My husband and I are trying to get organized. Anyone that knows us well can pick themselves up off the floor now and stop laughing. Yes, we are both comfortable with clutter and more likely to hang out in the house and read than do much of anything else, unless it is to drive to Santa Cruz so we can hang out and read. But we realize that we would have MORE time to read (and I’d have more time to write) if we got a little bit more organized, tried some listmaking and prioritizing of tasks, that sort of thing.  We have both had Palms Pilots in the past but they haven’t proved successful for us. My husband gave his up and I use mine for playing Scrabble. I used to carry a big fat  Daytimer along with a bunch of other stuff that looked good but didn’t get used enough. We discussed the problem and decided we needed to start with a basic calendar. Right now mine is a bunch of Post-It notes all over the place. His is in his head. We both use calendar programs at work that have some features we like so I went looking for something we could use for home. There were lots of calendar programs (PIMs) to put on our computer or even synch up with those Palms we don’t use but not much for sharing with other people. But I found one where I least expected it, on Yahoo. Yep, Yahoo calendar (if you don’t already have a Yahoo id for something like Messenger or Yahoo groups you need one) is great. I’m amazed I didn’t know it was there before. We can each fill in all our calendar items and share them with each other so our tasks show up on each other’s calendar. It’s great! Best part is that because it is online, we can access it from home, work, wherever. I love it when something simple like this is so effective. I know, I know, it’s only as good as the data I put into it and I have to actually USE it, but it’s a start. Now I hope I can find all those Post-It notes.

What does this have to do with writing? Plenty. Getting more organized will give me more time to write but the other thing I need to do is a brain dump of all the things on the to-do list in my head. I know I need to get going on the publicity for Oliver an think about the publicity for Robert Smalls. There are a bunch of little things that go into that but I keep forgetting about them because they aren’t all gathered in one place. Once I have a list in a central place that I can’t lose, or leave at work when I’m at home or leave at home when I’m at work, well, I think it will make it much easier. We’ll see.