I had listened to co-workers discuss the fact that they worked better with a deadline, even though they did much of it last minute. For me, I gave myself a deadline. Usually, I give myself 30 days. I have a writing count spreadsheet that I use, and I give myself a set number of words I’d like to reach. For example, 50,000. If I go over, that’s good. If not, I look to see where I can add more detail. This gives me a deadline that I can see when I put in my daily word count.

To help with my writing, I also have a notebook that I carry around religiously. It’s a Mead Five Star Notebook that has two halves and some pockets in the middle. The first half I use for ideas and snippets to include. The second half is for my daily To Do Lists and important information that doesn’t relate to writing. With my ADHD, I’m screwed without it.

Each evening, I spend time writing. I flip through my notebook and add in any ideas, conversations, or writing that I may have started. Any bit of free time, I’m writing. I even spent time during my planning and lunch to write at work, so when I came home in the afternoons, I could easily transfer that to my document.

With writing, I have found that you have to be consistently working. You have to maintain your focus and keep up with your stamina. Case in point: my newest work that I’m writing. I haven’t been consistently writing due to so many other things going on, and I can tell the affect. I’m struggling to get back into writing the book. It’s difficult after taking such a huge break. My writing doesn’t flow the same. How will I fix it? Probably go back to reading books that are similar to what I was writing to get me back into the mode of writing I was working on. I mean reading paranormal wolf shifter romances is miles away from writing young adult and middle grader novels.

Oops!

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This week I decided it was time to change my routine. I gave every day (including weekends) a designated work assignment. I would alternate between writing and sewing. On days where it was a writing day, if writing ended or I was unable to write for eight hours, I could stop and do a sewing related activity. That seemed like a winner, right? I would still be working on a business activity either way.

The biggest problem is not the day designation. The problem is I enjoy sewing. I’ll find any excuse to go sew. At least on days where my depression doesn’t seep in and cause me to be listless while my anxiety re-examines every awkward incident and event in my life.

So today is a writing day. If I can manage to find my thumbdrive (I don’t know why it isn’t where it is supposed to be) I may actually have time to work on my novel. That’s another reason why I needed writing days. I have much to write and finish this summer. My goal is to have my book finished by the end of July. I’m certain I can do it as long as I can stay focused.

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I know what it is that I am going to have to do to get myself out of this mess. I need to go back and look at my outline and make some changes. I need to figure out how to write my way out of the corner I placed myself into. I don’t think that I anticipated this, but then again, I began writing this novel without an outline. It kind of bloomed on its own. That’s why I’m suddenly stuck. I did find my handwritten notes yesterday when I began to clean out my old file cabinet that I will be chunking. Those may help me some, but I don’t know how much. As much as I don’t want to admit it, I think I had an unlikely hero rise up, and I don’t really want him to be a hero. I need him to remain helpful, but not be the rescuer. I need my heroines to rescue themselves. They need to know that they can overcome this. I don’t even want mom and dad to come to their rescue.

That’s my WIP for this Wednesday. What are you currently working on? Let me know down in the comments.

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This morning when I sat down with my cup of coffee in hand, I had every intention of tapping out several posts across at least 3 blogs. Instead it is almost midnight, and here I am writing my 2nd article of the day while sipping my night time cup of tea. I suppose that is production, just not the type of productivity I was searching for when I woke up this morning.

I started my morning like I do all weekend mornings: planning for the day ahead. I made out my list of things that I needed to accomplish today, and I even numbered them in order of importance. Since I did not finish those labeled in priority at 4 and above, those become my number one priorities in the morning. In fact, I have already cut out the fabric and made a plan for attaching the fabric to my jeans to extend the length. Sad to say that I have been trying to lengthen these jeans for 3 months. They are the only pair that I own that actually fit me in the waist since losing weight. The only thing that didn’t fit were the length. They apparently shrunk once washed and dried.

My least favorite chore- laundry- is currently finishing its round in the dryer. I still have about 2 more loads tomorrow, and of course folding, but I will be finished for another week.

The problem: Writing.

I have so much writing to catch up, yet I can never find the time. I have sat down at the laptop multiple times today, but even going over all of my lists of ideas, nothing seemed to jump out at me with inspiration wanting to be placed on the page. Maybe it is stagnant thinking? Maybe it is lack of inspiration? Maybe I can only churn out writing after I first wake up? If the latter, that makes so much sense. I do feel more inspired to write first thing in the morning. By the middle of the day and into the afternoon, I start to become mentally fatigued. I also haven’t read in the genres I want to write about lately. Don’t get me wrong. I love my topics and niches, but I haven’t come across any news nuggets.

They say that in order to be a more proficient, and daresay better, writer one must be reading. Always reading. There were times when I spent much of my lunch breaks scrolling through the news and reading interesting articles, or sending them to myself so that I could read them at a later time; however, I haven’t read much. The few articles I have clicked on have all been about the government, and I don’t write about the government. Writing, money, food, and business are my topics of preference.

So how will I manage to get caught up on all the writing that needs to be completed?

I guess I will just have to find the time to read at night and write in the morning. I set some very lofty writing goals for myself (3 articles for 3 blogs each day). I don’t think I’m going to reach that point. I had big intentions. I just don’t see me making it.

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I know. I get it. You’re probably thinking what do squirrels and this blog have in common? Well, just hear me out.

My son’s psychologist, during his appointment, diagnosed me as having ADHD. I sympathize a lot with my students who become easily distracted over the smallest of issues, and when you have those same said students in the middle of the day when meds are wearing off, you have highly distracted students. Much like taking a dog to a park and it suddenly darting off after a squirrel, only to dart off toward another squirrel once you’ve chased it down. This is what it is often like trying to go to sleep at night with my brain. It often chases down squirrels.

Last night was no exception. I had a conversation with someone about all the fabric I have that I can’t use due to it being licensed fabric, and I laughed about the fact that I could purchase the fabric and sell it as fabric, but I couldn’t sell anything made from the fabric because that’s a violation. This, of course, made my brain try to think of all the ways that I could sell that fabric.

There are a few dilemmas to this. What if I’m wrong about being able to sell as is? Where would I sell this? How would I sell and market it? Would this be a one and done, or would I want to turn this into a business?

Y’all, I have enough irons in the fire and plenty enough squirrels to chase without chasing this one down. Before I decide to take on one more thing, I really need to let the dust settle. I may need room for the fabric I can make items from and sell, but I may have to just bite the bullet and sell it on Ebay or something. Going into the fabric or wholesale business right now is not on my agenda at the moment.

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I sat down yesterday morning and worked on my To Do list for the day, but it wasn’t long before I decided I really needed to go to Hobby Lobby to see if they had what I needed.

That was my first mistake. They didn’t have it, but instead I ended up wandering around the store. Afterwards, I went home, grabbed the broken item (which was the reason I went to Hobby Lobby to begin with) and took it back to Michaels. I’m not sure why I didn’t take it with me the first time. Maybe, deep down, I really didn’t want to work. So now, with broken item in hand, I went to exchange it. Afterwards, I went to JoAnn fabrics to wander around that store, too.

When I finally made it home, I couldn’t find the needed motivation to work on anything. Instead, while I had already woke up late, I also decided to take a nap. I didn’t even have the motivation to watch TV. I just felt very unfocused. I had no attention span. I struggled to even watch a 5 minute video. Watching TV was out of the question. Sitting down to work at a computer was a no go.

I’m sure that I could have fought it, but I decided not to do so. I just let it go. It was not a good thing.

Recently, I started another business (outside of the 12), and I didn’t have the kind of response I thought I would, so I became depressed, and I think this is what led up to what happened yesterday.

Today, I have a different purpose. I did some reading last night. I went back through 3 years of journals, and I realized what I needed to do. That involves work. Unlike the year and a half that it took me to get where I was, I have insight to know what to do quickly to get results. (I’m thinking I should take those journals and write a book) Anyhow, today is about keeping my nose to the grindstone and getting the work done. I can rest on Saturday and Sunday like normal people!

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Last week I shared with you that I had decided to change how I worked my business by implementing a new organization system. Currently, I am juggling 11 websites/businesses/blogs. That seems rather overwhelming, but 4 of those are connected and are E-commerce websites. The only difference among them is that they are separated due to focus (children’s clothing, adult clothing, home goods, and party goods). I have had one of those businesses since 2016, two since 2019, and the other since last year. The remaining are blogs.

I started by separating these into days. E-commerce was only one day, while I could combine several blogs into a day. Example: Monday (3 blogs), Tuesday (E-com), Wednesday (3 blogs), Thursday (E-com), Friday (E-com), Saturday (Blog), and Sunday (E-com). Most of the blogs just require some maintenance and writing blog posts or creating social media posts. The E-commerce sites tend to require creating products and fulfilling orders. Because I work a full time job, I didn’t want to spend more than a few hours on my websites, plus what I did work on needed to be those things that brought in money. Important tasks = money generation.

What does money generation look like in a blog? Content. New blog posts. It can take up to 8 months before a blog post can see the maximum amount of traffic it will receive. When utilizing ads, page views (traffic) can mean money. Depending on the keyword or ad placement, it can mean anywhere from $0.15/1000 views to $15/1000 views. By utilizing this new system, I’ve been able to be more consistent in creating my blog posts so that I constantly have posts being published.

I tend to track my rank using Alexa Traffic Rank, and prior to my new system, my ranking had started to decline rather than moving up. This is a really big deal since I had managed to bring most of my sites up from obscurity in the 2 million range to under 150,000 in the last 5 months through consistent content posting.

You don’t necessarily have to utilize my organization system, but you do need to find something that works for you. I didn’t manage to follow my system to the letter, but I did manage to do something productive each day. For example, yesterday I didn’t create an upload of a product, but I did package some items for pictures later. My mind would not allow me to focus, and as far as typing, using my right hand since my recent stroke has been difficult some days. I tend to postpone things that require fine motor skills for when I am able. Is that a bad thing? Missing a day? Not necessarily. It was an E-commerce day. I can catch those up on a day when writing a blog post comes easily. I can upload one or two products or photograph a product, etc.

Overall, I’m liking my new system. We will see how the remainder of the month goes. I have tweaked a few things weekly, but I think I have it much the way that I want it right now. I just need to add in creating video content on Saturday and Sundays, but I’m waiting on more of my recovery before getting there.

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In anything, whether it is writing a book or blogging, the key to success is consistency. You must have a plan to put in the work on a daily basis if you are going to see any kind of success. Skipping a day may be okay, but skipping several can completely derail your accomplishments. If you are writing a book, missing multiple writing sessions could mean missing important deadlines. With blogging, missing writing sessions allows the competition to take away your spot.

Recently, I have moved and had a serious health issue that placed me in the hospital. Moving shifted me out of my writing groove. I spent my Saturdays pre-move writing and having posts and articles scheduled. Since the move, I have barely had time to sit down and finish one article or post, much less have enough to schedule out two weeks worth. The result: Google ranking has declined and page views are down 83%. I’ve seen this with all of my websites. It isn’t a good thing.

My goal for February is to be more consistent with my schedule. I decided to try a new system for managing my time and divided my tasks up so that I didn’t feel overwhelmed when it came time to focus on a certain website, task, or project. This will be my first week at attempting to stick to the schedule for a week. Prior to this, it was difficult to determine what important tasks I needed to work on, and at times, I would find myself with task overload. This did not fit well with my brain. Too much means I feel overwhelmed and the brain shuts down completely. Now I just delegate those too many tasks into categories and complete the important things first, and then move to the next, etc. I’ll definitely have to share how I set up my Happy Planner to keep track of all of this, but that will be a post for next week.

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I’ve been slowly pathing a new path for myself, and this new year I have big plans and goals set for myself. Everything has been leading to my future success.

With most goals, we often find ourselves with a plan that seems to veer off into a new direction. Personally, my writing plans have taken a new direction many times. I still love to write stories and books, but I have learned that sometimes we have to place foundations to make those things happen, whether that is blocking out specific time for writing or using free moments to jot down notes and ideas. Of course, right now, I’ve been using much of my expertise on writing to write smaller pieces (i.e. blog posts and articles).

Smaller pieces allow me the functionality to practice perfecting my style and voice as a writer. I do still have some nuances and quirks in my writing that I’ve tried to rid from my writing, but these quirks are harder to dispel than I thought. They do drive me crazy. I never knew about them until someone so kindly pointed them out. Now they stand out like a lone dandelion in a green field. If I fail to remove them, they swiftly multiply.

As for my writing goals this year, I want to be able to be more productive with my writing time. I want to be able to freely write and be uninhibited by that nasty quirk above. I want to use my planner to maximize my output and keep track of what I’m currently writing.

I will have ten full sites for which I will be writing content by the end of 2022. As of today, 6 of those are fully functioning, though I haven’t begun full promotion for them all. That is coming, but for now, the writing is the most important part.

I am also reading. If you write, you should also read. I have 2 books on my Kindle that I’m reading. I am trying to perfect my copywriting (it has been forever since I focused on that). Each of those books are on copywriting and selling. Once you dive into marketing, you understand that everything is connected (colors, word choice, and product photos).

As you can see, 2022 is going to be huge for me. Plenty of writing. Plenty of perfecting what I began in 2019. Plenty of expanding what I started last year. I know that I may feel stretched thin at first, but I’m looking forward to getting started and finding my perfect groove.

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It’s the weekend, and I am back to writing. I took the week off from writing as I felt I had pushed myself too much finishing up the month of November. However, I am back to writing. I mean, who needs NaNoWriMo as an excuse to write? Certainly not I!

I have so much to do in the next few months. I had thought about not posting as much on this blog while I worked on my other websites, but this morning I realized that I didn’t want to do that.

Of course, I probably will not post several times a week, but I will certainly post weekly while I let you know the progress of what is going on with my websites and blogs.

I currently have a total of five in progress and one that is in its infancy stage. Two of those are Ecommerce sites. I actually sell products on them. So maintaining and keeping it running is my main goal. The others, this site included in that, require constant updating and writing. Lots of writing.

I’m in the middle of researching for the newest addition. I don’t mind though. I enjoy writing. I enjoy research. Research means reading.

Today I’m focused on updating those that are already up. I’m adding in new articles and recipes. Then tomorrow, I write for the new one. I’m getting ready to launch it in a few weeks.

Until then, I’ll just continue to do what I do best and write.

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