All Work and No Play...

I'm in the midst of revising rewrites.  Sounds crazy, doesn't it?  I've rewritten 30,000 words of a nearly 60,000 word manuscript over the past month.  Not the most fun way to spend the first day of a new year, but it is what it is, and nobody will do it for me.

Monday is my goal to have this done and sent to my editor.  At the rate I'm going, there'll need to be an extension.  The holidays, family, and friends have taken more time than I'd planned, but I don't care.  Family and friends are important, and I won't give them up for anything.

I haven't made it through the first of the eleven chapters yet.  I've been making notes, re-reading the notes from my editor, and making more notes.  One way or another, I'll shove, pull, smash and whatever else it takes to get this right.  Or as right as it can be.

No, writing isn't always a joy.  I have a feeling of dread that the new writing I've done on this may be a bunch of dreck and not at all what it should be.  On the other hand, I know there are some things that are better than they were.  Definitely not the same, that's for sure.  I'm rethinking everything, probably more than I should.  Paranoia is rattle the door to my mind, but I'm trying to ignore it.  Final deadline for this is January 20, giving me a little more time.  But I have a February 24 deadline for another book, so...

I work weekends, evenings, late nights, and whatever small bits of time I can find during the weekdays.  Very little time for TV and fun things, although our family enjoyed Christmas together and New Year's Eve was spent playing Trivial Pursuit and ringing in 2014 with oldest daughter, granddaughter, son-in-law and my youngest daughter.  Today my four girls (and their children) went to their dad's for a grilled chicken dinner.  I'm sure they left stuffed and satisfied.  A good thing, since time to cook at my house has shrunk.

But today I'm revising those rewrites and probably writing a few more new words...to take the place of the ones that will need dumped.  Such is the life of a writer.

Daughters are back, so it's time to hear how their afternoon went.  I hope you and yours started the new year on a high note, and 2014 is filled with everything good.  Stay well, stay happy!

May your New Year flourish with new discoveries, wonderful inspirations, and happiness to fill your heart. ~ unknown

Ring it Out, Ring it In

It's that time of year again.  The end of the year.  For most, it's a time of reflection on the past year to make room for improvements in the new year.

Of course we want the new year to be better than the one before.  Life is a cycle of ups and down,  good things and not so good.  We all know this, but when we're hunkering at the bottom of not so good, it's hard to remember that things change.

Millions of people will make New Year's Resolutions tonight.  I don't do that.  Each time I have, they've vanished into the stratosphere in only a matter of days.  I've learned to be more goal oriented, but even that could use some tuning, and not something as easy as fine-tuning.  I'm working on that.

I've decided to blame all the bad things this year on the number of the year, itself.  I mean, look at it.  See that 13?  No, I don't really believe the number 13 is bad luck.  Expecting bad luck simply draws it into the real world.  But it's a nice excuse on which to blame those bad things.

If I could have one wish, it would to be like J.K. Rowling.  Not so much because of the fame and wealth, but what I could do with those two things.  I have a friend who recently started working in a homeless shelter here in our "fair" city.  She started just in time for Christmas, and she told me about a little girl.  I don't know how old the girl is, but she'd wanted a doll for Christmas.  Disappointed when it didn't appear, the girl's comment was, "I wanted a doll, but Santa ran out of them before he got to me, and I got gloves."  I have no doubt those gloves were needed, but imagine the joy on that little girl's face, if Santa hadn't run out of dolls.

The shelter is in need of coats.  New, only, because laws don't permit "used clothing" in this situation.  If I had J.K. Rowling's bank account, I'd buy they each person there, young, old, or in-between, a coat.  And a doll for that little girl.  Maybe next year?

I've been blessed this year with lessons learned.  Several of them within the past two months.  Those are the things I want to focus on as 2014 plays itself out.  I guess that is a sort of resolution.  If it is, so be it.  Or, as Captain Picard always said, "Make it so."

I hope you can "Make it so" this year in whatever way you choose.  Because, you know, life is a succession of choices.  When it comes to good ones, make it so.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Ring Out the Old...

MOTIVATION MONDAY

This is it.  The last holiday...the last day...of 2012.  It's a time to reflect on the year that has past.  A time to remember our successes and and celebrate them.  It's also a time to look at those things that weren't a success and learn why.

I've said it here before, and I'm going to repeat it.  I don't make New Year's Resolutions.  Why?  Because like most people, the majority of those resolutions never see the light of day.  We have good intentions.  Excellent intentions, in fact.  But they lack what's needed to succeed.

Instead of making resolutions, I set goals.  Not only do I set a goal, but I also plan a path to reach it.  I try to make sure the goal can be achieved, because setting a goal that's impossible to attain is a waste of time and energy.

Did you set any goals for 2012?  Any kind of goal.  It could have been a writing goal, a self-improvement goal, or anything you felt you needed as a positive push in you life.  I set a writing goal, along with my fellow WARA members, and I'm happy to say I not only reached it, but surpassed it.  Later in the year, I set a goal to walk a mile or two at least five days a week.  I didn't do as well with that goal, once the really hot summer weather arrived...and stayed.  But for almost two months I worked on it, so it wasn't a complete fail.  Simply trying is a positive.

If you haven't given any thought to setting a goal for 2013, that's okay.  There's still time.  If not today and tonight, then over the next week or month or whenever you discover you need motivation to get you start and keep you going.  Working on the goals we set is motivation in action.

May 2013 be your year to shine!

Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. - Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Final Friday

Have you set your goals for 2013?

It's Final Friday, the last Friday of 2012.  There are only four days left of this year to begin, work on, and finish the list of goals we'll be working toward next year.  This time next week, we'll be four days into the new year.

It's goal setting time!

It's hard to stay productive without knowing where and how you're going.  That's how goals help us.  My local writing group has been working on a goal all year.  Actually, we've each had our own word goal which is part of the overall word goal of the entire group.  We'll be talking about a new word count challenge at our January meeting and how we can make it more successful than this one.  We've all learned something this year about goals and writing, so next year can be even better.  The following are a few of those things I learned over the past few years when setting and trying to reach goals.

• Murphy's Law of Goals: When working on a goal, especially a year-long one, life will always intrude.  Try to build in extra time when setting your goal.  If it's early in the goal and you discover you're behind, there's still time to make up for lost ground.  Write an extra page or the equivalent word count of a page each day or twice a week.  Your odds for catching up are fairly good.  If it's later in your goal, just keep working and don't worry about the deficit.  Any progress, no matter how small, is PROGRESS.
• Never give up because you've fallen behind.  Dumping a goal is the worst thing you can do.  Giving up gets you nowhere, and you'll always wish you'd kept going.  Recognize why you're not staying on goal and try to correct it, if possible.  If not, keep going.  Sometimes miracles DO happen!
• Don't expect perfection.  Write first, polish later.  It's easy to write a few pages, then spend days, even weeks, going back over and fixing this little thing and that little thing, never making real progress. It's true that we can polish the shine out of anything we work to death.  Never surrender.  Write now.  Fix later.  Remember, you can't fix a blank page, except by putting words on it.
• Have a road map of where you're going.  Whether your goal is two pages a day or ten, having an idea of where your story is going and who your characters are will make the writing much easier.  This doesn't mean you have to have a complex plot, complete with twenty page synopsis.  It simply means that you need to have a solid idea of who the story is about, what's going to happen to him/her/them, and how the conflicts will be resolved.  Plan ahead.  If that means planning only a few scenes or chapters ahead, go for it.  Having an idea of what's going to happen when you sit down to write will be one step closer to getting words on paper.
• Celebrate each small goal you reach.  We all tend to be harder on ourselves than we should be.  When we don't reach a goal, we frown, grumble and brood.  When we do reach a goal, we too often don't give ourselves even something as simple as a pat on the back or a "Way to go!"  Reward yourself, even if it's nothing more than an hour reading, watching TV, napping, or spending extra time with family or friends.

What did I learn this year?  Taking a look at my stats-to-date, I see I need to make some changes.  I'm amazed that I surpassed the word count I'd set as my goal.  This past year, my word count total included both regular book writing and also blog writing.  In 2013, I plan to significantly raise my regular writing goal and keep the blog word count separate from it.  This year my word count goal will be 175,000 words.  Having learned that I can write more than I thought I could, there's no reason not to raise my goal.  

For those who set a goal for this year, but missed meeting it, don't give up.  A new year is just around the corner, and learning from our mistakes is a blessing.

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day. - Edith Lovejoy Pierce