Okay, not actually broken. More like adjusted, but we’ll get to that. Lots of pictures for this entry. You have been warned.
This morning, I headed outside at six in the morning, to shovel the sidewalk in front of our house. This is what I saw:
Good Morning, Albany.
This morning, I filled the last two page spread in my most recent morning pages book. Normally, I like to plan ahead, and have the next book all ready to go, so I don’t lose any momentum. This time, that was not the case. I love the Paris-themed book by Punch Studio, that I’ve been using; so much so that this is the second copy of that book I’ve bought. I did some online searching, and Ebay shows me that there are three other designs in that line: a different Paris-themed book, one themed around Italy, and another around New York City. Insert sound of angels singing here. Perfect. Only problem is, that I wouldn’t be able to get any of them shipped in time to start the new book.
I didn’t want to have any gaps. The longer away from any creative project, the harder it is to come back, and morning pages have been such a big help that I had to do something. All of the books I’ve had so far have rotating designs, so spread A is different from spread B, different from spread C, and so on, repeating after a short sequence. My visual brain likes that, so it’s a must when I look for a new morning pages book. This time, I couldn’t find any in stores, so I had to get creative. I had a deconstructed Studio Oh book that I’d originally intended for Her Last First Kiss notes, but book and notes were not a good fit, so I put it aside. Plain lined pages, but a lovely, slightly mottled ivory color. Add selections from my collection of design tape, et voila:
It’s not Punch Studio or PaPaYa Art, but it will do for now. What’s important is that it feels like the right place for me to start my day (as opposed to, say, shoveling knee-high snow. That is not a fun way to start a morning.) I’ve found that priming the pump with whatever my brain dumps out in the morning is usually effective, and from there, I go to planning. Here’s the current planner setup:
The small book is my eighteen month planner. Technically an academic planner, but I grabbed it because it is gorgeous and it feels like me. That’s where the day to day calendar things go; appointments, deadlines, RWA chapter meetings, etc. The larger book is a gridded page leatherette Markings book. I struggled to find a use for that one for about two years, lots of false starts and different formats, until I tried the design tape trick. Voila. Now it’s my daily tasks book, in bullet point form on one page per day. In two months, I’ve used more pages than I did in the two years previously. Think I’ve found something that works here, so sticking with it.
Which brings me to Big Daddy Precious, the Papberblanks book that holds my HLFK notes. Few false starts there, as well, but, once I figured out the single line of copper marker at top and bottom of each page, the notebook clicked with me. I started out writing in ballpoint in this book, because fancy book needs fancy pen, but it wasn’t until I switched to mechanical pencil (I do a lot of erasing) that it really clicked-clicked. The ability to erase is incredibly therapeutic, and makes it a lot easier to climb into my characters’ skins and look through their eyes. Will definitely be carrying this practice over into other projects.
The fancy twinkle lights are not on the actual page, but are an accurate representation of how it feels to be writing Hero and Heroine’s story. Which is an extremely good way for a writer to feel about the current WIP. I don’t know what it is about the visual connection that does it for me. Maybe it has something to do with being an artist’s kid, and making art, myself. When things in the really real world look similar to what’s in my head, that makes the connection stronger. Not going to complain about that.
Typing With Wet Nails 