp and Desk Setup

October 9, 2024annabowling Leave a comment

Thanks to Amazon Prime Big Deals, I now have a real desk headed my way in the extremely near future. This means I have a concentrated amount of time to take apart the makeshift bookcase I made from two wooden crates and an end table from Housemate’s old house. That table and a couple of other things need to go into storage because the desk is coming. I have been using a “foldable desk” which Housemate measured while I was asleep a few days ago (Real Life Romance Hero was present, so I assume he was aware of this) and it’s about half the size of the desk that is on the way. This is going to bring a lot of changes.

First of all, I will have twice the room I am used to having. Think of the current setup as typing with elbows flush with ribcage, with intermittent cat between me and keyboard, New desk will have space for a box/bed/space that will be for Storm (we will see if she agrees) and three entire drawers, the lowest of which is suited for hanging files. I have a lamp/pen holder/phone storage thingamaboo all ready to go. The big question there, is what pens do I put in it?

Secondly, pertinent to the image above, we have the revamped planner lineup. Here i s a fun fact about Housemate: she likes the mystery boxes/grab bags Michaels sometimes does. There were a few in our local Michaels this past weekend, and it happened to be a buy one, get two free deal. So, we got three. Inside, there were two Happy Planners, both dashboard layout. One dated, one not. I will be destashing or giving away the undated one, but the dated one has replaced the horizontal blank boxes A5 rings I had been using, but not reaching for much at all this month. For those who are new here, I do have a visual impairment, and blank pages are not my friends. Nice, dark lines, however, are my favorite. I will share the layout and a sample spread later.

I like having my planner shelf coordinated. I like the pink, the gold, the black and white. This is probably not the final form of the shelf, but it is what works for now. After the long hot summer, fall is here and my superpowers have returned. I have tentatively mapped out my writing schedule for the near future, and I’m excited about it. This includes first steps into indie publishing and some exciting new things for MelvaandAnna.com.

Also, we have reached a true sign of autumn. We have put Koolio on his winter break. He will be wintering in Housemate’s closet, along with his bestie, Oscillating Fan. The heat is not on yet, but we have freshly laundered blankets, plural, and Storm is always up for a good cuddle. We have reached the time of year when I run on tea (vanilla chai today, out of my Jolly Roger mug) and if this weekend isn’t The Weekend for foliage photography, it will be the next one. I finished reading a vintage historical romance last night, which means I now get to pick out another. Daryl Dixon: The Book of Carol is off to an excellent start.

I like the way all this is going.

Typing With Wet Paws: Camp NaNo Progress Edition

April 22, 2024annabowling Leave a comment

Tails up, Storm Troopers! I’m Storm, you’re awesome, and this is Typing With Wet Paws. We are three weeks into this version of Camp NaNo, and Mama Anna is happy to report she is doing pretty well on it this round. Not quite at goal, but close enough to call it good, and, most importantly she is having mostly a good time doing it. Here are a few reasons why:

She is writing by hand
She is writing in only one book (so far; more on that later)
She prepares each page beforehand, with washi borders on the top and bottom of each page.
She planned in non-writing days, for when she is being domestic warrior queen
This draft doesn’t have to be perfect, or readable to anybody else. It’s only her shoveling sand into her sandbox. She wanted me to say that it is her sandbox, not mine, because we have very different sandboxes. Nobody wants to play in my sandbox.

Mama Anna wanted me to say more about the mostly writing in one notebook thing. If you have ever met Mama Anna, or read even one of her blogs, you know she has a thing for stationery, including notebooks. Normally, she likes to set up a designated notebook before she starts, but this time, she grabbed a random notebook that was full of stops and starts, with paper that was just okay (she got this before she knew about GSM) because she wanted to get the ideas down, and, well, she kept going. Now, there are only five two-page spreads left. As her purr-sonal assistant, I am fairly certain she is going to fill those before the end of Camp, and that means she will start another one, where she can do the post-camp work. After she lets it sit for a while, to sort itself out.

Part of the reason she wanted to do Camp for this session was to prove to herself that she can still do it, and what do you know, she can. There’s some confidence that comes with that. She doesn’t know if she is going to do the other Camp this summer (though maybe yes, because this approach is actually fun, and fun is important) but she does know that going back to the WIPs that have been on pause (not paws, though my paws are on pretty much everything she owns) isn’t quite as scary anymore. Maybe she will even take some aspects of this experiment into those works.

Whatever she does, be assured I will be heavily involved in it, and probably sitting heavily on it because I am that determined to be an integral part of the process.

How’s your April going?

Everyday Carry, Spring 2024 and Camp NaNo Progress

April 16, 2024April 16, 2024annabowling Leave a comment

Welp, it’s spring. I have the window open as I write this. My ensemble for the day is a sleeveless shift dress with an unzipped oversized hoodie over it. My home office is an absolute mess because of spring cleaning. Next week means a trip to the storage unit, to put away things we aren’t using a at the moment and get out some things we’d stashed for the winter. A couple of days ago I (finally) set up an actual bookcase to hold the vintage historical romance novels that are te focus of my current reading. I have a lot to say about the whole vintage romance thing, but that is another topic for another day.

Today is the day to share my everyday carry. It all fits in this pouch, which lives in my purse and can go out on its own.

The main pocket holds a traveler’s notebook with three inserts (agenda and two notebooks) and the zip compartment looks like this:

I am currently going with a green theme for spring. We’ll see if I want to make a change at the start of the new month. The flowered notebook has perforated pages, which makes it double as a notepad or come in handy when somebody needs a piece of paper out in the wild. There is an additional zip pocket in the back, which holds a selection of Crayola SuperTips in pastel colors.

Skinny washi tapes are from Tim Holtz. The two blue items are a correction tape runner and adhesive runner, and the tin with my favorite Golden Girl (Dorothy Zbornak is an integral part of my final form) holds ephemera, including tea tags, stickers, washi samples and miscellaneous things that catch my fancy. There is also a growing collection of enamel and pinback pins, not pictured, as I am still moving them around.

It’s not perfect (what is?) but it feels right for right now, as does this entry staying pretty much as it says on the tin (of the title, not the actual tin.) Camp NaNo is going pretty well at the halfway point. Not perfect but doing its job. Not at goal, but close enough. What I set out to do was to prove to myself that yes, I can (still) do it. So far, so good. Here, we see the puzzler in her natural habitat, dogpaddling in a sea of unset gelatin, grabbing onto floating ideas as they bob past on fickle currents, and…I like it.

I don’t know all of the story yet. Most of the characters have placeholder names. the stately home where most of the story takes place is still under construction in more ways than one but that’s fine . At this stage of the game I am shoveling sand into my sandbox with all the enthusiasm and precision of a toddler on her first day at the beach.

Dressing Gown Days

December 21, 2023annabowling Leave a comment

Yes, I am American, and I call them dressing gowns. Real Life Romance Hero calls them “enchanted robes of comfort.” His is a lovely smokey grey. Mine is burgundy or oxblood, depending on my whim. They are both fuzzy and warm and perfect for today. We are both having rest days, which for me means I finally get to sneak a blog in for this week. I’ve missed blogging and plan to be more regular in the coming year. Our tree is green this year, with white lights and minimal ornaments, because the rose gold tree is inaccessible at the moment, and I Had To Have A Tree. Worked out pretty well.

My most-played Christmas song this year is “Fairy Tale of New York,” in several different versions, including one all in Gaelic. Yeah, there is some kind of story brewing. I am more than okay with that. .;ppppppppppppppppp (that last bit is from Storm, even though she will get her own blog post tomorrow. She has to be in on everything. Only fair, as it *is* her home.) b She is in the mood today to remind me that this is a dressing gown day, and that means I have things on my list like “read,” and “watch TV” and “do journal things.” I am trying to tell her that blogging is like journaling, but I don’t think she’s accepting my argument. Ah well.

Housemate purchased this year’s tree at her place of employment, and far overbought both lights and ornaments, which are both tiny and glass, but this is fine for a couple of reasons:

there are no such things as too many ornaments; if we aren’t using them now, we will be using them later, perhaps when we have a house and multiple trees.
Storm can’t get to the tree anyway. If she could, she would have by now.
It goes really well with the fun family stories we already have, like the time I blindly picked out a far too tall for our apartment tree because it was dark and raining and it ended up being Christmas trees, plural, as Real Life Romance Hero sawed it in half and gave the other half to our neighbor.

For those keeping track from last year, that brings our tree count to five. We have the green tree above, the rose gold tree in storage, my pink bottle brush tree, and my pink ceramic tree. Tree number five, I am calling our foster tree, as we are holding onto it for a friend in transit.

I love last year’s A5 rings so much, I am keeping the same setup, only changing the pages for this year’s

The current planner lineup for 2024 is approaching its final form and looks quite different than what I had expected. That seems to be a theme around here these days. I am even going out of town for what is shaping up to be an annual trip to the two coolest places in CT, namely The Book Barn and my friends, Mary and Brian’s house. Obviously, The Book Barn is the number two coolest place. Yes, it has a seemingly endless array of books to buy, but my friends are there only some of the time but they are in their home every day, so that makes it the #1 coolest place. Plus there is a dog.

This year’s Book Barn jaunt is going to be different, because I will be using either crutches or walker (looks like a torn meniscus but healing well) and that will be an adventure. I acquired a backpack to make toting stuff easier, but Storm seems to think I brought home a(nother) cat bed. She is in love with it, to the point of abandoning Real Life Romance Hero feeding her to settle on it. She has priorities. Everything is a cat bed if the cat is comfy enough.

No real point to this post other than the above, which is exactly what one needs on a dressing gown day. How is your day going?

Typing With Wet Paws: Adventures in Leatherwork Edition

October 13, 2023October 13, 2023annabowling Leave a comment

Tails Up, Storm Troopers! I’m Storm, you’re awesome, and this is Typing With Wet Paws. I have been very active this week. Always one hundred percent chance of Storm activity around here. Today, for instance, I sat on Mama Anna’s phone and tail-dialed Papa at work.

That’s not the only spicy thing I have done this week. Of course there is the daily help with making the bed and weekly changing of the sheets, but the superpowers are back, so I have to sep up my game as well. If you have been around here any length of time, you know how much Mama Anna loves her notebooks and planners. I love them, too, mostly lying on the bed. Open, closed, doesn’t matter. She has it, I am on it.

Usually, that is okay. Then there was this time. Mama Anna was feeling productive, and gave both of her leather traveler’s notebook covers a leather treatment. She even gave the B6 size, Christine (the name came on the notebook, so that is the notebook’s name and I will be calling her that) two treatments, because Christine was looking kind of dry. Christine had been taking a rest, but Mama Anna wants to get her back into use, and thus sprucing up is in order.

Well. The thing that they don’t mention on the bottle of the leather treatment stuff is that it smells really good. I mean really, really good. Tantalizing. Tempting. Irresistible. So irresistible, in fact, that I did not resist. Mama Anna had put the two notebooks on the bed just for a minute while she got the box that had inserts that fit Christine out of where she keeps it, and I, well, I had a moment. If you want to make Mama Anna’s head spin around super super fast, do the pricky pricky pricky thing with kitty claws on just-treated-twice leather. Uh huh. Mama Anna was Not Pleased. Apparently this kind of notebook is something called “expensive.”

One would think that Mama Anna would be happy that I took an interest in one of her hobbies, and tried my hand, well, paws, at it myself. She was not. She was also not too mad, because A) I am a cat, B) she is the one who left the notebook on the bed and turned away, and C) I am cute. There is also D) this really does make the cover more one of a kind and gives Mama Anna a reason to say she needs another cover in this size, and her birthday is coming in a couple of weeks, so there is really not a lot of harm done. I no longer get to be alone with leather goods, but that is a small price to pay.

What do you think of my adventures in leatherwork? What should I try next?

Typing With Wet Paws: Adoptiversary Edition

October 6, 2023annabowling Leave a comment

Tails up, Storm Troopers! I’m Storm, you’re awesome, and this is Typing With Wet Paws. This is a special edition, because it is my adoptiversary. Well, actually, it was yesterday, October fifth, but yesterday was also Mama Anna’s talking people vet session, and the first pictures of me with these guys were taken the day after, because everybody wanted to give me some time to get used to my new family

Possibly first crunchies with forever family

I have had three mamas, and that is the final number. My cat mom was my biological mom. I don’t remember a lot about her, but she was gorgeous (I assume she looks like me) and ran one heck of a milk bar. When I was big enough to set out on my first adventure, I went to my first human mom, Mama D, who took the best, best, best care of me until it was time for me to come to my forever family. I still love my first two mamas and I think about them a lot, always fondly.

As you might be able to see from the picture above, I wasn’t done growing yet when I met these guys, because I am bigger and longer and grownup now. These guys never got to see me as a tiny jelly bean or a li’l potato, as I came to them in my long teen stage. Now I am a big long, which is my final form.

Please note that Mama Anna was kind enough to match the cover of one of her journals to the color of half of my nose. Yes, she has another one like it in black, to match the other half of my nose. I will accept this tribute. My bond with Mama Anna and her writing has been there from the very start. One of the very first times I came out of my adventure cave, she had a journal out on the bed, and was working with an India ink pen. I wanted to play with the pen. She said I should not, because the ink might stain my white paws. Well. She had not noticed the black spot I have on one of my front paw toes before then and thought that she had stained my fur. She felt awful until she realized it was original equipment.

Ever since then, we have only grown closer. I have made new human friends/aunts and uncles both online and in purr-son. If Mama Anna wants to have a video chat with anybody, I must be part of it. That is not negotiable. I don’t make the rules. Oh wait, I am a cat. I totally do.

Mama Anna wanted to remind me that one of my main reasons I get to blog once a week is that I am to be her PR kitty. That means I have to talk about her writing. She’ll admit it hasn’t been great as of late, which is one of the reasons she is seeing the talking vet. The talking vet helped her give herself a couple of assignments. First, she needs to finish reading the novel she is currently reading, which is Lisbon, by Valerie Sherwood. She loves that book and has read it only once, so it is like a new book, but one she knows she will like.

Another goal is for Mama Anna to write one of her own blogs once a week for the rest of October. It doesn’t matter the topic, so be prepared for some babbling. Some of you like that, so you’ll be in for a treat. The rest of you, maybe ask her some questions so she can maybe use those to help figure out a topic. My Aunt Mary already asked Mama Anna to blog about Lisbon, so she will probably do that at some point.

The other other goal is related to NaNoWriMo and even Preptober. Mama Anna would like to participate in those, but she’s not sure exactly how, so the idea they came up with was this:

Pick a notebook
Fill it by the end of November
That’s it.

What she fills the notebook with doesn’t matter as much as just filling it. Probably extra points for making it be about historical romance. Mama Anna plans on getting together with Aunt Melva for an in person worldbuilding session soon, about the small town they are creating for their new contemporary series. This new notebook, which she will probably introduce you to later, will be saved for stuff about historical romance and maybe fantasy romance that reads like historical.

Will I try to steal her pens that she writes with in that? Yes. Will I sit on the open pages and the closed cover? Yes. Is she fully aware that if the notebook has a leather or faux leather cover, that I will do the pricky-pricky-pricky things with my murder mittens to the cover? Yes. Might she try to foil me by putting a cover over that cover? Almost certainly. Will that stop either one of us? Probably not, but there is only one way to find out.

How was your week?

2024 Planning Already?

July 26, 2023annabowling Leave a comment

Yes, already. We in the planning/journaling world do not take this kind of thing lightly, especially when stationery items seem to bloom all on their own in back-to-school displays. July is the midway mark on the calendar, after all, as evidenced by Christmas in July anything. Add to that the fact that it is July (duh) and I am, as the ancient Greeks say, “bad at summer,” which means a lot of summer days spent inside with my beloved journal stuff, and we arrive at interesting places. It’s kind of like that low hanging fruit thing, but with stationery.

l have already locked down two planners. The A6 traveler’s notebook I carry in my purse is definitely staying. I will be buying my monthly 2024 insert from Yellow Paper House, probably in pink The weekly calendar, I can make by myself in any A6 notebook, of which I have plenty. I can make my own horizontal layout, maybe throw in a quadrant or dashboard if I’m feeling frisky. I have the leather cover from Chic Sparrow already; love that, so that stays. I have a standard Bic four color pen in the attached pen loop for now but I think I want to upgrade. I have been wanting to use my fountain pens more, especially my favorite Writer’s Blood ink (dark red, very appropriate) I already have a couple of pens I might like to put there, so the only pen cost would be ink refills.

The other locked in planner thingy is my writing planner. That’s going to be my A5 pink Carpe Diem six ring binder. What goes inside it is still under consideration. I may keep the same Agenda 52 dividers, as the monthly calendar does not begin on the back of the divider, which I absolutely love. Then again, I may make my own, because I have a lot of cardstock that could make awesome dividers, and several different options for tabs. We will see what transpires. The actual inserts, I will either buy from Agenda 52, horizontal spread, or print my own,

Then I will add my own flair – vellum, acetate, assorted decorative items, and definitely pink sticky notes. After that, sections for active projects, with timetables, outline, etc. If the planner is prety and feels like me, I am more likely to use it. Not t hat it is the thing that makes me do what I do, but it does make it pretty and fun.

I am not at all sure what I will be using for the household catchall planner, but most likely it will either be me redating an existing planner that I already own, or maybe grab a super pretty planner that I won’t need to decorate much and can keep functional. Right now I have my morning and evening brain dump/mental health check in stuff in two separate disc bound planners. I would like to streamline that, and it may all end up in a good old-fashioned bullet journal. I like the idea of having all of that in one place. Not sure if I want to keep all of my trackers in such a thing, but I do know that each project I work on in the coming year gets its own notebook where everything lives, and No Where Else, because that way, we do not lose entire manuscripts when the publisher needs them in four weeks, Anna.

Since I am now a few days into the new regimen with updated pharmaceuticals and lifestyle changes, I like looking forward. I have books to write, both with Melva and on my own, and maybe even more beyond that. I feel like making media content and planning it out before I actually hit the publish button, or even boot the computer.

So, that’s this week. It’s hot, it’s humid. I’m in front of a fan, in a fetching white t-shirt dress, staying nicely hydrated, and doing quite well with the reading, which is a very nice new development. A little Bertrice Small, a little Maeve Binchy, a little YA. Seems to be working. What are you reading, or planning, or planning on reading?

Typing With Wet Nails

for the love of romance

Notebooks