Project Management for Smut Writers, Part 2

Welcome back, all! Last time I was here I talked about project management. I've been modifying my writing process to optimize it a bit more than not at all, using Trello to keep myself organized. Since then I've refined things quite a bit, so I figured I'd give you an update.

First of all, I've created a dedicated Writing board to track my different projects. Previously I had them listed in a list on my personal To-Do board, but that wasn't cutting it for me. Now I have things broken out into books in progress and ideas I haven't started yet. I also have a list of published books, which includes Amazon links for each book so I can do my advertising posts quickly. And I have a list of reference links in case I get time to, y'know, improve my craft.

The in progress entries are important, because that's how I'm tracking my work. Any time I manage to get some writing done or any other work, I just throw down a comment listing what I did. Easy!

So that's my writing board. I'm also still maintaining boards for each project I'm actively working on.

Disclaimer: 19+ year old farm boy.

Here I keep track of what tasks I need to do, but I also generate what is basically a scene block-out. Each card is a scene, and I write down what I want to happen in the details for each one. I'm still massaging this a bit - I can probably move to labeling scenes instead of moving them between lists. Also, I was tracking my work here, but it was too much trouble to break up my word counts between scenes, so I moved that to the Writing board.

So far I'm okay with this setup. I am getting a bit frustrated with Trello's interface - it's not as responsive as I'd like and the click-through to do what I want is a bit high. Still better than Project! (Ask me about my Project 2016 license if we ever meet in a bar. Then duck.) Once I get my system stabilized I might go looking for another solution, but for now I'm staying with it.

For the record I've completed a full 7,000 word short story draft since I got going with this system two weeks ago, and have written about 2,000 words on my next project. Some of you might think that's slow, but not me! Seriously, this is pretty speedy for me. Stop... stop laughing.

Ahem. Aside from writing I've been taking a PMP class - think I mentioned that - and it turned out to be an exam cram - didn't mention that - so basically worthless in terms of mastering the project management craft. But I am learning of a lot of things and I hope to share more with you all as I go.

Oh and once the Amazon Prime Day strike is over, remember to check out my smut. I'm hoping to get my harpy story out by the end of the month and then I've got a really steamy contemporary story in the works. Ciao!

-Lea

Project Management for Smut Writers, Part 1

Hey, check out the new author picture! I commissioned it from @monidraws on Twitter and she did a swell job on it. :-)

I'm done being on break after finishing off the Temple of the Seducer books, so I'm taking a couple of days to try and get my writing process in order before I move on to the next round of books. My process up until now has been:

1. Pick something to write.

2. Jot down notes on what I need to do.

3. Faff about.

4. It's been a month.

5. Panic, go to 3.

6. How did this story get done?

7. Wait a few more months.

8. Edit.

It's... it's not a great process. -_-"

I managed to get my butt in gear for the Seducer books (woo *confetti* woo), but now that I'm done with them I'm falling back into old bad habits I need to break.

The biggest one is that I'm super bad at making myself write when I've only got a few minutes to work in. I tend to write only after giving my brain a solid 30 minutes to an hour to sink into what I call... nothing... the point is I dawdle and then I don't get anything written.

So I'm going to follow some excellent advice I've read repeatedly and never quite properly followed! And that's to get everything down that I need to do, in advance, so when I have time to do it I can jump write in without sitting in the grip of a paralyzing fear of whitespace for two hours. And then maybe I can start setting up some deadlines and stick to them. Miracles happen!

Enter the PMP class I'm taking later this month...

If you've never dealt with Microsoft Project it's a God-awful piece of shit software program you should avoid at all costs unless someone's paying you to use it, in which case it's the super-useful industry standard. (Damn it Microsoft.) My day job is paying me to take a class on project management so I'm familiar with the basics, but I wouldn't dare use Project to try and manage my writing.

I decided to give Trello a try because it's free and it works on all my bits and bobs. I started off by making some to-do lists, found the interface acceptable, and started loading up book projects.

First step was to make a template project I could copy easily for new books. Trello sorts itself into "boards", so each project (book) is a board. Here's a screen cap of my first attempt:

Seems pretty reasonable at first glance (the color looks better live, I promise), so I copied the board and entered the info I had already for my "next" project ("next" implying I don't randomly shift focus):

Already I can see some problems. I'm going to need a reference list to keep track of any info I need that isn't tied to a scene or a task. Also I should have somewhere to put tasks I'm done with. But that ends up being a lot of lists, so I decide to use Trello's label feature to mark the difference between scenes and tasks so I can pick them out at a glance.

Now the project template looks like this:

Better! Now I don't have to break my neck browsing lists, and I can move the cards around to sort stuff that's important to the top. I'm keeping the drafted list because otherwise I'm going to have a lot of stuff lingering in to-do, but I might change that to labels a la Scrivener.

(Why am I not working in Scrivener? Because I've tried that repeatedly and it always goes fiddly on me and ends in tears. I'm resolved this time to keep the writing bit separate from the project management bit, and see if I have better luck. But for what it's worth, Scrivener does support the gist of what I'm doing natively so you're welcome to try it there.)

Now my next step is going to be getting all my current book projects listed out, then make boards for the ones I'm planning to work on, get the steps together... and get writing! As long as I can get an hour to work on it tomorrow I think I'll be fine. Plan on seeing an update by Friday this week.

-Lea