Showing posts with label scheduling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scheduling. Show all posts

Thursday, April 19, 2012

5 Steps to Beginning New Chapters



A life is a personal book of experience. Just as a larch cone waits to drop to earth to begin a new life cycle by birthing a new tree, new life chapters begin all the time. You’re born, cut your first tooth, leave home for nursery school, attend first grade, start middle school, move on to high school, then college or a job. You see what I mean? All of these mentioned qualify as new chapters in your life.

The birthing process in any activity is both a beginning and an end. Recently this has been one of the most critical things for me to recognize and take into account. I’m always beginning things, while putting others on the back burner until later. Engaging in this behavior leads me into frustration, near-panic states, and little efficiency in time spent working.

Since taking on the challenges presented to me during the past few months, I’ve developed my own method for dealing with my writer’s life chapter beginnings. The steps I use are done every day. They take little time to complete, but save much time later. That’s one thing above all that I’ve learned from taking Robert Lee Brewer’s Author Platform Challenge this month.

Here’s how you prepare for each day’s slim chapter in your writing life.

1.    Take inventory of those daily goals that went unfinished from yesterday and get them out of the way. Otherwise, they’d hang around your neck, dragging you down. If a previous daily goal cannot be finished due to the length of time necessary, devote one hour of active work on it to reduce its size for the next day. This step needn’t take more than an hour and a half.

2.    Determine this day’s goals now that yesterday’s have been attended to. Begin with those items which are routine each day—i.e. email, social media updates, check out at least three blogs/websites and comment as needed, and any writing challenges underway. Devote no more than three hours to this activity. This is also the time to do your own new blog posts for the day.

Also, do a quick scan of your week’s goals, month’s goals, and year’s goals.           Can you cross off anything on those?

3.    Pull up one larger project—book, short story, essay, etc.—that has been sitting on the hard drive for at least six months and give it one hour of your time. Do a rewrite, complete edit, additional research; whatever is needed to get the piece closer to submission quality. If possible, have a market picked out and write a query/cover letter and submit it that day.

4.    Take at least one hour to work on the latest project in your arsenal. If the rough draft hasn’t been completed, then finish it if possible. The first revision can wait until tomorrow's goals. (For book-length projects, an hour could get you up to ten pages of material, if you’re working NaNoWriMo style.)

5.    Take a break to get up and walk around once every two hours. Get something to drink. Talk to a neighbor, family member, make a phone call; whatever you need to do that has nothing to do with writing. This short break of fifteen to thirty minutes will help refresh your thinking and help your body get the circulation flowing again.

Here are some no-brainers as well. Eat, get some exercise. Nobody says you have to sit in that desk chair for hours on end, grinding away at the keyboard. I’ve learned the hard way that that isn’t healthy. You can just as easily run through mental brainstorming while doing the dishes as you can at the computer, if you must keep thinking about words.

Do a fifteen minute workout during a break; a few standing push-ups, stretches, leg lifts, standing crunches, anything you want. Crank up the stereo and break out into dance moves. Salsa is excellent for circulation.

Do an errand. Getting away from the computer will help stimulate flagging senses. New sights and sounds help generate new ideas. Enjoy yourself.

Try out these steps. See if they help you through the day. The main thing I’ve discovered, though, is that I must allow myself time to relax, more than anything else.

The world won’t come to an end if I can’t finish something today and must attend to it tomorrow. That doesn’t apply to deadlines. Those are rigid, but everything else is on a temporary sliding scale. When you begin a new chapter, see it as a personal adventure in professionalism. Realize that you learned one new aspect of writing yesterday, and you can build on it today.

© Claudette J. Young 2012
Photo Courtesy of BJ Jones Photography

Monday, August 23, 2010

When Sarfaris Come Calling

When a writer has a sister who’s decided to become a professional fine art photographer, life changes drastically. Especially when said photographer and writer live in the same household.

Welcome to my world. 

I, as the writer, have entered into a new and mostly exciting chapter of a new writing career. You see, I tend to go with my sister on photo safari each time that camera comes out of its tidy black carrying case.

Yes, that’s right! I’ve become the photographer’s sidekick. And it’s a position at which I’m very good. I know you’re going to ask, “What’s wrong with that?” accompanied by a puzzled expression and thoughts of stupidity on my part.

Heavens, please get those thoughts out of your head. I have absolutely no problem with that scenario. I thoroughly enjoy being that sidekick. As a writer it opens up all types of new genres for me from travel writing to nature pieces to commercial work. It allows us to work on pieces together with me doing text and her doing photos.   

Anything which broadens a writer’s scope and experience base is usually a good thing. I have no complaints on that score at all.

The only complaints I have are directed squarely at myself. The problem is that I tend to get lots of ideas for stories and articles on any given day and there simply aren’t enough hours in a day to write them all down, much less work on any one of them. Add new ones generated by photo shoots and I have mayhem of the brain and then some.

Now, I can’t read, type, or research fast enough. I thought I had a problem with that before this. Yet, I can’t keep my mind from wandering onto other threads of ideas while trying desperately to work out what I’m working on that moment. I can’t keep any kind of schedule taut enough to get done everything I really would like to do. Flashes of scenes recently viewed while out on the shoot overshadow those projects I’m revising, outlining, or devising.

You see the dilemma. I either have to get very creative with scheduling or get very fast with thinking, writing, and subbing those pieces I’ve written. Which shall I choose?

Should I give up those little adventures into the outside world, which--with the exception of trips to the grocery--are the only semi-regular outings I have. After all, writers do live a mostly solitary life, even when in a house full of people. Okay, one sister doesn’t constitute a houseful, but you understand my meaning.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that I’m one of the individuals who thinks that I should be able to get anything done to perfection on that first try and do it faster than anyone else. Having grown up under the watchful eyes of perfectionists, I learned early that doing things thusly made for a calmer life all around.

I’ve taken the time to decide which arenas of writing I want to spend most of my time in, whether as the gladiator or the spectator. That was a major step since I like working in so many arenas each day. It just isn’t practical, though. It’s like trying to split an orange into 25 segments when only 8-10 came in that convenient skin package.

On top of everything else, I have difficulty just saying “NO” to all of those marvelously attractive opportunities for contests--even drawings for free books, learning new techniques for working with your blog(s), or having a new free newsletter sent to your inbox every week/month, etc. How can any writer say “NO” to all that?

I know that I have to prioritize my reading selections for each week so that most of my time is used for writing, but… (sigh) there’s so much good stuff out there to read.

Oh, well, back to the priority lists. Priority Reading list--sites/blogs/mags/… Priority writing projects--projects for submission, daily AC article for submission/book manuscripts final work to go to agents, creative nf pieces (kids) final revision, creative nf final revision(adults), short stories (kids) final revisions, poetry for online sites, etc.

There you have it. My week in condensed form. If you look closely, I haven’t scheduled any meals or sleep. Food makes me fat and I hallucinate much more effectively without sleep, which is better for story writing. Potty breaks happen when necessary and don’t get scheduled.

The photo shoots? Sis is gone on one this week with someone else. I get to work this week. I couldn’t go out to play. Too many commitments. I wasn’t even asked to go. She knows what kind of projects are sitting on my desk.

I’m trying hard not to whine. Can't you tell? I’m actually looking forward to getting some writing done today. Sometime. If I could just get my printer to cooperate, things could go much more smoothly. I just know that my phone’s speed dial will be necessary for the Geek Squad before the afternoon’s over. I have two programs that fight over defaults. Another priority has come to the foreground.

Until later, dear friend, duck when you need to, roll over and play dead when the monsters attack, and don’t stop to ask permission if you get a chance to run.

In case anyone wants to see what sis does with that camera of hers, visit: www.bjjoneseyes@shutterbugstorefront.com/ Her galleries are there with companion pics like the ones here..
Claudsy