Checking It Twice: What Lists Help Your Writing?
Yesterday a friend asked me how I avoid panic when I’m in the middle of a big creative project, like launching a new book. So much to do! How do I prioritize tasks, get stuff completed, even considered additional ideas?
Panic, worry, angst are part of the publishing—and writing—journey. I think everyone panics at some point. Will I meet my deadline (self- or publisher/agent-imposed)? Will this chapter ever work? Will people love my book like I love it?
I answered her: I try objectify the process and give myself enough distance to calm the emotions. When I can do this—with the help of certain kinds of lists—I ride the storm of emotional reactions to my work. I can focus on the creativity instead of what might go wrong.
And don’t get me wrong here: Emotions are essential in life and in writing. Emotions give me clues when something is off, when someone is encroaching on my privacy, when I am doing the same to theirs. Emotions tell me a scene isn’t quite working, I have forgotten my purpose with a book, I am comparing myself too much to others. For me, emotional clues come as tightness in my gut or uneasy electricity across my skin, and I’ve learned to pay attention.
Emotions carry the start of any project, for me: enthusiasm, spark, and excitement give me permission to try something outside the box, take a creative risk beyond my current experience. They cheerlead.
Emotions can ramp up false reactions, though. They curtail my generosity by telling me I’m less than another writer. They make me worry that I’m not doing enough when I’m already working at max. When a project gets real, in revision and in the publishing process, it’s all too easy to for emotions like overwhelm, fear, panic to stop the creative flow—just when we need it most. Emotions can’t tell when it’s too soon to evaluate if an idea is working.
As I plunge deeper into a writing project, my emotions need to create a calm and confidence. This allows me to keep risking and adventuring.
And calm and confidence come from enough distance and detachment. Mostly, from the outcome of each decision. Too weighted down with worry about an outcome, I never try anything new.
So when my friend asked me how I avoid panic, I told her about my lists.
Lists give distance
I learned list-making from my mother. She was a pilot, trained in pre-flight checklists, which contain many tasks that guarantee safe travel. She kept her love of lists as she had four kids, went back to work full-time, and juggled the countless tasks of a fifties housewife. She scribbled thoughts and to-do’s on the backs of envelopes or notepads. Her kitchen was her office; the lists occupied one counter by the stove.
I watched my mom make these lists, sometimes snuck a peek. I could never make sense of her—or most anyone else’s—lists, though. I knew they worked: she rarely forgot something she’d noted.
When my mom worked, my grandmother took care of us as very young kids. She also made lists during her “quiet time” each morning, her way of preparing the day. She used tiny loose-leaf binders, the size of a big hand, and a favorite fountain pen.
Two strong, pioneering women—my mom was a pilot and my grandmother ran a summer camp for kids—both with dozens of plates in the air.
Not unlike writing, revising, and publishing a book! Tasks for books are endless, it seems. This inherited love for lists allows me to get those tasks out of my head and onto paper, giving much-needed distance and calming those emotions before overwhelm sets in.
I use lists to get organized. I use them to assess the importance of any particular idea for my writing project.
But like any tool, lists can become a character in my life, nagging me and growing too big—when my lists are out of control, they shout at me. Do more! And do it faster! They become burdens, not helpers.
Do you love or hate lists? How do you use them in your writing practice?
Lists for both sides of the brain
I’ve tried fasting from lists. For a long time, list-making felt too linear, too much task and not enough creativity.
Once when I was feeling especially burdened by list-making, I read a book by a writer who never made lists. He believed that lists were the enemy to creativity. That no one should have to ever live with them, and that we are much freer without.
I was seriously taken with the idea of never making a to-do list again, and I tried it. For a few days, maybe a week, there was huge mental freedom indeed. Nothing got written down on my calendar, in my journal margins, on my computer desktop. It created the sweet illusion that I had endless time with noting to do.
Then reality hit. I started losing deadlines, forgetting important stuff. I went back to my lists with curiosity—how could I make lists work for me in a new way?
My next ah-ha came from the Monk Manual, a journal-calendar-planner designed to encourage both sides of the brain in list-making. (Many such alternatives exist now, but this was my first try at one.) You wrote monthly goals, weekly goals, and daily goals. But the goals were created not just from external deadlines and demands. You got to dream a little about what you most wanted to create.
My big clue was this: focus each day on three important tasks. More, of course, were fine but but the idea was to generate satisfaction and confidence via purpose in your planning.
Monk Manuals helped me refine my lists into a more creative version, not just tasks but dreams and goals and ideas. From my years with those journals, I honed a two-part list-making approach that has served me through several books, short stories, and essays. I use it for my life as well as my writing.
Lists now have two purposes in my life. They serve as a dumping ground for ideas that don’t need to clutter up my head, through use of what I call the master list. And they help prioritize my time and actually get the important stuff done via list categories. I’ll talk about each of these.
Using a master list at any stage of a writing project
Long ago, a mentor advised me to have a master list of everything I wanted to consider or do for a book project. At first I rebelled at this. Why would I combine a maybe-someday task like “research library sites” with a definite task like “ask X for a blurb.” When I questioned her, she said the first use of lists in her opinion was to serve as a dumping ground for untriaged ideas. In other words, your brain, she said, needs a place to just accumulate, not decide. By having a master list, you can relieve yourself of the often-difficult task of triaging an idea’s importance here and now. Everything goes on the master list.
I eventually began one—I was in drafting stage at that point, with a new novel, so the master list became a conglomeration of ideas and resources and research questions and character questions, among other things. I used the back pages of my writing notebook—I have one notebook in process for each book or project. I added something almost every day, as ideas came to me, wishes I wanted to explore for this project. I didn’t think of the how or why, just the what. No timeline, no level of urgency, just simply writing down the thought.
I put ideas I borrowed from other writers on this list. I added stuff I read about somewhere. I might get an idea from a dream or during my walk. (I got used to carrying index cards or Post-It notes and a pen with me on walks to jot stuff down; now I just record them on my phone.)
It was important to me that this list was not electronic. Something about the kinesthetic movement of writing it down often broadened the idea, gave me other, tangential ideas, or made me realize the importance of it and perhaps even its timing.
When I got in a groove with this master list approach, I noticed my panic level about my writing went way down. I also noticed that my imagination was freer to roam to new ideas. I had more ideas come through about this book project after starting the master list than ever before. I realized my brain had been trying to hold onto so much, but not only that, it was also trying to judge the worth of each idea that surfaced. So some of my greatest, although unformed and seemingly impractical, ideas were completely discarded before they could even be tested.
I still use the master lists for my personal life as well as my book life. Sometimes the sheer weight of the list gets me down, though, and I stop looking at it for a few days.
I take a list vacation. I promise myself that there’s nothing hugely important to forget, no impending deadlines, then I close the book on my lists until my brain relaxes.
But most of the time, the list feels fun and expansive, not burdensome. As long as I keep it loose, untriaged, not pressured, it works.
Have you ever worked with a master list for a writing project?
Triaging the list—creating list categories
After I’d worked with the master list idea for a few months, I took the next step, which was triaging. Triaging is when you choose priorities for each item on the master list, arranging them by importance, time required, or urgency. I used different colored markers for these three levels. What a relief to see there were some that didn’t need my attention right now, others that jumped forward.
Each week, I set aside half an hour to look over this master list and its priorities. As they got handled, I crossed them off (I got addicted to crossing things off the list, so that motivated me to get stuff done!).
I both loved and hated the master list. It solved my frustration with too many lists in too many places in my life—I couldn’t work with my mom’s approach of small pieces of paper stacked on the kitchen counter or contain my ideas to a tiny loose-leaf binder page like my grandmother. With a master list, I had the freedom to expand as much as needed, to create a place for the flood of ideas that usually come with a book project so none were left behind, to have everything in one place. But a book project runs for years, if you’re like me with mine. And the lists get very long and very messy.
When the list got too old, cluttered, or hard to use, I’d transfer it to a new set of pages and triage again. Interestingly, the importance of each task changed as the book project evolved. Some items on the list never got addressed—they were irrelevant now—and others got expanded.
Sometimes, a type of task took over and it needed its own master list. When Last Bets was in revision, I had a master revision checklist list with categories such as:
timeline (when does each scene happen)
seasonal/weather details by scene
character continuity (consistency of names, hair color, glasses, type of clothing, gestures)
backstory placement (when the reveals happen, how they are spread out, their relevance to each present-time scene)
beginning and ending of chapters (varying how I opened and closed chapters)
fact checking (the storm at sea, the distance of the island from the nearest land mass, etc.)
When the novel edged towards publication, I began another master list for all my promotion ideas.
List-making will always be part of my daily life—I am my mother’s daughter, after all. But it’s a true gift to my writing life, the primary way I gain distance and objectivity when things go south. Nonjudgmental list-making is very healthy, as long as it doesn’t take over your writing time. When I find myself making lists instead of drafting or revising scenes, I get back to being a writer.
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
This week, start a master list in the back of your journal, on your desktop, or in your writing notebook.
Consider a current writing project or a creative dream you’ve been thinking about. Allow yourself to dump every idea, thought, and task about this project or dream onto the master list, without assessing its usefulness or importance yet.
Write as fast as you can, no editing. You can set a timer if you want to make it really fun. See if you can get 25 items on the list.
Evaluate how it feels. Does your brain seem freer, emptier? Does the master list overwhelm you or calm you?