Committing to a Story

Two months ago, I made a stupid promise.  I responded to a query from my publisher to submit an erotic romance story to a recent submission call by saying "yes", I would write a story to fit their guidelines.  That meant agreeing to write at least 10,000 words (and as much as 15,000) in a month.  Was this promise feasible?  Yes.  Was it wise?  Probably not.

You see, having published with this romance publisher many times before, I had already seen this specific submission call, thought about the theme and decided not to submit a story.  You read that right.  I decided against it.

I had many reasons not to write a piece for this call.  First of all, I have published in several of their anthologies and thought it might not be wise to submit to too many, which might lead to a de facto rejection simply based on volume.  Another thing, I wasn't too sure what the theme meant and hadn't written a lot of stories in this vein.  So, unfamiliar territory.

Of course, as always, there are other calls on my time.  I am currently in the middle of about a dozen erotic romance stories, many of which are clamouring to be finished.  (Yes, I can hear them clamour).  Plus, between work, family, and school, I already have plenty of deadlines I may or may not meet.  I didn't need another one to add to my list.

So why did I agree to write this story?

The personal query flattered me.  I write ménage erotic romances (among other kinds) and the idea that my editor would have thought of my other stories while reviewing this submission call made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  Pandering to my ego works, people!

I agreed to submit a story, worked my ass off for weeks to draft and edit it, and finally submitted it in early October.  A few weeks later, I got the news that my story was accepted for the anthology!  Yay!

Bottom line: I stretched myself thin to write this story.  I think it's a pretty good one, with a non-hero character I might end up using in a future tale.  Because I tend to write according to mood, I often didn't feel like writing this story, but in the end I finished it and it turned out well.

Don't believe what people tell you.  Writing is hard work.  It isn't always up to your inclination what you write about.  It was worth more to me to please my publisher, to push aside my other projects, and to finish this story.  I gave up something to gain something.

When you commit to a story, what do you give up?  What do you gain?

How to Make Bookmarks Work for You

I have a problem: I'm a multi-tasker.

Back when I was in my twenties, this was a great thing to be.  You, presumably, got a lot more done by being adaptable and able to switch frequently from reading, to emailing, to letter writing (yes, we still did that in my twenties), and so on.

Now, in my thirties, they tell me that being a multi-tasker doesn't work.  But, of course, I'd already learned that.

Multi-tasking doesn't work for me for no other reason than it has significantly shortened my attention span.  As a kid, I could spend an entire day reading.  As a post-secondary student with a part-time job, I learned to snatch bits of text book readings during my fifteen minute breaks.  Later, as a professional, I often had to break up a block of researching or drafting documents with interviews, phone calls and correspondence.  My day-long attention span was suddenly down to minutes-long or even seconds.

Even that solitary activity I enjoy best of all (get your mind out of the gutter!)--writing--no longer engages my attention for long hours at a time.  I can write for maybe fifteen or thirty minutes at a time before my mind starts wandering.  Usually, when this happens, I jump on the internet to do some "research" and I end up clicking through a dozen or more links until I'm playing an online game or reading about some celebrity I've never even heard of.  (I guess that should be "celebrity".)  An hour later, when I finally come back to my writing, it's usually time to do something else, like make dinner.

Recently, though, I've come up with a way of blending my shortened attention span with my overflowing email inbox.  When I have a fifteen minute time slot on hand (sometimes, I'll admit, during boring conference calls), I'll skim through my inbox, concentrating on the emails I get about writing.  I mean to read these eventually, it's just that I never get around to it.  So, instead of letting these emails languish in my inbox, I sort out the articles that look interesting, file them away in my Bookmarks folder under Writing and I come back to them as soon as my interest in actual writing starts to wane.

Now, when I take a break from writing, I read interesting writing articles that inevitably get me back into my own work-in-progress.  Since the articles are short, I can usually finish one in a few minutes, delete the bookmark, and get back into my work without getting up from my desk.  If it's a long article, I just leave it in my bookmarks until the next time my attention wanders.  Now I no longer feel guilty about not reading those emails I subscribe to and I spend less time procrastinating from my actual writing.  Try it out.  I'll bet it works for you.

How to Handle Competing Priorities

Like most women, I have about a dozen "to do's" on my list every day.  Heck, every hour.  Work, family, writing, friends, volunteer work, they all pile up every day and every day I must attack the pile.

Lately, we've heard that multitasking doesn't work, but we still do it, don't we?  Right now, I've got my smartphone beside me as I type this out and I have several windows open on my browser, all touching on different topics and all waiting for my attention.

In my writing life, I have second edits due back to my publisher next week, I have an entire novel I'm trying to write by mid-month, I have a submission I have to send off to my writing group which meets this weekend, and I want to read entries for the So You Think You Can Write contest.  Oh, and this blog post.  Does that sound like enough yet?

I can't do everything at once -- nor do I want to -- so how do I handle it?

Set Time Frames

Most of the writing tasks I have to accomplish will take an extended period of time.  Some have concrete deadlines (like my edits), while others don't.

Make a list -- mentally is okay -- of the tasks and how long you estimate they will take to complete, or, if they have a deadline, when it is due.

The Snowflake Method

The snowflake method is a debt reduction strategy I recently read about where you pay the minimum balances on all of your outstanding debts, but you pay off your smallest debt first by putting all of your available funds into that payment, then when that's paid off, you roll the extra payments into your next smallest debt and so on until you've paid them all off.  The idea is to promote a sense of accomplishment as you see your number of debts be reduced.  Another version has you paying off your highest interest rate debts first.

If any of your tasks can be completed in a short time, say less than fifteen minutes, do it first.  Do it now.  So, I would finish this blog first then I would send off my chapters to my writing group.

Set Mini Deadlines

After I've tackled the tasks that can be completed quickly, I move on to my larger ones.  These are high priority tasks that need to be completed by certain deadlines.

The edits will take a few days and I have about a week on hand.  I set out a block of time in my schedule -- the weekend should be okay -- to complete them.  That's my deadline before the deadline, which gives me time to catch up in case I fall behind.

Writing the novel is another larger task and I know I have to dedicate more time to it, but at this point I'm not sure how much time I will have on hand.  So I set a different kind of goal.  Every day from now until I decide that I need to have my first draft completed, I will write X number of pages a day.

In between all of these other tasks, I will be reading entries to the contest...such as when I need a mental break from writing or editing.

This may not be the best way to balance all of the millions of things that come up every day but it is a guideline and I always feel better with a plan in hand.  Try it and see if it works for you.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Wisdom and Knowing What to Ignore

This quote sits on my desktop at my day job:

"The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook." - William James

When I hunted this quote up, I was experiencing a great deal of stress at work.  Every day seemed like a constant series of aggravations and annoyances.  Stress made me more sensitive and even the smallest things that I would usually shrug off were getting to me.  This all made me extremely unpleasant to live with (just ask my family).

Stepping back and assessing the importance of each of these daily annoyances helped me to put my daily stressors into perspective.  A looming deadline for filing a document?  That's important.  A coworker being rude to me?  Not so important.  Certainly not worth ratcheting up my stress level when there's work to be done.

Knowing what to overlook has made a difference in my work environment.  Wisdom, well, that will come.

Resolutions - Blog Regularly

One of my Writing Resolutions for this year is to "Blog Regularly".  Here is how I plan to do it.

I started this blog at a maniacal pace.  One post every day for three months.  Yikes.  It's no wonder my writing production went downhill.  I was spending most of my creative energy on the blog.  It was a mixed blessing.

Although I was writing to support, inspire and inform my writing, I wasn't writing much.  I didn't know how to balance the two.

In the last few months of 2011, my blogging output dropped off dramatically.  I was down to a post or two a month.  But, because I was writing much more, I was fine with the sacrifice.  Besides, I was in the middle of signing my first romance publishing contract so I told myself I didn't have the time for the blog anyway.

But I missed blogging.  So one of my writing resolutions this year is to find a blogging schedule that fits my life (and my writing).

I've decided to aim for weekly posts, with a few special features if I have the time to write them.  How do I intend to achieve this output?

Finding ideas has never been my problem, either for my writing or blogging.  I have lots to write about, just not enough time to write it.

The time to write my blog posts will have to come out of my writing time.  No two ways about that.  But instead of aiming for writing a post a day, I will try to write a few posts at a time, hopefully with a similar theme, and schedule them for future posting.  For my blog posts, I also have to factor in the research time which is often a few hours to write a single post (mainly because I don't like giving out erroneous information).

It will be work, but enjoyable work.  I'm looking forward to once again spending more time with my online writing community!

Resolutions - Write More

One of my Writing Resolutions this year is to "Write More".  Here is how I plan to do it.

For me, finding the time to write has been relatively easy.  I run to my study whenever I find a lull in the hectic pace of my family life or, you know, pretty much whenever everyone around me stops screaming for a few minutes.

Setting up the space has worked out fine.  Although I do share my office space, I have a dedicated writing area that is all my own (once everyone in the family clears out of the doorway).

So what has stopped me, up until now, from writing more?  Why is it that when I sit down on my computer, I don't write nonstop for the half-hour or hour allotted to me that day?

First of all, the internet is a constant lure for me.  I want to research something to put into my story or my blog and I suddenly find myself playing a few games of Bubble Town.  After a while, I forget why I even came in the study in the first place.

Then, I want to find out what's happening in the rest of my house.  What is there to snack on?  Who's in the living room and what are they watching on t.v.?  There goes another hour, willingly frittered away, on Thinsations and reruns of Chopped.

What have I learned from the examples above?

Writing is solitary.  It disconnects you from the world--which is a good thing if you want to get a story done.  You need to be alone.  But now, as I get older, I have less tolerance for being alone.  I want company.  I crave connections, whether it's with my family in front of the television or on Twitter with a few hundred strangers.

This is a change that's happened within me.  Life has sped up and I have gone along with the new breakneck pace.  I need to slow down.  I need to think.  To reflect.  To savour both the thought process of writing and the writing itself.

So these are the techniques I will be trying out when I have my regular writing time:

1) Breathe.  Empty my mind.  Meditate.  I want to spend at least five minutes doing nothing but preparing myself to write every time I want to sit down in front of the computer.

2) Time myself.  I will set a timer next to me so that I know how long I've been in front of the computer.

3) Set mini-goals.  I will not get up from my desk until I have 100, 500 or 1,000 words written.  I don't care if it takes me ten minutes or hours to reach that goal.

4) Be flexible.  This one seems to go against my previous techniques but I also need to give myself the ability to balance my family, friends and day job.  If I can't, say, write ten pages this week, I can role this part of my goal into the following week and aim for twelve pages then.

Fear of Failing

I set myself up to fail sometimes.

Okay, that is a depressing statement.  I don't actually mean that I want to fail, but that I set goals that make it nearly impossible not to fail.  Take, for example, my recent resolution to write for an hour every day.  Now, I know with my work schedule and family life that I don't have an hour a day to spare.  Not every single day, certainly.  Yet I gave myself this goal and -- surprise, surprise -- I failed to reach it in the very first day.  And the next day.  And the next.

In fact, since I made that resolution to write for an hour every day, I have not written for an hour any day.  Yup, it's almost like I enjoyed the process of failing to stick to my resolution.

Almost.

The experience has made me wonder about myself.  What makes me write less at the very time I had promised myself to write more?

Maybe I made that promise to myself because I was feeling a lack of inspiration or energy to write.  Maybe I made the resolution at the very worst time to make it.  Maybe I'd just gotten lazy.

Or maybe I was afraid of giving it my all and still coming up short.  Of writing the very best story or novel that I could and still having no one willing to represent or publish it.

That's called fear of failing and before people started worrying about fearing success, they were caught up in worrying about this (which really makes more sense, when you think about it).

Fear of failing begins with a fear of trying.

The problem is that while trying leads to failure, it can also lead to success.  I may be anxious about how I will how I will handle sudden success (fingers crossed) but I'm not fearful of achieving publication and writing accolades, which have been my dream since I was a child.  I am fearful of spending so much of my life chasing this dream and never quite making it.

Does it mean that I won't be making any more resolutions about writing?  No.

Does this mean that I will stop trying?  Never!

Writing an Hour a Day

I make a lot of resolutions.  Some almost impossibly ambitious (eat only natural whole foods) and others a little more realistic (submit five short stories for publication every month).

My resolutions usually focus on what I can change (writing, submitting) rather than those goals that are outside of my control (publish more, get accepted by a literary agent).  My mantra is all about "stick-to-it-iveness" (thank you, Principal Skinner).  If I keep creating and putting my writing creations out there, regularly, and strategically, I will eventually be published.  I sincerely believe that.

Oddly enough, I tend to make resolutions all throughout the year, without relying on that anxiety-inducing New Year's Eve fever to start me on my righteous new path.  I make those resolutions, sure, but I also make resolutions in February, March, etc.  Every new season brings a new set of goals.

Many of my resolutions deal with my writing habits.  Write more.  Submit more.  Edit more.  Research more.  Yes...and blog more.

My resolution for the new school year (no, I'm not in school still but I do tend to think the year begins afresh in the fall) is to write for an hour a day.

An hour, you say?  Fie.

Yes, I mean it.  Kinda.

I'll admit that my definition of "writing" will be somewhat loose. I will be perfectly happy if I submit stories, edit, research agents, etc. during my "writing" time. In other words, any writing related effort that I would otherwise be trying to cram into my already packed weekends will now be spread out throughout the week.

The benefit, as far as I can see it, will be inertia. Not a day will go by when I'm not thinking about my works-in-progress and my writing career as a whole.  In addition, it will take the pressure off of me trying to writing for ten hours during the weekend when I need to do things like spend time with my family, see my friends, clean my house and cook.

Will my Hour-A-Day Experiment work?  We shall see.

Come on, try it with me!

Blogging the Easy Way

Ha. That title must have caught you, didn't it?

I am here to tell you that there is no easy way to blog. Specifically, there is no easy way to blog well.

For one thing, you can't get around the writing. Writing a lot is not writing well. Indeed, the opposite is quite often true.  Everyone has heard the quote where the harried writer, alternatively believed to be Twain or Voltaire, states that he didn't have time to write a short letter so he wrote a long one instead.  The same axiom applies to blog posts.  A long post is often the sign of shoddy research or editing--not knowing (or having the time to determine) what is important, you include every fact or tip that could possibly be important.  Result: a long blog post and an increased chance that no one will read it to the end.  Or, worse yet, you will have lost your message in the tedious confusion of your writing.

That said, I have recently learned of my nomination, by the wonderful Kate Kyle, for a blogging award.  Wow!  I hardly thought folks were reading, much less enjoying, my blog so well.

I am flattered and amazed at the recognition that has come from my little blog that could.  It has fulfilled its original function of reaching out to fellow readers and writers (especially in the romance genre) and it has made me feel much more a part of the larger virtual community of writers, which I now realize is enormous.

Yes, there is no easy way to blog.  You must steal time from the rest of your life, and your writing, to research, write and edit your posts.  If, like me, you started out with the aim of posting every week, this can be an incredible challenge.  But, in the end, I hope you find that your blogging is worth every minute.  Like I just did.

A Day on the Links: Health Edition

Recently, some of the romance readers and writers on Twitter have formed a diet club.  I didn't join but the project did get me thinking about my own health.

I could stand to be healthier (who couldn't?) and I often rely on the internet for information regarding my health choices.  For instance, there are tons of diet and healthy cooking sites out there.  So I thought that this week, I would share some of the great ones I've found.  Now let's all get off the computer and go jogging!

Live Strong: This website is the dot com version of the Lance Armstrong Foundation's dot org site dedicated to supporting people living with cancer.  This site is all about diet, nutrition and exercise.  Living healthy, in other words.  I often check it out for calorie and nutrition statistics on foods I'm thinking about eating (the figures can be shocking!) but the site offers a ton more in terms of information and inspiration.

Delish: When I have the time, I love to cook.  Knowing what goes into every bite I eat is frequently impossible but when I stand over the stove myself, I can monitor every drop of oil and every fresh ingredient.  Plus, I think my own cooking tastes pretty good. This is one of the best websites I've found for healthy recipes that don't take a ton of time or skill to make.

Good Housekeeping:  Yes, I know: the title of this magazine and website alone is enough to make you think you may be several decades too young for their advice.  Not true.  The health and diet section of their site has inspirational stories of women who've lost an amazing amount of weight as well as fun health and diet tools like a Diet Matchmaker and Cravings 911.  Definitely worth a peek.

Stop Writing and Take a Break!

Popular opinion has it that a writer should write every single day, snow or rain, heat or gloom of night. But we don’t belong to the U.S. Postal Service (which, by the way, does not claim this or any other official motto), so why do we adhere to such a stringent credo?

Certainly, there is a benefit to practicing your craft. How else would we get better? And for an aspiring writer, like me, perseverance is important to completing and submitting manuscripts on a regular basis.

But every day? That’s sounds like a job.

For the most part, I believe in treating my writing like a “real” job. I invest a lot of time in it and I do some part of it every day – either research, submissions, querying, networking, or, yes, writing. At least, I try to. When I don’t do anything writing-related for a day, I feel bad about myself, as if I was playing hooky from school.

Yet, I have to remember this: every job, no matter how demanding, grants time off. Annual leave, vacation, weekends, holidays. These are requirements of work too.

So why don’t we treat our writing like a job with a break now and then. Yes, I enjoy writing. I love writing and I love the feeling that comes with having spent a good chunk of time in front of a computer, creating pages and pages of fiction.

But…but…but, we need breaks, even from a part of our lives that we love. I’m not advocating a two day stretch every week or even every month. I still believe I need to keep my nose to the grindstone if I want to keep finishing one or more manuscripts every year.

I am suggesting at least an annual stretch of non-writing time. No touching the computer for a week, let’s say. It’s hard. You may be anxious to get back to writing during this time, even after just a day. Resist.

If you must, jot down ideas as they come to you during your break but limit this activity to a few minutes a day.

That strong itch to get back to your writing will stand you in good stead when your break is over and you will see your work with renewed energy and insight.

Photo courtesy of zirconicusso at freedigitalphotos.net

A Day on the Links: Woman Edition

I was going to call this A Day on the Links post the "Girlie" Edition but somehow that label doesn't quite capture the awesome variety, seriousness and frivolity of the websites I read on a regular basis.  While these are clearly women-centric sites, they aren't necessarily just for women.  I just like the female slant to the writings and the great sense of humour the writers for all of these sites display.

Jezebel: Full of current events and nostaliga, this website is one I can easily sit down and read for hours on end.  The articles range from the newsworthy controversies to reviews of favourite childhood books to celebrity snapshots.  In other words, anything and everything a modern woman is interested in.  Plus, the comments are full of smart, interesting women readers.

iVillage: If you're looking for health advice, a good recipe for dinner or sex talk, this is the one-stop shop for all women-related issues.  The articles are quick reads so you can just nip in and nip out to find just what you're looking for or browse for a while and pick up some tips on just about everything.

Chatelaine: My mother used to subscribe to this Canadian magazine and up until recently I still thought of it as "my mother's magazine".  Lately, however, I've been caught up in how much carefully researched and well presented information they have on all kinds of home and work related topics.  Plus, they have a great fashion and beauty section.  No longer my mother's magazine -- unless, of course, I have finally become her.

Waking Up Early to Write

This morning, I practiced what I sometimes preach here on my blog, and that's waking up early to make the most of the quietest time of the day.

If you're like me, you have a busy (and noisy) family who clearly don't mean to keep you from writing but often ending up doing just that.  My solution has been to make the most of the time when the rest of the household is sleeping.  That gives me two options: either outstay them later into the night or wake up earlier in the morning than they do.

For me, the choice was fairly easy.  I don't write very well in the night, after all of my energy is spent and my mind is sluggish.  I can't drink coffee late to keep myself up because that may mean I don't sleep at all that night.  And I find it tough to make sense of some of my writing later, to the point where I drop entire words that were crucial to making sense of my sentences.

So the choice was clear: wake up early in the morning to write.  My brain is freshest early in the morning.  I have the most energy and there are no distractions around my house.

Every weekend morning, I try to wake up at least an hour earlier than my family and I write at least a page or two before they come downstairs.  A whole hour, you ask?  And just one page???  That's because I also tidy up the house, putter around, clean, make coffee, and sometimes even cook breakfast.  Even so, it is worthwhile to get that page or two done with because that gives me a sense of productivity and accomplishment that lasts for the rest of the day.

Try it: wake up early and write a page or two before your family gets up.  It will start your day off on a great note.

Photo courtesy of Keattikorn at freedigitalphotos.net

A Day on the Links: Non-Writing Blogs

Before you think my whole life is about my day job and my writing, I do have a family, friends and other interests.  A lot of other interests.  Due to time and other constraints, most of those other interests remain theoretical.

Yes, I would like to one day learn about antique furniture and ancient civilizations but I don't know if I will ever have the time to do more than pick up a book or two and take what I can get from them.

Some other interests, I follow on the internet.  That's the great thing about blogs...they let you follow another person's interests and make them your own.  For the present, my interests include: cooking, frugality, and simplifying my life.  Not heady stuff but there are definite payoffs to pursuing these interests.  And, when the blog I follow is useful and well-written, I tend to come back to it again and again.

So, please enjoy today's round-up of my (for real) favourite non-writing blogs.

The Simple Dollar: I recently realized that I've been following Trent Hamm's posts on The Simple Dollar (TSD) for years.  Trent writes about his financial turnaround from his darkest hour, when his finances had hit rock bottom from years of spending and self-indulgence.  Now, he cooks at home, researches his purchases and does as much for himself as he can.  While I don't use many of the tips, this blog is still a constant source of inspiration and thought.  TSD has a large following so the comments are as interesting as the blog posts themselves.

The Stone Soup: Not only does this blog by Jules Clancy provide a multitude of quick and healthy "five ingredient recipes", but it also spends time thinking about food, diets and overall health. You can follow Jules as she tries different ways of thinking about food (and, of course, cooking).  There are great pictures and the recipes always look and sound delicious.  Plus, the posts discuss such basics as buying a slow cooker and how to chop onions without crying.

Zen Habits: As the title suggests, Leo Babauta's blog is about simplifying your life.  This may range from organizing your house to getting rid of excess possessions to getting healthy.  In today's world, this is exactly the kind of advice I find I need.  It's not just about the great tips and suggestions this blog provides, it's also about getting into the mindset that's it's okay to swim against the tide of 'more, more, more' and admitting that this mentality can be very stressful.

I think what I like best about these blogs is that the authors believe in the lifestyle they're writing about and that alone can be a great inspiration!

Day Jobs for Writers

I'm not Stephen King or J.K. Rowling.  Sadly, I haven't even published a book.  But another huge difference between myself and the two authors I mentioned is that they can support themselves off of their writing (Rowling's story is particularly transformative) while most writers cannot.

The hard truth is that most writers who publish and even make money off of their writing do it out of sheer love of the creative craft.  The anecdotal evidence is that they don't make enough money to support themselves.  Very very few rise to the status of the Kings and the Rowlings to make fortunes from writing.

Recently, I found a funny link on Lewis Lapham's Lapham Quarterly website about writers in the past and their day jobs.  The range of their salaries, adjusted to modern dollars, is from $1,828(!) to $50,000 per year.  Poor Charlotte Bronte.  But even more profound is how many of these jobs were uncreative clerical or government jobs.  Hardly the stuff of imagination, you would think.  Yet these individuals, working at their modest jobs, created The Waste Land and Jane Eyre.  Perhaps the tedium of work enhances the fantasies building within the worker's minds.  We've all experienced how performing a repetitive task can sometimes set your mind free to wander and come up with ideas.

But, in the end, they probably didn't show up at their jobs every day because they wanted a chance to ponder over plots while filing papers.  They did it because they liked to eat.  And stay out of the rain.  And sleep in a warm bed.  All necessary parts of life.  But, to a writer, so too is writing.

So how do we balance the two?

I previously posted a series on how to balance your writing and your day job.  These tips can help you to make most of your time both during breaks at work, during your commute, and at home.  True, work gets in the way of writing but it shouldn't put an end to it.  Perish the thought.

And when you get down about juggling the two: remember that some of the greatest poets and authors in history have held down day jobs and still managed to create everlasting masterpieces.  So, look out, Stephen King!

Quick and Dirty, or How I Like My First Drafts

I have a problem: I strive for perfection. In many areas of my life, including my day job, this is a good trait. My employer, not to mention my colleagues, appreciates well-researched, grammatically correct and error-free documents. But family, not so much. They could care less if the grocery list reads “potatos” or “veg”. It gets the job done.

So, in some ways, it all depends on the context. Sometimes we need to be perfect or as close to it as we can get. Other times, we just need to get the job done. Perfection can come afterwards (or, in the case of the grocery list, not at all).

What’s that got to do with fiction writing, you say? Everything.

When I write a story, I start out with a first page that I read and re-read perhaps a thousand times by the time I have completed the manuscript. That’s because every time I open up that file, I see that first line, that first paragraph, that first page, and I can’t resist titivating with it a little. Take out a word. Add a semi-colon. Before you know it, I have a perfect first page. But such initial perfection can often come at the cost of the whole.

There have been times when I’ve spent so much effort and energy on that first page that I’ve neglected to finish the story at all. Oops. By the time I got around to the last page, where I left off last time I was actually writing and not just adjusting the first sentence, the story has grown stale. I no longer care about the characters or plot I was so excited to put down on paper just a few days or weeks ago.

That’s because I wanted to the first draft to be perfect. Yet that’s not the job of a first draft.

A first draft is meant to put the skeleton of a story into black and white. No more, no less.

The flesh and blood of the story comes later during the process of editing and revising and, yes, rewriting. It is because of the desire to save ourselves this draining and occasionally tedious part of the process that we concentrate on creating a perfect first draft. But there is no short cut to perfection. Perfection comes with revision and rewriting. Period.

Don’t spend time polishing the bones of your skeleton. Write that first draft quick and dirty. Get it all on the page. Finish your story.

You can add detail and characterization in the second draft. You can correct plot points and inconsistencies in the third draft. Breathe life into your story bit by bit, with a careful hand on the bellows, and it will live forever.

Photo courtesy of luigi diamanti at freedigitalphotos.net

What I Did During My Summer Vacation

Right now, I am in the middle of my vacation.  Like many people, I get two weeks of vacation every year.  That's it.  So, by necessity, I have to be very careful about how I spend this time so that I maximize my fun, the completion of long overdue personal errands, and relaxation.

How do I do all of these things?

Take a Staycation

I've been having 'staycations' since before there was a term for it.

By and large, I don't enjoy traveling as I find it stressful and uncomfortable.  Yes, I like seeing new places and experiencing different cultures but I also know myself.  I'm not interested in spending twelve days seeing ten different countries.  And I don't like 'roughing it', whether that's camping or in a budget hotel.

It boils down to this: to travel properly, I have to spend money.  A good bit of money.  And, right now, that's not in my budget.

Do Nothing

For the first few days of my vacation, I did very little.  I'm talking no productivity, no errands completed -- nothing.  I met up with some friends, I hung out with my family, I surfed the net, read and caught up on some television shows I'd missed.  I enjoyed it immensely.

Like most people, I have job that stresses me out on occasion.  My vacation is primarily a vacation away from my day job.  I'm not adept at switching back and forth between the two so I need a buffer period.  A piece of time where I can let the job slip away into the back of my mind (this means no checking work email or thinking about the latest irritation from my coworkers) and get into a more relaxed mindset.

Do Something

After the first few days of destressing, I am ready to get to work.  No, I don't go back to checking work email, other than a brief foray to make sure the office is still standing.  I start writing.

The main goal of my vacation is to write.  At any given time, I have several different projects (read: manuscripts) on the go so I hit the one I'm most in the mood to tackle.  After those few days of downtime, I'm really raring to go.  The time off from both work and writing has made me eager to write, which is part of the benefit of taking the few days off.

With my mind far from work and refreshed, I'm capable of producing some of my best writing.

Every day, once I've passed my creative limit, I switch to another writing-related task.  Either I write some posts for my blog to store away for when my day job gets too hectic, or I research some potential agents or publishers for my work, or I just spend time on Twitter connecting to other writers.

Because this is my vacation, I don't put too much pressure on myself.  Yes, I have a daily or weekly goal I want to reach for my writing (usually, a certain number of pages I want to have written).  Yes, I have a target for the number of queries I send out.  But if I don't make it, I don't stress about it.  After all, this is my vacation.

Oh, and that picture at the top of this post, I'm there -- in my head.

Photo courtesy of Sura Nualpradid at freedigitalphotos.net

How to Balance Your Writing and Your Day Job – Part 5: Get Help

No man or woman, even a writer, is an island. To get through your day, you need a group of people, seen and unseen, who support you.

I take a train every morning that someone conducts for me. I purchase a coffee someone else has brewed and poured out. I accomplish the daily tasks at my work because my colleagues help and assist me.

Paid or unpaid, willing or indirectly conscripted, we depend on these offerings of assistance from other people every day. So why shouldn’t we need and want help in our writing careers?

Sources of assistance

Everyone around you should be viewed as a potential source of help, support, and even inspiration.

Books contain disclaimers, acknowledgements and thank yous for a reason. A novel might be created by a single person whose name appears on the front cover but it’s also a team effort involving all those who appear on the dedication page and even those alluded to (in the negative sense) in the usual disclaimer: “Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead...”, etc.

The usual suspects are your friends and family. But you may also want to think about your colleagues and co-workers, your writing friends (both in person and online communities) and your idols or mentors.

If you’re in the process of paring down your time drains, you may be thinking about hiring someone to assist you in one of many ways, such as: performing a chore you spend time on (either daily tasks like cleaning or one offs like designing your website) thereby freeing up your time for writing, providing expert advice in a subject you aren’t versed on (accounting, legal, and editing come to mind), and providing emotional support (often gratis).

Getting help

The only way to receive help is to ask.

The people around you who love and care about you won’t know what they can do to support you unless you tell them. Don’t be afraid. It takes a few minute of conversation, as formal or informal as you want to make it.

If you want to get some time off from your day job to write, such as a leave of absence from your employer or a flex time arrangement, this will be a more formal process. First, look up your company’s policies and find out if you qualify for what you’re thinking about requesting. Next, put it in writing. Offer solutions. If the company’s needs may be negatively affected by your proposal, brainstorm solutions to mitigate these affects before you make your request. Plan out your finances and make sure you can afford the resulting decrease in your income.

For people you may not see on a regular basis (online friends, influences, mentors, etc.), this conversation will take effort and forethought. Think about how best to approach the issue. It may be as simple as starting an email off with “Can I ask you a favour? Feel free to decline you don’t have the time or interest. I won’t be offended :)!” And make sure you aren’t. When you’re asking someone to do something for you, their refusal should not make you grudging. It’s not personal. People have other time commitments and interests that take up their free time. Just as you’re trying to balance your life, they’re trying to balance theirs. Be understanding.

For formal arrangements like hiring someone to mow your lawn every week or file your tax return, look for referrals from the people mentioned above. If you can’t get a good local referral, try the Better Business Bureau and, of course, the internet. Up front research will save you trouble later.

What kind of help do you need? 

You want: an expert to tell you how to perform a task, more time to write without encroaching chores or commitments, daily reminders to keep at it and a cheerleading section for when you try and fail. Some of these kinds of help may be out of your reach for financial or other reasons.

Free types of help include: 

• ask someone to discuss your goals with you on a regular basis (doesn’t have to be daily) – this will serve to keep you on track
• ask someone to give you a daily reminder of when it’s time for you to write – this might work better for an online friend
• tell your friends and family what times you’ve dedicated to your writing and ask them to leave you alone during this period (except for emergencies) – it may help you both to outline what matters you think qualify as ‘emergencies’
• ask someone to trade time-consuming chores with you, such as cleaning, cooking, babysitting, so that you can write – you don’t have to trade the same chore as you can easily promise to watch your neighbours’ kids on Saturday night in exchange for having him cook you a week’s worth of dinners – remember to keep up your end of the bargain when the time comes

Remember that the ultimate goal of obtaining assistance is to further your writing career. Be flexible. You may not be able to have your mentor read through your entire manuscript but she may give you an introduction to a worthwhile contact such as a great editor. Take what you can use and be grateful, even if you have to decline.

Good luck on your writing goals!

Photo courtesy of Pixomar at freedigitalphotos.net

How to Balance Your Writing and Your Day Job – Part 4: Simplify

Your whole life is spent running from one commitment to the other. There’s barely enough time in the day to eat a real meal or sleep properly, much less write fiction. Never mind the time crunch – you can’t even find the energy to sit down in front of a computer and be creative.

Your writing career and your day job seem to be pitted against each other in a battle to the death. One of them must go. But it can’t be your job…you need it! So what’s the solution?

I don’t believe you have to give up on your dreams of being a published writer (or whatever your actual dream might be) just because you also have a day job that you need to go to every day in order to survive.

The solution to a hectic, overcrowded life is…take a breath, hold it for five seconds…three, two, one…let it out…

Simplify

Simplifying your life merely means taking out the unimportant and leaving the essential, important aspects.

What are the things (people, activities, even possessions) that are important to you? If you don’t know already, spend some time thinking about it. You can’t simplify, part of which involves eliminating the extraneous, without know what it important and what is extraneous.

If you’re like me, you balance your day job, your writing, your family, your friends, your partner, your community activities, your hobbies, your entertainment and a dozen other commitments on a daily basis. It’s exhausting. If you’ve decided your writing career is one of the most important aspects of your life (and frankly, why would you be engaging in this process if it wasn’t?), then you may need to trim the other categories.

Eliminate

The simple way to simplify is to cut out those categories that consume the most time. One of your hobbies is sailing but it involves many hours every weekend on the water. You like sailing but you like writing about sailing a little better nowadays. You cut out sailing. This may or may not be a good idea. But it has certainly freed up some of your precious time.

Automate

The better choice for simplifying your life is to automate it. Put your finances online and automate your regular bills. You’ve just saved yourself an hour or two every month when you sit down at the dining table, write checks, lick envelops, and give yourself a headache.

Online tools can be used to automate everything from your grocery shopping list to your work. Many of these are even free. Try some of these out and keep what works for you.

Organize

The most pointless time drains stems from a lack of organization. How many times have you spent an hour searching for an item that you could have found easily if you had a better system for your tools, your files, your clothes, or what have you?

A few practical storage mechanisms, a calendar and reminder system can save a ton of time and effort. This is one area where the investment of time up front (to create the organizational system) will save you time in the long run. Online tools are also available for keeping track of your time, possessions, etc.

Transform

I’m not saying stop spending time with your friends or stop volunteering but do these things in quality rather than quantity.

Instead of spending two hours every week with your friend at a movie theatre, where you can’t talk to each other anyway, why don’t you spend every other week catching up over a two hour dinner? Instead of volunteering every weekend to build houses, why don’t you try getting on the board of the agency that builds the houses, which meets every month? All of these options are just as valuable, the latter ones just don’t take as much time.

Come on, breathe with me. You can do it. Wait, I can simplify that. Do it.

Photo courtesy of Pixomar at freedigitalphotos.net

How to Balance Your Writing and Your Day Job – Part 3: Find the Time

Sure, it’s great to have goals. And a plan is a lovely thing. But when do you find the time to work towards your goals and execute your plan? Indeed, you might not even have the time to work on creating your plan in the first place.

I have the same problem and the same underlying tension between the demands of my day job and my writing life. I want to write 24/7 but when push comes to shove, I have to eat, clothe myself and put a roof over my head. Like most people, I not only have to put in the requisite number of hours at my day job, I have to find the energy to complete my work during the day, leaving very little energy (not to mention time) to write and strive towards my goals for my writing self.

Interstitial time

Time doesn’t just come in increments of an hour or more. Don’t give up on writing for the day just because you won’t have an afternoon or a full hour to work on your writing.

Take time where you can find it. Actually, if you think about it, this is what we’re all doing already. We squeeze in a workout between home and work. We spend our break calling the credit card company and our lunch hour picking up a few items from the grocery store. Nowadays, that’s how we get by.

I call these increments interstitial time. It’s the time we find in between the bigger (usually already committed) blocks of time.

The big blocks are Work, Family, Sleep, etc. Every other minute in the day is essentially up for grabs.

Finding the time

I’ve created a list of likely categories of interstitial time which may exist in your life. By cobbling together a few of these short periods, you can find time to write – or at least plan to write, or research, or edit a few pages you’ve already written.

Commute: if you’re on a bus or train for longer than five or ten minutes, you can make use of this time to write.

Work Breaks and Lunch: Let your partner pick up the groceries today. Or instead of waiting on hold with the credit card company, drop them an email. Free up your fifteen and thirty minute breaks in the workday to do something for your writing career. Think about it like your second job; you just do it in between the first one.

Wake Up Early or Go to Sleep Late: Create some time by carving out a small slice of that big block called Sleep. You may not want to do it every day but a half hour on the weekends before the family gets up or at the end of the day after the kids are in bed can give you the time to write a page a day or even more. After a year, you’ve got a decent sized book!

These are just a few of the places where I’ve found interstitial time. If you look hard, you can find some slices of time in your own life. Put them to use.

Photo courtesy of Pixomar at freedigitalphotos.net