The List

Easily dismissed and often neglected, the list of weekly and daily goals toward your writing helps reveal the meaningful methods for your own writing.

Back in The Day we had the Franklin Planner, named after that famous list maker and goals specialist Ben Franklin.

Today we have all sorts of planners, online and off. Some of the best writers we know keep flow charts, planners, and plain old lists to get items done.

So why do they matter more now?

1. Your own life is competing with your writing. We run our lives like little corporations. You have your marketing team (social media), your IT department (the computer training, maintenance, and product development for the presentation), and the CEO who runs the entire operation. You have the CFO who put you on a budget and lectures you about retirement. With all of these competing forces, you need an anchor into your own creative work.

2. A list keeps you accountable. Time flies. Get obsessed about one event or project (a birthday party, a promotion, a vacation) and watch your writing days slip away without even knowing it. With a daily list you see, in retrospect, how much time you commit to writing. Day after day. Seeing it on paper makes it real.

3. A list identifies our choices. A list of days and weeks without writing identifies how we chose to use our time. Without a struggle or angst, we just see, easily, how the days were spent.

4. Writers create time. Alice Munro used to write during her kids’ naps. Rita Dove told students to write in 15-minute slots. Gabriel García Márquez got up at 3 a.m. to write. Toni Morrison wrote on her commute. Listing your writing places forces you to get creative with time, including looking for nooks and crannies in the day. Listing helps you try new ways and track your progress. Which way worked better this week? This month.

So try the list every day. Feel free to do a top three list on paper every day. See what happens. See what you learn about you as a writer.