I never understood why we have this during such a freakin’ busy month, by the way.

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One hint, though: Copy your text from the window where you typed it before you click done. The program does follow up with a reminder to save the text to your clipboard, but it strips out all your paragraph breaks.

I’m trying to use their widgets from the site. I haven’t decided which of these I like *best* (if the darned things will ever actually work):

The participant widget:

The participant widget with username:

The My Month widget (hey, this one is inaccurate — I did over 3K the first day!):

The MiniGraph widget:

The NaNoWriMo Graph widget:

The uber-detailed Progress Report widget:

The Region Status widget:

For now, so that I can get something done (other than deleting email notifications about waiting spam), I’m *temporarily* disabling comments on all posts. I’ll look at this further tonight and see if I can find a better solution, though! See updates below.

(And for my random thought of the morning –”spam hammered” could actually be spammered. And this is a spamergency!)

Update #1: An online pal — who’s about to become a BELOVED online pal if this works — just sent me a link to a different plugin with a glowing recommendation. So I’m re-enabling the comments and trying Cookies for Comments instead. Yay!

Update #2: Just tested that plugin. I didn’t see anything amiss as a regular user on the site when I posted a test comment to this post. I’m hoping the solution is this simple — it blocks the spammers without hassling commenters. *crossing my fingers*

Thank you, Donncha, for the tip!

The book is simply a list of pithy sayings, which ordinarily I’d love. The fun part is supposed to be figuring out when Larry is serious and when he’s just joshing. Hmm, not so fun because of the high “groaner” quotient.

As you may have guessed, the sayings themselves are a mixed bag. Some made me laugh out loud, and quite a few made me smile. I appreciated the somber truth in others. And the rest? Pure groaners.

A few examples:

• “I think going to the bathroom is the biggest ‘waste’ of time.” (groan)

• “When people say, ‘Do you have a minute to talk?’ They don’t mean 60 seconds.” (smile)

• “I am always amazed how often I have to decide to tell the truth. It should be easier.” (Huh. Interesting thought!)

Minor criticism: I know my copy was an ARC (Advance Reader Copy). But there were quite a few quotes repeated.

My personal verdict: I’m not sorry I read it, but I’m glad I didn’t pay for it. On a scale of 1-5, I’d give it a 2.

And the price on the back of $14.95 is waaaaay too high.

Disclaimer: I’m a participant in LibraryThing.com’s Early Reviewers program and get freebie books in exchange for reviews. (Positive or negative, doesn’t matter.) You get to select from a list of books and periodically something from the list will be sent to you. Unfortunately, my review isn’t so “early” … mea culpa. I’ll do better next time!

[tags]Larryisms, Larry John, LibraryThing.com, Early Reviewers, book review[/tags]

Just as an experiment, I think I’m going to start keeping track of the days I don’t work on my fiction and the reasons/excuses I give myself … plus some possible solutions. Maybe that will help me pinpoint my roadblocks and map my way around them.

This morning: Slept too late.

Possible solutions:

• Set your alarm clock! (Duh.)

• Also, go to bed early enough the night before so that you have a full night’s sleep. This isn’t 1979 and your college dorm room at Ole Miss, you know.

• Um, go to BED the night before instead of falling asleep stretched out on the sofa. That way, in the morning you’re near the — oh, I don’t know — actual alarm clock.

• When you fall asleep on the sofa and wake up beside the cats with the TV remote pressed into your cheek in the pre-dawn hours, then drag your butt to bed and set the clock for an early morning writing session, OR go ahead and get up to write. Going back to sleep and dreaming about writing? It doesn’t count.

Tsk-tsk note to myself: Seriously? You lazy ass.

Photo credit: Dr. Hemmert

[tags]procrastination, problem solving, removing roadblocks, writing excuses[/tags]

I’ll give you 100 Entrecard credits just for signing up for this blog’s RSS feed or email feed, until I run out of credits. That should make 39 new readers happy, and the 40th will get a tinier slice of the pie (67 credits, or more, depending on how many dropped cards I get in the meantime). Use one of the giant orange buttons in the top right corner of my site to sign up. And please leave a comment on this post with the name of your Entrecard blog so I can send you the credits!

My leaving isn’t an indictment of the Entrecard system — I like many of their recent improvements, such as the ability to link multiple blogs. (But I do *not* like their weird new ad pricing system. FYI.) I just am trying to pare down my computer-facing time, and clicking through a promotion system like this just isn’t as fun or profitable as other projects I could be doing. So I’m spreading the EC love with this giveaway before I go.

Note to current advertisers: I will leave the Entrecard widget in place until your ads have run their course, don’t worry. I won’t back out of a deal! )

Thanks, Entrecard visitors! )

[tags]free Entrecard credits, Entrecard giveaway[/tags]

“If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.” ~ Olin Miller

I know the reasons for writing regularly, for being patient through multiple drafts, for just showing up day after day. I haven’t developed a long-term butt glue to keep my fanny fastened to the fiction writer’s chair yet, but I’m trying. I can do discipline; haven’t I held down full-time jobs for the past 26 years, despite longing to stay up late and sleep later every day? So why do I keep permitting roadblocks in my writing path?

Recently, I thought a writing partner would keep me on track. Like diet buddies, we’d check each other’s progress. Then I went through a few weeks of serious illness, he and his family bought a house, my family struggled with making our high school senior study enough to graduate, I fell behind at work, and our fledgling writers’ relationship faded away. And while he was a good writing partner and I feel embarrassed that I failed to be one, I think that maybe a writing buddy wasn’t the right solution for me; self doubt paralyzed me when I showed my early drafts to someone. I need a different way to stay on the path.

After all, I’ve been “writing a murder mystery” for two years now. But real writing time? Maybe a month.

Then I read a RockYourDay blog post last week with a key concept that resonated for me: “Don’t confuse lack of progress in overcoming a habit with the actual difficulty of doing it. If you’re not making progress, it’s likely that it’s because you aren’t deciding up front to anticipate obstacles and so you’re not planning your way around it.” [Emphasis mine.]

Wow. Just … wow. So I’ve been thinking about where my time goes:

• Sleeping, especially long, long naps. I’m taking prescription iron medicine for anemia, and that helps. And for a lingering kidney infection I’m taking a strong new antibiotic that has a powerful drowsiness side effect for me, which doesn’t help. Solution: Get well, and (the hard part) keep more regular hours to help me distinguish between real fatigue and medicine-induced sleepiness I can sometimes push on through. I HATE regular hours, though; I love staying up late or getting up early on my own whim. Still thinking hard about this one.

• Blog surfing. Err, with a blogroll of nearly 300 strong, I definitely need to trim. By AT LEAST one third, and preferably two thirds. I spent the better part of an entire day this weekend just trying (and failing) to catch up on reading a backlog of blog posts. Solution: Trim the blogroll. Again, a solution I dread; I love them all and love to find new ones. I keep thinking that faster skimming will help but it doesn’t. And I’m spending way too much time on reading — or clipping to read in the “later” that never comes. I’ve gotta trim again.

• Obsessing over useless things. When I should be pulling out my story board and tackling one of my mapped-out scenes, I’m instead sorting my sock drawer or alphabetizing my science fiction book shelves by author. Or I’m making lists that are related to my writing, without actually being my writing. Solution: Set aside time to do lower-priority tasks so they don’t crowd my writing time. Every time has a task, and every task has a time.

I’m sure there are more, but those are the ones that loom for me. I’ll tackle them first and then study my action plan again: Where is blocking my free time from flowing to my writing, and how can I avoid the blockage?

What are YOUR fiction-writing obstacles, and how are you planning to overcome every way they manifest for you?

Photo credit: Mozambique – Moments

[tags]writing, writer’s habits, discipline[/tags]