Jennifer Safrey's Blog: From Jen's Desk, page 2
April 20, 2021
Just Fill In the Numbers
I’m so excited about this new project. And the problem with being so excited about a writing project is that the excitement goes hand in hand with a constant anxiety that I’m going to mess it up.
In the writing world, there are two kinds of novelists: “plotters” and “pantsers.” A plotter PLOTS the entire book before writing it—they use individual combinations of outlining, scene blocking, synopses, mapping, and other methods to get the skeleton of the story complete before sitting down to write the actual prose. Pantsers, however, don’t. They write “by the seat of their pants.” They sit down in front of their computer every day and say, “I wonder what’s going to happen,” and then they write.
I pantsed all my books before I took my decade-long break. And I hated writing. I loved editing and revising, but the draft process was a nightmare. I kept writing myself into holes and wasting time. I kept having to stop to figure things out. Yet I proudly wore my pantser identity proudly, like I was the in the imaginative, exciting club, and plotters were boring nerds.
Now, years later, I don’t have the time I used to have. I mean, I don’t have as much time in my life left. I want to write as many books as possible. I want my career to flourish. I decided to become a plotter, because I don’t have the time to waste meandering around a Word document.
I started my new life as a plotter for National Novel Writing Month 2019 by writing an extended synopsis and referring to that as I drafted. Was my first draft perfect? No way, but it never is. But what I was able to do was write every day without the feeling that I didn’t know what came next. And it didn’t stifle my creativity in the least. In fact, it took a lot of pressure off and allowed me to concentrate on dialogue and details without the stress of not knowing the big picture. It was easier.
Now I’m writing a new manuscript with four major characters in four alternating points of view. My target date to start the 4-month first-draft process is May 1. I created arcs for each character, with corresponding plot points in a hero’s journey until I had a nice, solid overview of each character’s story.
Great, I thought, that’s progress. Now all I have to do is create the scenes, one by one, and when I have those, I have a road map for a draft.
I sat down to scene-block, then … I may have become the first writer in generations to be completely stuck after one scene. I just sat there. What is going on? I thought. I knew the full story. But the scene by scene, the getting the characters here and there, was at a standstill. They were all stuck in the first scene, staring at me with expectation, as I sweated.
How do I fill in all the gaps? I wondered.
I had some scenes but not others.
Like … a Sudoku.
If you don’t know how to play Sudoku, I’m almost afraid to tell you because once most people learn, it becomes a bit of an obsession. Simply put, it’s a grid in which numbers are filled in for you and you fill in the rest so you have numbers 1-9 in each row, each column, and each box. The easier the Sudoku, the more numbers are pre-filled in for you. The more difficult, the fewer numbers you’re given to start with.
The plot is a Sudoku, I realized. And I stopped trying to scene-block in chronological order. Instead, I made scene cards for all the scenes I already know need to be there, the ones I already see in my head. These are my pre-filled in numbers.
Now, all I need to do is fill in the holes—the scenes in between—to make each plot line complete.
And that’s what I’m doing now, one by one.
It’s so much easier to see from above than to see what’s just in front of you.
In the writing world, there are two kinds of novelists: “plotters” and “pantsers.” A plotter PLOTS the entire book before writing it—they use individual combinations of outlining, scene blocking, synopses, mapping, and other methods to get the skeleton of the story complete before sitting down to write the actual prose. Pantsers, however, don’t. They write “by the seat of their pants.” They sit down in front of their computer every day and say, “I wonder what’s going to happen,” and then they write.
I pantsed all my books before I took my decade-long break. And I hated writing. I loved editing and revising, but the draft process was a nightmare. I kept writing myself into holes and wasting time. I kept having to stop to figure things out. Yet I proudly wore my pantser identity proudly, like I was the in the imaginative, exciting club, and plotters were boring nerds.
Now, years later, I don’t have the time I used to have. I mean, I don’t have as much time in my life left. I want to write as many books as possible. I want my career to flourish. I decided to become a plotter, because I don’t have the time to waste meandering around a Word document.
I started my new life as a plotter for National Novel Writing Month 2019 by writing an extended synopsis and referring to that as I drafted. Was my first draft perfect? No way, but it never is. But what I was able to do was write every day without the feeling that I didn’t know what came next. And it didn’t stifle my creativity in the least. In fact, it took a lot of pressure off and allowed me to concentrate on dialogue and details without the stress of not knowing the big picture. It was easier.
Now I’m writing a new manuscript with four major characters in four alternating points of view. My target date to start the 4-month first-draft process is May 1. I created arcs for each character, with corresponding plot points in a hero’s journey until I had a nice, solid overview of each character’s story.
Great, I thought, that’s progress. Now all I have to do is create the scenes, one by one, and when I have those, I have a road map for a draft.
I sat down to scene-block, then … I may have become the first writer in generations to be completely stuck after one scene. I just sat there. What is going on? I thought. I knew the full story. But the scene by scene, the getting the characters here and there, was at a standstill. They were all stuck in the first scene, staring at me with expectation, as I sweated.
How do I fill in all the gaps? I wondered.
I had some scenes but not others.
Like … a Sudoku.
If you don’t know how to play Sudoku, I’m almost afraid to tell you because once most people learn, it becomes a bit of an obsession. Simply put, it’s a grid in which numbers are filled in for you and you fill in the rest so you have numbers 1-9 in each row, each column, and each box. The easier the Sudoku, the more numbers are pre-filled in for you. The more difficult, the fewer numbers you’re given to start with.
The plot is a Sudoku, I realized. And I stopped trying to scene-block in chronological order. Instead, I made scene cards for all the scenes I already know need to be there, the ones I already see in my head. These are my pre-filled in numbers.
Now, all I need to do is fill in the holes—the scenes in between—to make each plot line complete.
And that’s what I’m doing now, one by one.
It’s so much easier to see from above than to see what’s just in front of you.
April 13, 2021
A Room With(out) a View
I wrote six full-length manuscripts facing a wall.
I’ve lived in different apartments with different desks and different desk setups. But every time, my desk was head on into a wall or, when I had one of those corner desks, the corner of a room. Windowless and bare every time.
Come to think of it, when I was a kid, my sister and I had this nice big bedroom with two windows, and I opted to shove my white desk into the wallpapered alcove so I could work on my junior high essays and my high school lab papers in a dark cave of isolation, with only a small desk lamp when the sun went down.
It had always been my process to push my brain into a corner, into a wall, in order to force it to think. A daydreamer by nature, I was convinced that a window (worse, a window with any kind of interesting view) would only contribute to procrastination and slack. The only efficient way to focus, I assumed, was to create a kind of prison cell with nothing but my work to look at.
And, I mean, it worked. I wrote six books like that. I would emerge from each writing session, blinking at the light of day, vitamin D-deficient, thirsty for fresh air of any kind. Because I did get work done, I figured this was working.
But just because something is working, it’s not necessarily ideal. Or healthy. Or the only way that will work.
When I moved into my current home, we decided the larger bedroom would be the office space. I inherited the dark wood desk that was in my living room growing up. It’s an old but nice piece of furniture, and the best spot for it aesthetically was on the wall facing out two windows, with a third window on the left side of it.
Oh no, I thought, and I proceeded to write my seventh manuscript in other places: the living-room sofa, the basement, the public library. I sat at my desk a few times, but only at night when the shades were drawn. In those few times, I realized the desk was comfortable. It felt right. Good height, ergonomically sound. But these stupid windows…
When Covid happened, my schedule changed (for the far better, really) and I began to work on my eighth novel 6:30-8am in the mornings. I’m not a morning person. The first morning I tried it, I rolled out of bed, cursing, feeling exhausted. I trudged into the office and put the shades up. The morning sun felt so good. Good on my face, good on my eyes. I looked out at the quiet street. I looked at my Jeep in the driveway. I looked at the turkeys meandering on the lawn. I looked at a bird in the bush in front of the window closest to me, and I’m pretty sure it looked at me too.
Now I write with the quiet birdsong of early morning, and my focus is just as good—but my mood is far, far better. It’s not much of a view, and I’m not sure how I’d do if I could see an ocean, or a mountain. But looking at my street, from my home—this is now the right way for me.
I’ve lived in different apartments with different desks and different desk setups. But every time, my desk was head on into a wall or, when I had one of those corner desks, the corner of a room. Windowless and bare every time.
Come to think of it, when I was a kid, my sister and I had this nice big bedroom with two windows, and I opted to shove my white desk into the wallpapered alcove so I could work on my junior high essays and my high school lab papers in a dark cave of isolation, with only a small desk lamp when the sun went down.
It had always been my process to push my brain into a corner, into a wall, in order to force it to think. A daydreamer by nature, I was convinced that a window (worse, a window with any kind of interesting view) would only contribute to procrastination and slack. The only efficient way to focus, I assumed, was to create a kind of prison cell with nothing but my work to look at.
And, I mean, it worked. I wrote six books like that. I would emerge from each writing session, blinking at the light of day, vitamin D-deficient, thirsty for fresh air of any kind. Because I did get work done, I figured this was working.
But just because something is working, it’s not necessarily ideal. Or healthy. Or the only way that will work.
When I moved into my current home, we decided the larger bedroom would be the office space. I inherited the dark wood desk that was in my living room growing up. It’s an old but nice piece of furniture, and the best spot for it aesthetically was on the wall facing out two windows, with a third window on the left side of it.
Oh no, I thought, and I proceeded to write my seventh manuscript in other places: the living-room sofa, the basement, the public library. I sat at my desk a few times, but only at night when the shades were drawn. In those few times, I realized the desk was comfortable. It felt right. Good height, ergonomically sound. But these stupid windows…
When Covid happened, my schedule changed (for the far better, really) and I began to work on my eighth novel 6:30-8am in the mornings. I’m not a morning person. The first morning I tried it, I rolled out of bed, cursing, feeling exhausted. I trudged into the office and put the shades up. The morning sun felt so good. Good on my face, good on my eyes. I looked out at the quiet street. I looked at my Jeep in the driveway. I looked at the turkeys meandering on the lawn. I looked at a bird in the bush in front of the window closest to me, and I’m pretty sure it looked at me too.
Now I write with the quiet birdsong of early morning, and my focus is just as good—but my mood is far, far better. It’s not much of a view, and I’m not sure how I’d do if I could see an ocean, or a mountain. But looking at my street, from my home—this is now the right way for me.
April 6, 2021
I'm not Jo ... I'm Amy
I'm not Jo ... I'm Amy.
This confession is an astonishing one in the female writing community, who tend as a group to regard Jo March as the patron saint of female writers everywhere, those who long to create legacy and make a living with words. Jo is the character I’m supposed to love. Jo is the character I’m supposed to embody. Jo’s spirit is the one that’s supposed to swirl through every word as I form sentences.
But I came to an astonishing realization this week—I’m not Jo. I’m Amy.
Yes, that Amy. The spoiled, attention-grabbing, emotionally volatile sister. And though at first I was horrified to discover it, I feel so much more comfortable with the story of Little Women now that I have this insight. I feel so much better about loving Amy when she was supposed to get on my last nerve.
For all her faults, and her difficulty in expressing herself in a socially acceptable manner, she was the most pragmatic—and, at the same time, the most artistic. She didn’t fool herself into thinking she’d change lives with her painting, but she knew she was talented, and she knew she’d have to marry well in order to keep doing what she loved. She hated being poor, more than the rest of her sisters. She and Jo both wanted to break out of the box of what it meant to be a girl in New England at that time, but Jo seemed to see writing as a means to a financial end, to use it to create a better life, whereas Amy saw her painting as the joy in itself, and she needed to create a better life for that pursuit. She loved pretty things and dressing well, and she was more cosmopolitan than her sisters. And in the end, she got the life she wanted—did Jo? I always thought she settled in marriage, and in career. And why did she agree to open a school for boys with her husband? Why wasn’t it boys and girls? Or just girls?
It was Amy who broke away from provincial life at the end, and realized her dream to become bigger than the life she’d been given. She also seemed happy to me, whereas Jo seemed like she’d be internally tortured forever.
I realized I was an Amy when I was listening to a podcast about enneagrams, and they were talking about my enneagram type (4, the individualist), and gave Amy March as the example of a 4. I thought about Amy’s core need to be her own person, to matter, to have a voice, and her core fear of being ignored and unimportant. And how as a child, that was enough to make her toss Jo’s manuscript in the fire. I get you, Amy. It wasn’t the right thing to do, but you were a kid, and the frustrated kid in me gets it. I’ll defend your character forever.
This confession is an astonishing one in the female writing community, who tend as a group to regard Jo March as the patron saint of female writers everywhere, those who long to create legacy and make a living with words. Jo is the character I’m supposed to love. Jo is the character I’m supposed to embody. Jo’s spirit is the one that’s supposed to swirl through every word as I form sentences.
But I came to an astonishing realization this week—I’m not Jo. I’m Amy.
Yes, that Amy. The spoiled, attention-grabbing, emotionally volatile sister. And though at first I was horrified to discover it, I feel so much more comfortable with the story of Little Women now that I have this insight. I feel so much better about loving Amy when she was supposed to get on my last nerve.
For all her faults, and her difficulty in expressing herself in a socially acceptable manner, she was the most pragmatic—and, at the same time, the most artistic. She didn’t fool herself into thinking she’d change lives with her painting, but she knew she was talented, and she knew she’d have to marry well in order to keep doing what she loved. She hated being poor, more than the rest of her sisters. She and Jo both wanted to break out of the box of what it meant to be a girl in New England at that time, but Jo seemed to see writing as a means to a financial end, to use it to create a better life, whereas Amy saw her painting as the joy in itself, and she needed to create a better life for that pursuit. She loved pretty things and dressing well, and she was more cosmopolitan than her sisters. And in the end, she got the life she wanted—did Jo? I always thought she settled in marriage, and in career. And why did she agree to open a school for boys with her husband? Why wasn’t it boys and girls? Or just girls?
It was Amy who broke away from provincial life at the end, and realized her dream to become bigger than the life she’d been given. She also seemed happy to me, whereas Jo seemed like she’d be internally tortured forever.
I realized I was an Amy when I was listening to a podcast about enneagrams, and they were talking about my enneagram type (4, the individualist), and gave Amy March as the example of a 4. I thought about Amy’s core need to be her own person, to matter, to have a voice, and her core fear of being ignored and unimportant. And how as a child, that was enough to make her toss Jo’s manuscript in the fire. I get you, Amy. It wasn’t the right thing to do, but you were a kid, and the frustrated kid in me gets it. I’ll defend your character forever.
March 30, 2021
Getting an A for Effort
If there’s one thing I am good at, it’s working hard.
When I was a little kid, I remember every time I complained or whined to my Dad that I was bored or I had nothing to do or no one to play with, he would say to me, quite seriously, “Why don’t you go in your room and do some work?”
Never “go play.” It was always “go do some work.”
And I always did. I’d go into my room and look for work to do. Sometimes I’d arrange all the stuffed animals in order of size, or fluffiness. Sometimes I’d alphabetize my board games or books. And more times than sometimes, I would create a book. I’d take a stack of paper, write a whole story a page at a time, then go back and draw and color illustrations for every page. I threw myself into each project completely, and solicited my parents’ praise when I was done. I was a bit of a showoff.
My dad is a hard worker. He worked for Long Island Water Company for 42 years, starting as a mechanic, becoming union president and eventually moving to management. By all accounts, he was well liked by everyone, from the union guys to the women in the administrative offices. And I think it was because—and not in spite of—the fact that he didn’t tolerate nonsense. He expected people to work as hard as him. He expected people to care as much as him about tasks getting done well. He was fair and reasonable, but wanted the people around him to be at their best.
Interestingly, he never pressured me to be the best when I was a teenager, but I think it was because he saw he didn’t have to; I had inherited the self-discipline. I had discipline when it came to my sport (baton twirling) and when it came to music (flute), and that work ethic stuck with me into adulthood, allowing me to write novels and be an entrepreneur and get a black belt and climb a mountain and travel alone.
Dreaming is wonderful, but dreaming isn’t enough. A dream needs a plan. And a plan needs work.
I like goals. I like achieving. And my attitude has shifted, because when I was younger, I was driven by the need to be the best at everything I did. As an adult, I’m smarter and more realistic. I know I can’t be the best at everything. I can’t even be sort of good at everything. There are plenty of skills I could stand to improve, and lots of talents I’ll never have.
In my experience, the key to going after your goals, to achieving, to manifesting the best you’re capable of, is to be the hardest worker you know. Put in massive effort. Take big aligned action. Do what needs to be done in addition to what you want to do.
And if you’ll excuse me now, I need to go to my room and do some work.
When I was a little kid, I remember every time I complained or whined to my Dad that I was bored or I had nothing to do or no one to play with, he would say to me, quite seriously, “Why don’t you go in your room and do some work?”
Never “go play.” It was always “go do some work.”
And I always did. I’d go into my room and look for work to do. Sometimes I’d arrange all the stuffed animals in order of size, or fluffiness. Sometimes I’d alphabetize my board games or books. And more times than sometimes, I would create a book. I’d take a stack of paper, write a whole story a page at a time, then go back and draw and color illustrations for every page. I threw myself into each project completely, and solicited my parents’ praise when I was done. I was a bit of a showoff.
My dad is a hard worker. He worked for Long Island Water Company for 42 years, starting as a mechanic, becoming union president and eventually moving to management. By all accounts, he was well liked by everyone, from the union guys to the women in the administrative offices. And I think it was because—and not in spite of—the fact that he didn’t tolerate nonsense. He expected people to work as hard as him. He expected people to care as much as him about tasks getting done well. He was fair and reasonable, but wanted the people around him to be at their best.
Interestingly, he never pressured me to be the best when I was a teenager, but I think it was because he saw he didn’t have to; I had inherited the self-discipline. I had discipline when it came to my sport (baton twirling) and when it came to music (flute), and that work ethic stuck with me into adulthood, allowing me to write novels and be an entrepreneur and get a black belt and climb a mountain and travel alone.
Dreaming is wonderful, but dreaming isn’t enough. A dream needs a plan. And a plan needs work.
I like goals. I like achieving. And my attitude has shifted, because when I was younger, I was driven by the need to be the best at everything I did. As an adult, I’m smarter and more realistic. I know I can’t be the best at everything. I can’t even be sort of good at everything. There are plenty of skills I could stand to improve, and lots of talents I’ll never have.
In my experience, the key to going after your goals, to achieving, to manifesting the best you’re capable of, is to be the hardest worker you know. Put in massive effort. Take big aligned action. Do what needs to be done in addition to what you want to do.
And if you’ll excuse me now, I need to go to my room and do some work.
March 23, 2021
Being Willing to Ruin a Perfect Idea
“Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.” –Iris Murdoch
Not the most optimistic quote in the world, but one that resonates with me as I madly prepare for the first draft of my next novel. And I’m happy to know that other feel this way, because for my first half-dozen books, I was positive I was the only one who felt this, and I felt unable to describe the feeling to people who weren’t writers.
But this is the feeling: As I’m drafting, and the words come out of my mind and I see them on the page, I feel more and more frustrated with every sentence. It’s as though between my brain and my typing fingers, the ideas morphed and shifted and warped, and what I see in front of me is nowhere near the ideal and perfect story I saw in my head.
I don’t understand it; how does the story come out so messed up? I know exactly what I want to say! I know exactly what I want the characters to do, and say, and think, so why are they saying and doing and thinking similar things but not quite right things? I’m trying so hard! What is wrong with me?!?
I’m relieved this happens to other writers, because I don’t feel so singularly stupid, but I wish I knew how to translate abstract thought into a concrete story. Even at the end, after all the edits, after good reviews, after good sales, I still harbor the secret feeling that I never got the story quite right.
And it’s particularly frustrating to me now that I have an idea I think is my best book idea yet (though admittedly I’ve probably been convinced of that for every one of my books). My plan is to plot and outline this book through the rest of March and April, and start a first-draft process on May 1 which hopefully will take about four months.
That’s the plan. And I’m looking forward to May 1 because I really want to start writing; I love this story. But I’m also dreading May 1—will that be the day I have to admit I’m going to wreck my best idea with my own incompetence?
Giving up has never been an option for a Safrey.
Sticking to the plan is all I can do. I’ll have to squelch the emotional little girl inside me screaming, “You’re ruining the whole thing!” with every sentence, page, chapter I complete. I have to release the expectations, and rather than trying to reach a perfect idea, I need to learn enjoy the story that does unfold and take shape, and know that it’s mine, and know that I’m doing my best. And I have to trust that though it might not come out the way I expected, it will come out the way it’s meant to.
Plan. Release. Trust.
Not the most optimistic quote in the world, but one that resonates with me as I madly prepare for the first draft of my next novel. And I’m happy to know that other feel this way, because for my first half-dozen books, I was positive I was the only one who felt this, and I felt unable to describe the feeling to people who weren’t writers.
But this is the feeling: As I’m drafting, and the words come out of my mind and I see them on the page, I feel more and more frustrated with every sentence. It’s as though between my brain and my typing fingers, the ideas morphed and shifted and warped, and what I see in front of me is nowhere near the ideal and perfect story I saw in my head.
I don’t understand it; how does the story come out so messed up? I know exactly what I want to say! I know exactly what I want the characters to do, and say, and think, so why are they saying and doing and thinking similar things but not quite right things? I’m trying so hard! What is wrong with me?!?
I’m relieved this happens to other writers, because I don’t feel so singularly stupid, but I wish I knew how to translate abstract thought into a concrete story. Even at the end, after all the edits, after good reviews, after good sales, I still harbor the secret feeling that I never got the story quite right.
And it’s particularly frustrating to me now that I have an idea I think is my best book idea yet (though admittedly I’ve probably been convinced of that for every one of my books). My plan is to plot and outline this book through the rest of March and April, and start a first-draft process on May 1 which hopefully will take about four months.
That’s the plan. And I’m looking forward to May 1 because I really want to start writing; I love this story. But I’m also dreading May 1—will that be the day I have to admit I’m going to wreck my best idea with my own incompetence?
Giving up has never been an option for a Safrey.
Sticking to the plan is all I can do. I’ll have to squelch the emotional little girl inside me screaming, “You’re ruining the whole thing!” with every sentence, page, chapter I complete. I have to release the expectations, and rather than trying to reach a perfect idea, I need to learn enjoy the story that does unfold and take shape, and know that it’s mine, and know that I’m doing my best. And I have to trust that though it might not come out the way I expected, it will come out the way it’s meant to.
Plan. Release. Trust.
February 12, 2021
This Writer's Toolbox
There’s always so much chitchat about what tools writers use in their craft: software, hardware, notebooks, planners. I’m not high-tech, but there are some things I feel like I can’t live without.
• I’m a PC girl. Stop with your Apple evangelizing. I use a Mac at my day job, but, you know, I just never liked it. And I’m not here to wax philosophical about operating systems—I’m not that sophisticated. The bottom line is that keyboard feel is really, really important to me. I want to feel a good strike, and I want the keys to have satisfying kickback, and I want to love how it sounds when I’m on a roll. I have a little Dell laptop that my friend refurbished for me, and I can’t be happier with it. I’m not against Apple—I have an iPhone I’m happy with—but I really just don’t love Mac keyboards. [Many years ago, I wrote massive chunks of several of my published books on an Alpha Smart. It looked like a weird little toy, a translucent blue-green device with a tiny screen that showed maybe three lines of text at a time. It was great for someone who got easily distracted by the Internet—it was strictly a word processor. When I was done writing, all I had to do was connect it to my desktop computer, open a Word document, and all my writing zipped into the Word doc. And it weighed like a pound, so I carried it everywhere.]
• Microsoft Word. This is what I write my book with, and only this. I know Scrivener is the “it” thing, and there’s a bunch of other writer-ish software out there, and it’s wonderful for many writers who love it and God bless them, but I can’t stand it. It doesn’t work for my creative process at all; it just stresses me out. I like real notebooks and index cards, and when I’m ready to write actual words, I do it in a Microsoft Word document. Call me a dinosaur and you’re right, but that’s what works for me.
• Planner. Google Calendar is zero fun because you can’t draw in it and put stickers on it. I’m a paper planner girl and I will be forever. It’s a bit of a sickness. I mean, you can only have one planner a year, technically. And somehow I often have more than one going at once—one for my life, one for my writing, one for whatever else. The one I’m using now for my life planning is from Sourcebooks, called “C’est la f*cking vie.” It’s got lots of daily space, and lots of surprise swear words on the pages and on stickers, which resonates with me.
• Brainstorming, planning, and scribbling: I’m a notebook/blank book/journal hoarder from way back, and I keep gathering more and more. When I teach yoga, I write my lesson plans in spiral books because they lay flat on my mat. For writing, I have lots of different needs. For my brainstorming and ideas and random pieces of dialogue and planning, I use whatever pretty and inspiring notebook fits into the current handbag I’m using. I maintain an index of canon information for each story in a Hustle Co. hardcover bullet journal. For larger mind-mapping work, I have a huge two-sided white board in my basement that flips over; Teddy uses one side for his projects and I use the other. I use index cards to write scenes and then I lay them out on the floor or tape them on the wall and move them around if I need to change the order of plot events. (Though we painted our walls recently, so I have a feeling my tape-to-the-wall days are over.)
• My two favorite office tools of all time. Here they are. Without these two items, I would be finished. There would be no Jen Safrey books.
o Highlighters. Highlighters are the office-supply love of my life. I use color codes to highlight canon notes in my bullet journals and different character arcs in my notebooks. I highlight passages in reference books so I remember to come back to them later. I highlight my expenses in my bank statements to make tax time easier. If you give me a package of highlighters as a gift, I’m the happiest person on Earth.
o Post-It Notes. Heaven sent. I can write a novel with literally just a pile of Post-Its and no other tools if I had to. I tab research books, notebooks, binders. I write notes for the current scene I’m on and stick it to the side of my screen as I work. I note what I plan to work on tomorrow and stick it on my laptop cover. I label the piles of crap on my desk: bills, need follow-up calls, stuff to file. I like Post-It Notes in all shapes, colors, sizes. I like the dispensers and I like the pads. I like it all. Give me all the Post-It Notes.
I think most writers would agree: Bring us to an office-supply store and it’s even more squeal-worthy than a candy store.
What supplies can you not be without?
• I’m a PC girl. Stop with your Apple evangelizing. I use a Mac at my day job, but, you know, I just never liked it. And I’m not here to wax philosophical about operating systems—I’m not that sophisticated. The bottom line is that keyboard feel is really, really important to me. I want to feel a good strike, and I want the keys to have satisfying kickback, and I want to love how it sounds when I’m on a roll. I have a little Dell laptop that my friend refurbished for me, and I can’t be happier with it. I’m not against Apple—I have an iPhone I’m happy with—but I really just don’t love Mac keyboards. [Many years ago, I wrote massive chunks of several of my published books on an Alpha Smart. It looked like a weird little toy, a translucent blue-green device with a tiny screen that showed maybe three lines of text at a time. It was great for someone who got easily distracted by the Internet—it was strictly a word processor. When I was done writing, all I had to do was connect it to my desktop computer, open a Word document, and all my writing zipped into the Word doc. And it weighed like a pound, so I carried it everywhere.]
• Microsoft Word. This is what I write my book with, and only this. I know Scrivener is the “it” thing, and there’s a bunch of other writer-ish software out there, and it’s wonderful for many writers who love it and God bless them, but I can’t stand it. It doesn’t work for my creative process at all; it just stresses me out. I like real notebooks and index cards, and when I’m ready to write actual words, I do it in a Microsoft Word document. Call me a dinosaur and you’re right, but that’s what works for me.
• Planner. Google Calendar is zero fun because you can’t draw in it and put stickers on it. I’m a paper planner girl and I will be forever. It’s a bit of a sickness. I mean, you can only have one planner a year, technically. And somehow I often have more than one going at once—one for my life, one for my writing, one for whatever else. The one I’m using now for my life planning is from Sourcebooks, called “C’est la f*cking vie.” It’s got lots of daily space, and lots of surprise swear words on the pages and on stickers, which resonates with me.
• Brainstorming, planning, and scribbling: I’m a notebook/blank book/journal hoarder from way back, and I keep gathering more and more. When I teach yoga, I write my lesson plans in spiral books because they lay flat on my mat. For writing, I have lots of different needs. For my brainstorming and ideas and random pieces of dialogue and planning, I use whatever pretty and inspiring notebook fits into the current handbag I’m using. I maintain an index of canon information for each story in a Hustle Co. hardcover bullet journal. For larger mind-mapping work, I have a huge two-sided white board in my basement that flips over; Teddy uses one side for his projects and I use the other. I use index cards to write scenes and then I lay them out on the floor or tape them on the wall and move them around if I need to change the order of plot events. (Though we painted our walls recently, so I have a feeling my tape-to-the-wall days are over.)
• My two favorite office tools of all time. Here they are. Without these two items, I would be finished. There would be no Jen Safrey books.
o Highlighters. Highlighters are the office-supply love of my life. I use color codes to highlight canon notes in my bullet journals and different character arcs in my notebooks. I highlight passages in reference books so I remember to come back to them later. I highlight my expenses in my bank statements to make tax time easier. If you give me a package of highlighters as a gift, I’m the happiest person on Earth.
o Post-It Notes. Heaven sent. I can write a novel with literally just a pile of Post-Its and no other tools if I had to. I tab research books, notebooks, binders. I write notes for the current scene I’m on and stick it to the side of my screen as I work. I note what I plan to work on tomorrow and stick it on my laptop cover. I label the piles of crap on my desk: bills, need follow-up calls, stuff to file. I like Post-It Notes in all shapes, colors, sizes. I like the dispensers and I like the pads. I like it all. Give me all the Post-It Notes.
I think most writers would agree: Bring us to an office-supply store and it’s even more squeal-worthy than a candy store.
What supplies can you not be without?
January 30, 2021
The Morning Routine
My Morning Routine
I worked nights in a newsroom for 10 years; and though it’s been a long time, my body somehow never recovered or recalibrated. The mornings are tough for me. Even if I’m not sleepy, I have zero inclination to actually get out of bed.
People are sometimes surprised to hear I’m so crap at getting out of bed and functioning like a human before 10am or so, because yoga is very much my jam. An absurdly early rising is a major part of the yoga lifestyle, isn’t it? Sun salutations and all?
Yeah, not me. But I am a creature who enjoys daily habit, and I can push myself to get up at the same time every morning as long as I know I have a checklist to get through.
Here’s the Monday-through-Friday morning routine that works for me. Feel free to use it or play with it if you’re looking to adopt something similar.
1) Rise at 6:45 a.m. I know for a lot of people, this doesn’t qualify as early, and I deeply admire those people, but for me this is a real challenge.
2) Put my contact lenses in and head for the basement. In the summer, it’s naturally cool (I hate air conditioning) and in the winter, we leave the heat vent open so it’s the warmest part of the house. I camp out on one of the two loveseats, whichever one the cats aren’t sacked out on. No reason to wake them early.
3) Meditate 5 to 10 minutes. I’m a big Peloton fan (#ViserionIce) so I choose a meditation on the app, or sometimes I go for a meditation specifically for writers (try Abbie Emmons’s “Writing Meditation for NaNoWriMo” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X484E... ; Georgette Graham’s “Meditation for Writers: See Your Setting” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6sb7... ; or Georgette Graham’s “Meditation for Writers: Meet Your Muse” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqXl9...).
4) Work on my novel in progress. Right now, that novel is Foreverness and I’m in the brainstorming and outlining part of the process, so I work as hard as I can until it’s almost 8 a.m.
5) Feed the cats, grab my breakfast, and log on at work. I do my day job from home these days, so I log in and begin my workday. Also, I’m a huge breakfast eater—it’s my favorite meal! So I make an egg-and-cheese burrito or avocado toast, or maybe eat a great bagel from The Back Bay Bagel Co. (www.backbaybagel.com) that I bought and froze over the weekend. I’m a born-and-raised New Yorker, and I can attest that these bagels are the closest it gets in Massachusetts to bagel magic. And by the way—I don’t drink coffee. I hate the taste. I drink an iced tea or a glass of quality chocolate milk with my breakfast.
6) Sneak in journal time. Most of the time I can snag a few slow moments in that first hour of work to write in my journal. I commit to two pages a day, and my journal entries are short lines—one thought per line. Kind of like a weird long epic poem. And I scribble fast, so it doesn’t take me long at all to get out two pages—10 minutes, tops.
I maximize my morning time in two ways:
1) I shower at night. I used to hate doing this, but I like it now because I’m so draggy in the morning and I can’t be bothered to do all that work, lol. It’s nice to wake up clean and only have to kind of arrange my hair rather than do a whole song-and-dance with it before I get down to my day.
2) I train during my hourlong lunch break, or in the evening. I hate exercising in the morning anyway, so this works out well.
As far as weekends go, I wake up early on Saturdays to teach an 8:30am yoga class, and I sleep in on Sundays, so those mornings I don’t follow routine. But I clear a lot of time over the weekend to get writing and other work done, so those mornings aren’t as crucial for me. On weekdays, getting my writing done early is key to feeling good (and accomplished) the rest of the busy day.
What's your morning routine like? Do you have anything to share or suggest?
I worked nights in a newsroom for 10 years; and though it’s been a long time, my body somehow never recovered or recalibrated. The mornings are tough for me. Even if I’m not sleepy, I have zero inclination to actually get out of bed.
People are sometimes surprised to hear I’m so crap at getting out of bed and functioning like a human before 10am or so, because yoga is very much my jam. An absurdly early rising is a major part of the yoga lifestyle, isn’t it? Sun salutations and all?
Yeah, not me. But I am a creature who enjoys daily habit, and I can push myself to get up at the same time every morning as long as I know I have a checklist to get through.
Here’s the Monday-through-Friday morning routine that works for me. Feel free to use it or play with it if you’re looking to adopt something similar.
1) Rise at 6:45 a.m. I know for a lot of people, this doesn’t qualify as early, and I deeply admire those people, but for me this is a real challenge.
2) Put my contact lenses in and head for the basement. In the summer, it’s naturally cool (I hate air conditioning) and in the winter, we leave the heat vent open so it’s the warmest part of the house. I camp out on one of the two loveseats, whichever one the cats aren’t sacked out on. No reason to wake them early.
3) Meditate 5 to 10 minutes. I’m a big Peloton fan (#ViserionIce) so I choose a meditation on the app, or sometimes I go for a meditation specifically for writers (try Abbie Emmons’s “Writing Meditation for NaNoWriMo” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X484E... ; Georgette Graham’s “Meditation for Writers: See Your Setting” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6sb7... ; or Georgette Graham’s “Meditation for Writers: Meet Your Muse” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqXl9...).
4) Work on my novel in progress. Right now, that novel is Foreverness and I’m in the brainstorming and outlining part of the process, so I work as hard as I can until it’s almost 8 a.m.
5) Feed the cats, grab my breakfast, and log on at work. I do my day job from home these days, so I log in and begin my workday. Also, I’m a huge breakfast eater—it’s my favorite meal! So I make an egg-and-cheese burrito or avocado toast, or maybe eat a great bagel from The Back Bay Bagel Co. (www.backbaybagel.com) that I bought and froze over the weekend. I’m a born-and-raised New Yorker, and I can attest that these bagels are the closest it gets in Massachusetts to bagel magic. And by the way—I don’t drink coffee. I hate the taste. I drink an iced tea or a glass of quality chocolate milk with my breakfast.
6) Sneak in journal time. Most of the time I can snag a few slow moments in that first hour of work to write in my journal. I commit to two pages a day, and my journal entries are short lines—one thought per line. Kind of like a weird long epic poem. And I scribble fast, so it doesn’t take me long at all to get out two pages—10 minutes, tops.
I maximize my morning time in two ways:
1) I shower at night. I used to hate doing this, but I like it now because I’m so draggy in the morning and I can’t be bothered to do all that work, lol. It’s nice to wake up clean and only have to kind of arrange my hair rather than do a whole song-and-dance with it before I get down to my day.
2) I train during my hourlong lunch break, or in the evening. I hate exercising in the morning anyway, so this works out well.
As far as weekends go, I wake up early on Saturdays to teach an 8:30am yoga class, and I sleep in on Sundays, so those mornings I don’t follow routine. But I clear a lot of time over the weekend to get writing and other work done, so those mornings aren’t as crucial for me. On weekdays, getting my writing done early is key to feeling good (and accomplished) the rest of the busy day.
What's your morning routine like? Do you have anything to share or suggest?
From Jen's Desk
This is what it's like inside my head all the time.
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