Schedules

I use excel to create schedules for my writing project. I don’t schedule things down to the minute. I just schedule things to do each day. I use a schedule for writing this blog. I have a week to write, revise and post the blogs. I confess, I write them in advance. I’m not reporting news, I’m just writing some advice on writing. They are usually things that have worked for me, like schedules.

You don’t have to use a spreadsheet program for your schedule. A text editor would do. I find that excel works well for this list. My schedule is also the basis for my index of the blogs I have written. It makes it easier for me to keep track of what I have written. This works for me.

My blog schedule, for example has a column for the actual date of the blog — the day that the blog is to post. This is the absolute deadline for writing the blog. The next column has the topic. After that, I have some calculations. I have a column for writing deadline and revision deadline, then I have a column for the number of words. I try to have four hundred fifty to five hundred words per blog. This is where the calculations come in. If the word count is between four hundred fifty and five hundred words, the spreadsheet reports that the blog is done. Otherwise, it tells me how many words I have left to write for the blog. It’s something I use. You might not find it useful. You might not have a minimum word count on your blog as I do, but that’s OK. You don’t need that part of it. It’s just part of the schedule for me.

A schedule can help you stay on track with your writing. That will help you keep to your deadlines, self-imposed or not. That is what they are for after all. As I have said, I don’t plan my days down to the hours and minutes. I just note that I want to do something on a particular day. It’s just how I do things. You might find you need to do a more precise schedule. You might find that you don’t need a schedule at all. I find having a schedule useful. It keeps me from repeating topics too soon.

A good schedule can help you keep track of your writing. It can be fancy or plain. It’s up to you. When I finish a year’s worth of blogs, I take the spreadsheet and revise it. I remove the columns with the notations that I have on whether it is done or scheduled. I just leave the date of posting, the topic, and the number of words. Then I move the worksheet from the blog schedule file to an archive file that indexes the work. I include where the blog is located, since I use scrivener to write them, what scrivener file they are located in. I used to have them in text files in a folder — I had a column that held the link to the file. Now I just note which scrivener file has the blog. Like I said. It works for me.

About pebblepup

I am not one who is comfortable talking about myself but here goes. I enjoy writing, family history, and reading. I decided to do this blog because I wanted to try something new. I decided to make it a weekly blog because I wasn't sure that I could keep up with a daily one, and monthly seemed like I was writing a magazine. I think I did ok with my choices. You'll notice that there are not a lot of graphics on my site. That's because there are graphics plastered everywhere on the Internet and those sites sometimes take forever to load. This blog is a place where you can kick back, relax and be ready to be amused. At least I hope I willbamuse you. This blog is on a variety of subjects from my ficitional cat agency, the FFL, which is monthly, to instructional blogs to editorials, which are my opinions only. I admit that I don't know everything and could be wrong -- I frequently am. Now, stop reading about me and read what I have to say!