This is the time of year when school has started and the next step is organizing everything into a good routine. I don’t seem to be good at this life skill, though attempting must be one of my hobbies. With new schedules and continued habits and commitments, readjustments are required and piecing things in where they fit. Not quite a New Start, but a re-evaluation.
For Organizing Life
Old habits die hard, but there isn’t enough time in a day for everything. I’m working on doing a ‘quilt’ organizing of my life. This includes cutting everything up into little pieces and then spreading them out throughout the week. Trying to make use of the 15 minutes I have between things, and squeeze in what will fit.
A word of caution, we all know what happens when there is all work and no play. If all of the blue in a quilt is in one corner, the quilt looks lopsided and weird. Organizing a balanced anything, life or quilt, requires spreading pieces out as evenly as possible. Have some downtime spread out among the work.
For Stories
“Kill your darlings” is a phrase most writers have heard. Meaning that there are times when even your favorite ideas need to be cut out of a story for it to work. The good part about it, is that those wonderful ideas you had to ‘kill’ from that story may work wonderfully in the next.
Every story is developed from little ideas put together. Like making a potion, some of those pieces of ideas had to wait a long time to be used. This concept applies especially to the brainstorming and beginning part of writing and creating. Piecing together is also required in developing and editing.
I have had stories that didn’t have enough ‘pieces’ in them, as well as a few with too much. In both cases, cutting things down and fitting them together is a tedious, but worth-while process.
Share with me some of your “quilts” and I’ll share some of mine with you. This can be your scheduled week, an adjusted story plan, an actual blanket, or something entirely different. I want to see what kind of pieces you have and what you can do with them!
