Category Archives: The Fictorians

Promises To Keep

Nancy Greene The Writing Life 2 Comments

 I have a commitment issue.

Okay, maybe it’s better to say I have an overcommitment issue.

I describe myself as a mommy, writer, lawyer. Needless to say, each of those things is a full-time job. So, necessarily there are instances when the time required by each of them add up to more than 24 hours in a day. I’m in one of those periods right now.  But I’ll end up waking up at midnight, carving four hour of work out of the night, and then napping for a few hours before I have to get up to feed the horses. In other words, I make it work until I fall down. Not the best strategy but it’s who I am.

There are a number of downsides to this very A-type personality trait. One of which is when other people fail to meet their commitments to me, it is a source of annoyance. But, that’s a different post. Balance is the issue.

Most of us haven’t reached the point in our writing careers when we can give up the day job and write full-time. Those who do write full-time often work on more than one project at a time. Oh, the luxury of only having one thing to work on at a time. But, reality is that life rarely is that simple. We juggle. Animals need to be fed. Kids need to be reminded to shower. They need to be taken to school, or sports, or a friend’s house. We need to meet work deadlines, and get new work.  We need to write, and edit, and market our writing. And somewhere between managing our life, we need to live it.

There’s all sort of advise out there about how to fit writing into the rest of your life. You’ll often be told that we have to write every day. And that’s great. For when you can. I have a post on my blog about inching toward sucess – having low daily writing goals so I feel motivated to start every day. I was recently listening to Get-It-Done Guy’s podcast “How to Juggle Multiple Projects,” and realized his advise, as it often does, applied to many areas of my life.

So, how do I juggle? Sometimes very poorly. I do try to stay on top of my commitments so I can spent time with my family and honor all my other obligations.  The following is what (mostly) works for me:

First, I follow the Get-It-Done Guy’s advise.: prioritize my “to-do” list.

Second, I focus on one task at a time. Have you ever walked around in a circle because your attention is being pulled in too many directions? I have. My kids think it’s funny. My husband knows to get out of my way because a melt-down is coming. We’ve been sold this idea of multi-tasking, but we really can’t work on more than one thing at a time. Multi-tasking is really serial attention focusing. Focus on one item and work on it until done, or until you reach its time allocation, see #3 below.  I turn my e-mail alerts off and my phone to “do not disturb.” Because I’m not starting and stopping tasks, I generally can accomplish my goal for that session. Minimize distractions.

Third, I schedule my tasks by Time. I’ve been a lawyer long enough that I know that most routine matters will take a certain amount of time. If I need to write a memorandum that’s going to take 30 hours, I can break that time commitment up to 3 hours a day for ten business days.  Because I’ve broken down my time allocation, I can start without feeling overwhelmed. It’s only three hours after all. The Get-It-Done Guy takes this one further and suggests putting the time blocks on your calender. For me, this doesn’t work because I see all the working “appointments” and die just a little. The blocks of time on my calendar become a wall I have to overcome and create more stress for me as I run “late” between tasks. But it might work for you.

My writing time is 9 pm to 11 pm. I’ll write when I can steal minutes (the Get-It Done Guy also has a great post on maximizing and using down time), but those two hours a night are my time. I write blog posts, edit, review other people’s stories and write in that window.

Fourth, I try to set realistic goals. My daily word count goal is only 250 words and amounts to about 15 minutes of time. Remember my two hour window? The 250 word goal means that on any day I can write, I’ll met the word-count goal. Because the goal is so easy to reach, I can beat back the need to sleep to get it done. After all, it’s only 15 minutes. The nights I write I average 750 words? What does this mean, it means I generally meet my weekly word goal (1,750 words per week). Writing isn’t a chore for me when I think about it in these terms and get to mark a check in my “goal completed” column. If you are the kind of person who needs the tangible reminder, go ahead and make a chart to show when you’ve met your goals. I use a word-count comment in my WIP so I can see I’ve met that day’s goal.

Fifth, deadlines are your friends, but unlike real friends you should manipulate them. There are some deadlines you must meet, and others that are aspirational. Use aspirational deadlines in advance of any hard one. If I’m writing for a November 1 submission deadline, I’ll have a September 15 completion deadline. Why? I’m very deadline motivated. I will push off matters with later deadlines to get to priority items. The aspirational deadline builds in a “catch-up” window. It also ensures I meet the “real” deadline without pulling an all nighter whenever possible.

Finally, I give myself a break. Not too long ago, I was in trial or other hearings nearly every day. Because my lawyer-ly matters were back-to-back my preparation time spilled out of normal office hours (7 am – 7pm – yea, I know – not so normal working times).  I was at the office trying to get exhibits ready until 2am the morning before a trial. Needless to say, I didn’t write that night or any night that week. I forgave myself for missing and started in fresh with the new week.

For me balancing my family’s, writing’s and day job’s obligations is a constant dance. With some planning, I manage to limit the times I stumble. I hope a look at how I work to keep a balance between the important pieces of my life will help you do the same. For me, it’s time to have dinner with the kids.

Check out my newest release from Musa Publishing: Jack Gorman Got Cut By A Girl. Karma is a bitch, and Jack Gorman is about to find out how much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday Reads: 5 August 2012

Kylie Quillinan Sunday Reads No Comments

Looking for some reads to inspire you?  Check out these.

Brian Keene – How to Write 80,000 Words in a Weekend

Erin Bowman – Facing the Blank Page

Guest Blogger Patti Larsen at The Other Side of the Story – One Writer’s Process

James Scott Bell – Successful Fiction Begins With a Great Concept

Roger Colby – 5 Ways to Work With Stubborn Writing

Kyle Wiens – I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

Rachel Aaron – A New Look at Plotting

Amanda S Green – And Now We Wait

Dystel & Goderich – What Really Happened with the Pulitzer

Alison Strachan – Writing Goals: Learning How to Learn About Writing

 

Missed any Fictorians articles this week?

Evan Braun – Interlocking Pieces (a.k.a. The Martin Effect)

Leigh Galbreath – How to Make Highway Robbery Work for You

Matt Jones – Distractions – Stop Working Against Your Technology

 

Distractions ““ Stop working against your technology

Matt Jones Writing Tools 1 Comment

One of the most common complaints I hear from fellow writers is how hard it can be to write and be productive with all the distractions prevalent on the information superhighway. While the usual advice “Just Write” still burn strong, when you write every day the temptation can be too much. It can be an email notification, or just a quick pause to look something up. Next thing you know you’re lost in the throes of reddit and the time you allotted yourself to finish this chapter ended hours ago. If you’re one of these types that often find the allure of the web a little too much to resist, here are some ideas that may help. I’ll start out easy and move to the most extreme so you can choose a solution that works best for you.

  1. Close all programs that distract you. This means your email program, instant messenger windows, web browsers, and other alert programs. Keep a notebook in front of you to write down all ideas that pop in your head or items you want to research. Stay in your writing window as much as possible.
  2. If you absolutely need to have internet access for research, but find yourself always clicking on those same websites, look at getting a browser add-on that blocks websites for certain time limits. Examples are leechblock for firefox and StayFocusd for chrome. These apps let you choose a website and set up access restrictions. You can block the site for the entire writing session, or grant brief access to the site for 10-15 minute breaks every other hour or so. While this method is easy to circumvent, it will remind you to write when you absent-mindedly click on that reddit or facebook link.
  3. If nothing else works, block the problem sites permanently. Almost all routers have an access control functionality. The access control pages, much like the plugins, let you choose a website and a time period. If you have it in your schedule to write every morning from 7-9am, you can have your router block these pages during that time. You can even specify the computer so your family/roommates aren’t blocked as well. You can even turn off the internet during this time so there is literally nothing online to distract you. If you’re really desperate, bring a friend in and have them change the password to the router. That way, it’s blocked from the router and you’re free to work.

While this won’t solve all distractions, it does help get you away from the ones online.

How to Make Highway Robbery Work for You

Craft & Skills Leigh Galbreath Reading The Writing Life 4 Comments

It has often been said that the best way to learn how to write is to read. As Evan pointed out in Monday’s post, reading the master like George R.R. Martin can teach you more than any book on writing. Looking closely at how they do it, figuring out what tricks and techniques are used is a talent that any good writer should cultivate and use.

I don’t know about you, though, but it’s a talent I’ve never quite gotten a handle on. I get lost in stories too easily. Even my own tales tend to run away with me. So, I’ve had to cultivate a different talent.

The brazen art of highway robbery.

Okay, so “highway robbery” might be a bit strong of a term. I guess mimicry would be closer to the truth, but it’s not enough for me to simply look at a piece of prose and figure out how it was made. I have to carry it off, with a grin on my face, and dissect it piece by piece.

I first did this with one of my all time favorite authors, Neil Gaiman. One thing that Gaiman is famous for is his use of humor. So, I took a short story I was writing and after much re-reading of Gaiman’s work tried to copy his rather unique tone and style. What came out was a story about an angel and demon hiring a private detective to find Satan, who they need in order to start the Apocalypse. It’s a silly tale that will never see the light of day, but the people who have read it laugh at all the right parts. It proved a learning experience I don’t think I would have gotten any other way. I learned that humor, in Gaiman’s work, comes out of his choice of details, which is, quite frankly, brilliant. Now, I enjoy using that very technique not just to show humor, but any other emotion I might desire in a scene.

I did the same with Elmore Leonard and his use of dialogue. By mimicking his style in a story I learned how restraint can make dialogue more believable and how subtext can work far better than paragraphs of spoken exposition. Less is more with Leonard…or rather, less is everything.

The drawback, many would say, is to lose a bit of your own style and tone. Some might think that, by mimicking another author, you run the danger of letting their voices overcome your work. The idea here, though, isn’t to steal their voices. It’s to steal their technique. To take on a particular writer’s style, see how they put the words together, and then let it go. The reason it worked for me, I think, was that I had no intention of ever publishing my experiments. They were learning tools that I easily shoved in a drawer and left behind.

So, I invite you. Find a writer you like. Get out your chosen writing device, whatever it may be, and see if you can recreate something from your own mind in their words. See what comes out. I’ll bet you’ll learn something you didn’t know before.