photo courtesy remind on sxc

A year or so ago, I was watching an episode of HGTV’s Design Star. (I like home decorating reality shows. Don’t be judgy.)  They were staging a kitchen for a photo shoot for a catalog, and one of the judges mentioned that one of the designs “showed no editing ability whatsoever.”

A little bell went off in the back of my head. It was the first time I’d ever really thought about editing as something that extended beyond writing, and out into the three-dimensional world.  The judge was right; the contestants had just dumped everything they could think of into the design, and had never gone back and pulled anything out that wasn’t working.

I was thinking about this a couple weeks ago, because I’m going through the process of editing my closets. I think editing sounds much nicer than “purging,” which sounds like something unhealthy and gross. Unless you accidentally consumed some hemlock, in which case, purging is absolutely the right thing to do.

So in editing my daughter’s room, we sorted everything into:

1. Outright trash (of which there was a disgustingly large amount.)
2. Clothes she’d outgrown that were bound for younger cousins or Goodwill.
3. Clothes and toys that she simply didn’t really like.
4. Things that were broken, had pieces lost, or were otherwise probably unusable.
5. Clothes and toys that fit, were fit to use/wear, and that she liked.

And this is how I ended up toting 11 garbage bags of stuff out of her room over the course of about 2 weeks. It was EXHAUSTING.

After that, I tackled my own closet. My issue was a little different. I didn’t have a ton of clothes or shoes, and most of the things I owned I liked and fit me. I just didn’t have any “outfits.” There was no organization or forethought; I just tend to buy pieces I like, and that often doesn’t translate to a wardrobe of workable outfits.

This was where the editing metaphor really served me well. Because I understand editing isn’t just cutting out what isn’t working. It’s often reorganizing and adjusting what might work, if it were just presented in the right place.

This was also kind of exhausting. I started with the same sorting I did in Maddy’s room, although it was much faster. There was no trash or toys, and only a few things that outright didn’t fit or weren’t fit to wear. I also culled a few things that I will put down to bad judgment.  And then I started building outfits, in the same way you start pulling coherent scenes and chapters together from random characters, situations and bits of prose.

I think at one point Chris thought I was nuts, because I had literally every item of clothing I own except underwear and heavy coats pulled out and covering every surface of my bedroom. I even matched shoes, belts and jewelry. It was a little crazy.

But at the end, I had 5 really nice professional outfits, a couple of nice church outfits, and of course, several sets of t-shirts and jeans. I knew what went where.  I knew EXACTLY what two or three items I really needed to buy complete a couple of outfits, and I went shopping and got exactly those items.  It was pretty spectacular.

It will take some work to keep things organized, but in exchange for two days work (counting the shopping), less than $100 in purchases made me feel like I had an entire new wardrobe.

What about you? What are some other areas of life where editing skills could be of use?

If you are not an aspiring author, and you are not into steampunk, and you did not grow up reading & adoring Andrew Lang’s “Coloured Fairy Tale Books,” it is hard for me to describe exactly how much awesome is packed into that one sentence.

So after squealing just a little, I read the call for submissions. I got very excited and started tossing some ideas around and finally hit on one that I liked. A lot. Like, “I’m going to write this thing even if I never get a publisher interested in it.”  I ran the idea past a few friends who shared my taste in fiction. They all loved it.

So I sent in my first ever fiction query letter.

If you want to be an author, the first thing you learn is that you will have to face a lot of rejection. In reading Stephen King’s On Writing last year, he devotes a lot of space to all the rejections he got before his first short story was accepted for publication, and before Carrie was accepted.  How it’s supposed to work is, first you submit and get form rejection letters, if any response at all.

After a while you submit, and get rejection letters with specific and helpful feedback.

Then, glory of glories, you get an acceptance.

As a copywriter, I’m used to rejection. I was prepared for rejection.

I didn’t get a rejection.

We will fast forward past the part where I screamed like a bobby soxer at a Beatles concert, and ran yelling around my house, waving my Windows Phone with the acceptance email like it was the Olympic torch on the last lap to the stadium. In case you were wondering, I have absolutely no decorum whatsoever.

In short, this is my official That Darn Kat announcement: I’m going to be published.

I am currently writing a novella, a steampunk version of The Snow Queen called Bitter Cold.

Echelon Press will be including it in an anthology called Once Upon a Clockwork Tale.  It will also include steampunk versions of The Wild Swans, Jack & the Beanstalk, and Hansel & Gretel.

It’ll be available in paperback and eBook in February, 2013.

 Their previous steampunk title, Her Majesty’s Mysterious Conveyance, is currently available on Amazon.

I’ll be posting more details as they become available. When it gets closer to time for publication, I may be doing some contests to give away free eBooks for review and other awesomeness.

To everyone who reads this blog, and has encouraged me in my writing, from the bottom of my heart THANK YOU. And whatever your  dreams are, I hope you get to experience the feeling I’m having right now.

Being a “paid professional writer” is a dream for a lot of people. If you read many blogs or websites aimed at aspiring writers, most of them talk about the pros and cons of keeping your “day job” while you work on your craft and build up to earning a living with your writing.

I’m in a little bit different position because my “day job” is also being a writer.  I do content strategy, social media and web copywriting for a digital agency. About 50% or more of my typical workload each week is writing. So I already earn a living writing. But I’m still an “aspiring writer” in the sense that I haven’t had a lengthy work of fiction published in print, and that’s a goal I care about.

It can be both good and bad when you are already a working writer, who would like to expand or transition into a different kind of writing.  On the positive side, you get lots of great practice with the basic tools of language, grammar and usage. Business writing, including blog posts, online articles, pithy social media updates and technical manuals, can all improve your writing skills.  If you can keep a reader interested when writing about choosing a payment processing company, you’ll be better equipped to keep them interested when writing the necessary exposition in your novel.

The kind of writing I do is also excellent practice for overcoming procrastination, which typically plagues writers. The client really does not care that you aren’t in the mood to write about plumbing, law or dentistry today. They don’t care that your Muse is giving you the cold shoulder. The deadline is the deadline. Unless you’re genuinely overbooked and need an extension (which is rare in my case), you’re going to have to just suck it up and start putting words together.

On the other hand, when you’re already spending several hours a day writing, it can sometimes be tough to come home and write some more.  If you’re trying to get published, building up an author platform is another thing that can take up a lot of time, and requires even more writing.  So if you aren’t truly passionate and excited about this new milieu of writing, you may find that you’re “all written out” at the end of every day.

There’s also what I like to call “the Icarus factor.” When you’ve aspired for years to earn a living writing, and you achieve that goal, you may feel like setting a further goal to master a new frontier of writing is “reaching too far.” There’s a certain temptation to think that you should be happy where you are, and that striving for something more is hubris. (And we all know where hubris leads our heroes, don’t we?)

But mostly, that’s just silly dysfunctional thinking. If you were a good enough writer to get a full time job doing it, it’s likely you’re a good enough writer to succeed in another medium of writing as well.  And your current writing will probably only benefit from you stretching yourself as a writer by trying a different format and style.

Most writing coaches recommend that you don’t give up your day job, because the financial stress of being unemployed can make creativity hard. I’m grateful that I’ve already achieved an earlier life goal of earning my living primarily through writing.  Would I love to have my fiction work published? Sure.  Is it sometimes hard to sit down and write, after a full day of writing? Absolutely. But as long as I have stories in my head, I’ll keep trying.

What about you? Has reaching a particular goal in life made you more or less willing to keep pushing for new goals? Would you get tired of writing (or cooking, or playing tennis, or whatever you’re passionate about) if it were a “day job” and a hobby?

In the video, a clearly exasperated North Carolina dad reads a foul-mouthed, disrespectful post his 15 year old daughter put on Facebook, thinking she could block him from viewing it. Apparently she failed to consider that (A) her dad worked in IT, (B) she’d been busted for similar bad behavior before, and (C) in upgrading her laptop, he’d have access to her Facebook account. So in response, after reading her diatribe on the video, he shot her laptop several times with a gun and posted the video to her Facebook wall.

The video spread like wildfire for a lot of reasons.

• First, I think the whole tale of Facebook being the last stand, line-in-the-sand battleground between a rebellious teen  and frustrated parents hit a nerve.
• Second, YouTube videos of things getting shot or blown up are oddly compelling, even without the additional layer of domestic drama.
• Third, you’ve got a clear opportunity for judging and condemning the behavior of others you know almost nothing about, which is like internet flypaper.

Put those three things together, and yes, you’ve absolutely got a perfect recipe for a “viral hit.”

In watching the video, and watching the reactions to the video, a few things came to mind.

Parenting is not about your ego. A few people commented that the dad overreacted because his pride had been injured by his kid’s Facebook rant. I agree that letting your ego, pride or potential embarrassment drive your parenting decisions will make for an exhausting experience for you and your kids.  That said, we’re all human. If you think you’re going to get through parenting a kid to adulthood without ever making a decision motivated by embarrassment at their behavior, you don’t have any kids yet, or your kid has never had a nuclear meltdown in public.  Still, often the last thing you want with a teen is to create an escalating power struggle, which is what seems to have happened with these two.

Your reaction to the video is related to your personal experiences with guns, violence and family dynamics. I grew up in a rural area, in a home with several guns. My dad actually did the whole “cleaning his guns to scare off his daughters’ boyfriends” thing. My grandpa Fred once shot a shotgun at some stray cats on his property from inside a mobile home (and no, Granny wasn’t too pleased.) My reaction to the dad using his kid’s laptop for target practice was probably different than someone with no real exposure to guns. But I grew up in a family where shooting things for entertainment was pretty typical behavior, and I also didn’t grow up in a home where there was violence or abuse. YMMV.

I’m not convinced there’s no place for “shock and awe” in the parenting playbook. Giant caveat: some kids would take what this dad did, and use it as an excuse to escalate their behavior. Then again, there are kids who would take a rational, reasoned response like getting grounded from their laptop as a sign of weakness, and immediately start concocting their next mission in “Showing Mom and Dad they’re not the boss of me.”  Parenting is not a paint-by-numbers affair. We really know almost nothing about this guy and his kid, or their overall relationship. It’s a seven minute YouTube video. No matter how many views it racks up in the few weeks of shelf life it has, it’ll be a blip on the viewscreen of the internet for a nanosecond. It’s important to give kids grace and room to make mistakes. It’s also sometimes appropriate to let them see that they aren’t the masters of the universe and immune to expected or even completely unexpected consequences.

image via guidnunc on sxc

Nora fiddled with the top button on her heavy coat. It would be time to leave soon. She was worried about Arthur. He was prone to taking a long time in the bathroom, especially on long trips. Travel did not agree with his delicate constitution.

They were due to leave on the 5′o clock train, though, and at nearly five minutes till five, he was still nowhere to be found.

She picked up her jaunty red traveling hat from the train station bench and perched it atop her shiny, sleek brown hair. She picked up her purse, and strode over to the men’s room door. She had been planning this trip down to minute detail for months. She wasn’t going to let Arthur’s indignant digestion derail her carefully laid plans.

“Arthur?” she called, in a saccharin-sweet dulcet tone.

“Arthur?” Now she was a bit more strident. The clock ticked on.

“ARTHUR!” She had finally arrived at shrill. But still there was no answer.

Undaunted, she crept cautiously into the men’s room. There didn’t appear to be anyone inside. She walked back to the last stall. A flash of yellow caught her eye.

Arthur’s yellow scarf was dangling out the window. Nora’s mouth dropped agape in shock. By this time, Arthur was on another train, on what Nora would call the wrong track, heading away very far and very fast.

img courtesy sxc

Yesterday, I spent 5+ hours cleaning my 7 year old daughter’s bedroom. I had spent several additional hours a week or so ago just going through her clothing and purging anything that didn’t fit, was unfit to wear, or that she just didn’t like.

All together, I removed 11 trash bags of stuff from her bedroom, which is about a 10′ x 11′ space. About half of that went to Goodwill, and half of it went to the dumpster.  Here’s the really crazy thing: I did basically the same thing a year and a half ago when she, her brother, and her dad all went to Arizona on vacation.

At one point, I had her stuff spread out covering the kitchen table, all down the hallway, and in various piles in her room. I was burning daylight trying to get it purged to the point that we could let the dog back into the house without fear that he’d eat something toxic or dangerous. (He’s a pug. They’re not smart animals.) 

But I did get it all done, and now she has easy access to the stuff she loves and uses regularly, and when I tell her to pick up her stuff and put it away, there’s actually more “away space” than stuff.

You have no idea how badly I was dreading tackling this task. For one thing, she has a bad habit of sneaking food into her room. I was pretty certain I was going to find gross stuff (and I did). It was a dirty, nasty, hard, unpleasant task.

But I’m so glad I did it, and that I stuck with the task till it was completely done.

I think decluttering your physical environment emotionally resembles defragging your hard drive. Remember that? Your computer would start bogging down. You’d already done File Cleanup. So you’d go into System Tools, bite the bullet, and defrag.

You knew it would take FOREVER. You knew you couldn’t get anything else done while it was running. But you also knew that it would actually help make things faster and make it easier to get things done.

Defragmenting is basically organizing for the optimal use of the available space. That’s really what decluttering is: organizing for the optimal use of your physical space.

• Getting rid of the stuff that’s utterly useless
• Grouping similar things together, and
• Prioritizing the groups so that the stuff you use most often is most easily accessible.

This is important to our family right now. We’re either going to get a buyer for our house, or remodel it to fit our needs this year. Either way, we have to get rid of all the useless clutter. I’m sure as heck not packing and moving it. Plus, I’m working from home quite a bit right now, and the more cluttered my home gets, the harder it is to remain productive here.

I want to do a lot more writing in 2012 than I did in 2011, and it’s hard to do that when I feel the clutter screaming at me. Seriously. It screams at my soul like a wet Mogwai.  Quite distracting.

It sounds so easy, but it’s so hard to actually make yourself do it.

Partly it’s the “I might uncover disgusting stuff that I will then have to touch to get rid of it” thing. But I think the bigger part is how bad you feel about yourself for letting inanimate stuff overwhelm and master you.

But then, if you just keep trucking on, and keep addressing this thing and that thing until you eventually get to the end. And it feels wonderfully freeing.

What about you? What do you always dread doing, but always feel great after you get it done?