4 things I love about NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo is just around the corner. The new website is up and running and you can sign up now to be one of hundreds of thousands of other people around the world who will attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November.

I'm not sure if their author buddy system is live yet, but if so, you can find me via my username: lbakerrabe. Add me as an author buddy so we can watch each other progress toward the finish line.

4 things I love about NaNoWriMo:

1. It's only a month long. Even though sometimes I wish NaNoWriMo was year round, having it come but once a year concentrates the creative and competetive juices that make doing it so rewarding.
2. The goal is simple. Writing 50,000 words in 30 days is a very specific goal, and pretty easy to track. It's also just about numbers and output, not about quality or something else subjective.
3. It puts my priorities into perspective. Writing is extremely important to me, but often I can persuade myself to trade writing time for work time or house cleaning time or watching 30 Rock time. In November, I'm better at putting writing first.
4. It's kind of silly. The people who come back for NaNoWriMo year after year and the ones who get a lot out of the whimsical online community that surrounds it and who don't take it too seriously. It might sounds stressful to write that much that quickly, but it's not supposed to be. It's supposed to be an adventure, just like all art.

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April's calendar

If you subscribe to my monthly newsletter, you already know that I'm preparing to attend my first organizing conference, the National Association of Professional Organizers' 23rd Annual Conference and Organizing Exposition, next week. I'm extremely excited about the event and have already started my packing list. If you don't subscribe to my monthly newsletter, what are you waiting for? Sign up now!

Other stuff happening this month that you should know about:

April is Script Frenzy month, just like November is National Novel Writing Month. I will be attempting to write a 100-page script in 30 days!
April 1: April's Fool's Day
April 16: National Stress Awareness Day
April 18: Federal tax returns must be postmarked by this day. Passover begins.
April 22: Earth Day
April 24: Easter Sunday

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by anee.baba
Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

Day in the Life

Monday, February 21, 2011.

Though it was President's Day and a holiday for many, a self employed person can work on such days if it suits her, which it did me yesterday. I woke up at 6:45 and did my morning routine on the computer, checking email, updating Twitter and Facebook, catching up on the feeds in my Google Reader and reading some articles on the Los Angeles Times website. I also ate breakfast and prepared for the day's client.

At 7:45 I left the house and drove to meet my 8 am clients at their home in a nearby mountain community. In the car I caught Steve Inskeep's interview with Lisa Cholodenko, writer and director of The Kids Are All Right, a movie I really enjoyed. She was recommending movies and it was cool to hear her espouse the virtues of Ordinary People, Chinatown and Y Tu Mama Tambien, three movies I love, too. Then I arrived at my clients'.

It was our first session together, so I familiarized myself with their needs and spent a solid four hours sorting papers and getting a filing system set up. As I told my clients, I could do that all day long. I'm not sure they believed me, but it's true. My brain loves to categorize, sort and put away. However, the session was over at noon, so I returned home and fixed myself lunch while going through my email inbox for the second time that day.

I spent the next three hours on my computer promoting my upcoming workshop. It's on March 12, and I'm hoping there will be a good turnout. Getting free of paper in one's office seems impossible, but it isn't, and I think it's something that can really help people's state of mind and productivity. Plus, the workshop price is like getting 3 hours of intensive coaching from a professional organizer for the price of a single hour with that same organizer in your home or office. Anyway, I created notices for the workshop on a number of online bulletin boards. I also emailed a few clients to follow up on their progress and updated Bento with my recent income and expenses information. I also started this blog post.

I took a break to catch up with a relative on the phone. We talked about writing, and I got inspired to set myself a new goal. I write fiction, and have been plodding along in the middle of a novel for months. My new goal is to write ten thousand words in the next week and a half, hopefully getting me over the hump and into the final stretch of the story.

Realizing it has been a while since I hosted a Biznik networking mixer, I also set up one for two weeks from now, on March 8th. It will be at Bokado in Studio City and you can find all the details here. It's amazing to think that I've been hosting these on and off for over a year now!

I spent some time polishing up an article I'm writing called "Taking the Paperless Plunge." I'm sending in to the San Diego chapter of NAPO to see if they want to publish it in their online newsletter. I'm really happy with the way it turned out, and I'll probably publish it here in the future.

Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher.

After a light dinner and an episode of Murder, She Wrote on Netflix Instant (my favorite corny TV show and a good palate cleanser for my brain), I turned to my book. I'm writing a romance and I feel like I've been writing the same scene for days. I got in almost 1,000 words, which is really good for one sitting for me. I then did the dishes, made sure my work kit was ready for tomorrow's client, and finished writing this post.

So my day was productive, if a little unexciting. Now you know what a day in the life of a professional organizer* is like!

*I got the idea to do a day in the life of a professional organizer post from Bay area professional organizer Amanda Kuzak.

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

NaNoWriMo Survival Tip

We're one week into National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). If you are still writing, congratulations! I was on track until yesterday, when I didn't write at all and now I'm suddenly a day behind. But, there are still 22 days left to get to 50,000 words and I know I can do it. Here is one of my personal favorite tips for getting through the month with your word count high.

To stay focused while writing, I have a specific writing playlist in my iTunes. The value of this is fourfold:

1. When I hear the songs (always played in the same order) I know it is writing time, and Pavlov's dog-like, I want to write. 
2. They length of the playlist helps me keep track of how much, or how little, time I've spent writing and I can tell myself I'll keep going just through the next Broken Bells track.
3. If I need a little extra motivation, I'll buy a new song I like on iTunes, and put it in my writing playlist. The only way I'll let myself listen to it is on the playlist, and I don't listen to the playlist when I'm not writing, so it's like a little reward.
4. I'll add certain songs to my playlist if I think they will help inspire some part of the writing process, so if I character mentions a certain song, I'll do my best to add it. The playlist becomes tailored the novel I'm writing, and I get to start over again when I start a new one.

What strategies do you have to keep focused when you are doing a task that takes time and energy, that perhaps you don't always want to do?

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

A year ago: NaNoWriMo, change and Halloween

NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, starts November 1, and I'm participating for the third year in a row. (If you are attempting it, too, friend me!) Last year I wrote about balancing the hours it takes to actually write about 2,000 words of fiction a day with all the other things that a person has to do.

Change affects us all, practically all the time, and I love Julie Morgenstern's take on change and organization: “Every time we go through a major change, we experience a breakdown in our organizational systems.”

This time last year I also wrote about the benefits of a paperless, automatic billing. It really does help to stem the paper tide and keep things simpler and cleaner if you can switch most of your bills to this format. Try it, and see what a difference it makes.

Regarding organizing for Halloween, I put together a holiday-themed Organizer's Blog Digest. Check it out.

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com


      

NaNoWriMo preview

NaNoWriMo, aka, National Novel Writing Month, isn't until November. However, it isn't too early to start getting excited about it! I love NaNoWriMo. The challenge of writing 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days is just the right amount of scary and doable and useful for a fiction writer with self-discipline issues. Last year, I accomplished the goal and three months after that, I finished the novel I started. I'm in the (hopefully) last stages of revising that novel, and I'll be ready to begin again on November 1 with a clean slate and a new story.

I strongly encourage you to consider joining in the fun this year if you are any kind of writer, or even if you had a passing thought one day that you'd like to write a book. You can do it. I think the collective energy of 200,000 people all attempting the same thing really makes it easier. Or if not easier, less lonely, which is kind of the same thing.

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

My resolutions

The two biggest keys to making and accomplishing one's resolutions are specificity and accountability. The more specific you are about what you want to do, the easier it will be to name the steps needed to fulfill the resolution and the easier it will be to see if you've succeeded. Accountability speaks for itself. If you tell other people your resolution (such as writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days), you'll have a support system encouraging you to keep on the path to your goal, and you'll have the satisfaction of being able to show those people that you did it! So, in the interest of accountability, here is a recap of my 2009 resolutions and how I did with them, and a partial list of 2010 ones.

My 2009 resolutions were:

• Go camping
• Seek alternate headache treatments
• Sell a piece of writing
• Visit Griffith Park, Griffith Observatory and the LA Zoo

How did I do?

• I did not go camping, mainly because I don’t have a tent. But I realize that’s not a great reason, as I could have bought or borrowed one. I think I’m going to have to go with Gretchen Rubin and take this one off of my list, since this is the second consecutive year on there. As soon as I take it off, perhaps a way to do it will appear.
• I suffer from biweekly migraines. They have lessened in intensity this year because of some alternate treatments, mainly strong doses of black tea. The caffeine seems to help, but they haven’t gone away completely. I think that counts, though.
•  I did not sell a piece of writing. At the beginning of the year I thought I might start making my living from writing. Instead, I started my professional organizing business and have been writing as a creative project. Both choices have been great for my life. So I’m content with not having achieved this one as my priorites shifted and I accomplished so much more.
• I did go to Griffith Park and Griffith Observatory and while I didn’t go into the zoo, I parked in the parking lot there to do the LADWP Festival of Lights, so that counts, sort of.

My 2010 resolutions are:

• Refresh my apartment by de-cluttering and rearranging the space (even professionals have to make a point to do this once in while)
• Learn about and use more of the features of my digital camera and look into editing the images in some kind of effects program
• Revise a piece of writing to a point where I'd let other people besides my sister read it
• Buy more produce from the farmer's market and less from Ralphs

Of course, I've got a ton of other little and big things on my 2010 to do list, at this point mostly things I want to do to promote and expand my business and things involving my upcoming wedding. The beauty of ushering out an old year and beginning a new one is that it truly feels like anything is possible. Even if we plan out the year and what we want to get done in it, there are still surprises along the way, and we may end up in a place in December that we couldn't have imagined in January. What are some of your resolutions?

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

On NaNoWriMo and time management

Let me start this post on time management by saying I haven’t posted in almost two weeks, but not due to poor time management (exactly), but to a temporary shift in priorities. Not only have I been thankfully busy with client work, I took a long weekend out of town and got engaged (!)—two things that both kept me away from my computer and also started me rolling down the steep slope of wedding planning. (You can expect more than one wedding planning inspired posts over the next six months or so.) Anyway, excuses aside, I have another big project looming that puts time management in the spotlight—NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is an annual challenge to writers worldwide. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Yes, one of the days happens to be Thanksgiving. You “win” if you actually write that many words. If you’re participating, I’d love to connect with you, so add me as a buddy.

I’m letting you all know that I’m participating because in addition to all other other things going on in life, work, family, eating, sleeping, exercising, Twittering and yes, now wedding planning, I’ll be writing an average of nearly 2000 words a day. Every day. For 30 days. That not only takes a little bit of crazy gumption, but it takes time. Even though the point is just to write a lot, not caring if it’s polished (it won’t be), writing that much still takes me a couple of hours a day.

So how does one manage to find the time? My solution is simple, if perhaps unexpected. I’m not going to tell you that you can multitask your way through the month, doing laundry, writing a blog post and listening to your kids tell you about their day all at once (especially if you do that already, it isn’t going to save you enough time to write a novel in a month). I’m not even going to preach about productivity. Trying to squeeze an hour’s worth of work into half an hour isn’t really feasible unless you already spend half an hour of every hour surfing the Internet for cat videos instead of working.

Rather, the way to make enough time for an ambitious but fairly short-term project is to decide not to do things you would normally do. I’m not talking about washing your hair or feeding your dog, or even going to work. You still have to do all those things. I mean things like watching Netflix, going out to dinner with friends, getting your car washed. I’m choosing writing a novel over socializing, just for 30 days. I’m also going to put my Netflix subscription on hold for a month, which can be done easily. I’m going to make big batches of soup so dinners can be reheated easily and eaten in front of the computer. I’m basically trading some of the things I like to do as part of my normal routine for the ability to intensely focus on one project that has a start date and end date and promises to be richly rewarding to me. You can make the conscious decision to put a few things on hold while you reprioritize and work on a dream at any time. This kind of time management means realizing that you can’t do it all, and you have to be willing to make decisions about what is most important to you, otherwise in these times of intense focus you risk not having enough time to do even the basics.

So wish me luck on finishing NaNoWriMo this year, and I’ll see you on the other side!

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com