After writing last night’s blog post, I went back as I said I was going to and worked some more on setting up ClickUp, including lining out a couple tasks I wanted to get done over the next couple of days.

One of those things was eBay listings because I needed to get more going. That was scheduled for today. Then I had scheduled for tomorrow a task that I wanted to get done before the show I have in a couple weeks. It probably won’t make much difference then, but it will for the show the following week, so I might as well prepare it for the first, right?

This morning I got up and did the eBay listings as scheduled. I then went ahead and did the other task too, just because I knew it was upcoming and I thought that if I got it done today, maybe I could have more time to work on something creative tomorrow without breaking up the day. It felt good to get that all done.

I also added the upcoming shows I have and tasks that I need to do before them, like booking hotel rooms ahead of time. I am so afraid of forgetting to do something simple like that, then getting somewhere and not being able to find a hotel within a reasonable distance of the show. Believe me, I’ve walked in to hotels to check in and heard many people getting turned away because they showed up somewhere thinking they’d be able to get a room and everywhere is booked solid because the con is going on along with the rodeo, a concert, another large conference, and a funeral. Adrian used to handle this for me, but since he’s no longer living at home and checking with me weekly if we have our room, I need to remind myself to do this. Adrian hates not knowing where we’re going to land — I can get in the car and drive and see what happens with the day, but that sort of thing terrifies him.

Plus, a lot of times when I’m at a show, I’ll make a note to myself about something I need to do for the next show I have, be it order new business cards or order new books, or even just remember to bring heathier snacks. Then, undoubtedly, I lose the note, or ignore it because I’m tired after the show and then forget it once a day or two goes by, or I’ll think that I really don’t need to bring heathier snacks because the cookies I had were really just fine and easy to eat. Yeah. my critical voice will justify just about anything. This way, I’ll just enter it into ClickUp and then I will assign it a date. Hard to forget when it’s in my face.

I also discovered last night that ClickUp has this feature they call LineUp(TM). It puts tasks front and center before you and it’s something you have to add to that section. There’s another “Trending” section which shows you what you’ve worked on a lot/recently that’s automatic. Between the two, it’s kind of nice. I added things to the LineUp(TM) so I wouldn’t forget to do them even though they are easy tasks. I can see myself forgetting to do them, then wondering six months from now if I’ve done them and being irritated at myself for not getting them completed earlier. That would just let my critical voice have a field day over what a failure I am.

I do wish I could just add things to the calendar without having to put them on a list. So, I just made a sort of generic To-Do list for these things. I had to go back and look again and I just found that they do have a reminders that you can add. They are just hidden until you scroll your mouse down over a “My Work” section of the page. I guess that will work too.

Oh, and I’ve forgotten about the biggest problem with it: it’s slow. OMG! It’s like it has to send the data to the website, encrypt it, decipher it, run it through each of their servers, have a tea party, decide what to do, get approval in triplicate, recheck the approval, encrypt it, send it back to my computer, decrypt it, and then see if I really wanted the change. Not everything is that slow, and sometimes it depends on how many checkboxes are checked (the fewer the faster). And status templates can get very confusing too when you are trying to set something up that is not the normal, then the lists below want to know if it’s using the statuses of the parent grouping or something else. Egads! I remind myself that I am not using it like the normal, average person is going to, but I have reasons for my way and if I like it, I’m going to have to work within the constraints.

Even with the slowness, I like the look and functionality of this one better than the last project management software I was using. Now I just hope the programmers don’t screw it up!

I did also get writing done today. I was watching a writing craft workshop video and had an epiphany about something I needed to do the story. It sent me cycling back to layer that in. Then, while I was washing dishes tonight, I had another great thought that I’ll have to layer in. I’m really enjoying writing Siva’s story, which is a good thing because I’m estimating that it will be about 70,000 words. For those of you who are wondering, that’s about the size of Manifest the Magic. 70,000 seems to be a sweet spot in length for my novels, but that’s what I grew up reading (before New York contracts got ridiculous and demanded that writers write 90-120,000 word mammoths so that they could charge more to cover their overhead — they certainly weren’t paying the authors more!)

The Fenrir story I’m writing this week is also awesome and a lot of fun. This story is another that will only be going out to certain tiers on my Patreon. While there are about 10 stories on Amazon Vella right now, the only place you can get ALL the Fenrir’s Tales is on Patreon. I may some day decide to close down the story on Vella, but they will be up on Patreon as long as the Loki level has support. That’s how it is. I’m sure I’ll also put together a collection of them at some point, or do something else with them, bundle them in other stories or whatever.

Last week, I wrote a “Part 1” of a story. I suspect that there are going to be 3 parts total. All 3 stories are only going to Patreon. But, they won’t be together. I am not writing Part 2 this week. It was almost like I had to wait because Fenrir is having to wait for the people to come back as if it were real world time. At first it bothered me some, but then I started writing this wickedly fun story and I became okay with waiting. Yeah, Fenrir’s Tales are crazy fun because I get to write in different points of view and tenses, and even voice styles. Sometimes it’s a real challenge too. This one I’m writing this week has a very cool voice to it.

I’m off now to prepare an eBay purchase for shipment tomorrow so I don’t have to interrupt my day for that. I want to get to writing early tomorrow morning.

Cheers!