I haven't made new year's resolutions, as such - since we're a low fat, low alcohol household for reasons of health, giving up things seems both redundant and likely to be miserable. But I try to start the year by having a clear out, and making plans for the months ahead.

Last year I posted about my motivational stickers, which worked up to a point, but this year I need something else to help keep me organised. Since I tend to carry a notebook around anyway, I've decided to give bullet journal a try. It's a sort of combination of all-purpose notebook and diary, so will hopefully allow me to keep track of things.

I particularly like the idea of indexing, to keep track of several projects at once. I've written up the suggested format, including the diary logs, although I already have a diary so may use that instead rather than scheduling things into the journal. I bought Mslexia's writers' diary, and want to get the use out of it. Plus every week has a handy blank page, in which I write all the interesting submission deadlines for that week (whether or not I've decided to write for them). I think that might clog up a bullet journal, since so many of the deadlines whoosh by Douglas Adams style - even with the best of intentions I can't write for all of them!

So I'll probably keep the diary for deadlines and appointments, and use the journal to keep track of writing projects, noodling, and those things I plan to do but haven't scheduled yet. I'm halfway to using that format anyway.

Amanda Hackwith has this interesting blog post about how she customised the format to fit with her writing life. I'll probably do something similar, although the colour coding seems like a bit much effort. I can always put my stickers in, instead.

Here's another audio site, Tabletop Audio, ostensibly for role plays but would also be good background for writing to. This one has less Hogwarts, but does have locations such as a 1920s speakeasy, a royal salon, and a city under siege.

There probably isn't a speculative fiction writer out there who isn't already aware of Doug Smith's Foreign Markets List - but just in case one stumbles across this - go forth and submit reprints across the world!

Today's advent entry is another useful tool, for writers who want to design their own e-book covers. Because let's face it, while being able to hire someone to make art for you is great, sometimes it's not possible or affordable. Canva lets you do all the work yourself, and comes with handy tutorials. Mostly it's free, although some of the pre-designed layouts and custom bits have a (small) price tag. Obviously pay for any pictures you bring in from stock sites or the like.

It must be a couple of years ago now I bought The Writer's Toolbox by Jamie Cat Callan.

Like my ever-growing pile of books about writing, it got looked at a couple of times, and I had the best of intentions to use it, but then it got put to one side and forgotten about it.

I pulled it out again recently when I was stuck on a prompt-based challenge, to add a couple of elements and a first line to get me going. It worked, although the resulting story is possibly too strange to actually do anything with.

The toolkit itself is a fun idea. It has some spinners with things like characters and obstacles on, sicks with first lines and lot twists, and cards with sensory details and objects. The different idea generators are designed to be used with those of the same sort (although I mix and match), and the idea is to write from one until the egg timer runs out of sand then use the next one to turn the story in another direction.

I liked the idea so much I decided to make my own, except based around speculative fiction. I got as far as buying a pack of craft lolly sticks in different colours, but realised I was going to have trouble writing on their rough surfaces and also couldn't decide what to do with my sticks. Have some for fantasy and some for science fiction? Include characters/settings/fantasy races and aliens/settings? Then I got distracted, and moved house, and haven't done anything more with it than find a tin to keep the sticks in.

The problem with the toolkit is there's a risk of getting bored with the content. Sure you'll end up with different combinations, but there are limited options for each different element. There's only so many times you want to write about "Joy from the rock band" or someone who solves their problems by learning to drive. The sensory details and plot turn prompts have probably got a it more life in them, and you can always combine them with other, weirder prompts. See you at Seventh Sanctum?

It's an ongoing source of amusement and/bemusement for many, writers included, that writers seem to be drawn to coffee shops like moths to a flame. Coffee shops are a break from the writing desk, a retreat from the demands of family, or somewhere to hang out during NaNoWriMo write-ins. While coffee shops seem to be quite a modern phenomenon they're really not, as David Brandon's Life in a 17th Century Coffee Shop will attest (as will anyone who remembers what coffee was like in the UK not so long ago).

There are a number of suggested reasons for this obsession. This article suggests being shamed by the public gaze out of loitering and into working has an effect, and also that the short bursts of time writers stay (typically a couple of hours) has an effect similar to the Pomodoro technique.

Research has shown that coffee shops can also be stimulating to creativity. It's not the caffeine, but the noise levels. Too much noise can be really distracting - like my downstairs neighbour who's currently blasting the TV loud enough I can hear it through my floor. Too little noise and suddenly the ticking clock in the next room is the herald of your writing time slipping away. Quiet can be intimidating. Just enough - like coffee shop chatter - can function as white noise, happily placing the writer in the Goldilocks zone between distraction and fear.

Unfortunately there are no decent coffee shops in my town. Not one. Because I need a certain level of background noise to get anything done, I've started using a website called Coffitivity. As the name suggests, it plays a coffee shop soundtrack (there's a choice of three). The chatter is just quiet enough that you can't hear what anyone is saying, which is a pitfall of real coffee shops (I got no writing done the day I ended up a table over from three women discussing their friends who work in the internet sex industry).

To be fair, any white noise would probably have the same effect. I quite like the idea of swapping my imitation coffee shop for an imitation beach, or rainstorm, so I'll probably seek some out. In the meantime I'll keep listening to Coffitivity's "Morning Murmer" track and hoping that someone finally opens a proper coffee shop in this town.

A little late posting, since it's now 5th May, but I signed up for the May story a day challenge over at storyaday.org.

It's bringing home to me how out of practice I am. One of the first posts suggested starting small - no more than 1200 words a story at the beginning of the month. My immediate reaction was I'd struggle to manage even that in a day. I used to be able to do it in an hour and a half. These days I find it really difficult to go from a standing start.

Not engaging with the prompts is a problem. Show me a picture of a baby elephant trying to rescue a kitten from a river and I'm more likely to think it's twee, and that I hate anthropomorphic animal stories, than wonder how an elephant and cat become best buddies, if they're in league with each other, or what that cat is doing in the river in the first place.

However, even when I was writing from prompts before I was usually supplementing with other prompts. It's when the random connections happen in the brain that the magic starts.

So, for anyone else in need of prompting, here are some of my favourite prompt sites:
Seventh Sanctum, which has prompts for pretty much everything (random creatures, equipment, names) on top of a dedicated writing section that comes up with plots, symbolism, themes etc.
Mangle posts the last 25 images uploaded to Livejournal. Sometimes what you'll get is awful (yes, sometimes that's porn - the site is very NSFW), but sometimes you'll get a gem.
Also for images there's deviantART, which posts up it's most recently popular images on the front page.
The Random Proverb Generator which smooshes up proverbs and serves them back in a new form. Loading it up to get the link just netted me "Absence makes the heart grow words". There might be a story in that.

I've been woefully neglecting my blog lately. So much so that I even forgot to post about the awesome Toasted Cake podcast of my flash story "A Primary Function". This story remains one of my favourites, because it's just plain evil.

This blog isn't the only thing I've been neglecting. From writing, to eating my five-a-day, to getting the stairs instead of the lift, it's very easy to take the path of least resistance. Especially when you spend all day at work, come home to cooking and cleaning (more work), and still have to write something (which by then feels a lot like work). In an effort to make the things I'm supposed to do more fun, I've joined a site called Habit RPG.

It's basically a website where you make a list of all the things you need to do, then check them off as you do them. You can have Habit, which are things you want to get in the habit of doing or not doing - which can have a positive or negative value (for example taking the stairs versus taking the lift). You can have Dailies, which are things that need to be done every day or on specific days of the week. Or you can have To Dos, which are things you really should get around to doing at some point, like your taxes. You can set these up with checklists too, which is ideal for long-term projects.

The reason this is better than just keeping it all on a piece of paper, is that it's also a game. Specifically, as the title suggests, a roleplaying game. You start as a little warrior avatar, and checking off your tasks gets you gold to buy equipment, and XP to level up with.  If you click a negative habit, or fail to check off a daily, you take damage. At level 10 you can choose a character class (warrior, healer, wizard, or rogue). I picked rogue, because I know myself well enough to admit I'm mostly in it for the random drops, which rogues get more of.

Every so often checking off a task will drop a random item on you: eggs, from which you can hatch cute little pets, and hatching potions which determine the flavour of pet you get. Combining a flying pig egg and a zombie hatching potion gets you an ugly yet amusing zombie flying pig. I'm personally waiting for a shade potion so I can hatch an evil panda. Because why not?

It also fosters a sense of co-operation. You can join a Guild, which is a bunch of people with an interest in common, or a Party in which to do quests. Some quests are "drop quests" where your random drops include items the party is trying to reach a particular number of, and boss fights where doing your tasks causes damage to some random evil you're trying to defeat. The other side of this is that your missed dailies go towards the damage the boss does and so can hurt the rest of the party.

So far it's got me eating my five a day and climbing the stairs, stopped me eating crisps, and helped me organise a massive house clean. I currently have writing and submitting down as habits, but I'm about to switch some of them over to dailies for that spot of extra motivation. Since my main problem is remembering to do the things I've decided I need to do, having them all in one place and getting rewards for doing them is really helping.

I know some people will look down on using a game as a motivator, but frankly we're not all super-organised and saintly, and able to do all of life's Shoulds without a bit of help. I'm not interested in the kind of outlook that says life should be all about being sensible and adult. And neither is my zombie flying pig.