Magical Words

Recently, on another newsgroup, a group of us were having a discussion about making the transition from writing part-time to making a go of it as a full-time novelist.  I’ve been fortunate throughout my career.  Thanks to a supportive spouse who happens to have a secure, well-paying job with benefits, I’ve been a full-time writer from the start.  For a while, I wasn’t making much — actually I was barely making anything at all.  But we stuck with it, and it’s worked out. 

Along the way, I’ve found that there are certain things I need to do during the course of a typical writing day to keep myself healthy and productive and, oh yeah, sane.  And so I present to you my “Top Ten Things I Do To Make The Full-Time Writing Gig Work”: 

1.  Exercise.  I begin with this one because it’s how I start my day.  Pretty much every weekday morning I drop one or both of my kids off at their schools (depending on my wife’s schedule) and go to the gym for an hour.  Some people, I know, can’t exercise first thing in the morning.  That’s fine.  But I’m convinced that this is the most important thing I do for myself everyday.  It makes it far easier for me to spend the next seven hours basically glued to my desk chair. 

2.  Healthy Eating.  I realize that this is starting to sound like a public service announcement from the American Heart Association, but I believe the greatest danger I face working in my home is the lure of the kitchen and pantry.  I’m already prone to procrastination (see number 6) and one of the easiest ways to kill time is to wander down to the pantry and, as Pooh might say, fine a little smackerel of something.  Problem is, if I let myself do this, I’ll soon look like Pooh.  I have a smoothie for breakfast after my workout, I eat a reasonable lunch, and I don’t snack in between meals.  Save for the following exception…. 

3.  Post-Lunch Sugar Fix.  Yeah, I do allow myself a sweet just after lunch to get myself through those low-energy early afternoon hours.  I adore chocolate, but I’ve taken to not eating it after lunch because of the whole “don’t want to look like Pooh” thing.  I’m a sucker for twizzlers and gummy fruit slices.  So that’s what I have.  Low-fat, high sugar.  It’s my little reward for getting through the morning without a snack. 

4.  The 30 Minute Cat Nap.  Okay, this is the one that gives me some guilt.  My wife works far harder than I do and she doesn’t get a nap during the day.  But there’s this comfortable futon couch right there in my office, and, well, what can I say?  Seriously, naps are shown to be great for your health, and they reenergize me even more than that sugar fix I rationalized in the last paragraph. 

5.  Realistic Daily Goals.  I’m prone to guilt.  Maybe it’s being Jewish; maybe it’s being married to a lapsed Catholic.  Lots of guilt in our house.  And so, if I didn’t set realistic goals for myself, I’d feel guilty every day for all that I didn’t get done.  So when I’m working on a book, I shoot for 5-7 manuscript pages each day.  That’s a bit over 100 pages a month, which gives me a book in half a year or so.  I can live with that.  And more important, I can do it comfortably in a given day. 

6.  Carrots and Sticks.  As I mentioned before, I’m a procrastinator.  I can always find stuff to do that has nothing to do with writing, particularly with a computer right in front of me.  So during the course of a day I’ll give myself smaller goals and reward myself for meeting them.  “I’ll write two pages and then I’ll play a game of solitaire.”  Or, “One more page and then I can check my email again.”  Stuff like that.  It works, and it breaks up the day a bit. 

7.  Occasional Days Off.  Sometimes, after completing a chapter or reaching some kind of milestone in a book (200 pages, or the halfway point, or the completion of a particularly difficult section) I’ll reward myself with a day off.  I’ll go birding, or take out my camera and go shoot for the day, or I’ll just do nothing at all.  It’s a variation of the Carrot/Stick thing, and again, it works for me. 

8.  Treating It Like a Job.  This one is very important.  Because I work at home, my work is always right there, in my face, even on days when I don’t want it to be.  So I work a normal day — not quite nine to five, but close enough.  And unless I’m really up against a deadline, I take weekends off.  That’s family time, my time.  There’s no physical separation from the job, so I have to create one in my head. 

9.  Treating Home Like an Office.  The flip side of that last point.  It’s very easy when working at home to get caught up in household stuff.  Suddenly that leaking faucet or squeaky door needs my attention immediately.  So for those hours when I’m working, my home becomes an office.  I try to ignore that kind of stuff knowing that the maintenance guy (i.e. me) will take care of it over the weekend… 

10.  Understanding How Incredibly Lucky I Am.  I have a job that I absolutely love.  I’m my own boss.  I get to work at home.  The time I might spend commuting to another job, is instead time I get to spend with my kids and my wife.  Even on its worst days, my job is better than anything else I could imagine doing.  And sometimes in the middle of one of those rough days, I find it helpful to remind myself of this.

Tags: David B. Coe by DavidBCoe
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Okay — I’m still getting used to the site here.

Somehow, part one of the post got listed as being posted on the 7th…

So that is why is makes no sense…

Faith (a compudunce)

Tags: Faith Hunter by faithhunter
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I posted on my other blogs about the ongoing saga of the RV, so I won’t go into that part here. Instead, I’d like to talk a bit about book signings, speaking engagements, and meeting with fans. And what all that does to and for a writer when they first start out.

I was terminally shy when I first started writing. Not the kind of shy that makes people wall flowers, but the kind of shy that makes people aggressive. I know that doesn’t make sense on the surface, but bare with me. I knew I couldn’t hide behind my hair and still do the public part of the writer’s job, meeting booksellers, getting the word out about a book, all that kind of stuff.

So I flipped a mental switch and let fear come out as a sort of *in your face* friendliness. A car salesman on steroids. Wearing lots of jewelry. And a hat. Really.  I wore hats a lot. Hats are sort of like a costume, something you can hide behind and still attract attention. And the clothes and the firm handshake worked better than the total silence of fear. But the stress of that fake persona closed in on me and I couldn’t write for days after an event. The fear was still there.

Part of that was because I realized I still had nothing to say to the people I met.  So I scripted all sorts of possibilities. They say this, so I say that, and they do this, so I do that. I created a public personality for the character who was myself. It was like scripting an interactive scene for a book. And it worked.

The shyness, while still part of me, is rearranged inside me into an interactive scene — the scene I created to allowed me to put my fear of people aside and be a real person, friendly, kind, and all the things that lived inside me but were shoved deep inside by fear.

I … um … I wrote my way out of shyness.

Which brings me to the RV.  (Yeah, a writer’s mind puts all sorts of weird things together.) Writers travel a *lot*. We may be on the road for three months at a time with only short visits back home. Hubby and I used to have a station wagon for that, so we could bring our dogs along, and we stayed at a lot of Red Roof Inns because they allowed dogs. But it was stressful staying in hotels, and I always left stuff behind and the dogs got older and they didn’t like the travel so much because they had to stay in their travel crates all day…. Travel was difficult. My health suffered, my writer’s muse suffered.

So, like, seven years ago we bought our first RV. The RV became the place where we lived on the road. All our stuff was there and the dogs loved it and it was perfect. I never had to worry about losing stuff, because nothing ever got moved out.  And hey, I’m a woman.  A traveling closet was perfect.  My stress levels went way way way down.

With the stress down, the persona I had created became the real me… How weird is that? I wrote and rode my way into good mental health. Well, … better mental health. And less stress meant better physical health. Because of writing and because of the RV, I am healthier. And happier.

The problem? The new RV (yeah, we bought a new, used, one, bigger, better, with a slide) has been in the shop since the day we bought it. Stress levels are up…  I’m addicted to the RV!

So, back to my original premise — new writers may live in fear.  And we have to find ways to deal with that fear. 

Faith

Tags: Faith Hunter by faithhunter
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Wednesday afternoon, I went over to visit my friend Kim Harrison for a little advice. She’s a bestselling writer of urban fantasy and wise in the ways of self-promotion, and I knew she’d be able to help me out. My husband and I had been talking about giveaways for my upcoming book signings. He wanted to order a somewhat expensive item, printed with my promotional information, to give away. But the cost was so high that I started digging my heels in - it’s not that I don’t love everyone who’ll come and buy a book, but if it’s between presents for y’all and a mortgage payment, I guess you know who wins.

I trooped over to Kim’s house for tea and advice. She very graciously pulled out all her old and new promotional items for me to see, and we talked about cost benefits and do-it-yourself options. She shared her thoughts on what worked and what didn’t, and why. Slowly and surely I started getting a better handle on what to do. I left there with a peaceful mind and a plan.

When I first began writing, it never occurred to me that I’d need to do much more than write the book and maybe have a few signings. It’s a book, and it sells itself, right? Alas, no. There are an awful lot of books on the shelves, and if I want mine to stand out, I have to help it along. I hit the jackpot with my cover art (Shelly Wan is a goddess!) so that was a plus. And I happen to be a rather gregarious sort, so talking to people won’t be a problem at all. (Getting me to hush is going to be tougher.) But an extra little sursey (that’s Southern for “surprise”) never hurts. The trick is to avoid bankrupting yourself to do it.

What’s that? What did I decide to give away? Aw, you’ll just have to come to a signing and find out!

Tags: Misty Massey by Misty Massey
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Post One… 

My alter-ego had a signing for her newest book, Sleep Softly.  The signing was great, BTW, but that is not why I am posting.

I came away with one of C.E.’s (Catie’s) and one of David’s (which was on the top shelf, face out even before I got there b. I also pre ordered the next one of Catie’s, told all the booksellers how wonderful she is, made her several new fans, and….*drumroll*… I saw Misty’s book.

There is nothing quite like seeing a writer with her first book in hand, getting to hold that first book, and knowing it is wonderful.  What total fun!

Faith

Tags: Faith Hunter by faithhunter
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I meant to post hours ago, though I hadn’t quite decided what to write about for today.  It’s funny really (at least to me).  Part of what we talk about as writers, part of what Catie’s post from yesterday (and my reply) was getting at, is the fact that when writing is a job you write on demand all the time.  None of this waiting for inspiration stuff.  I sit down at my computer in the morning, knowing that I’ll be working on Chapter Whatever, taking characters x and y from this place to that place.  You get my meaning.  I write what I have to write everyday.

But when it comes to writing blog entries, I sometimes find that my mind just goes blank.  I don’t know what to write.  My mind was filled with Super Tuesday stuff this morning, but I didn’t want to bring in more political stuff to this site.  And I had nothing else on my mind.

So I got to work, and promised myself that I’d blog later.  I’ve been working on this story for a couple of weeks now.  I’ve known generally what was going to happen, and I’ve been excited about where I thought the story was going.  But I’m not used to writing short fiction, and I was having trouble getting past the middle section of the piece.  Some stories are like that, I guess, just like some books are like that.  Sometimes the words just flow, and other times it’s a real slog, and it’s not always clear to me what it is that’s slowing me down.

Anyway, today, at last, I broke through.  I hadn’t written more than a page or two in any of the last nine days working on this thing.  Today I wrote eight pages — two thousand words.  As I said, I don’t know what was holding me back before, and I don’t know what changed today, but suddenly I was just writing.  And maybe that’s the secret.  At some point I stopped thinking about the story; I stopped trying to make something happen.  Instead, I listened.  I listened to myself and I listened to my characters.  Rather than trying to impose my will on the story, I gave in to it and let it guide me toward what I think will be a pretty good ending.  And as soon as I did that — as soon as I stopped pushing and just let it flow — everything became easier.

Yes, to be successful in this profession, you have to apply butt to chair and write.  You can’t wait for the Muse.  But neither can you push your creativity in specific directions, at least not all the time.  This is a job.  It’s also art, a creative process. There’s a balance that each of us has to find.  I know authors who swear that you really can control every part of the writing process, who control their characters and plot and know exactly where their stories and books are going from start to finish.  I know others who just write — no outline, nothing more than a vague sense of where the project should go.  I’m somewhere in between.  I make myself write each day, but when I try to grip a story too hard it fights me.  For me at least, writing is both an act of discipline and an exercise in relinquishing control.

Anyway, it worked today.  I wrote and wrote, and completely lost track of the time.  And that’s why my post is late.

Tags: David B. Coe by DavidBCoe
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One of the things about doing this writing thing as a job (aside from the fact that nobody tells you ahead of time that your ability and time to *read* will decrease to a depressing degree) is that there are deadlines. It’s no longer just going along for the fun of it, seeing where the story takes you. You’re expected to turn books in on time.

The book I’m working on right now was due Friday. Yes, sadly, the Friday five days ago. Matters out of my control caused the last book, and now this one, to be late, and I *hate* that. Hate it with a fiery passion.

So February is Writing Blitz Month for me, while I try to catch up.

Typically my daily word goal is 1100 words, which makes a book in about 4 months. That works out pretty well, generally. But right now my minimum goal is 1756 (a number which will look somewhat familiar to the NNWMers out there), which would put me at the anticipated length of this book by the end of March. That would…do. It’s not ideal, though, so I’m trying to do better.

This week it’s about nose to the grindstone. I’m aiming for 5K a day, Monday through Friday, with Saturday off. Goal for the week, including Sunday: 27,000 words.

Next week I’ve got a lot going on: a trip to Dublin for professional stuff, and holiday time with my husband. So I’m not doing the Blitz next week, and will settle for 2000 words a day, again with Saturdays off (I’ve learned that I really do need one day a week off). Week after that, The Blitz is on again.

Aiming for 80K this month, all told. I haven’t written that much in a month in a long time, but needs must, and I hope I can do it. I’ll settle for breaking 100K on the book (which I anticipate coming in around 140K), but if I can pull off 80,000 words in February I’ll be very pleased.

And that’s a fair bit of what this job really is about. You don’t wait for the muse. You don’t want for inspiration. You go sit down and you write, and the truth is that by the time you’re done with edits and revisions and polishing, nobody’ll be able to tell which parts were inspired and which parts were like pulling teeth.

Better get back to it.

*I don’t believe NNWM is for weenies. That was a joke.

Tags: C E Murphy by cemurphy
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Right.  Time.  We’ve been talking about it a lot on magicalwords.net.  And, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, likely because I have so little time in each day. Not enough time to meditate, rest, clean house, make jewelry, write (especially write).  The deadlines imposed by life and editors, family and friends – not one of which I would change, mind you – make me nuts.  Sometimes a bit depressed.  Which reminds me that I need time to exercise – to keep the depression demons at bay.  I just need more time.   There are lots of ways to get more time.  I know.  I’ve been considering most of them.  I could give up sleep.  Write fewer books.  (Not gonna happen.)  Spend less time with family and friends.  (But I spend too little time with them as it is.)  Eat less.  Okay – that’s a good one.  It stays on the list.  Give up my day job….ahhh.  Yes.  Now why do I have a day job?  Oh.  Right.  Health insurance. I promised myself not to talk politics here, on the list.  Yet, I have to say this one thing. If the US had affordable health insurance for its citizens, we self-employed types would have more time and could get more done.  We would be more productive, less stressed, and the country would see huge increase in productivity.   More productive people pay more in taxes because they make money, making the country better off financially. I could go on, naming the ways health insurance would make us all better off, and countering any disagreements that might get posted here, but I’ll just wait until after the election.  Then, maybe, I’ll have more … time.

Faith

Tags: Faith Hunter by faithhunter
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I usually try to treat writing like I would any other job.  I work at home, and so it would be very easy for my writing to take over my life, to consume the time that I need to leave aside for my family, my friends, myself.  So I work weekdays, morning to late afternoon, but I rarely work on weekends or at night.  The luxury of writing full-time.

But I have this short story I’m struggling with.  I wanted to finish it by end of business on Friday; I didn’t.  I can already feel the pull of it, and I expect I’ll wind up working on it over the weekend.

I know that many other writers don’t have the luxury of writing full-time.  But I also know that even when we struggle to find the hours to write, we also have to set limits on our writing time, because as a profession it can be all-consuming.  So how do others who write deal with time issues?

Tags: David B. Coe by DavidBCoe
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