Category Archives: Work-Life Balance

Cracking the Whip: Hard Enough, But Not Too Hard

Balancing Acts Guest Posts Living Deliberately Motivation The Writing Life Work-Life Balance 1 Comment

A Guest Post by Travis Heermann

Discipline.

A professional writing career lives and dies by discipline—or the lack thereof.

Maybe you have talent, but talent is only the beginning.

There’s honing one’s craft (got to practice and study until professional-level prose is automatic). There’s learning how to deal with rejection (growing a callus on one’s heart). There’s learning how to market one’s work effectively (most writers revile, loathe, and despise self-promotion). There’s connecting with a community of other writers, finding your tribe (who will sustain you through the long, dark nights of the soul).

And then there’s the simple fact that one has to insert one’s backside (Tab A) into the chair (Slot B), apply one’s hands to scribing tools (Assembly C), and wiggle them around until beauty and pathos are released into existence.

It all sounds so simple. But if it were, the world would harbor more professional writers.

It’s easy to pour something onto the page when the flush of inspiration is hot and new, when the Muse is sitting in one’s lap with a martini in one hand, stroking your hair with the other, and whispering thrills into your ear. Call it what you will—The Muse, inspiration, your subconscious, whatever—I’m talking about those moments when you realize two hours have passed and there are many more words on the page now than there were before, artful words poured forth from the chalice of your amazing subconscious.

However, the Muse is a fickle tart and simply doesn’t show up every day.

But you’re the professional. You have to show up to work even when the Muse doesn’t. You have to slog it out, even when the Muse is out there draping her(him)self over the lap of some other writer. The bottom line is this: the Muse most often visits writers who are working.

It is working that’s the hard part. Carving out a writing schedule when other demands on your time swarm like rabid termites out of the woodwork, and then guarding that time like a snarling, viciously aroused mama tiger, is where the discipline to finish books comes from.

One of the best ways to develop writing discipline is to set daily goals.

  • A paragraph.
  • A page.
  • A thousand words.
  • A chapter.

These are all good starts. A thousand words a day is a great round number, because it means in 60-90 days you will have a completed novel draft. If you write 250 words a day, a single page, you’ll have a novel draft in a year.

Regularly meeting a simple, achievable goal helps develop good, steady production habits. After a while, you may find that it becomes easier and easier to meet your production goals. In that case, try ramping up a little. Challenge yourself. Instead of a thousand words a day, try 1,500.

You will find, once you establish reasonably regular butt-in-chair discipline, that the Muse finds you increasingly sexy and comes over for trysts more frequently.

Nevertheless, there are limits. You should push those limits, yes, but you must make sure your goals are achievable. If there is no way you can write 3,000 words in a day, making that your goal, only to fail every single day unless you skip showering and sleep and feeding the kids, is a fabulous way to dive headfirst into the crazy pool. It will destroy your confidence like those dreams where you’re walking around naked at work. The Muse likes you best if you’re properly groomed and smelling nice.

For the last two years, I have successfully completed NaNoWriMo. This year was a real struggle, because I lost more than a week of writing time to travel and household emergencies. But I succeeded—51,000 words in about three weeks. It was a struggle. I had to make sacrifices. Friends and family saw me less often, because I had a goal. And I made it. That success alone was a tremendous confidence boost.

Fortunately I have learned to surround myself with people who understand and support my goals. They miss me, but they’ll get over it when the book is done.

In the coming months, I have a number of goals.

  • Finish the third volume of my Ronin Trilogy, Spirit of the Ronin.
  • Write seven short stories for various anthologies.
  • Launch, promote, and oversee the Spirit of the Ronin Kickstarter campaign.

Creating and running a Kickstarter campaign relates squarely to goal setting, but that’s a topic for another time, except to say I would really appreciate your support. The campaign will launch in mid-January, 2015. Please follow this link to view the Kickstarter campaign, and consider supporting this project.

Then go put your butt in the chair and invite the Muse over for a booty call.

Goals vs. Objectives – Who is Really In Control?

Balancing Acts Goals Living Deliberately Motivation Nathan Barra Reflection Self-Awareness The Writing Life Work-Life Balance No Comments

“No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” ~Helmuth von Moltke

I am highly motivated by progress and will often get frustrated when I feel like I am spinning my wheels in a task. This probably explains my penchant for lists. I know that I’m not the only one who gets a sense of satisfaction by drawing a bold stroke through a particularly challenging line item. However, I have found that it is all too easy to focus on the list itself and forget that it exists to serve my objectives. Recently, I’ve put a lot of thought and effort into living a purposeful life, driving towards and realizing my objectives to the best of my abilities. Through trial and error, I have found that the key to effective progress is self-aware honesty, maintaining a life balance, and having the courage to change course when results do not line up with what was intended when I set my goals.

The first step to living deliberately is to determine what you truly want out of life. There are countless voices in the world, some benevolent and others selfish, that seek to guide our desires. Many people never look past what society, advertising agencies and our loved ones tell us we want. If they are happy that way, all the better for them. It takes work to quiet all the voices and achieve the self-awareness necessary to decide what you really want free from the influence of others.

Once your objectives are set, it takes practice to be able to manage all the distractions and necessities that the world demands of us. Though there are a thousand obligations competing for our time and attention, many things that we view as “essential” can actually be minimized or eliminated entirely. It is a matter of understanding one’s priorities. Once you achieve the self-awareness to determine your life’s objectives, sorting the essential from the non-essential becomes much easier.

Finally, I have found it necessary to be proactive in evaluating and adjusting my goals. Though it is easy to simply stay the course until things start to fall apart, it is a much less effective strategy than taking time periodically to honestly evaluate the results of my efforts. If a course of action isn’t working, isn’t supporting my objectives, there is nothing holding me to them. Try to make a change and see what effects come. I look at it like sailing by the stars. Having a heading does no good if you don’t look up every so often.

I started out my blogging year with the Fictorians by describing the system we use to set annual goals at work. Though I stand by the idea that goals should be SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time bound), I have come to realize that they need to be adaptable as well. Action is not progress unless my objectives are being achieved. Therefore, goals should be designed and maintained to support objectives, not the other way around.

Jackson Pollock’s Fruit Salad

Goals Kim May Work-Life Balance No Comments

Normally at the beginning of the year I have a pretty good idea of what my career goals will be. This year my goal was to survive the Anthology Workshop at the end of February, hopefully selling a story in the process. The rest of the year I’d figure out later. I know that sounds like I’m throwing fruit on a canvas and hoping that the outcome is something other than a sticky mess. But when you’re juggling the pears of a day job, the oranges of an intense writing workshop, and the sour apples of a dying pet, hail Mary throws are about all you can do.

So, did I make a masterpiece? Perhaps. Out of the five stories I wrote for the workshop, three sold. Nothing to sniff at for sure but instead of finishing my second novel I spent the next six months hurling more and more fruit. Starfruit and persimmon, blueberries and cherries, all were thrown at the canvas. I didn’t need more fruit but it was hard to say no when the opportunities arose. I mean, how often does one get offered the persimmon of an invite only anthology? Even if it doesn’t hit the canvas it would be wrong to pass up the chance to make the throw.

And miss I did. But a few of those persimmons are still in the air so maybe one will land. I hope all of them will hit but the longer they’re in transit, the more I wonder. This isn’t a slow-motion montage and the canvas hasn’t been pushed back fifty feet so it should have connected by now. Right?

Given that I accomplished my initial goal, I can definitely count this year a success — though I certainly don’t have any desire to repeat the clean up. I haven’t decided if I’ll stay the course in the new year (you know, to improve my aim) or to set a new goal. Perhaps adding a laser sight to the act. Who knows. Whatever I decide, at least I know I can make one hell of a fruit salad.

And Then Life Happened

Goals Leigh Galbreath Motivation The Writing Life Work-Life Balance 1 Comment

So, I made, what I thought, was a fairly easy goal in January. Focus on improving on my weaknesses as a writer. It’s not like there aren’t a dozen different ways I could satisfy this goal: read a craft book, take a class, revise an existing work and give it to a friend for them to say, “Yeah, this is better.” I mean, honestly, this one even seems ripe for rationalizing how an action only tangentially related could be applied so I could say, “Yes. I made my goal.”

But I must be honest.

Books read: 0

Classes taken: Nada.

Friends who have read a revision to make me feel better: Niet.

My only defense in this, my great failure at such an easy task? You know that saying about how life happens when you’re making other plans?

This year has been a bad one helath-wise for me. I’ve suddenly become plagued with half a dozen, seemingly unrelated problems, the big one being that I’ve developed asthma due to allergies, which I’ve been plagued with most my life. Apparently, my allergies have shifted so that I’m now allergic to mold and cats. I own two cats and live in Houston (where it’s humid most the year and the mold count skyrockets every time it rains…and it rains a lot). Add to that a few other issues I won’t bore you with, and the result is that I don’t feel well most the time. And just as I thought one issue was figured out, something else went wrong.

Seriously, I’m too young for my body to be falling apart all of a sudden.

Suffice it to say, it’s hard to focus on writing when it feels like an elephant is sitting on my chest. Taking classes isn’t the easiest thing to do when all the money’s going to doctor’s visits and medicine.

We writers and our health – what’s up with that?

I’ve heard people talk about how we have to be careful with our health, because writing is a pretty sedentary line of work. It’s easy to lose track and end up gaining weight and not getting enough exercise, thus bringing on the host of health problems that come with it. Plus there are the writer-specific issues, like repetitive motion injuries and such.

What I don’t hear often, though is how it can stunt creativity, and in the end, sap the desire to be creative. Let’s face it, pain is exhausting, and creativity needs energy behind it. Psychologically, feeling bad all the time makes it very hard to feel good about much of anything—even something I love like writing.

But, things are looking up, as that medical issues get sorted, and I have kept writing, albeit slowly, sometimes painfully. At this point, anything is better than nothing, and I’m addicted to the written word, so I’m not going to be able to stop writing, even if it’s makes it harder to stay healthy, for whatever reason.

It’s the nice thing about writing—it can happily wait out those curve-balls life throws at us. Sure, I still didn’t meet my goals for the year, but I think I have a pretty good excuse. The thing that makes me feel not so bad though is that it’s not like I’ve set a hard deadline. Pretty much, the only real deadline is when I finally kick the bucket. There’s nothing that says I can’t just start again now, so it’s not a lost cause and I’m not a total failure. Yet.