Method and Mayhem: Digging myself out with Plotter lists

My archival trip to the University of Oregon was incredible. It ended way too fast, and before I knew it, I was back in Lawrence, KS, still working intensely on both my archival research and the big fiction manuscript which I do not intend to market - but now I was also dealing with family obligations, health issues in the family and my own, university commitments, future planning, and many other things.

Lists, lists, lists. Plotter in Bible size is my go-to organizer.

I continued to work on the fiction manuscript at the same breakneck pace. I talked to my therapist about the intensity of my feelings about writing a big novel I do not want to market, and we talked about how I could allow myself to produce something which is not an “asset,” i.e. not a potential commercial/marketable property or product. This decision was and remains revolutionary for me. I am at 110k words in and I regret nothing. There’s a bit to go until the end, but I detoured to bonus scenes, of which I also have over 30k (I’m afraid to put everything together and count, it’s probably more). That’s like a heap of NanoWrimos. I feel great about this work, and about my decision to keep it to myself. Many things will come out of this which I do plan to share, but this project in particular is private and is likely to remain this way.

Now that the intensity of first drafting is easing up and I have so many things to catch up on, some of them urgent, I’m back to detailed planning using my fountain pens, journal, and Plotter. It is very difficult to get back to regular planning when I was organizing my life around these two big projects (archival work and fiction MS) for a while.

Getting “back on track” can be emotionally challenging, especially since I never feel that I’ve gotten “off track” by prioritizing big projects I basically live for and which need my focus and attention. There are some people who work steadily in exactly the same way every day. I am not one of those people. When I am in a flow of a big project, I prioritize that project. I always keep track of some things (like my core schedules, my commitments to students), but others are rotate in and out in order to make room for the big pieces. It means that from time to time I need to rebalance, and re-embrace detailed organizing to catch up on other fronts. I find that breaking things into small components and paying attention to accessibility is very important.

I like to use my Plotter (Bible Size) to break things into components and to track my progress. I like my Plotter because it is versatile, slim, has small, non-bulky rings, and easily lends itself to good archival organization via the Task Manager folders. Plotter offers a variety of fountain pen friendly refills. I’ve been on the Plotter train since 2022.

Lists, lists, lists. With Leonardo Momento Magico Bohemian Twilight and Aurora Internazionale Arancio

I started by making a List of Lists. I wrote out a few versions of the List of Lists just to make sure I have everything I need.

Then I wrote out some of those lists.

Then I rewrote some of those lists to have a better grip on the order of things as they need to get done. I want to write a bit more about the process of list rewriting by hand, because it’s such an important component of my process: hopefully in the future.

Then I wrote my daily to-do lists based on those lists.

I am happy with my progress - I’ve been steadily catching up, and I still am doing work on the big projects, although less intensely.

One of the things I’m working on is a linocut promo print for my upcoming book, Yoke of Stars (July 2024). But I am also doing frogs, because frogs are in my big private novel.

I think it’s difficult to easily shift between different modes of organization because the world is often selling us a one size fits all organizing solution, when some of us have an ebb and flow, or rotate approaches, or have different organizing needs at different times. I’ll be honest, often after reading some of these organizing books I start feeling like there’s something wrong with my approach (or even myself!) because while my approaches have a pattern, it’s more of an interpretative dance than a military march with a drum. Reading Newport’s Deep Work, I thought, “finally, neurotypical people discovered hyperfocus”; Allen’s Getting Things Done takes a more segmented or fragmented approach - but both deep focus and getting many small things/pieces done have their place in my method/mayhem: they just don’t happen at the same time and in the same way.

“Begin with one” is a line from Sofia Samatar’s new novella The Practice, The Horizon, and the Chain - it is marvelous, and I warmly recommend it. “Begin with one” is an important reminder to myself (in my plotter divider) to begin with just one thing when I am faced with multiple conflicting priorities.

Organization is there to support our endeavors: it is not the overarching principle in itself. It’s a tool. I believe tools are value-neutral - using a Plotter for two months, taking a break, returning to it in a month is not any better (ethically speaking) than using a Plotter all year long, or not using a Plotter. That’s just my approach, however; you might feel differently.