writing – Page 4

September 21, 2015September 20, 2015

Writing Rituals

Developing our own unique rituals can help us become more productive in our writing. They offer us the freedom to tap into ourselves – to find those things that connect us with our imagination. For some, sitting at a desk wearing a pair of boxers and sipping on coffee might bring on the muse. Others might connect with their story by taking a walk in the woods or listening to a soundtrack of their favorite movies. (I love listening to music from The Lord of the Rings.) The choice of ritual isn’t as important as the results. Ultimately, the object is to clear away the static so our thoughts and ideas flow.What are your rituals?

September 7, 2015September 6, 2015

Don’t Let Time Pass You By

As writers, we each face our own struggles. I tend to think a lot of my issues could be alleviated if I had more time in the day. Seeing as how I don’t have access to a magical hourglass, I had to consider other options. The one that screamed for my attention was time management. My situation is not unique. Like many of you, I work full time. That leaves a few short hours a day to take care of my home/family, exercise, write and grow my audience.

Building my author platform

It’s hard.

Who knew there would be so much effort required? I thought writing the novel was supposed to be the most difficult part. Imagine my surprise when I realized I needed a twitter account, a Facebook author page, a blog, etc.

It’s time consuming.

Each plank in the platform comes from the connections we make. Those connections take time to cultivate. That means we reach beyond ourselves. We engage others. We listen to their ideas. We share ours. In short, being a good neighbor requires being social.

But – here’s the catch

Building my platform was taking too much of my writing time. Seriously. It was so easy to get caught up in reading the posts on certain Facebook pages. And then there was Pinterest. My goodness – I was on my way to becoming a “Pinning” junkie. I have boards dedicated to my blog, to interesting faces, beautiful places – things that may or may not inspire scenes in future stories. There’s boards dedicated to my books. I’m sure you get the picture. 😉

I needed to get a handle on my socializing…

I love my blog. I love the blogging community. I decided that my blog would become the hub of my social media/platform building efforts.

This is still a work in progress. But it has helped ease the stress of coming up with so many new ideas for posting to the different social media sites. Take my Facebook Author page – I guess I’m a bit ambivalent when it comes to this page. I hate feeling as though I’m shouting Look At Me! and my Facebook author page makes me feel that way. By sharing my blog, I have activity on my page without bashing people over the head with Buy My Book posts.

There’s still the Time Management thing…

This requires discipline and lots of it. I’m not the most disciplined person. I have a tendency to fly by the seat of my pants – which is probably why I’m a pantzer and not a plotter. To help keep myself on task, I came up with a schedule. It’s helped by making me more mindful of my time. I decided to limit my interactions to about 30 minutes an evening. That means I have to choose which sites/communities I am going to visit. Take Mondays, for example. I’ll visit blogs that I follow as well as Twitter. Tuesdays will be G+ communities and maybe a stop at my Facebook Author page. It’s not a perfect plan but it is helping me stay focused and freeing up my time.

schedule — Not sure where the lines that separate Thursday, Friday, and Saturday went…

I’m always looking for new ideas… What are you doing to maximize your writing time?

August 31, 2015August 30, 2015

Lessons Learned

I love winners. I love underdogs. I love losers when they don’t give up. But I don’t love quitters. And that one thing – not wanting to be a quitter, not wanting to feel like a person who throws in the towel, has about wore me out. It’s been two years since I published my first book. Since then, I’ve worked on the sequel, written and published a novella and wrote another story. But it’s that sequel that’s killing me. I think about the characters, how the story should go, what I want to happen. It all sounds good in my head – and yet, when I sit down to write, I lose interest.

Other characters have popped in, wanting to tell their stories, and I told them to hold on. It wasn’t their turn. After a while, they stopped knocking on the door of my imagination. And that’s sad. It bothers me that I stubbornly clung to the idea that I had to do a trilogy – because that’s what YA writers do. Those other stories, those other characters, are like smoke rising in the air. How do you recapture those ideas? Because it’s not like I haven’t tried. I wrote down the ideas – I knew to do that much. But going back a reading over those thoughts – I’m not finding the magic.

After so many hours working and reworking the sequel, I’ve got to admit it:

I’m a quitter!

Maybe one day, the story will flow. But now is not that time. I’m shelving the sequel. I’m reclaiming the joy I had when I wrote the other stories. It’s okay for me to put something aside when it becomes a burden. And that is exactly what the sequel has become. And it makes me sad to admit it.

But –

I’ve learned something important.

As a writer, I should have stayed true to my first instinct.

If I would have done that, then those other characters – their stories would have been told.

And –

I remembered something important.

Just because other people are jumping off bridges, doesn’t mean I have to.

If I would have worried less about what other writers were doing, I would have been satisfied with a stand-alone book.