Six (nearly seven) months in and my Bullet Journal is still going strong.

I've made a couple of changes to the format. Instead of writing a daily log every day I do a weekly spread. It allows me to park weekend tasks on those days, from the beginning of the week, instead of having to either remember them or carry them through every day until I get to the point I can actually do them. It also means less disruption of my routine on the days when I can't check the journal over breakfast (early starts where I have to eat at my desk, for example), since I don't have to prep the log every day.

I've started putting in a deadline calendar each month, but only for the current month. Future deadlines are still going in my diary, along with appointments. It's a little clunky having two books, but the way I look at it is the diary is for the future (and I can leave it at home) and the journal is for now. I don't think I'm quite ready to abandon the traditional diary yet.

I'm still scrapbooking in the back (and a note for future journals is that pritt stick might be better for this than staples!). My Beadhaul comes with a leaflet showing all the beads included, so I've added that as well. So far I've only made a pair of earrings. I've got ideas for a couple of other things but I'm not sure I can translate the ideas out of my head at this point.

It hasn't helped much with my writing, but I think there's a larger issue of balance there, rather than being disorganised. Overall I'm getting more of the day to day things done that used to slip under the radar, so it's definitely working. The only problem is I'm bored with the notebook now and ready for a new one!

As part of my plan to get my writing more organised I've signed up for #12For12 - twelve stories in twelve months. The rules are flexible, so I'm choosing to interpret them as a finished story a month. Since I'm trying to build up an inventory of longer stories only three of them can be flash fiction. I'm currently trying to clear out my inventory of older unfinished stories, so I expect a few of those to creep in, but I also want to produce new work. (I've got something in the works at the moment, but don't expect that to be finished until February.)

I'm trying not to think too much about publication at this point. What's important is to get it written.

I've been quite productive since coming back from Swanwick, at least I have this week. I've written over 2000 words on a new project, mostly in the evenings but a little during my lunch breaks. It's not the project I'm supposed to be working on, the one with the deadline, but words are words.

Back in January I posted about using stamps and stickers for motivation. I'm still doing it, although I've refined the requirements a little. Anything that actively moves a project forward gets a stamp now, rather than just words, so outlining and research also count. Lots of words gets a sticker, not just finishing a project, and epic days - such as the time I managed 650 words on a work day - get a flying unicorn sticker.

For all that I had a rough week at Swanwick, it did its job in making me feel enthusiastic about writing again. It's amazing what you pick up even when you're not aware of it. I bought a book from the second-hand table, The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner, which is a sort of chatty memoir advice for writers sort of thing. That prompted me to buy a bunch of other writing books, most of which have been sitting an an Amazon wishlist for months, and some of which were recommended by other Swanwickers (or were in the pile of books they picked up). I may have overdone it a little, as I now have a stack of seven or eight of them to read. But it's nice to have someting to read in the bus, since I don't particularly like writing there, which at least keeps me thinking about writing.

Last year was a bit of a bust in terms of writing. It was a year of infinite variety in terms of the dayjob - new role and schedule that started the back end of 2014, and then training for a new job. My boyfriend got a new job too, which meant a change to his schedule that took some getting used to.  As a result I had pretty much no brain for anything else the whole year.

This year, although I'm still working my way through the training period for the new job, I want to get back on track. The problem is getting motivated, because there's always something that needs doing around the house, or I just don't feel like writing. Tracking wordcount doesn't work, I just end up feeling demoralised at never doing enough. Plus anything involving spreadsheets is useless, as I actually have to turn on the computer and open the document to get any benefit. So this year I had to find something else to motivate me.

I've gone for rubber stamps and stickers. Any day I write I get a garden-themed stamp on my calendar. It doesn't matter if I've only written a few sentences, as long as I've actively worked on a project. Blogging counts for this, as otherwise I wouldn't, but only my regular Tuesday posts. If I finish a first draft, I get an owl sticker. If I polish a draft and get it submission-ready, I get a cat sticker. Blogging doesn't count toward stickers.

It seems to be working so far. I've worked on a particular story project most days, finished a piece of flash, almost completed a poem draft, and am about to start working on editing a piece. Not only does it satisfy my inner twelve year old, but it also gives me a visual record of what I've achieved that isn't reliant on achieving arbitrary numbers. I do enough of that at work - which, thinking about it, is probably why I'm so resistant to doing it in my writing as well.

And, of course, when I run out of stickers, I can treat myself to more!