History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

An Attempted Year without Novels, and the Results

| December 11, 2022

Early this year, I decided that I didn’t want to write novels for a year to see where it got me. By July, I had decided “maybe just one novella.” But I’m here now to say no. I wrote my novella in July, and immediately knew that it needed more work. So I did some […]

Checking In after Six Months without Novel Writing

| July 11, 2022

Since early this year, I’ve been focusing only on short fiction and poetry, and not trying to write any novels or even novellas. It’s been a little over six months, so it’s time to check in. If you read my recap from last week, you probably noticed that there’s a novella on it now. I […]

Checking In after Three Months without Novel Writing

| April 4, 2022

It’s been roughly three months since I decided that I would put novels on the VERY backburner for 2022. I told myself that I would check in with this decision roughly quarterly to decide if it was still working for me. So far, the answer is a resounding yes. I’m still juggling a lot of […]

Integrating a Day Planner into Writing Planning

| June 24, 2019

While my spreadsheet (of doom) is my primary method of organization for writing planning and submitting stories, I’m also a fan of redundancy and stickers, hence why I also use a day planner. The day planner I prefer starts each week on a Monday, and has large spaces for weekdays, with smaller spaces for weekends. […]

2018 Planning

| January 2, 2018

Yesterday, I talked about what I accomplished in 2017. I managed to get a lot of writing, reviewing, and editing done. 2018 will be similarly ambitious! This year, I’m writing a bit more detail about what I plan to work on, so that I can track it better at the end of the year! In […]

My Giant Spreadsheet of Doom, Part 3

| July 17, 2017

(For the first two posts in this series, click here (1) and here (2).) The image here is a little on the fuzzy side, but since what I’m talking about today is more about the shape of things than the details, I think it’ll work out fine. You can also click on it if you […]

My Giant Spreadsheet of Doom, Part 2

| July 10, 2017

(For the first details on my giant spreadsheet of doom, click here.) Last time, I talked about how the rows on my giant spreadsheet of doom worked for planning out my various projects. Now, we’re looking at how I use the columns. As I mentioned before, each column represents a week, with my weekly calendar […]

My Giant Spreadsheet of Doom, Part 1

| July 3, 2017

For several years now, I’ve been using a giant spreadsheet of doom to keep myself on track in terms of all of my writing projects. Because it sometimes comes up when talking with other writers, about how I keep myself organized, or how I get so much done, I thought I’d give you all a […]