When I first started working with my Standard-size Traveler’s Notebook, I found the Lauren Phelps Designs Dream Notebook.
This is an undated planner. There are blank monthly spreads in the front and then the rest of the book is full of beautiful square gridded pages. The grid is quite light and not bothersome in any way, at least for me.
The undated A5 Cloudberry Journal was not working as my writer’s tracking journal. It is by no means the fault of the journal. It was what I needed to do, what I needed to track, and how I wanted to track things…the journal is lovely and high-quality.
So, when I received the Dream Notebook, I decided to see if I could make this work for what I want and need to track and do for my writing.
To be honest, this is still a work in progress. I am playing with different strategies and methodologies.
I set up the monthly spread for October, which is cool for me since October 31 is Samhain and is my New Year. I tabbed the monthly spread as well as where the blank pages began so I can find October the monthly and October the pages.
I had a lot of stickers and planner decor for Halloween and October. So, this planner got a big glam bam across the October pages.
For the monthly, I put in my hard due dates for certain projects. But otherwise, the monthly days are where I stick my word count for every day.
On the monthly spread, I also made a space for Things To Do, for Quarter Four goals, and for Monthly Goals…and October has been kicking my butt backward and forwards on many levels. I never went back to fill anything in.
Moving over to the blank pages, the first two pages, to which I added that second October tab, are sort of my landing pages.
I broke down the various projects on my plate, from Novel #1 to the online sources where I publish. The original intention was to write out what I planned to do for each project in the month of October. That didn’t happen.
What I ended up doing was keeping track of hard due dates for a couple of the projects, a little note about a to-do on another project, and for my online writing and publishing, lists of topics to write about for November.
After that, I decorated five double-page spreads in Halloween stickers, leaving lots of room in which to write. The intention was to use one page to do a weekly reflection, and the other to write out to-do lists, or brain dumps, or whatever. None of that happened until about the third week of October because I completely forgot about all of it.
I ended up using some space to do a brain dump about certain projects. I used one spread to draw up some goals for November. I used another page to write out what I need to do for a different project, with some soft due dates outlined.
The monthly spread has been an amazing help for me. Especially since I stopped tracking my word count in my Sterling Ink Weeks/N2 Commonplace Planner.
I have used the monthly spread for word count tracking consistently.
Now that I remember what I had planned to do with this notebook, I think going into November better equipped not only to utilize the notebook in a more useful manner, but I think I will be sinking deeper in my author aesthetic and work, more so than I did in October.
Going through this process also helped me think about and plan out what I want to do for my Tarot/Oracle journal that I have set up to begin in November. I will talk about that later on.
Tabitha Low 