Hey, folks! Today I’m here with Tru, Paige’s brother-in-law as we discuss Demons Are Jackasses! We’ve got a lot—

*waves excitedly* Hey, guys!

*frowns* Not yet. *turns back to the audience* We’ve got a great line-up for you this month as we build up the excitement for the book which is currently available only in—

*the EMF meter buzzes loudly*

*@_@ at Tru*

*frantically turns it off while studying it and trying to find the source of the EMF…at the same time*

*talks over the buzzing* Anyway, it’s still only available in paperback, but the book is SO pretty!! I really recommend having it in paperback. I’m…mildly distracted by the–*takes EMF meter and turns it off*–character joining us today! His name is Tru and he’s a ghost hunter, if you couldn’t tell.

*grabs the EMF Meter from Frankie and turns it back on* There is something here with us!

*leans over and whispers back* It’s the readers, you doof! They would show up as energy since this is CYBER SPACE!

*thinking frown*

*takes the meter away and sits on it*

*glare*

Anyway! Wow! He’s distracting! Tru is a really FUN character and I usually enjoy having him IN the scenes! He’s originally from Texas and Webster’s definition of the word “Geek”. Please help me welcome Tru!

*turns beat red and grabs digital voice recorder*

So, Tru, tell us a little bit about yourself.

You just did.

*grins and says through teeth* So tell them something else, you twit! You’re the one who wanted to do the interview.

*talks through grin* That was BEFORE the spotlight was on me.

Just relax. Be yourself. You’ll be fine.

*deep breath* Well, I’m the husband to Paige’s sister and a proud father of three—oh, wait, at this point we’re at two and a half – children.

Why don’t you tell us what it’s like living in the Ansley household.

It’s a ZOO! *dead pan look at audience* No. Really. Alma is the craziest witch I’ve ever met. This woman can make the house shake on the foundations! And she knows how to weld the wooden spoon. Like, seriously, my hand’s been nearly broken more times than I can count!

LMAO!! I’ve seen that happen a time or two!

You laugh! My oldest daughter is a fire starter, so when she’s pissed off, fire comes shooting out of her ears! It makes it really tough to be a father! So, I let me wife wear the pants. I prefer not being the pig on the spit, so I’m the nice Dad. My middle son is a bard, of all things. Now, here’s me, the dumb dad, thinking, “Hey, having a bard as a son is SAFE! My daughter might be trying to kill me, but my son is going to be AWESOME! Ohhhhhh noooooo! He threw a tantrum at the age of two and broke every glass bottle in the pickle aisle!

ROFL!!! Pooor Tru!

I MIGHT, maybe, get my pants back after the little one (that you’ll see in Angels) is grown and out of the house. But let’s just say that being the Muggle in the Ansley house SUCKS!

*picking self off floor* What are your thoughts on Paige?

*pauses…blinks…shifts in chair…explodes* Thank GOD I married the one that talks to dead people!

*chuckling* Okay, well, folks, that’s all the time we have right now! Stay tunes and be sure to check out Demons Are Jackasses!! It really is a great story!

I’ve written more than that.

I actually joined that site a year ago yesterday. In the 367 days, I missed 12. My streak as of yesterday was 297 days. Yes, somehow I managed that through moving (Thanks, Mom!) and having a baby (always with the technical gadgets when he slept) and figured how I could do that minimum through my phone if I had to.

My fastest entry took 7 minutes to reach the goal, over 100 wpm. My 355 completed days have accumulated 344,110 words. The most I ever accomplished in a day was 4944 and makes me wonder why I didn’t push to the 5k mark. [Personal best writing day is over 8k - before I ever had children or found 750words.]

The site also tries to give insights into my writing, whether I’m feeling affectionate or thinking about death or if I use present tense verbs or what sense (read: vision) I’m using for description.

But that isn’t the information I turn to when I want to understand my writing better. Besides the words themselves, and there are a couple budding novels in there if I’m not careful – or maybe if I am. Some days it’s hard to tell. The information I gather lends more to understanding the process.

I learned I can type off the top of my head and still send words flying out of my fingers over 100 wpm. When I say they’re on fire, that’s pretty close. I learned I can type over 3000 words in an hour. That might seem like a modest 50ish wpm, but keeping it up for an hour or more is daunting.

My best time of day is the morning, but I can’t type in the morning because I’m busy with kids. So I almost always do my writing during afternoon naps. When I have to do it in the evening it takes longer, especially if there are distractions like the TV or my husband. [I told you I was writing. Go do something else until I'm done!] Longer often means five times as long, slowing me down to the average at this site, somewhere around 13 wpm when averaged with the distractions.

When I get warmed up and set a timer, I can shut out pretty much everything else. It’s really fun to just sit there and commune with the characters while they’re doing weird things.

So now I’m working on figuring out how to do that all the time. Because every now and then I end up with random brain dumps that, while helpful, aren’t exactly fueling my fiction word count. Except they do by getting the other stuff out of the way. It’s amazing how full the brain can get just going about your daily business.

I keep working to refine what I write, to learn more from this tool, to pursue more goals in my writing. It’s an ingrained habit for me, and whatever else it teaches me, that alone has been good enough to keep me at it.

Now what I need is a tool that makes me sit there and edit things on a daily basis. Because having the rough draft out only gets you so far. My drafts are improving, which means some of them are not complete dreck when I spew them out.

And today, when I sit down to write my words again, I’ll be figuring out something else to take time and make my words count. It doesn’t always have to be a race for speed. It’s about what I need to get out in order to do the writing I want to complete.

What tools do you use to keep your habits going for writing, editing, publishing, social media, other writer-type habits I’ve forgotten? Please share.

Actually, when you think about kids this just makes sense. Who knows what taste there might be on a pine cone? I bet a child would tell me. Probably also explains why so many parents are always screaming “Get that out of your MOUTH!”

But how does that translate into what we write? The majority of authors (especially in brick and mortar stores) are adults. We would then use a lot of visual description when we want it to be real to the readers.

I have a group of characters living on some far-off planet who don’t use their eyes. These nearly blind people can sense movement but not much else. It was such a difficult thing for me to describe things using their noses and ears as the primary senses and the visual as a distant fourth (behind touch). While I haven’t yet decided to have them put everything in their mouths to taste, I can’t promise anything about their futures.

What do you do to distinguish between characters? Do they all use their eyes as a primary sense?

I think if I were to catalog all the descriptive words in my current novel, most of them would be geared toward the visual. Makes me think I should look at that while rewriting. Yay! Just one more thing to edit and polish. I will finish it eventually, I swear. Though it might help to find less things I want to fix.

As long as we’re doing colors, why isn’t it cerise instead of just red or cerulean instead of just blue? I rarely hear anyone talking about aubergine. Is it the one syllable quality of red and blue and green that make them so common? Yellow simply doesn’t have the same impact. Yet it can’t simply be about the name, because pink will never have the impact of a neon orange – and that never rolled easily off anyone’s tongue.

When I ask someone’s favorite color, often I get a generic blue or purple or brown. The aforementioned aubergine ranks for one friend of mine, and another told me burgundy. It made me think about my own response, which is much more vague since I am fond of too many colors to pick just one. It’s very dependent on what it is for (a car or a purse or the walls of my bedroom)  and my particular mood.

How does color affect how you write? Do you search for a specific shade like chartreuse or will bright green work? Do you work to figure out the perfect color for everything or do you leave a few to the reader’s imagination?

Does having all that information conflict with your own ideas when reading? I’d love to know!

One of the things I love about writing groups is how being connected to them reconnects me to my projects. Another is hearing all the great things they bring to share.

They talked about a future meeting and it’s hard to realize we’ll be moving into our new home that day. I’m excited about the new house, but a little sad to be missing part of this group just as I connected with them.

Maybe I also needed a new perspective. I mean, I’ve been working on this piece and that for a while, and every group gives something a little different where feedback is concerned. And the new perspective makes me very excited to dig into the project again. If only I had time. I’m about to start packing for this next move!

They’re very encouraging, and I wonder how old they think I am. I get the feeling they don’t think I’ve done this much before, but I can’t be certain. The age groups seem to be either older or quite young. And by quite young, I mean two of them were about high school aged. Interesting, but good.

It also makes me feel a little more at home, now that I found where some writers congregate. It’s funny the things that make us feel like we’re in the right place, but that seems to be one of them for me.

But I think I know what I want to take next time I have a chance to write. And it’s exciting!

Some days it’s the same thing with those grading sites. Marketing Grader and Tweet Grader were mentioned today, though we’ve also compared Klout on occasion. If you send us (and I’m talking about a specific friend who shares my competitive drive) one of these tools, we try to integrate it into our knowledge base.

And why? What does it matter if my Klout score is 15 or 57 or even 95? [For the record, it is none of those.] That won’t sell my books. It doesn’t matter if the Marketing Grader says my website is 0 or 100 out of 100. Did any of you check the scores before buying a book or a service from someone?

I think it’s even funnier that I can admit that those scores are geared toward businesses selling a product online, but many of the people I know who try to learn from it are online but not necessarily selling a physical product. [Yes, I know books are physical products, but bear with me a moment.] I can look through all of the stats and see whether I’m capturing an audience by Twitter followers, or Tweet Graders or other options. I can figure out what I’m doing on Facebook by fans and shares and other activity. My blog has subscribers and links to various social media.

So what are we doing with it? Just checking. It’s a sliding scale to see whether we’re engaging someone or just talking in a bubble. Are we using the platform not as intended but as we can to get conversations moving?

And then, when it’s quiet, my friend and I try to outdo each other strictly by the numbers. If you’re curious, we have the same Klout score and our Marketing Grades are a single point different. It probably helps that she and I share information and little tricks when we find them and also encourage and support each other to keep up with blogs and tweets and posts. It’s a crazy thing to try to keep all of these things up, but somehow it works.

I’m really grateful that she’s there to help keep me motivated and focused on the target. My target isn’t a number – I’m just here to talk and share and learn as I write and publish. Life and work are good, but it can be good to remember it isn’t just a numbers game.

Except I can’t stop trying to get those numbers higher!

Bye-bye, House.

It probably goes without mentioning that I love books. The sea wasn’t all of them, some had been moved to the basement to de-clutter the library and others came with me to my temporary home. As I looked at them, I realized how impatient I was to be reunited with them again. It was all I could do not to snag one of two to read right then. [Despite corralling two children away from the action of the packers.]

How do you explain to someone who doesn’t read about the joy of books? How can you ever hope to get into their heads how the fiction takes you away to another place? How the nonfiction infects your brain with more knowledge? How much space those engineering textbooks take and how heavy those things are?

Some days I’m not sure why we keep those textbooks – they were in storage for 10 years, never touched, yet they are guaranteed space on my shelves, along with my fictional pursuits in various stages of editing and first editions from published works. It’s an odd mix that the estimater under-estimated for my home.

While I’d love to share those books with everyone, especially to get the nonreaders to understand the greatness of print – I get that not everyone’s going to get it. [It just makes me sad, as a writer.] I don’t let go of them easily. Even the ones my husband questions, like “Dummies Guide to Coaching Basketball.” No, I’m not sure I’ll ever need it, but you never know when it’ll come in handy.

My writer-friend Shawna once said she’d never be surprised by any book I owned. I like that – she understood that I love books and I can’t resist the treasures they hold. Thomas Jefferson said it best: “I cannot live without books.” And why should we?

It’s always difficult to know. You want to introduce your protagonist among the very first, many times the very first character to show to your reader. Readers like to know what’s going on and care about someone who comes up. [Yes, there are several people who get away with doing it another way, but we're going to stick with the mainstream for the moment. Pretend I'm not George R.R. Martin, ok?]

So if you have your protagonist firmly in mind, you want to introduce her to your reader. You choose something that shows who this is and why she is different and important and worthy of the reader’s time and attention.

Then you start the trouble and change things up for the poor protagonist until she can’t help but follow along with the plot.

But what about the others? How do you decide to put the other characters in? What about people who walk in and out for a little bit? It’s always good to think about that a while. Sometimes there’s an organic way to do it. A way to sprinkle the other characters in while the protagonist goes along with her story.

I have two characters that are giving me a little trouble. I introduce them early because they’re important. However, one of my critiquers thought I shouldn’t introduce one so early, and then another thought I should introduce the other earlier to show her importance.

I end up chewing over that kind of advance planning for the beginning. It seemed to make sense how I introduced them, but it’s possible it’s not quite in order. So I’m curious how other writers do it – do you decide to introduce them in a certain order or just when they come up? How do you decide in the rewrite if you’ve done it well enough? And does it matter if it’s a thousand words here or there to keep them flowing through?

Next time I might look closer at how they come through the story. This one is set in a fairly good order except for the two I mentioned. The two characters are important, though neither is the most important throughout the plot. It can all be put together in good time and I’ll have it figured out within the week.

It does give me a great deal to think about. There might be a million ways to introduce a few characters and I’m not sure I always give it as much thought as i could to make sure it’s done the right way and for the right reasons in the plot.

This kind of thought process has slowed my editing progress. I need to jump into a different chapter and stop worrying about those introductions for a little bit. How do you deal with it?

As you know, I’ve been a member of Crowdtap for some time and I got another sample for Old Navy share last October. It’s been really fun to give some feedback and I have a couple Amazon gift cards from the experience. [Email me: noble.ransom (at) gmail (dot) com if you want more details or an invitation.]

I just got another one for two FREE t-shirts at Old Navy for me and a friend. It was great and we got to try them all on, though we were leaning heavily toward the Henleys to begin with. They feel great on, and while I originally worried the material was pretty thin, I have worn each of these shirts all day and they held up very well to the abuse of a typical day with a toddler (almost 3) and a breastfeeding newborn (2 months today).

My friend accompanied me with her 3 year old and her 7 month old. Since we met at parent-tot gymnastics just before my son was born, our two toddlers ran circles around us and helped themselves to the toys in the store. My friend and I took turns trying things on while the other kept an eye on the kids. Luckily the babies were on good behavior!

Here are the pictures of the shirts we decided on: 

The Henleys were a good option for me since I’m breastfeeding. I have a sling for my son and he likes being close and it keeps my hands free for my toddler. He can nurse in there, which is why I love buttons and nursing tanks. It was a little tricky the first time, but it’s getting easier each time we try it. Great easy style to be on the go. And I might be a stay-at-home mom (and writer) for a while, but that means I’m always on the go.

And her picks: 

Yes, you saw that right. We picked the same shirt. Great minds think alike, right? I’m sure one of these days we’re going to show up to our gymnastics class in the same shirt in the same color! She talked me out of the paler colors because they washed out my skin, which is a pity because sometimes it’s nice to wear those softer shades. Can’t argue with that logic, though, so I’m all ready for St. Patrick’s Day with my green Henley from Old Navy.

We both had a lot of fun and took our children to the park afterward to play. It reminded me that I haven’t had a lot of time to shop since my son arrived and it’s been good to get out and see where everything is – we moved to town 4 months ago and I’m starting to know my way around enough to not rely on the GPS every single time I get in the car.

Can’t wait to get back to Old Navy to see what else they have.

While I make goals and I keep track of them, I must not be stretching myself enough according to that standard. I often choose smaller goals and see if I can do more than just the minimum. I also realize that it isn’t possible to do everything I want to and have interest to attempt. Not even close. But I do prioritize and make an effort on the things that matter to me – though it is often something I know I can do if  I put a reminder in front of me.

So what is the change if I allow myself to fail at a goal here and there? It opens up a lot of possibilities. I can call it a work-in-progress and remind myself that there is wiggle room. Yet it’s also good to remember I only have a couple hours a day when I am doing things for me and not my children.

Writing takes up a lot of that time. I won’t apologize for it, because it’s what I love to do.

I’ve been struggling to get back to my daily yoga practice post-baby. Part of this is because I don’t have somewhere to go do it yet, and my toddler takes it as an invitation to use me as a jungle gym. It greatly increases the difficulty of a pose like Warrior I when you have a small child standing on your back leg.

My challenges this month are to go back to yoga every day and to edit a novel and to keep up my writing streak and prep another novel. Those are big goals considering my newborn is 7 weeks old. He just slept a little over 6 hours, which is called “through the night” by the professionals… and I woke before he did. Somehow I was wide awake and starving at 3:30 in the morning.

If this keeps up, I’ll have plenty of time to practice yoga when my children are sleeping. And edit my novel. Probably a bunch of other things, too, but six hours isn’t really enough sleep for me on a regular basis. While I can dream of things like bottling time, liquid sleep, cloning, and delegating roles to an army of bored people who procrastinate their time away, I know that we’re all given the same time and it’s what we do with it that sets us apart from the rest.

I don’t have time to be bored. If I finish those novel edits, I’m going to dive back into writing that novella I think I have a handle on completing. There’s always another project that I’d like to tackle – even if it’s just knitting another rug for the bathroom floor.

What do you do for your goals? How do you know you’re successful? What do you think of the 50 percent and stretching quote from Chip Wilson?

With focus, you can become an expert in a small field. It is identifying a niche that pleases you and moving from there to let others come and make use of your knowledge in that small area. On the other hand, with diversity you can know a little bit about a ton of things and point questions in the direction of someone with the expertise to answer in the niche.

I’m struggling with this because I want to focus, but I do not seem to be able to let go of all the little distractions that lead me to exploring other areas. My other problem is a lack of time.

I’m a stay-at-home mom. I play with my kids and try to teach them things and hope they don’t run me ragged by day’s end. I get very little quiet time to pursue my interests, mostly writing, and so I think it’d be best to target one thing and finish it and do it well. Usually I find myself doing about ten things that aren’t that one task that I think ought to be most important.

Is it procrastination? Or is it just some inability to focus?

It’s March and NaNoEdMo is going on. I know I can’t set aside 50 hours to dedicate to editing my manuscript, but I did dutifully send the next segment to my [online] critique partners. While this piece isn’t in their science-fiction-or-fantasy niche, they’re being good sports and reading it anyway.

Yesterday I figured out new goals for the month, and the day before I was free writing about the idea of a community. Some science fiction story will be popping out of that at some point in the near future. It’s not my fault – I refuse to gag my muse. Or maybe that is my fault, because I refuse to gag my muse. She drags me on all kinds of side trips around different concepts and characters and plot twists until I can’t help but focus on something else.

I should be able to help it. I’m the writer. I’m the one in charge! Or so I like to tell myself. When characters take the stories into their own hands, trouble ensues but it makes for a beautiful story.

Sometimes I write articles as well. Does it help to further split my time between nonfiction and fiction? No. Yet something brings me back to nonfiction time and again, so I’m attempting to keep it in check while I go.

I keep track of social media and I’m learning about how I can influence those around me. It’s also interesting because that will be part of my platform for when I do get that book out.

When. Not if. This is not a place or a time for doubt. I am an artist and doubting my work comes all too easily, but I am working on not letting it get in my way. Determination takes me farther than talent, so as long as I keep my iron will set on getting it published I know it will happen.

Then what stops me from working on it until it shines like a pearl? Something is resistant to me sitting down and just saying I’m a novelist, or a short story writer, or an article writer. [Though on that last one, I blame lack of interest in pursuing only articles.] I’m not the best writer out there, but I can’t say I’m a bad writer, either.

Then I’ll be spending more time on the question of whether to focus or to branch out, whether to find my tiny niche or keep writing as I find interest. It is a question for my platform, because then I wonder if I should separate it to be found easier for the things I do, or to lump them together and show the wide differences in style.

It’s hard to be successful until you figure out what you want to do and apply all your talents in that direction. But what if what you think is the direction you want to go actually covers too much territory to make it work? What did you do when this question presented itself? Did you find your niche and become the expert? Or did you dabble with fingers in every inkwell?

It reminds me of the phrase, “jack of all trades, master of none.” Except something in my writerly head wants to twist it to ‘jill of all trades, mistress of one” – meaning writing, of course. I can’t stop because I love it and I don’t know who I am without it.

It’s true in some respects. I often feel that staying at home isn’t something that can be understood until you try it out. It’s not for the faint of heart, either. At first glance, it seems like there is an easy road where a person gets to play all day at doing things that are fun. Somehow it never works out that way, though.

All right, at first when I didn’t have children, my days were filled with writing and playing guitar and messing around with some video games. It didn’t take long to just clean up after myself. Then living with my husband it took a little longer. During pregnancy most of those chores got harder.

Last year I wrote about my three-ish jobs and juggling a child who stayed at home with me all day. Minus three-ish jobs and juggling two children and the household chores makes me feel very much like the woman with six hands in the last frame of that meme. Except I don’t have six hands.

And I’m sure someone will like to comment that the chores are the same no matter if one parent stays home or if both work, and someone might even be right.

All I can say is I want to write during naptime. The trick here is to get both kids to nap at the same time. And have that time be uninterrupted with diapers or random screams or anything else of the sort.

I know the conventional wisdom is to sleep while the baby sleeps. Well, it doesn’t work. I have to be beyond exhausted to get my body and brain to agree to a nap, and even then the smallest disturbance knocks me out of it. I “wake” feeling more fatigued than when I attempted the nap.

So unless I know I can manage at least an hour uninterrupted, I’d rather be productive. I can blog, I can meditate, I can plot, I can write my 750, I can even research potential markets – all of these things are contributing to my career goals.

Right. I admit it. I have career goals and part of it is to stay at home.

Naps don’t last forever, and I’m probably pushing it with my daughter nearing three. My son seems very resistant to napping during the time she deigns to be quiet. Somehow, I will make it work. Determination can make things happen that otherwise wouldn’t.

But if anyone does know how to switch diaper times from 2 am and 2pm to 8 am and 8 pm, I’d be grateful. Or, really, any time when we’d already be awake. Domestic chores are trying my patience. It must be time for more yoga.

I am determined to keep writing, despite the dishes daring me to put just one more on the stack, and the laundry sitting to become riddled with wrinkles. It’s a lot to do. Most of the time I’d just prefer to ignore it, though somehow that only makes it worse when the time comes to tackle the chores.

It always returns to plot. I have less trouble with my characters getting in line. I have been taking time out this month to try to correct my plot fizzling issues. Somehow I know there must be a way to carry everything through to the end while being true to my original vision of what the novel is supposed to say (and why I don’t have aliens land on the kitchen table in my contemporary YA).

To that end, I have been trying out several different ways to see a plot through, from randomly typing out from the beginning (which is why I know it isn’t working for me) to setting everything out scene by scene (which I know runs a large risk of me taking a left turn about halfway through).

I always liked the look of traditional outlines but never thought they fit me very well. Or maybe I just liked that they had such an orderly form with the roman numerals and all the other stuff thrown in. Lately I’ve also attempted to type a bare bones summary in prose form to see where that led me. Turns out the answer was ‘in circles’. I still use that method to organize my thoughts to find connections between pieces that I’m not sure fit together but seem to have possibilities.

Then I also stumbled into some worksheets. You can find them in books, too, like First Draft in 30 Days or Book in a Month. I haven’t progressed to filling them out in order, but taking time to pour over them has pushed my thinking into that kind of system. What was the climax? What is my internal or external conflict? What else do I need to get my characters from point A to point B or what obstacle do they need to overcome in order to get to this spot?

While they can be a good tool, I’m also trying not to stuff too much into them. I like giving my characters a little room to breathe while they get through the novel. When I originally drafted Don’t Tell Your Mother I only had a vague notion of what the end was going to be, and then as I got to each segment I’d write a sentence about what the next scene would be so I wouldn’t lose my place in the story if I got interrupted. [It really is a bummer, but there comes a time I must sleep.]

I’ve also read lately about Scrivener (which I thought I had blogged about, but apparently I just looked at it) being a good tool for novelists because of the functionality to rearrange things at ease. There are other software programs that also do this kind of thing, and I’m sure each has advantages and disadvantages.

It’s going to take some time for me to perfect my method of plotting, and I might just come to the conclusion that each project takes something different and it will depend entirely on my inner vision of the story. If nothing else, I’m enjoying learning the different methods and how each might be implemented to help (or hinder) my progress.

What do you choose to use to plot novels? Have you tried other methods? What did that teach you about your writing and plotting?

How do you measure success?

Success ought to be achieving goals that you set out for yourself, but it isn’t that simple. While we place goals in front of ourselves, the pieces that determine whether or not we are successful are often out of our hands. Do you set straightforward goals with singular paths to achieve them?

Sometimes it isn’t about giving up or staying the course. Sometimes it is about how success is defined. Another friend of mine, Michelle Tuesday, runs a music school. A guy came in one day to sell her the option of a better page rank. Michelle knows her page rank, her analytics, and how to reach her customers. A page rank may or may not lead to more students in her school. She defines success as keeping her students happy and building her studio. These are measurable goals and she can track how she’s doing.

I sometimes have issues with this. While I am not counting the comments in my success, I love to get them. I can see how when so much time is spent crafting posts to put in the blog that it can be easy to see that lack as a failure whether it is or not. How many other things are easier to count as failures rather than how success ought to be measured? Is this just another way we give ourselves permission to give up on our pursuits?

I remember when I sold lia sophia jewelry I had a manager who defined success as getting out there. She encouraged us to get ‘no’ answers, because we were trying. I wrote the word NO on a piece of paper 50 times trying to hear that from my customers. While I think I did manage to get yes as an answer, I did also hear the word No a lot. The trick was not to let it shut you down. Getting out there meant becoming a success.

In some ways I treat my creative pursuits the same way. I get out there. I send stories for publication. I share them with friends. I blog and keep up with Facebook and converse on Twitter. Has that sold a million copies of my book? Not even close. Here and there my book does get shared, and every now and then I get feedback from someone who read it. That is what I love. I know I’m out there. I’m sharing with people. It won’t make me rich, but it does make me happy.

Next time you set a goal for yourself, try to make sure that the path to success is within your ability to achieve. What other ways do you define success?

It’s not something we’re ready for at all times. The idea hits me and I want to run with it. The problem comes along later, when I realize the idea was not fully formed and is in dire need of tweaks and research and who knows what else… And when I run into that wall I end up with a partial draft of something that I’m not sure what to do with, because the idea takes a turn every time I actually finish the front end stuff.

Somehow that leads me to the idea I wasn’t quite ready to write it when I started setting fingers to keyboard. Later, when the ideas mature, I can put them in different combinations and make something better.

Example: I just pulled two ideas from my snippets and merged them with another idea I came up with more recently. While they were not related at first, this time they seem more suited to weaving together. Once I started down that path, a torrent of words spewed forth. Then I read my old notes and found nuances I had forgotten. I’m still trying to pin them together.

I’m not sure if it’s enough to write that novel yet. I have a couple different viewpoints I want to show in this world I’m creating, but I haven’t figured that all out yet. So it might be a few novellas woven together into a book. It might also be a series. Sometimes it’s hard to know exactly how much I have to say before it begins.

Other times I am not sure if I’m ready to say exactly what needs to be said. At least I have time to manage to think about it. I am focusing on editing my last manuscript (still working due to moving and having a baby and everything else that gets in the way of pure writing pursuits), yet in the meantime I still doodle and dream up this alternate place that sings to me when my creative side takes hold.

I’m not sure I’m ready to write it yet. The two year old and the two week old are definitely taking most of my waking hours and will continue to do that for some time. I’m also not sure what my message is, but somehow the idea won’t leave me alone for the moment.

It’s a little like when the unicorn kept telling me he was the one who wanted to skewer my last protagonist. Silly unicorn, she’s got her own magic to protect her. Now if only she could control it… But that’s another story that hasn’t quite been finished yet. I promise I will when I’m ready. The question of how to know when I’m ready troubles me, but I write hundreds of thousands of words in a year (250k+ last year). I have time to figure out drafts and redraft them later.

I’ll admit it would be seriously more efficient if I could figure that all out before I start drafting, but so far I haven’t been able to help myself. What do you do when that idea takes hold of your brain and won’t let go? Do you write it? Do you start building the world? Do you outline (or whatever other plot devices you use to figure it out before you write)? Or do you take a little snippet and let it simmer for later?

However, in the quest to be less attached to physical objects – the question keeps surfacing with as much as I read about the subject. Some laud Twitter as bringing people to make their updates in a succinct style, while others study that writers are wordier when they write directly into digital methods rather than on paper first and then transcribing later.

I’m sure most of that would be true in varying degrees depending on the writer. Some writers can go on and on about all kinds of things, while others make certain they boil it down to the most essential substance. It’s part of an individual style as much as anything else. I’m not sure wordiness can be equated with quality on any level. Some swear by the 1000 page novels and others prefer short pieces that don’t span the full page.

My moving saga has taken me away from my laptop with the two monitor system that I had in my little library. I love stacks of books surrounding me while I type out my next piece. Some of those books are blank and others are binders with hard copies littered with comments in varying colors. [I love using colorful ink.] The other missing part of my setup is the printer. It’s in storage for a time and I’m learning to compensate with different ways for that.

It’s not so bad. But I haven’t found a new writer’s group yet. I’ve been finding ways to not just write online, but also edit. I can’t say whether I’ve found all the ways to manage what I need. I’ve managed to critique a couple things from friends, and that’s been quite an experience to get the apps on my iPad running the way I want them. I keep thinking just one more… just one more…

I’m curious about other writers who manage without paper. It seems like a less physically demanding way to survive without the stacks of manuscripts covering the desk. Do writers exist in paperless environments, even on a temporary basis?

I write, therefore I exist — even without my comforting paper clutter. Right?

Right now I’m a stay-at-home mother. The writing is a side gig that occurs mostly when my little one sleeps. The SAHM gig is not to be regarded in any way less demanding or rewarding than other career options, but a statement that my time is claimed. Life hinders my productivity in domestic tasks, but I don’t tell my two-year-old that she can’t get out her toys, even if it does look like a war zone. We’re learning to pick them all up before bedtime.

More often we point our fingers to the obvious procrastination markers like Facebook or Twitter and try to justify them as promotion. I recently ran into an article saying how people ought to only check that stuff twice a day. I’m not sure how that’d work for Twitter, but Facebook would be easy enough.

Maybe the trick to becoming a productive moonlighting writer is to know why you’re writing and not just the things that are also taking up that coveted downtime. I write because I love exploring new worlds through fiction. I love stringing sentences together (even if they’re not very good at first) and sharing them with others. I enjoy the struggle to find the right words to portray something in my head. With that in mind, I crank out a lot of words.

Over 250,000 words since I began writing at 750words last May. I had no idea I could be so prolific. Sure, I’ve done NaNoWriMo and completed the challenge without breaking a sweat or trying to finish in the 11th hour, but I haven’t kept track of what I do normally. While the 750words site has focused me to write every day and not in the fits and starts I had done before, it also keeps track of what I’ve done since I joined.

I don’t have a full novel written there yet. My last project has morphed into something I’m not sure I’m ready to tackle just yet and I’m working on editing a young adult manuscript more than whipping a wayward work-in-progress into shape.

The other thing I really like about those kinds of statistics is it will track how long it takes me to spew out my words. Some days are a struggle, full of distractions and nearly an hour sessions spent trying to find words. Others can be as short as seven minutes to make the minimum word count. A couple have been spent with a timer and an idea and simply throwing out the ideas as fast as my brain can make it up.

Of the times when my daughter is asleep, I rarely wake before she does. So between writing during her afternoon nap and after she goes to sleep at night, I am much more productive in the afternoon hours and try to take advantage of that. I also shut down other distractions like Facebook.

Lately I feel like I’ve been just waiting, waiting, waiting for the baby to be born. [If you believe the computer, I'm due today. If you believe the 8-week ultrasound, I was due yesterday.]  That’s been hindering my productivity more than I like to admit. How much could be done while I’m not feeling the best but not as sleep-deprived as I soon will be? Another blog post? Another article read? Another chapter edited? Another story written? Another submission sent off?

I’ve managed to get my iPad mostly in order to be my productivity station on the go. I only have three games loaded on it. Mostly I have been reading a bunch of articles and keeping up through other social outlets. When the games become a serious time sink, I’ll have to let them go, too. It’s always good to have goals and keep them in view to know what can be achieved.

I believe goals ought to be flexible and intended to stretch abilities. When I see the goals I want to make happen, I work harder to keep those results at the top of my list. When I allow for life or other things to intrude, I make it more likely that I will stick with the goal instead of just throw in the towel. Take 750words as one example: I haven’t written every day since I joined on May 1. I’ve missed 12 days. Most of them were in a row during a difficult couple weeks. I’ve given myself permission to lose a day or two with the impending baby, though I’m trying not to use that.

Whatever hinders me is something I allow to happen. My choices lead me to where I will be next. Not everything has to be productive – not every moment, not every choice, not every little detail – but I manage to get things done. Maybe that’s just because no one’s sold me on a reason to spend 3000 hours on a WoW profile…

What do you think about productivity and downtime and how they affect your writing and your goals?

Good enough is a troublesome concept. It’s not just whether or not a piece is well-written. There are so many things to take into consideration, like the overall market and whether or not the editor likes it. Then when the rejection comes through, you wonder if you’d just worked a little harder, made just one little change, if it would have been okay.

I can’t be the only one wondering these things. I don’t let it stop me from sending things out. I aim high. I get rejected. I try not to let it get to me. It’s not easy.

This time I got lucky, or I just had a great fit with The Storm is Coming anthology.

My story, The Rescuers, is one I wrote a time ago, but it always sounded like Chapter 3 in a novel. I needed time to focus it into something much better. It happens that way sometimes, when you have a good premise but the writing doesn’t quite follow through on the promise.

It helps to not give up on yourself or the story that needs to be told. Sometimes that short story has to be made into a novel, but other times it can work if other pieces are different. I throw out a lot of rough drafts, and some of them I tweak endlessly (or so it seems) and others pop out fully formed and ready to be something.

I guess it just reminds me of that saying where you write what you are ready to write. Sometimes we have ideas we aren’t ready to tackle at the moment. Other times we tackle them and falter, but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep revisiting the idea until it gels.

There might be more to this Rescuers story later. I can’t say whether or not the characters will try to push their other adventures into my head or if I randomly run across something I know has to fit into their world. For now, I’m extremely excited to be slated for the upcoming anthology and waiting to see what else is in store from Sleeping Cat Books.

So the editing must have other things about it to make it into different piles. Do you plan out each step of the rewrite? Do you take it in sections? Do you just read and change it on the fly as you go?

Somehow it gets hard to focus on a rewrite when there are so many things to look at. I have been slowly going through the manuscript. I have a plan, but it does not take shape all at once. The latest thing I have been working on is the teen romance plot line. I don’t find that the easiest thing to do, but just taking that one part has made it easier.

Easier, possibly, but I find myself distracted by all the other pieces that need changing, too. Now and then the other things sneak in and they get tweaked. Overall it makes for a quicker change of the parts that absolutely contradicted the things I am working toward. Then I can bring out the more subtle pieces when the framework is in place.

It takes me a lot of time. I also get a little frustrated when I see how quickly those sections get read when they are polished. I could spend hours on a paragraph that the reader takes in less than 10 seconds. But if they enjoy it, all is well.

And they do say it takes thirty days to make or break a new habit. So what is it about resolutions that don’t stick? Perhaps it is because so many of us are trying to change things that are difficult to change. We also try the same things year after year and fail every time.

There is something about the new year that makes people want to try something new, correct bad habits, or just move out of the rut from the previous year.

I had a good year last year. So it isn’t a rut I am avoiding, unless it would be the part where I am having a baby and should figure that out before attempting to write a dozen novels. [A dozen novels in a year, you say? Possible, I think, but not in a year I have a baby.]

I already have a few goals to meet, like figuring out how to finish my manuscript and finish the next draft of the work in progress. The deadlines extend through the move and the upcoming baby. While I think it is important to keep making progress, I also believe that it is more important to make adjustments for things that happen instead of calling myself a failure.

Calling myself a failure will never give me anything but grief. So pardon me while I wait on some of those resolutions while I adjust the current goals for my circumstances. I hope all of you manage as well in your current and future endeavors.

When I was a child, holidays never stressed me out. It was a break from school, time to read as many books as I could fit into the time, and time to be excited about exchanging gifts.

Somehow as adulthood approaches, there are more pressures. We want things to be special for the kids- and in my family we have a great 7-year Santa tradition that none of us want to miss. Each year since my daughter’s birth we’ve sent out pictures of at least her with Santa. This year’s holiday card had a picture of my daughter hugging Santa, plus one of the four of us (my husband, my daughter, Santa, and me).

My husband and I were super organized during our recent relocation, and we had the labels printed off before we moved as well as a short letter to explain our recent developments (baby due in January, promotion and move). We had the cards printed and ready to send out by 1 December, but it took me another week to buy stamps. Some years the holiday cards feel like such a strain to get them all out with everything else going on. Yet I love receiving them from others and seeing how others change.

Then there’s always the question of gifts. I love shopping and finding a great gift someone on my list will love. Because I’m due in less than three weeks and a little restricted for travel, it changed how we normally celebrate the holidays. Most of my shopping was completed Black Friday and most of our gifts exchanged on the next day.

This year also marks a change in my attitude. We moved for my husband’s job about a month ago. We’re in temporary housing so we didn’t have to worry about all that while the baby was imminent. There’s only so much we can do at once, right? But with these two moves (one to temporary housing, one to a more permanent residence), it has me realizing that it won’t be a permanent residence, most likely. Just a more permanent one.

That makes me more willing to part with items that clutter up our living space, and more selective on the things I want to purchase for gifts. So part of my daughter’s gift was a museum membership (that we’re already enjoying). My husband often asks for clothes, so it makes it easy to keep him happy and well-dressed.

One of the few things I’m not willing to part with, or even entertain a discussion about getting rid of, are my books. No, they’re not easy to move. They’re heavy and bulky and I have a lot of them. Many more than goodreads would have you believe. One day I’ll catch up with that, but it won’t be in the near future. I love books and reading and writing.

“I cannot live without books.” Thomas Jefferson

I have been modifying some of my writing techniques, but I miss my printer. I have been accustomed to writing in a digital setting for some time, but I don’t always have access to my saved copies. Most of it is again at my fingertips, but I’m still using different computers than I’d gotten accustomed to in my home office. Not to mention that lovely iPad 2 I got for my birthday and the bluetooth keyboard I (already) received for Christmas (from that favorite sister-in-law).

The questions become how to keep it all compiled nicely where I can find it, and also how do I bypass the print and edit/revise/proofread step(s). At home I had novels trapped in binders that I could take with me to writing groups or simply lend to a friend who wanted to read the one up for revision. But those paper copies make it so easy to mark notes in margins and replace words I don’t like.

My current issues are organization of my digital files and keeping tabs on the draft copy I’m revising. Once I moved I realized I wasn’t sure where my best copy of in-progress revisions were hiding. Oops. While that’s partly under control, it tells me what else I need to do in order to be more productive.

Yes, productivity and efficiency are at the bottom of everything, from holiday shopping to organization to making a new place feel like home. Or maybe my household is just practical that way.

Happy Holidays! May your new year bring in many wonderful things.