Updating the Whiteboard

Blog Post No. 483

Some years ago, I was at Arvin‘s place and I saw that he had a whiteboard set up on an easel with all his many to do lists scrawled across its surface. It would have been in our university days and probably in the midst of Wii Like To Podcast production. I thought the idea was great. A non-permanent place to write reminders that was clearly visible. My family had a whiteboard set up by the garage door when I was little, but it was rarely used, and at the time, I certainly didn’t have a need (or at least the wherewithal) to keep notes or a schedule.

By the time I was in university, I was all in on the idea. I went to the office supply store and bought what I thought was a big whiteboard for way more money than I expected. Instead of putting it on an easel, I hung it on the wall. I can’t say if I used it as much as I had planned, but I still have the same whiteboard up in my room with a bunch of stuff messily scribbled all over it in rough approximations of discrete sections. This week, for the first time in a few months, I updated the whiteboard.

Let’s call this post an update with a twist (since I’m updating the whiteboard with writing stuff). I had the whiteboard sitting half-out of a rubber-made bin for a long time since moving into the room where I am now. Over the pandemic shutdown, I took the time to not only do a good (overdue) cleaning, but I put it up along with some bookshelves and paintings. (It all really tied the room together).

In my times of stress and uncertainty over the lock-down, writing down what I had to do (or wanted to do) on the board helped clear my mind. I jotted down deadlines, random ideas, reminders, or whatever I needed to get out of my head (or remember for a limited amount of time).

Right now, I have a section dedicated to writing, one for editing, and another for ideas. There is an area for a general to-do list (non-writing related) one for those short term things that I can’t afford to forget, and even a space for blog post ideas (or posts that I feel I need to get to eventually). It’s a really handy thing to have by my desk. It’s out in the open so I can easily reference it, but out of the way so that I can ignore it when I have to get some work done (and ultimately clear things off of it).

The latest update I did was to the editing section. I had the latest Invasion Novel update on there (which won’t change until Snow from a Distant Sky is out) but the draft for Snow was old. I also had some random ideas for stories that were taking up a lot of room since I scrawled them in a hurry to get them out of my head. The ones that still speak to me (or have been started as short stories) I put into a more compact and coherent list.

The general to-do list was also way out of date. So much so that I left some things on that had to be done again (like wash the car). I do wish I was better at drawing (or even doodling) since it would make my boring lists more interesting. I haven’t been able to justify spending any time to learn to draw when I’m still learning how to write, though, so learn to draw never made any of the lists.

Anyway. In the next few weeks, I’ll be able to take Snow out of the edits section and I’ll have to make a new area for layout, cover, and printing. I’m excited to get this book out. I think the story is good. The deadline came up on me quickly, though. There is still a ton to do and I’m expecting at least a couple more edits in shortly. Then I have to do the dreaded out-loud read to myself. It’s going to be nice to have the fifth novella out but I’ll be a bit sad to not have another one to work on later in the year. Hopefully, I’ll be working on a new novel, instead. I’ll have to update what that second novel will be on the whiteboard. I just have to pin down the idea, first.