Wow. Friday again. That came around quick…
We both slept really well on Wednesday night resulting in us both getting up on time. I did get up with the poet too, to let the dog out. But his time is actually 2 hours before my time, and I went back to bed… The dog had a very good night. I think that has a lot to do with it. He didn’t wake once.
We had some good news from the workshop provider. They may not be doing an anthology study along in the summer, but they have added in an extra fantasy detective workshop in May and they confirmed next January’s workshop too: space opera. I get both of these as a lifetime study along member. Already they have 3 people enrolled on both, for the in person workshops. All from the one that just finished yesterday.
One day, in the future, I’d like to go to a face to face in person workshop. They get a good deal on the hotel rates, the poet will come too, and we’ll stay a bit longer in Vegas. It would be nice to fit one in before we’re all too old.
I spent some time adding a third word-count spreadsheet to my monthly spreadsheets. I have one for long works and one for short works. There’s only room for 10 projects on each, and I know I’ll write more than 10 things in 2024. I have 12 stories alone for 12 STORIES IN 12 MONTHS. At some point, I’ll open workbook 2 for the shorter works.
But the extra one I created is the totals spreadsheet. I opened last year’s, added an extra day for 29 February, and created all of the formulae for Month 1, January. Later I spotted a newer, 2024 version to incorporate leap day, but I’d already done my formulae by then and couldn’t face doing them again.
I’ll still only use one spreadsheet at a time, but the two 10-project workbooks will automatically feed into the totals workbook. I just have to remember to have them all open at the same time for the formulae to work.
I finished yesterday’s blog post and started today’s blog post. Then I settled in to catch Wednesday’s workshop. This was the last session of the week as he had nothing to record on Thursday morning for Friday viewing. Then I cracked on with the story.
I cancelled my Plottr annual subscription last week because I’m gradually moving away from subscription models. The other two I currently have are Canva and TickTick. Canva is one I’m trying to step away from, but while I learn how to do everything Canva does in Affinity, I’m tempted to hold on to it.
For TickTick I’d buy a lifetime plan tomorrow if they had one. I don’t mind keeping it, though, as I use it every day and it’s half the price of ClickUp. But I don’t use Plottr every day, and perhaps I should at least use it more often. Out of etiquette, and because they asked, I told them why I was cancelling. I’d also prefer something that works and syncs across several devices.
And, of course, they have one. It’s called their lifetime pro plan and I’d need to use it for 10 years to get my money’s worth, based on the annual plans.
However, I’ve been chatting with one of their support team and he offered me a discount based on this year’s subscription. By the time we’d finished chatting, the discount almost doubled. This offer also coincided with them releasing three new plotting templates – ALL for short stories.
I think he could only offer me this further discount because I’ve actually been with them for two years. This is Year 3 coming up. I daresay if I hang on, I might get a further discount. But as this one expires on 14 February, and as they’ve released these three new templates, at least one of which I know will work with the current short story I’m planning, although I’m sure two of them will, I think I’m going to go for it.
The poet offered to buy it for me as an early birthday present, which is very generous of him. But we’ve been there before, on more than one occasion, where we’ve each bought the other a gift in advance and by the time the birthday rolls around something else has taken our fancy.
There’s another course I have my eye on too, but it’s full price at the moment. I’m also already paying for a monthly subscription to another site, which gives full access to all of the courses there, although I’m toying with the annual plan there. But it’s still annual rather than lifetime. I can cancel both at any time and not pay any more once the term has passed.
So in among the planning and plotting and bobbing and weaving, I’m also number-crunching and trying to work out which is worth more to me. I’ll probably go with the Plottr lifetime plan. I’ll possibly buy the writing with depth course too, but if a sale pops up meanwhile, I’ll definitely buy it. I should really make maximum use of my monthly plan for the other one. If they don’t refresh the courses, I could finish them all within a year and not have to pay again.
Today, I’m back on with THE SECRET OF WHITEHORSE FARM and I’ll strip 1,200 words out of the sci-fi story for 12 STORIES IN 12 MONTHS. I also have a hair appointment this afternoon.
Have a super weekend!
Busy day for you! It’s still easier for me to use my own structures that I created before online tools existed than the online tools, because I lose so much time learning them, uploading information, etc. and it gets in the way of creation. I’m so exhausted by the time I’ve wrestled with the tool that there’s no energy left to create. It’s one reason I dumped tools like Asana, et al. It took me longer to enter the information and then update it than it took to do the tasks. I was losing too much actual work time by using it, instead of the tool streamlining my work.
TickTick is much easier and quicker than any of the others, and it does everything I need it to. I like to do the planning in TickTick because I can move it around before deciding on a schedule, then I can transfer it to the diary.
Plottr seems to be another one with a big learning curve. There are tons of videos but they’re all still going way over my head. It’s good in that it provides prompts and suggestions – not AI – like a roadmap, I suppose. And I can export it to Scrivener (or Word), so I have the structure to guide me there too. Complete waste of time for writing by hand as, like you, I have tried and tested methods. But handy for when I’m creating direct into Scrivener.