Category Archives: Author’s Perspective

A Guest Post by Holly Roberds

The problem with self-directed work, whether you are a writer, freelancer, or artist trying to make living or even just a mark, is you never know whether or not you are doing the things to put you on the path to life you want. You try to measure your progress, write more stories, submit more work, but sometimes your efforts never feel like they are enough. While working on your writing career can be a joy, it can also turn you into its slave.

I came upon this revelation after working a twelve hour day at a temp job. Up at five am, I managed an hour’s worth of editing time. Then at lunch, I squeezed in an hour of freelance work, and snuck in more editing throughout the day until I rounded up the edits at thirty pages for the day. I have never accomplished so much in one little day. Thirty pages of edits is an amazing accomplishment for me on days I didn’t have other obligations, so this was monumentally awesome!

Except, it wasn’t. Instead of feeling proud of my uber-productive day, I was absolutely miserable. Not because I felt overworked. Oh no. I was miserable because I internally bemoaned, “I didn’t do enough today! Maybe I should stay up a couple more hours and try to pack in more writing and edits.”

This is when I recognized something was very wrong. I could no longer hang out with friends, family members, or even take the time to sit down and watch a movie without the wormy guilt incessantly tugging me back to work. The ugly and demanding voice, I’d grown used to, chided that if I could get so much done on a busy day then my output should be triple on my days off. Then again, I looked over at my boyfriend who thoughtfully chewed dinner and patiently listened to my struggles. I’d rather not dump kerosene on my relationship with him or the rest my friends and family before switching on the flamethrower.

Something was broken inside me.

My off-button.

I had graduated beyond the initial stages of waffling, enough to finish stories that were of palatable quality. I was shooting short stories into the dark, unforgiving abyss of pro-markets, and gaining massive ground on my novel. Heck, I’d even scored my first publication. It was a good year for me! So why did I feel like no matter what I did, it wasn’t even close to being good enough? So what if I could fit in six hours of writing a week? Twelve hours was better, thirty would be ideal! As a freelancer, with almost total dominion over my schedule, this should be easy right?

Wrong. The more I worked, the more I wrote, the hungrier I got. Eventually I started to feel like a starving wolf, ribs poking out, maw dripping with saliva, so hungry I might start gnawing on my own legs.

I decided to handle this problem like any writer attacks a problem. I researched the ba-geezus out how to feel satisfied with the work I was doing. Most articles target writers who have trouble starting and continuing writing, I couldn’t find any that said to cool my jets. I decided to start to reading books on mindfulness, gratitude, and anything to help me enjoy life and my journey to becoming a better more productive writer without killing myself.

I spoke with friends about my problem. It helped me stay accountable. They were also more likely to notice that glazed look of panic in my eye when I wasn’t working before giving me a sound smack. Thankfully, my friends are supportive and encouraging. They shared they thought I worked harder than most people they knew. That they were already proud of my accomplishments and dedication, so I should be too. Also, they ordered me to (for the love of god!) relax.

The biggest wake-up call occurred during a conversation with a friend who was a freelancer as well as a professional writer.

With a sigh I explained, “Every second of every day, I am scrutinizing if I’m doing enough. Am I putting my energy in the right place? The place that is going to get me closer to my concrete goals?”

Namely that big beautiful publishing deal complete with a novel on the shelf and my name on it.

I paused, then asked him, “Do you know what I’m talking about?”

With a deep, tired sigh, he said, “Yes. Yes, I do. I’ve felt that way.”

Under the assumption this was all just a phase I had to get through, I asked, hopeful, “Really? How long did you feel it?”

“I feel it now, and I have felt exactly what you are describing every day since I started writing and freelancing. The ‘I should be doing more,’ ‘the things I’m doing aren’t enough,’ even if I am loaded up.”

Alarm flooded my brain and body. Sixteen years. He had been writing and freelancing for sixteen years, enduring this soul crushing guilt of never feeling he was doing enough.

No! My internal voice cried. We are not doing this! That is far too long to feel bad. My writing is a pleasure of my life, not my master.

As a writer You are completely self-directed and that is a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. The pressure can suck the enjoyment out of writing, and even life. Don’t let it.

I have had to take several steps back and deliberately make goals with a cut-off point. For example, I would endeavor to write two hours on a given day, but found I was sometimes only able to fit in one hour. Normally, this would send me into a dark cloud of regret, and I’d turn on myself like a punching bag. I’d have to do better the next day to make up for it.

Now, I will put as much deliberate effort into congratulating myself for taking one more step on my journey. I will even say it aloud. “I am doing enough.” “I have done good work today.” Because, personally, I love drilling new age hoo-doo affirmations in my brain, but I’m sure you can find your own style for self-congratulations.

Where I used to pour all my time into constructing plans and concrete writing goals, I now spend equal time planning my ‘do nothing time,’ to free myself of the eternal ‘I could be writing right now’ syndrome. There are times in the week or day where no work is allowed.

Disclaimer: this advice is not for the so called writers who never actually write anything. This is for the people who make progress, whether slow or at careening speeds who can identify with the lack of satisfaction shared here. I invoke the popular adage, “Slow progress is still progress.” Even when we writers get on a role, we can still feel the exact (if not exaggerated) despair and frustration as someone who is doing nothing.

As writers, we know what we have to do. Write more and submit more. So I made a writing/editing plan and I still make concrete goals for writing every month, but the difference is I have decided to put all my faith into the process I built. Sometimes I overshoot word count goals, and there are weeks where my process stands stock-still. Either way, when I’m supposed to be in relax mode I consciously divert my attention from the demons who demand more from me to stay in the moment as much as possible.

Don’t let your writing aspirations dig a bottomless hole in your soul at the expense of the rest of your life and happiness. So if you have written today, submitted something, or devised a grand plot idea on a napkin, let me just tell you, “You are doing a good job!” Better yet. Get in the habit of telling yourself.

Holly Roberds:

Holly Roberds lives a strange bohemian lifestyle in Broomfield, CO. She holds down five jobs at any one time which include working for a private investigator, as a freelance writer, writing coach, as well as numerous other alternating positions. Since she is her own boss, Holly has gobbled up countless books, articles, and studies on self-discipline, and effective work strategies. Holly writes science fiction romance, some occasional bizarro short stories, and co-authored the Writers of the Future’s ongoing blog on the craft of writing.

The Writer’s Cave

March 19, 2016

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Balancing Acts Business Choice Day Jobs Family KD Julicher Mixing it Up Professional Behavior Starting a Career The Writing Life Your Writing Environment No Comments

A Guest Post by K.D. Julicher

I work from home, forty hours a week. I write – almost always at home – another twenty or more hours. I do chores around the house, tend my child around the house… and for the last seven months, it’s been a pretty small house. Most of my waking hours are spent at my big work desk, ten feet away from my kitchen and five feet from the couch where I spend a lot of the rest of my time.

One of my biggest challenges is switching out of job mode and into another area of my life. I can shut off the computer and walk away, but getting my brain to realize that we are done now and I can go work on my creative projects is something else. It’s probably the biggest hamper on my productivity right now. I find myself dawdling, or surfing the internet, instead of getting to my writing. Or there will be some chore that wasn’t important enough to interrupt my day-job for, but now absolutely must be done. Or my child is being dreadfully neglected, or there’s some exotic ingredient I must have for dinner…

So I have coping mechanisms. First, I try to do mental prep-work in the half hour leading up to quitting time. I assess whether I’ve got dinner under control, and if not, make a plan. I organize my thoughts and figure out what I’m going to do when I get done with work. Maybe I think about the scene I’m writing, or the plot problem I’ll be addressing.

Then I get done with work. I stand up from my desk, I stretch, I get a new drink, and I relocate. I have an awesome work desk with a super comfortable chair and a huge monitor and a keyboard I love. But if I try to write there, I’ll get nothing done. I need a change of setting after 9 hours in the same spot.

I walk back to the spare room, where in one corner, away from the massive quantities of Lego and the storage tubs that wouldn’t fit anywhere else, I have a wooden desk. Or half of one, depending on how much of the Lego array has migrated. I’ve got a keyboard and a pair of headphones, and I bring in my laptop, plug it in, crack my soda, sit down on the less comfortable office chair, and bring up my project file.

Human brains are amazingly strange things. Everyone’s experienced that moment where you get up to look for something in another room, and then you can’t remember what it was. Turns out that the act of leaving one location and entering another serves as a cue for your brain to dump whatever it was remembering. That’s annoying when you are trying to remember what you were looking for in the kitchen, but really useful when you’re trying to shift from one mode to another. By training my brain that the spare room is for writing, I can leave the day job behind relatively easily.

We’re going to buy a house soon, and I know that my writing space will have to be planned from the start. It’s very effective for me to have a place I can go to and draft. By the same token, that isn’t my editing spot. I edit curled up on a comfortable chair, usually while my husband reads the draft on his ipad so we can go scene-by-scene, line-by-line through the story. Trying to edit in my writing spot would make me crazy. The subconscious cues I have to tell me to “just sit down and write” would make trying to take time and actually edit impossible.

The writing spot is going to be different for everyone. An ergonomic setup is best for your body, but that can mean a fancy chair, a squat ball, even a walking desk. Maybe you write on a netbook. Maybe you have a 32-inch monitor. Have you spent time thinking about your surroundings? Take some time now. Try something new. A different computer, or a typewriter or a new notebook. A different chair. Maybe your chair is too comfortable, and you get all relaxed and can’t produce! Perhaps you need headphones to shut out the outside world, or a nice set of speakers so you can play music and still hear the doorbell, or you have to work in absolute silence. Maybe there’s a door that you can close, or a window that needs to be open.

If your writing process is stalling out at any stage, take a look at your physical environment. Is the rest of your life intruding on you? Are you trying to write next to a pile of unfolded laundry? Are you editing in a tiny closet with no way to look outside? Are you trying to brainstorm on the treadmill, even though you know your best inspirations come when you’re in the shower or hiking?

I’m not saying your surroundings have to be perfect. If writers could only produce when seated at 19^th century desks in a New England garret, bookstore shelves would be empty. But for those of us who struggle to keep up our productivity around all the other demands of life can help ourselves by taking a few steps back and thinking about where we write instead of just what we write.

K.D. Julicher:

K. D. Julicher writes from the mountains of Nevada, where she and her husband collaborate on novels and raising a daughter. Her day job involves keeping trains from running into each other. She won the 2014 Baen Fantasy Award and will be published with this year’s winners of the Writers of the Future contest. Links to published works and infrequent news can be found at www.kdjulicher.com.

Have Counselor, Will Write

March 18, 2016

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Author's Perspective Balancing Acts Family Karen Pellett Life Philosophies Self-Awareness Self-Motivation The Writing Life Work-Life Balance Writing as An Emotional Outlet Your Writing Environment No Comments

A Guest Post by Karen Pellett

Just last month, I was lying in the same-day surgery wing of the hospital prepping for knee surgery when the pre-op nurse asked what kind of work I do. I smiled as I took the marker and dutifully wrote “Yes, please,” on my right knee, a protective measure against the surgeon working on the wrong leg, and answered, “I’m a mom and a writer.” Over the next hour we talked more about what I do for a living. Finally, she shook her head, and asked, “How do you do it?”

“I have a fantastic counselor,” I said.

She broke out laughing.

It is true though. Life is chaos. That is a given fact for pretty much everyone. It is a big mess of trials, failures, joy and heartache that all mesh into one big ball of fun.

Once upon a time, in a land known as Seattle, I quit my full time job as a business analyst to write. I’d wake up in the morning, kiss my husband send him off to work, and then sit down at my computer and……twiddle my thumbs. I had all the time to write, and struggled to write a single word. It honestly took my friend giving me a random writing prompt before I wrote my first short story Curse of the Light Switches. Believe me, it was totally and completely pathetic. But it was what I needed to kick my imagination gears into motion. Over the next two years, I wrote and edited seven drafts of my first ever epic fantasy novel. Thinking the project finished and a work of art, I started submitting to agents. The mail box remained empty for months. The few responses I did receive were form letters. The greatest rejection stated that while I was a talented storyteller, I was not a fit for their publishing firm.

Then, after seven years of fertility issues, we invented the child. Not just any child, but a little girl who rolled over in the hospital three days after birth and has never stopped moving. She was our little miracle, but the moment she came into existence my motivation and ability to write drastically dropped faster than an Olympic skier racing down a bunny hill. Two months after our daughter was born we moved from Seattle to Utah so that she could grow up near her half-brothers. A short twenty months later I had a son after four and a half months of bed rest. When he was ten months old, I informed the doctor that I wanted to have one more child, but that they had to be farther apart. Either I was a totally suck-tastic mother or my children were literally more than I could handle. The doctor informed me in return….Guess what? You are already pregnant.

Three kids in three and a half years. Try writing anything through that and I’ll personally bake you a cake.

I attempted to salvage my feeble writing career by attending a myriad of local writing conferences and by joining two different critique groups. Their feedback was invaluable. But as I read their stories and compared them to mine, I wanted to cry. However, I’m the type of person who is just too stubborn to give up. I hung in there, submitted crap, and took the feedback as my saving grace and ran with it.

Our chaotic life then spiraled out of control. I ruptured a disc in my back that required major surgery. What writing I did attempt felt like crap, and I felt like the grand prize winner of the Worst Mother of the Year award. On top of that, my husband had a bad reaction to medication, sending him into six months of suicidal tendencies.

That is when I met Bonnie (a.k.a. the most incredible counselor in the universe). She was exactly what I needed in a counselor—long almost black hair, bangles up the arms, at least four necklaces, ripped leather pants, camouflage shirt, combat boots, and a bike jacket. Bonnie became my counseling version of the fairy godmother. She helped me learn what I could control, what I couldn’t, and how to see the difference.

Then in 2014 my littlest son hit me in the head with a car seat, giving me a concussion and one of the greatest miracles of my life. Because of my concussion the doctors did several MRIs and identified “three white matter brain lesions in non-MS typical locations.” This simply means… I’m a writer in transition to superhero glory.

I wish.

At the same time all three of my kids were diagnosed with special needs—running from ADHD, Sensory Processing Disorder, Moderate-functioning Autism, aggressive tendencies, and developmental delays. My kids are pretty much creative geniuses that learn uniquely and see the world in remarkable ways while not grasping social expectations. The truth behind the difficult paths I traveled hit me when I made Bonnie cry. (There’s no crying in therapy! Oh wait….yes, there is. Just not usually from your counselor.)

So how do I balance life and writing in this chaos? I don’t. Thanks to those tiny aliens in my noggin’, the three precious miracle children in my life, a very supportive husband, and my genius counselor, I’ve had to learn to let go. Instead I wing it. Personally, I can’t write at night. I cherish my sleep way too much. And I already get up at oh-dark-thirty thanks to my autistic son who doesn’t require anywhere near a decent amount of sleep. So instead, for four days a week in the precious two hours that all three kids are in special needs classes, I attempt to write. Just like in college, I still tend to work best under pressure, so I set deadlines and goals to keep me motivated (and yes, chocolate and caffeine are often involved). Then there’s my amazing husband who will stay home with the kids and send me off to the library to work when I require a much needed sanity break. (Back off ladies, he’s mine!)

Through it all I’ve written two novels, unpublished to date, but they will be published someday. I’ve had a piece published in a magazine about what it is like being a stepmom. Another piece won first place in an online writing contest and was included in an anthology on being a mommy writer. My third essay came out last year on the trials my husband and I experienced going through fertility issues. And my first ever short story was published this last Christmas to help raise money for Primary Children’s Hospital.

Yes, my life is still a ball of intense chaos, but I love it. It is not easy. But the fight is worth it. And thanks to a brilliant counselor, I’ve had to learn that if I want to survive, if I want to thrive, I must do something that takes care of me—and that something is writing. I’m worth it.

Karen Pellett:

Karen Pellett is a crazy woman with a computer, and she’s not afraid to use it. Most of her time is spent between raising three overly brilliant and stinkin’ cute children, playing video games with her stepsons, and the rare peaceful moment with her husband. When opportunity provides she escapes to the alternate dimension to write fantasy & magical realism novels, the occasional short story, and essays on raising special needs children. Karen lives, plots & writes in American Fork, Utah.

The Truth of Work/Life Balance through Life’s Storms

March 16, 2016

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Choice Dealing With Personal Calamities Family Giving Yourself a Break Kate Corcino Making Progress as a Writer Self-Awareness Starting a Career The Writing Life Work-Life Balance No Comments

A Guest Post by Kate Corcino

Point A: We’ve all heard them—those pithy sayings meant to get us through the rough patches. “When it rains, it pours” and the like.

Point B: As writers, we’ve all heard the impossible counterpoints, too. “Write every day. EVERY. DAY.”

What happens when Point A wipes out Point B? I’m not talking about feeling swamped. I’m talking about a tidal wave of life events that crashes over you and those you love with a destructive force that leaves you sobbing as you pick over the detritus. Whether it is one huge event, or a series of smaller events that just keep coming, you are utterly overwhelmed.

How do you manage work/life balance when that happens?

You don’t.

And that’s okay.

But how can I be a writer if I’m not writing?

Because you’re learning.

Neither life nor writing happen in a vacuum. The things that you are learning when you’re in coping mode enrich both your person and your writing. I have so many writing friends forcing themselves to work through upheaval simply because they think that’s what writers do. They push themselves into exhaustion and beyond. They agonize over every moment spent away from their manuscript.

The bear of it is, sometimes you can’t help it.

In 2005, at seven months pregnant, I tripped while unloading groceries (they don’t call me “Grace” for nothin’). The impact caused a placental abruption. Our son was born at 27 weeks. The next three months were a blur of hospital corridors, medical forms, two-steps-forward-three-steps-back terror, and gratitude. Later, when I had time to reflect and not simply ride the daily waves, I recognized all of the lessons learned during that time that inform my writing and my life as a writer. Foremost among them was perspective. No matter how terrifying my tiny son’s odyssey was, the spectre of loss that left me breathless with fear was very real to other parents in the NICU. My son survived, then thrived. He came home. Other precious lives were lived in their entirety in that unit.

In 2008, when I was barely five months pregnant, my water broke early. The team at the hospital informed me that they had no choice but to deliver my still “unviable” daughter. We refused. They quoted a 90% fetal mortality rate in ruptures before 22 weeks, but we were steadfast. We were dismissed, sent home with antibiotics to keep infection at bay, instructions for total bed rest, and informed that I should drink at least 120 ounces of water per day. IF we made it to 24 weeks, they’d hospitalize us then, when there was a chance of saving her. When we went back three weeks later for the ultrasound, an eternity of tears and fears having passed in those weeks, my membranes had resealed. Our daughter wasn’t just viable, she was perfect. Lessons learned? Belief in myself, in my instincts, in my right to say no to experts determined to tell me they know better.

In 2011, my husband suffered a heart attack in the middle of the night. A day and half later, he underwent a quintuple bypass. Four and half days post-surgery, as I sat by his bedside, I received a series of calls that makes my heart ache to this day—our 15-year-old son had been in a horse riding accident. He was taken to a different hospital because he required the highest level of trauma care. Two days and a full craniotomy later, I stood by my son’s bedside at midnight as he came out of his anesthesia, disoriented, terrified, and in pain. He begged me with slurring words to hold his hand, to sing him his baby song, to stay with him. I stood leaning into the metal bars of his bed in the PICU until dawn, holding his hand and singing “You Are My Sunshine” until my voice failed and all I could do was hum. At dawn, he finally fell asleep. My day, to be spent managing my loves in two hospitals and at home, was just beginning.

Lesson learned? I am mighty. There is nothing that cannot be handled, so long as you keep your focus on the moment you are in right then. Do not look up. Do not allow yourself to be overtaken by what-ifs and possibilities. All that matters is one moment. If you can do that, you can do anything.

2015 was meant to be a great year. I had that work/life thing on cruise control. My first book, Spark Rising, and its related collection of stories had been released at the end of 2014 and the response to the novel exceeded my expectations by miles and miles. It won awards while I was deep in writing its follow-up. At the same time, I balanced managing the household, homeschooling my two youngest children, cheering on my oldest (who’d recently flown the nest to begin his adult life across the country), and nurturing a handful of animals. But I didn’t merely balance. I didn’t manage. I excelled.

And then our household crashed, again. My chronic health condition (also nicely managed) decided it was done cooperating. I was hospitalized for a week that summer. And then again. And then again. Even as teams of doctors surrounded my bedside and told us gravely that we were done managing and I risked death if they didn’t intervene surgically, I still managed.

I finished two sets of revisions on the manuscript and scheduled both edits and my surgery for early Fall. I co-wrote a short story. I made arrangements for the kids, the animals, the household. And then I was hospitalized again, and the surgeon moved up my surgery. It couldn’t wait.

Unfortunately, it would have to.

A week before I was supposed to return for elective resectioning of my innards, an inattentive driver swerved in front my husband on his way to work. His motorcycle went down, and it took all my careful management skills with it. We began an odyssey that would span gross malpractice, finding another doctor, another hospital, and two surgeries to repair him. The morning of my birthday, I kissed my husband and went to wait in a waiting room while they replaced his shoulder. Five weeks later, he leaned over to kiss me and wait while they wheeled me in for my own surgery.

During our recoveries, I did not write. I did not think of my once-looming deadline, now postponed. I did not work in spare, stolen moments. I allowed myself to heal, for him, for our children, for me.

Because sometimes work/life balance means putting everything you have on one end of the scale because that is the side that matters most.

The miracle of it is that when you turn back to the scale, somehow both sides are still hovering, somehow still balancing. How can that be?

That’s the most important lesson I’ve learned. As writers, we are so much more than butt in chair, fingers on keyboard output. We watch, we synthesize, we learn, and we dream, even through the nightmare times. And every experience, every moment away from our manuscripts and our internal worlds, returns again to us two-fold in wisdom, and depth of character, and fullness of experience that allows our writing to grow.

Work/life balance? I’m here to tell you, my friend, that if you’re alive, you’re balanced. When the storms stop thundering and the water recedes, when you have time to rebuild and breathe again, the words will be there. And they will be so much richer because of where you’ve been.

Kate-Corcino:

Kate Corcino is a reformed shy girl who found her voice (and uses it…a lot). She believes in magic, coffee, Starburst candies, genre fiction, and descriptive profanity. A former legal videographer, teacher, and law student, she believes in chasing dreams and the transformative power of screwing up and second chances. She is currently preparing for the imminent release of Spark Awakening, the second book in the Progenitor Saga, a futuristic fantasy series with romance, science, magic, and plenty of action.

She lives in her beloved desert in the southwestern United States with her husband, several children, three dogs, and two cats.

Find Kate at…
Website/Blog: http://www.KateCorcino.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorKateCorcino
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KateCorcino
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8381085.Kate_Corcino