One thing I’ve learned about schedules during the last week — they MUST be flexible! My schedule, however well intended, wasn’t practicable. Not that I’m giving up on it. Oh no . . . I plan to continue with this attempt at fixing my life. In fact, there were some positive results. But perfection is impossible so flexibility is a necessity.

This past week I took a lot of scheduled morning walks… which was a great way to start the day. I enjoyed coming home and getting right into watering the garden before making breakfast. I did good at writing the three morning pages every day but that takes me so long I’m often late to get to the computer at 10am for blogging. Sometimes I felt I was ‘running late’ most of the day.

Making that morning routine more difficult, Bob started a new prospecting project that involved having me drop him off at the river most mornings. The reason is that we noticed a truck parked downstream from us that had been vandalized recently — rocks thrown through the windows. We don’t want that to happen to our car so it can’t sit there all day while he’s working. Of course driving back and forth to his prospecting place wasn’t part of my schedule. I told myself that I must be flexible — that too rigid an attachment to the schedule wouldn’t work for either of us. While there I enjoyed watching him kayak across the river each morning, and managed to take photos of wildflowers while I was waiting around. The flower in the photograph above is St. Johns Wort - the well-known herbal depression remedy.

One day he wanted me to go out of town with him. Around here, going out of town means a two hour drive each way, minimum, unless we go over the hill to Oregon (summers only) which takes only an hour. Any direction we head out, it is time consuming. Out of town trips are not in my schedule. Again, flexibility is needed to work around the unexpected needs of life.

On Sunday he wanted me to go swimming with him! Swimming isn’t in my schedule either! More flexibility needed! However I managed to take my Alphasmart Neo to write about the swimming hole we were at. Now that’s double-dipping!

Now I’m about to revise my new schedule for the first time. I will definitely allocate more time to writing. It seems strange that I gave it only one hour. I need more than that to be effective at revising my novels. When I start a revision, I like to complete one chapter daily. It doesn’t make sense for me to do any less. Customarily I speed up at the end of the novel and revise two or three chapters each day. That’s because toward the end I get excited about reading and the revision work comes easier.

As to what works well, concerning the schedule… I found it took stress off my relationship with Bob because (1) He can see I’ve devoted my computer time to real work; (2) He can see when my breaks will be and has adjusted to using the computer when I’m not using it; and (3) He knows I’ll take time off during the day to do ‘real world’ things around the house and garden.

My challenge now is to revise the schedule so it allows more time for writing and flexibility. I know if I stick to the plan more things will get done. Efficiency is my goal.

I’ve been resisting the idea of making a schedule for months, even though I’m not getting things done as well as I’d like. So it surprised me this morning when I started writing one in my journal while doing morning pages.

First I decided to write a blogging schedule. I did this because the day before I meditated on my problems with keeping blogs updated, and got the inspiration that I should update each blog once weekly. So . . . I made a little schedule to tell me which blog to update and on what day. The day for this blog is Monday — the top of the work week!

After a few more minutes of writing reflection in the journal I found myself writing a daily schedule to make room in my busy life for all the things I need to do.

Here’s what I came up with:

Today’s run-through with the new schedule was perfect. It helps immensely that my life partner, Bob, supports me in this effort. In fact, he’s been urging me to make a schedule for months, but I didn’t because they have never worked for me in the past. Why set myself up for failure? That’s what I was thinking… but now I’m willing to give it a try because I think it is the only way I’ll get everything done. Also it helps that Bob now knows exactly what hours I won’t be using the computer - so he can come in and read the news.

This morning after printing the schedule and posting it on the wall, I managed to write a post about the movie, K-Pax, on my Mystic Movie Reviews blog. I love that movie! We watch movies almost every night of every week, so I’ve decided to post a review every Monday of the movie I liked best from that week. That was done at noon. I hit publish and walked away from the computer - to go make an onion and tomato sandwich - which I took out to the screen house for a little picnic. While there I took off my shoes, watched my vegetable garden grow, and read a chapter in a time management book.

At 1pm I came back inside and spent a happy hour critiquing three chapters in a novel for a writing friend. Next I worked on my latest Squidoo lens — Chives - Cultivation and Medicinal Uses. I’m making a series of lenses about herbs and gardening. My new niche! I was thrilled to hit publish on that project too! I got it done just after 4 and by then I felt drained — so I lay down for an hour (couldn’t sleep) and then went downtown to get the mail.

I had a lovely evening with Bob and now, here I am, finishing up the day’s work… not feeling pressured by having too many other things to do. I feel I’ve done my share for the day. Probably the schedule has the effect of lifting the burden of work stress. Now instead of thinking that I’ve got a ton of work I didn’t get done today - I’m thinking - I achieved my goals for the day and kept to my schedule and everything worked out great. I hope this wonderful feeling lasts! By this time next week I should have more to say on the subject.

Okay, this has been fun… and I’d just like to know (in case someone reads all this) . . . how do you feel about schedules? Do they work for you?

I used to write poetry daily. In fact, for a while, it became quite an obsession. I also delved deeply into songwriting — the musical side of poetry. But I gave it all up in favor of sanity, long ago.

Lately I’ve dabbled at a bit of poetry, for the fun of it. I’m not diving into the deep end of the Mariana Trench this time.

A few weeks ago I wrote some limericks for a contest. Here’s what I came up with: The Irish Story of Frank Martin and the Fairies, Retold in Limericks.

Today I wrote an autobiographical prose-poem, free-verse style: A Baby Boomer Defines Life After World War II.

Are you on Twitter? If so, you’re welcome to follow me. So many people are connecting on Twitter for microblogging fun, I recently even discovered one of my daughters there. Most of my Twittering is about writing, including my content-writing work at Squidoo.Com. I maintain a second account to talk about herbs and gardening: Linda’s Herbal.

A new type of Squidoo lens was developed recently. It combines Twitter with Squidoo, and is called a Twttrlist. Each Twttrlist contains a list of favorite Tweets on a chosen topic.

[If you don't know what Tweets are, check out Twitter.]

My first Twttrlist was called Great Writing Resources, Tips, Twitters, and Inspirations. I pulled out all stops on this lens; it contains links to every lens on writing that I could find on Squidoo. Because it represents the work of many lensmasters, the range of writing topics covered is staggering. For example, some topics are mystery writing, writing children’s novels, ebook writing, and daily prompts. There’s much more.

If you’re looking for some handy writing inspiration, you’ll find it there.

My second writing Twttrlist is for those of you who may be interested in participating in NaNoWriMo this year: NaNoWriMo News, Tips, & Resources on Twitter and Squidoo. Again, I featured the work of other lensmasters as well as my own lens, Get Ready For NaNoWriMo.

After all these years, I finally have one novel revised enough to submit. That’s quite an accomplishment, for me. I never understood as I was writing it how intense my revision experience would be. I’ve been over that manuscript six times now. For most of the first year I was afraid to look at it!

When I did - I read the first chapter to my teenage son, and he made several suggestions immediately. I implemented them during the first revision. I tend to let a manuscript rest between revisions. My mindset resists burnout in this way. Once I actually start a revision it goes fairly fast — I manage to do about one chapter daily, and with twenty chapters, this one took me about a month to revise each time. I always enjoyed re-reading the story!

It wasn’t until the third revision that I got brave and creative by deleting big chunks of text. I had to get a handle on the art of perfecting by cutting down. This helped me bring the manuscript from 51K to 46K which is a much better length, I think, for an upper middle grade novel. The last two novels in the series are more young adult in nature.

The one novel I now have revised six times and am ready to submit is The Scribe of Irohila, the first novel in my Antediluvian Adventures Series. I’ve got a synopsis written, and even a query letter. Now all I have to do is start sending it out.

I want to thank my writing friends in the Silverweb critique group for their help in critiquing this novel. Thanks Beverly, Jennifer, Nancy, and Norma! Thanks also, Jeannie of the Literary Dreams group… who did a final read-through and edit. Your insights helped a lot!