It’s a Plan

By Kait Carson

"If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else."—Yogi Berra

Sometimes, Yogi, you can end up someplace else even with a roadmap. Sigh—sad truth. But then again, unintentional trips down sideroads can provide the best scenery. That’s as true of the writing life as it is of real life. I confess I’m the type of person who would get in a car and go. Turn wherever suits my fancy, stop at the cute bed-and-breakfast, picnic on the grass beside a babbling brook. There was a time in my life when I would go to the airport and book on the next departing flight. In short, I’m flexible, and that’s served me well. As random as it sounds, it wasn’t. I always had a plan. The plan was always flexible, but the aim was to collect experiences.

Now that I’ve morphed into a full-time writer, those experiences are useful. So are the thirty years of journals lining my bookshelves, but that’s another blog for another day. This blog is about planning. And welcoming 2026.

As you have probably guessed, I’m not good at ironclad structure. Gives me hives. What I crave is flexible accountability, and lots of color. After all, I came of age in the era of Carnaby Street and Peter Max. My idea of a perfect plan combines two desk calendars, one wall calendar, and one wall chart. Full disclosure. I have two wall charts, but the second one is only for word count, and I wish they made more colors for dry erase markers. Alas, there’s not much to choose from in that regard. That aside, this is how my plan to plan or not works.

It all begins with the Quo Vadis Minister agenda. The new ones usually drop in August, and in my mailbox soon after. The first pages feature an annual page a month calendar. I use it to record birthdays, deadlines, and appointments. I use the interior weekly pages to keep track of how I spend my time and record my word count. A nice, big column on the right side lets me write my aspirations and cross them off when I accomplish them. At the end of the week, I transfer those hours into a spreadsheet. I aim for four hours of writing work daily and another two of marketing. If the spreadsheet is falling short, I do a deeper dive to figure out what happened and what, if anything, needs to change. Items like health, weather, power outages, and multiple non-writing appointments happen. If I’m spending too much time on Wordle. That needs to be addressed. There’s only so much slack my flexibility will permit.

 The Happy Planner is my true planner. It’s perfect for figuring out my writing process so I can set realistic deadlines. Last year I learned that for the first draft, plotting takes ten days, writing takes sixty, and editing another thirty. I map those events out in big blocks and decorate them with stickers and colored pens. Each day has a blank box where I fill in the word count. Empty blank boxes make me itch.

My final calendar is by Suzy Toronto. By now you can guess the attraction. It also serves as my at-a-glance calendar. The blue boxes are birthdays, the pink deadlines, and the orange stripes at the bottom have the names of our fifth weekday bloggers. The boxes are big enough for me to see them without my glasses. A huge plus for a writer of a certain age. Besides the colorful format, I love the upbeat introductory essays.

The last link in the chain is about writing. I have an old-school whiteboard calendar hanging on the wall behind my door. Instead of dates, the boxes each represent a chapter, and the Post-It notes serve as guides for the events that need to happen. As I write each chapter, I remove the Post-Its for everything except red herrings and clues, and add a different color Post-It representing red herring resolutions. By the time I finish the first draft, I have a visual skeleton of the book, and I’m able to spot those pesky plot holes. And if the book takes an unexpected sideroad midway through, rearranging Post-It notes to suit is a simple solution.

What about you? How do you plan your time and production?

 Kait Carson writes the Hayden Kent Mysteries, set in the Fabulous Florida Keys, and is at work on a new mystery series set in her adopted state of Maine. Her short fiction has been nationally published in the True Confessions magazines and in Woman’s World. Kait’s short story, “Gutted, Filleted, and Fried”, appeared in the Silver Falchion Award nominated Guppy Anthology Hook, Line, and Sinker. Her nonfiction essay was included in the Agatha Award-winning book Writing the Cozy Mystery. She is a former President of the Guppy Chapter of Sisters in Crime, a member of Sisters in Crime, and Guppies.