spreadsheets

What I thought I would do this week is share some of the tools/random things I use while writing or planning that have helped me in hopes that it might also help some of you. I have not been paid to endorse any of these things. I just like them and would like to share.

I hate making spreadsheets. Some of you are very talented and patient. I am not, so I like to outsource my spreadsheet needs.

WorkingWriterBiz spreadsheets– I bought these last year when I started to get my author shit together. This Etsy seller has so many fantastic spreadsheets. I use them to track my sales, social media numbers, and word count trackers. You can even make your own 3 book bundle, which is awesome. They work on Excel and Google Sheets, and you can save them as blanks and use them year after year.
Svenja’s word count spreadsheets– I love Svenja’s spreadsheets so much. If you only write like one project a year or don’t want to separate word count data by project, these spreadsheets are fantastic. They are pay what you want and have beautiful background art from Lord of the Rings, Once Upon a Time, and much more.

YouTube

Sarra Cannon’s Heart Breathings Youtube channel/newsletter/resource library– You have to sign up, but it is worth it. Her Youtube Channel, which will be mentioned below has been so helpful to me (she will pop up a few times here). She has sprint trackers, a plot outline sheet, and so much more. Besides being a great teacher, she also takes into consideration chronic health problems, mental illnesses, etc. when discussing being an author. There’s positivity, but none of it is toxic or of the hustle variety. You can find the link to her newsletter on her website/YT channel. Personally, her resource library is *chef kiss*
The Courtney Project on Youtube– Courtney is one half of the romance writing duo Kennedy Fox, and she has some really good info on being a full-time author, how to up your game, etc. She’s a bit more down to business than Sarra Cannon, but sometimes that is necessary.
Music to Write By playlist– This is something I whipped up for myself and for my students. There’s a lot of fantastic ambient music and long tracks to help you focus while you work. Tinnitus scrubbers or colored noise has been a godsend for my ability to focus.
As a side note, while I have not watched it, I know Brandon Sanderson (aka the fantasy author I have also not read) has his entire course on writing scifi/fantasy for free on Youtube if you are interested.
A word of caution- There are tons of resources on Youtube, but there’s a difference between enjoying someone’s authortube content and coming to them for advice on writing/publishing. Obviously vet who is posting because learning from someone who is below you in skill or are not ahead/in line with you career-wise isn’t particularly useful. People who haven’t finished and/or edited a book might not be the best people to get writing advice from if you are trying to publish your work.

Books

Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel by Hallie Ephron- pretty self-explanatory. If you’re at the intermediate/advanced stage of mystery writing, this is below your level but useful for someone like me who strays into suspense instead of mystery
Structuring Your Novel by K. M. Weiland- truthfully, all of K. M. Weiland’s books are phenomenal
Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody- another book on structure that is incredibly helpful
Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes- for the romance writers who also need structural help
I Give You My Body by Diana Gabaldon– the author of Outlander also has a short book on writing sex scenes, which I found helpful from a sensory/choreography level
Newsletter Ninja by Tammi L. Labrecque- this book and its sequel helped me increase my newsletter subscriber list significantly. I haven’t used all the advice, but the vast majority of it (in both books) were very useful.

Sundries

I’m not including buy links to these because they’re sort of open-ended, but these are things I use all the time when I’m working on my books.

Blue light blocking glasses- to save your eyes from computer screen glare. Plus, I think the yellow helps me focus, even if I panic that my dogs have jaundice (FYI it’s the glasses, not them)
A notebook to write ideas in or to write on the go- I use a 5 Star grid paper notebook most of the time. It’s the perfect size for my normal handwriting, fits a lot on the page, has a spiral, etc.
A bullet journal- if you like staying organized, I highly recommend having one or a planner to keep track of your publishing/writing to-do list
Kanban Board- same thing as above, though this is paired with the HB90 method (see Sarra Cannon’s channel or my past blog posts for more on this)
Washi tape, markers, stickers, highlighters, etc.
Your choice of pen that is conducive to writing- for me, this is Pilot G2 pens (of various colors, sometimes I use the one color only for one book) or Sharpie S-Gel pens. If the pen doesn’t write well for you, use something else. Yes, I do get hung up on pens and the color sometimes.
Reverse outlining– I write very vague outlines on an act-by-act basis, but you can find more about reverse outlining in a past blog.
Forest app– this is an app on my phone that I use to time sprints all while growing cute little plants. I also use it for grading papers and doing any other thing I don’t feel like doing. Will do work for cute trees.
Miro– this is a very flexible app where you can make mind maps or just organize notes in a nonlinear way. I use it for chapter or timeline planning.
As an aside, a lot of people like Scrivener to write on. I find it difficult to use and fiddly. If you’re thinking about it but aren’t sure, I highly recommend getting the free trial and then seeing if it clicks with you or not. For me, it did not, but I prefer Word.

Courses

Skillshare- I do not have a Skillshare subscription currently, but in the past, I had a 2 week freebie period and I was able to watch a lot of videos on writing, marketing, etc. You can find these free trial codes pretty easily online, so I highly recommend grabbing one (and setting a reminder to cancel it). They also have courses like learning ASL, various art media, etc.
HB90- this is Sarra Cannon’s course on planning, getting your shit together, realistic goal-setting, etc. It’s not being offered currently but will be in March, I believe. I highly recommend it if you’re trying to organize your life a bit better and actually make progress toward your goals. Once again, it isn’t about hustle culture. Her mindset is inclusive of those who are chronically ill or neurodivergent, which I appreciated.
Publish and Thrive– this course was pivotal to me getting my shit together and doing so well with my launch of The Reanimator’s Heart. It is a 6 week course on indie publishing that is stuffed with fantastic information that you can watch at your own pace and have lifetime access to. When I took it, I ended up with over forty pages of notes and a plan for how to market my books better and set myself up for success. It’s great for those who are new to indie publishing, those getting back into it, and those who feel like they’re career is stalling. Sarra is only offering this course once this year, and it is currently open for enrollment. It starts February 4th, 2023, and while it is pricey, it was worth it and she offers payment plans. As a past student, I have an affiliate link if you would like to sign-up. Feel free to reach out to me if you are thinking about it but have questions!

As you may have gleaned from my posts since I started blogging again in the latter half of 2021, I have had a lot of trouble writing since the pandemic started. It was difficult before that, but it really worsened during the pandemic due to stress, worsening of my OCD symptoms, and what I now realize may have been covid brain fog (this seemed to greatly lessen after getting vaccinated). At this point, I’m in a much better place mentally than I was a year (or more) ago. Not 100% but at least 80% of the way there.

Since 2022 started, I have tried to really get back into the groove of writing like I did in 2019, so I’ve been trying to figure out how to optimize my writing routine and do things that make it easier to get work done. Before we get into this, I want to make it clear that I am not into the hustle grind, write a million words a day mentality. I’m literally just trying to get words on the page in a way that doesn’t feel like absolute torture.

Sprints

Something I started doing at the end of 2021 is using sprints. Sprints are setting a timer and writing for that amount of time. This is a branch off of the Pomodoro Method, which uses 25 minutes of work followed by a few minutes of time, followed by another “pomodoro” or 25 minute sprint. I found several authors on Youtube who do live sprints online, and I started joining those to help get started. Even if I found the videos too chatty at times, the synergy of writing at the same time as other people helped a lot. It took me a bit of trial and error to figure out what sprint length works best for me. 20 minutes seems to be my sweet spot. I can do two 20 minute sprints pretty easily and clock in a couple hundred words each time. I’m slowly trying to strengthen my creative muscles and do a bit more writing, so increasing from two sprints to three or even four in the future. I’m not there yet, but it’s a hope of mine.

Tracking Progress

With sprints, I’ve also started tracking my sprints with a printable chart that I got off Sarra Cannon’s website. You can see them in the picture below. Using these sheets and making note of the minutes long the sprint was helped me to find my sweet spot with sprint length. I also liked to see how much I got done each day and how the word count was increasing. Seeing progress makes me believe that it’s happening because adding words feels rather amorphous.

I also use a spreadsheet to track my daily word count. I take the total from the sprints and add it to an excel sheet. These spreadsheets also track my overall monthly goal (which we’ll get to in a bit). The monthly spreadsheets add everything up for me, let me track my progress, and the one I bought can track more than just my WIP. That way I can see that if I have a low word count on my WIP it may be because I wrote a 1,000 word blog post instead. If you’ve ever done NaNoWriMo, the word count trackers are a lot like what they have on their website, but this one covers more than one project at a time.

While tracking my progress has been good for me because I have the visual pay-off, something I struggled with greatly in January was not punishing myself for not writing on a certain day. I originally colored in the days where I didn’t write. That ended up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy where one writing-less day perpetuated more writing-less days. The colored bands stacked up, and my positive feelings surrounding my work plummeted. In February, I stopped coloring in the days I missed. I tried to treat the new month like a clean slate, and with each successive week, I tried to have less writing-less days if possible.

Realistic Goals

Let’s put a big neon, bolded sign around REALISTIC.

I somehow managed to be under the delusion that in the past, I could write like 30k a month despite logically knowing I didn’t write more 1,000 words a day. I actually went back through my blog and found my old monthly check-ins, which had my word count totals for the month. Most were 10k-20k depending on the month and where I was in the story.

This is also something I had to calibrate within myself. The beginnings of new books are a SLOG for me. I tend to have false starts, have a lot more pauses, and I can’t power through the beginnings when I don’t know where I’m going like I can in the middle of a work. What I am having to remind myself is that if I’m working on the beginning of the story (first 10k-15k), I need to be mindful that it’ll take me a lot longer than months where I’m in the middle or end of a book. I may only write 5k a month when I’m starting a brand new story and still feeling out where I’m going.

In January, I wrote 2,800 words, and in February I wrote 10k with the word count increasing each week. This leads me to my March goal. I decided that I’m going to have a good, better, best goal for my March word count goal. My good goal is 10,000 words, which is fairly modest and very doable if things continue as is. My better goal is 15k, and the best goal is 20k. I don’t think I’ll hit the 20k, but it would be amazing if I could. Instead of shooting for the fences and saying 20k for March, I have the lower goals which are more realistic and very doable. Basically, this is positive reinforcement as I stretch and rebuild my writing muscles. I have these goals written down on my sprint sheets and my word count spreadsheet along with how many words per day I need to reach each.

I’m a very visual person who likes data, so having all these spreadsheets and sprint sheets help me manage my goals while tempering my expectations (aka not being totally unrealistic because I can’t remember my past creative thresholds). Not everyone will like this, and I know some will actively hate that everything involves tracking because it has the opposite effect on them. But if you’re like me and need that sort of regimented, goal-oriented, piece-by-piece breakdown, some of what I’ve done these past two months may be helpful to you.

Tag: spreadsheets

Writerly Tools of the Trade

Spreadsheets