Back to Business...uh, well....

So this month we're talking about writing itself, and publishing, right? I probably had something bigger and grander planned for this post, but then, well, life happened. My husband had to have surgery, and instead of having time to write this up yesterday, I wound up waiting for the hospital to find my husband a room post-op. For three hours. After spending the morning in the waiting room waiting for him to come out of surgery. Shot the whole day.

Maybe that's a lesson right there. Life happens. Writing is not a 9-5 job for most authors I know, although many of us wish it could be (there are days I do too, but I actually like my job). I have a goal of 500 words per day. Not a huge amount, but when you hate writing first drafts like I do -- I am a champion reviser-- sometimes those words feel like pulling teeth. And I'm kind of in a funk right now. Graduate School ended in the beginning of December, and there were the holidays, and all this other stuff, and I had given myself permission to wait until January 1 to dive back into writing.

And then...well, stuff gets in the way. And now I'm turning into a champion procrastinator. I've tried to write some  every day, but I think I've made the 500 words, like, once. I'm just not feeling it, and I'm easily distracted. I think I need to go back to the beginning and read over the whole first 25,000 words and find the story again. Yeah, like I have time for that.

What was I saying...oh yeah. My advice for writers -- be flexible. Don't throw up your hands in despair if the time you set aside for writing gets eaten up by life's crap. I finally DID have time to work on my manuscript yesterday (and should have done it while waiting in the hospital, but there were too many distractions, and I had a book to read), and it was during my son's basketball practice. I find those times ideal for writing, when I have to be somewhere and not engaged with what's going on. But sometimes that's what you have to do to get it done.

Some people can sleep anywhere, I have learned to write anywhere. And now it really IS back to business for me. I have three books to work on this year, and one new edition to get out into the world. No more time for distractions.

Look, shiny!

Aunt Noony's Inside Look at Publishing

It’s funny, I don’t really think of myself as being “inside publishing,” or inside the ebook publishing industry, but since I have a book out with a major digital-first press I suppose to others that I might be considered at least “published,” if not on the “inside track.”

So how’s the view from here?

The more I know, the more I learn that I need to know. As much as I know about writing (active voice, action tags, story craft), I find I still have more to practice. Each time I go through a manuscript to edit, I think, “This is the time, it’ll be so clean I won’t have to touch a thing.”

I’m wrong. Routinely.

Humbling experience, that.

Each time I think I “know about the ebook publishing industry,” someone will mention a new-to-me publisher that’s been in business for years. It’s not that they’re so small I’ve never heard of them, it’s that I’m not well versed enough on the businesses playing in the industry yet.

So here’s what I do know:

Concentrate on the basics and on what you can control.

1. Write daily or as often as you can. There are many prompts available on the internet (type “writing prompts” into Google and poke around). Experiment with a new one every day for a month. Write with a pen and write on the computer, see how the different mechanics work with your creative process.

2. Practice your writing skills. Get a book on grammar from the library or buy yourself a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. Wrestle with comma usage and the dreaded semicolon; become an expert in verb tenses. Learn about the “story arc” and the seven traditional plots. Get yourself a copy of Fiction Writers Workshop by Josip Novakovich or take a fiction class through a local writing group.

3. Meet other writers. Find writing friends online through magazines like Writer’s Digest or The Writer, and make local connections using your local newspaper or Meetup. Exposure to others working on the same things you are is helpful for the learning process and can also inspire you to try new things.

4. Attend regional writing conferences or even a national one. My own writing organization, Evanston Writers Workshop, holds our annual conference very year during the third weekend of August. We bring in authors, publishers, agents, and have an awesome time learning and playing with words for three days.  There's a lot you can learn about traditional publishing and the ebook publishing industry, and how the interrelate and augment each other from the authors' perspective.  It's no longer enough to ignore ebooks; we as authors need to understand it because that's how a lot of newer authors are being published.

5. Stay humble. No matter how much you know or learn, remember there’s always someone out there that can teach you something. Be teachable.

6. Keep writing. Through it all, remember to keep writing. This is surprisingly easy to forget, in fact. I meet writers through Evanston Writers Workshop who have all sorts of dearly-held opinions about publishing and writing, but when asked what they’re working on, the answers “oh, this manuscript I’ve been writing for twenty years.” One manuscript for twenty years is not a good track record for knowing the publishing industry. One of our speakers, author Jody Lynn Nye, has published over forty books and over a hundred short stories.  I think THAT is the track record of someone who knows the publishing industry, don't you?  Everyone has opinions, and it’s easy to forget that our job description is “writer,” not “pontificator” or “prognosticator.” If you have the urge to do either of the latter two things, DO IT ON THE PAGE! Whatever you do, write.

Lots.

Write on!

13 Things to Write During Football Season

We've got these kids, DH and I, and after we had the first one we made a deal. He could watch as much football as he wanted....as long as he was responsible for the kids while the game was on. I had no intention of being a football widow with 2 kids to feed and a house to clean while the Dude sat on the couch and watched other dudes running around chasing a ball. The result is that DH doesn't watch as much football as he did before we had kids, and he has learned the value of taping the game on TiVo and fast forwarding through the commercials.

In fact, I welcome football season now. For me, that's prime writing time I don't get when it's not football season.

So here are 13 things I hope to write during this year's football season:

1) More query letters, hopefully at least one of them along the lines of, "Yes, I accept your contract, awesome agent or publisher!"
2) The rest of this steampunk novel that was supposed to be a short story and then supposed to be a novella but is now a novel. ONE novel, by gum, just ONE.
3) More stories about bad cats on Meankitty's redesigned website: www.meankitty.com
4) The 4 critiques I promised to do for an RWA chapter contest I'm helping judge.
5) The ~9 critiques I usually do for my local chapter RWA contest as the Grammar Wench -- finalists get a consult with me as they prepare their manuscripts for the final round judges. Some take advantage of it, some do not.
6) A note to my kid's school explaining that she is now off the restrictions from her broken arm and can resume normal activities. Yay!
7) A third Tallwood romance novella by Ellie Marvel, characters pending.
8) A hilarious yet informative trip report of my and DH's vacation in Yellowstone. With pictures that don't suck! Which means the friends we're travelling with will probably be the ones who took the photos...
9) A lot more of the superhero serial romance some friends and I have been dabbling with--time to get serious!
10) The beginning of my next Realm romance, the third in the series after 1000 Kisses, due out in February 2011 from Samhain.
11) A thank you letter to the people who gave us that million dollars for being the millionth customer of some random store.
12) Some extremely clever tweets that get RT'd a lot (wishful thinking on my part, but hey, so is the one about the million dollars).
13) My Beyond the Veil blog entries!

What do you usually accomplish during football season? Lots of cheering and cussing or something else entirely? I know there are a lot of people out there whose lives aren't touched by sports, televised or otherwise. Are you one of them?

Jody Wallace w/a Ellie Marvel
http://www.jodywallace.com
WHAT SHE DESERVES--Available from Samhain Publishing

Finding time

I admit it, I totally recycled this post from my other group blog. But it's a good post, and the blogs have two totally different audiences. So sue me. Actually, it's pretty apropos, considering the topic...


So many people have said to me, "Oh, I wish I could write a book - but I just don't have the time!" (As if time were the only necessary element to writing). I often wonder about that. I'm a pretty busy gal myself. Now I only have one child, so I bow to those authors who are juggling the lives of their three kids, all going in separate directions. But still...
My child is active in two sports a year, and football is a time suck beyond all others.
I work (part-time) and
go to Graduate School (part-time).
Guess who's Team Mom?
I manage slush for a small publisher
I am active in two group blogs, plus am my own webmaster and I have my own blog.
I do my own book promotion.
I try and exercise five days a week. (you see how that's at the bottom of the list?)

But I still find time to write.

I think the key to finding writing time is a)scheduling and b) determination. You have to WANT to make time. And if are determined, you can make a schedule and stick to it. During the school year, I wake up at 5:30 am (yes, Virginia, there IS a 5:30 am) to read for school. At least half an hour. If I'm working that day, I have plenty of time to shower and all that. If I'm not working - bonus! I get my son up for school at 6:30 (he's a slow riser, like me). On Sundays I work on school stuff. Sometimes I write in the morning, sometimes at night, but I have a schedule and work around everything to find that writing time.

My schedule is flexible. This is key for me. Mostly I have a word goal of 500 words/day. Some days I write all 500 words at once, sometimes it's 250 in the morning and 250 at night. Sounds weird, but 500 words a day is 3,500 words a week, which is around a chapter for me, depending on what I'm working on. That's how you build a book - one word, one sentence, one paragraph, one chapter at a time. Even if it's 300 words, that's more than you had before, right? Some days I'll write 1,000 words and some 400, but it balances out in the end.

Once we're settled into the football season, I will take my netbook and write there, since practices are pretty much dead time for me. I write at work, when the kids in my class are at special. Or I'll read for school, which frees up some home time. I write at lunch. I take Boy to play at McDonalds and write. When he was little, I wrote while he napped, or in the blessed silence between when he would go to bed and my bedtime. I watch more Netflix than TV now, too. TV is a time suck, even the good shows.

There are all kinds of nooks and crannies of time to be had if you really want to write. Sometimes, other things suffer. I don't exercise as much during the school year (it's about priorities, don't judge me :P ). You might have to say no to things people ask of you. Not that I would know anything about that, I just never can seem to do it. Just squeeze it in - who needs to clean the house, right? You may need to turn off the Facebook and stop Twittering for just a little bit, but make it a reward, like I do - NO INTERNET until the words are done.

I won't give up my writing time, and I don't know a single writer out there who will. This is what we love, and even if we have to give up sleep, it will be done!

Think for a little bit - could you find more time if for something you REALLY want?