Back to reality

We go home tomorrow. I have LOVED this week away. The trick will be to keep taking time to relax and read and hang out with Mr. W while still getting our daily routine done.

My big task for next week is beginning to plan for the next book! Its code name is Aardvark, and I know absolutely nothing about it. :) This time, I'm trying a new system. I've been keeping a list of ideas for books, ranging from fairly solid concepts to a few words. I'm going to start each day with one idea, and spend the day playing with that idea and see what kind(s) of book it could be.

Then, the next day, I'll put it aside and go on to another idea. This, with any luck, will help me not get too panicky if an idea doesn't 'gel' right away. I did panic with Raoul, and in fact ended up ruining two previous ideas because I got so stressed about them. An idea doesn't become a full-formed book in a day, and this way I can't expect it to.

I will also go back to the gym, and will take time to decide exactly what I want and why in the 'body size' department. I'm strong and fit, but I'm fat too, and I need to decide what I want and then go after it with the same determination I go after my writing.

Finally, I'll stay out of my inboxes (email, Facebook, etc.) until 5pm or so each day, after my work day is complete. That will help me stay focused on Aardvark during the day while still keeping me in touch on a daily basis.

So, between now and next Friday:

• I will play around with at least four ideas. (I'd like to have five, but I commit to four. :) I haven't decided yet whether I'll blog them, but I do promise to do 'em!
• I will run three times, do at least one other workout, and spend at least one hour figuring out what I want from and for my body.
• I will check and empty my inboxes once daily, and process them completely while I'm in there.

Those are the biggies. I will also make sure I spend good time with Mr. W and with poor Sapphire who's been on her own all week except for twice-daily visits from our neighbour and friend, but if I reach the end of the week and can mark off the three things above, I will have kicked butt.

Two questions for you: a) what will YOU do this week that's a bit of a stretch for you? b) would you be interested in seeing the daily Aardvark progress?

Reading every day

Those of you who know me well will be shocked by this: I haven't been reading much lately. In fact, I've had to force myself to read.

As a child, I once (once!) told my parents I didn't feel like reading. They took me to the hospital. I had to have my tonsils out. I have always been a voracious reader.

But as a writer, I've been finding it increasingly hard to read. I see things that don't make sense, badly written passages and so on, in a different way than I used to, and I miss my old style of just tearing through books.

I've been trying to fix this by telling myself to read a book a week, but it hasn't worked. It's made reading a chore, and that's even worse.

So, I've made a resolution. I read a new novel for 15 minutes a day. I can read longer, of course, but 15 is all that's required. It can be an author I've read before, but only books I haven't read before count. I started the day after my birthday, and I will continue until my next birthday.

In those two weeks, I've read three novels and am partway through the fourth. True, some days I got the 15 minutes in right before bed (and I set an alarm on the Palm to make sure I truly did the full 15!) but I haven't missed a day.

Related, I'm also planning a 'three strikes' policy. I've always been one to finish books even when I hate them, but now that just doesn't seem to make sense. So, a book gets three strikes. If there are three separate instances of ridiculous characters or insane interpretations of situations or "too stupid to live" behaviour, the book is no longer worth my time.

My current book is at two strikes (one for a character, in one paragraph, going from "OMG they're demons you can't even be friends with one" to "you're pregnant by one? congrats" and being genuinely happy. urgh) and based on how it's going I anticipate the next one coming later today. :) SO then I'll just admit that this woman's best-seller status makes no sense and move on with my life.

I know I'm not the only one who'd like to read more than I do. Perhaps this resolution would work for you too? 15 minutes isn't that hard to find, but if it is make it 10, or even 5.

But do read.

June 27, 2008: Heather needs help (seriously)

Just read a blog post from Lauren McLaughlin (written back in April) in which she talks about needing time off, needing a six-week vacation.

I commented to Mr. W this morning that, while I am still loving Raoul, I'm finding it harder and harder to drop myself into that chair and make it happen. Once I'm there, it's great (really... I love the writing process) but getting there is tough. I HAVE been getting there, haven't missed a session, but the crowbar required to get me there is getting larger and larger.

I expect Raoul to be done by the end of July, and then I'd planned to spend August working on finding the next book. But what if I took a break instead?

I have been writing full-time since 2005. I finally dealt with a crippling fear of success/failure (not entirely sure it wasn't both) in early 2006, and since then there's been no time off. Since 2006, I have:
- completed the two half novels I had been stuck on (Polar Bear and a children's book I wrote for the volleyball team at the last school I worked)
- written four full first draft novels (Seven, Seven's ancestor, one that's never seen the light of day codenamed Gillian, and "The House of Her Dreams", a moderately creepy suspense I wrote for my sister). All of these also had a planning phase of 1-2 months beforehand.
- revised Polar Bear at least ten times (possibly more like 15)
- revised Seven's ancestor twice
- revised Seven twice
- spent a month fighting for Raoul's concept
- written half of Raoul's first draft

That's basically 1.5 years. I feel a wide variety of emotions re-reading this list: a little pride, mixed with awe, sprinkled with shock. HOW can I still not feel like I'm getting enough done?

Because I haven't sold yet? I don't think that's why. I've come to terms with the fact that the selling part isn't under my control and I accept that I'm writing the books first for me because I love them, and second for however many readers I can get. That's how I fixed the 2005 fears, and it's been working.

I do need a vacation. But I genuinely don't know what I'd do with myself for all that time. Taking a trip someplace for the month is not an option for a variety of reasons, so I'd be here. And how would I be here and not working?

Would reading and re-reading writing books, and taking courses, be a vacation?

How can I possibly not know what would constitute a vacation?

But I don't.

If you do, especially if you're another crazy-driven type like myself, let me know. Because I need one. Badly. Or at some point, the brain and creativity will give out and then I'll have nothing.

I get the rest concept on the exercise front. Training for marathon running makes it painfully clear - you can't just keep building. But here it feels different.

Here, I feel afraid. Afraid of what, I don't know. But deeply afraid.

Feedback, please. Here or on facebook or via email or via carrier pigeon or even by phone if you must. But I needs the helps.

101 in 1001 update: June 22, 2008

I've been working hard on other things (16,000 words on Raoul this week!) so the 101 tasks have sort of... fallen by the wayside. I have done things, of course, but not to the level I'd meant to.

I'm actually starting to think I might convert the list into multiple "10 things to do in 101 days" lists - the long time frame of the original seems to promote a "yeah, yeah, later" mentality. But we will see. Not all tasks are conducive to that, which makes it tricky.

NO, I did not add 8,000 grains to my free rice total to get me to 101,000 (and in fact, given that I was at 90,000 last week, even if I HAD done the 8,000 I wouldn't have reached 101,000). Current total: 93,200
NO, I did not release five books to BookCrossing. I did three, though, and two more are prepped and ready to go.
NO, I did not knit at least two rows daily on the sweater of doom. I didn't want to, and it's become something I HAVE to do not something I WANT to do, so I did maybe two rows all week and then set it aside.

YES, I did read. I read "Mindless Eating" by Brian Wansink (as an eBook on my Palm, while on the treadmill and elliptical). Fascinating and well-written!
YES, the litter box is now on top of the toilet. Sapphire is doing her job.

This week, I will:
- add seven thousand grains of rice, to put me just over 100,000 grains.
- make plans to celebrate July as my birth month, doing at least one fun/interesting/different thing each week of the month. Feel free to email/facebook-message me with suggestions!
- donate the last two books to bookcrossing
- read another author I've never read before, again most likely as an eBook
- finish my third string grocery bag
- knit through at least one movie with Mr. W (at home, not at the theatre :)
- mid-week, remove Sapphire's litter box and replace it with litter in a bowl in the toilet, then hope for the best.
- do week 9 of the Artist's Way book
- return to private item #101, which fell by the wayside this week because I forgot to put it on last week's list!

In other news:
- ten more Raoul-writing hours, plus whatever time in the afternoon to polish it up
- progress on Margie Lawson's EDITS course
- finish re-reading Donald Maass's Breakout Novel book
- revise the training schedule for the 10-mile race, since I'm having trouble finishing the runs without stomach problems (I'll spare you the details :)

The year is nearly half over. I am pleased with what I've done thus far...

• Revised "Polar Bear" in January
• Finished revised draft of "Seven" by end of February
• After a good month of struggles ('good' meaning possibly longer, not a reflection on the quality and enjoyment of said time) found the concept for Raoul
• Created a career plan for myself
• Trained for and ran two half marathons
• Locked in the 101 in 1001 list and did weekly updates
• Finished "Seven"'s edit
• Created "Raoul"'s outline
• Completed Margie Lawson's "Empowering Characters' Emotions" course
• Polished "Seven" to feedback and did final re-read
• 41,000 words on "Raoul"'s first draft
• Sent out initial queries for "Seven"
  
• Wrote five articles for Computing Unplugged from Jan-June

It actually looks quite impressive all written out! I keep this information listed in my Palm but not as concisely as this - I will keep it this way from now on, as it'll do wonders for the "ack, it's July and I've done nothing, NOTHING, all year! Why am I so freakin' lazy?" blues. :)

Have a great week!

June 4, 2008: Priorities

I was offered an interesting gig for the month of July, posting news articles to a site I visit frequently. There was even a few hundred dollars in it.

But I said no. And I'm thrilled with myself for it.

Writing Raoul is my top focus. My other goals and tasks are secondary. Choosing to add this new project, which would require about an hour a day, might not have stopped me finishing Raoul by July 31st as I plan. It probably would not have stopped me. But it would definitely have made me work a lot harder and my stress level would have been considerably higher.

I said no because I want to be a published novelist, and I don't want to take on anything else that will interfere with that. I'm so happy I recognized the danger before I automatically said yes (and I did nearly offer to help "if he was desperate" but avoided that little pitfall as well).

Perhaps in gratitude, Raoul went really well today. A little piece of information I'd planned to share later appeared in today's scenes, which is great because it came out as a natural part of a conversation, and I'm hearing Tess's voice and words more and more clearly.

Moving from hyper-private MC to Tess, who has a temper and isn't at all afraid to share her opinions, is a challenge. But I love it.

Writing Project: Raoul
Time Planned: 2 hours plus type-in time (I scheduled up to three hours)
Time Spent: 2 hours plus 1.25 hours (the other 1.75 went to working on an online course)
Favourite Part: being tired in the last 15 minutes of writing but getting a really great ending to the scene in question anyhow

Exercise: scheduled rest day
One Fun Thing I Did Today: looked at LOLCats. Yes, I do this every day, but this cat looks so much like my Sapphire I couldn't stop laughing.

May 29, 2008: New Look!

I've spent the afternoon playing with Blogger and getting the blog to look as much like my web site as I can. I'm pretty happy with the results. Those of you who read this via FaceBook, feel free to visit http://heatherwardell.blogspot.com to check it out!

I'd actually planned to spend three hours updating the web site and the blog and getting everything nice and shiny for any agents who might be visiting. Having planned that time meant I could test things, try it out over and over, and not feel bad that I was "wasting time". I actually spent four hours because the blog was uncooperative, but I'm pleased with the results.

Writing Project: EDITS course, web site/blog redo
Time Planned: 2 hours for EDITS, 3 hours for web site/blog
Time Spent: 2 hours and 4 hours
Favourite Part: Returning to "the good old days" when I worked for the bank, trying to teach myself HTML and web design by changing one detail at a time and seeing what happened

Exercise: 30 minutes elliptical
One Fun Thing I Did Today: Re-decorated the blog - I've been wanting to do it for a long time!

May 15, 2008: Crazy scheduling woman

There are probably rocket launches that aren't scheduled as tightly as I made today's plan. I launched my rocket, let me tell you. (That sounds dirtier than I'd intended.)

Raoul's outline is indeed done. The characters are itching to be written, but Seven needs to get out into the world first, so tomorrow I'll finish up some of what I've been learning in the emotions course (which is better and better with each passing lecture, incidentally) and get ready to go full-blast on Seven on Monday. (Yes, it's a holiday. No, I ain't takin' no holiday. My boss is a slave-driver. :)

As well, I cleaned out the linen closet (scoring 15 items to donate to charity - explain why two people need ten towels??), sent off my Computing Unplugged article, washed the floors, dusted, spent an hour applying the emotions course to Seven and another half hour on the next lecture... I am a beast. A tired beast. :)

Writing Project: Raoul's planning - last day, baby!
Time Planned: 2 hours
Time Spent: 2 hours
Favourite Part: How badly I want to start writing it. :)

Exercise: 40 minutes elliptical (scheduled to be 45 but I was going to be too late for breakfast!)
One Fun Thing I Did Today: I'm about to sit and relax and crochet for an hour. Heaven!

101 update: April 27, 2008

I did really well on the 101 tasks this week! Overall, this week just really worked for me... good with Raoul, good with exercise, good with 101... mumblemumble with my eating... oh, well. There's always an area to perfect!

NO, I did NOT list 101 things: about me (task #2), that make me happy (#4), and that I like about myself (#5). I have 34 things combined. In my head, I think I had this week's task as being 'get thirty-odd items total' not 'thirty-odd items for each list'. To clarify for myself, I will do ten things for each list this week, so that #2 has 18, #4 has 27, and #5 has 19.
NO, I did NOT use my Palm food tracker and exercise tracker religiously for the entire week. All the exercise is tracked, but I did the food part for the first few days and then the wheels fell off.

YES, I knit ten rows (actually knit 12!) of the sweater of doom. It's a good few inches long now. Woo!
YES, I volunteered another hour at the elementary school's band.
YES, I read one novel by an author new to me (Erica Orloff's "Confessions of a Blues Goddess").
YES, I reached 30,000 on freerice. I am a machine - I'm at 40,400! I made it my main Internet home page, so I nearly always do a few when I open Firefox.
YES, I did private item #101.
YES, I lost weight. I'm down 0.8 pounds over the last two weeks. If I used the food tracker religiously, this might help!
YES, I donated more items to charity - 8 bags of stuff (I keep forgetting to count the stuff before it goes into the bags) and 8 single items that I DID remember to count. My total is now 35 of the 101 I wanted to donate.

As well, I DID do brainstorming for Raoul, put together a novel planning checklist, and declutter the bookshelves. I did NOT eat two fruits and one yogurt daily.

Verily, eating is my downfall!

For the 101 tasks this week:
#1: I will get my freerice total to 50000.
#2,4,5: I will do ten things for each list this week, so that #2 has 18, #4 has 27, and #5 has 19.
#3: I will volunteer with the band if they need me this week (it depends on how their Tuesday rehearsal goes)
#35: Our last band rehearsal for our May 4th concert is Monday. If I am not able to play all notes, I will schedule a practice session for this week. Last week, there were about 2 bars I didn't have nailed. I can most likely get 'em at practice tomorrow.
#44: Read another author new to me, and review the book.
#55: Knit each day, at least one row. (As I get faster and it gets less awkward, I'm not minding it so much!)
#65: Think before I eat and focus on cutting 3500 calories between diet and exercise this week.
#89: Complete Week One of the Artist's Way book's program.
#98: This private item is a daily task, so I should do it seven times this week.
#101: Do this private item once.

This is sort of a scarily long list, but I think it's doable. A lot of them are short and easily completed, and those that aren't seem to fit into what I've got going on this week.

In other life areas:
- I will write the rough draft of my May article for Computing Unplugged
- I will continue to refine and build on the outline for Raoul
- I will clean out the hall closet and the laundry room/closet.

Whew! But it'll all be good. You'll see. :)

April 24, 2008: I love you, Raoul!

I had a fantastic morning. In 1.5 hours, I created a three-page outline for the new book, codenamed Raoul. I haven't re-read it - it's going to wait until Saturday - but I know that a) there are some things wrong with it and b) there are a ton of things right with it. And both of those things are just fine with me. :) I'm delighted with how it's going!

I had lunch and a shopping trip with my mom today and didn't get home until 3:30, and never quite got back into the working groove. I've spent basically the last hour and a half browsing crochet patterns on the Internet. I have noticed that I'm far more productive Monday and Tuesday than I am Thursday and Friday... I've always assumed I should force myself to do the same amount of work each day, but perhaps I should front-load the week for writing and back-load it for housework. Something to test out.

Writing Project: Raoul
Time Planned: 3.5 hours
Time Spent: 1.5 hours. Hmm.
Favourite Part: putting the ending on the outline and knowing it's the right ending!

Exercise: 25 minute run (wanted 45 but had to cut it short because I was volunteering at the elementary school's band practice at 7:30AM and I just couldn't get up any earlier!
One Fun Thing I Did Today: had a nice lunch with my mother

April 22, 2008: Nerd Post

After yesterday's tech support delight, I was dying to play with my Palm online. It now gets my RSS feeds, so I can read my blogs there. Why would I want to? Because I am a nerd. Big time. :) (I also sent an email while in a store, which thrilled me a lot more than it should have, frankly. I might need to get out more.)

Another great scheduled day! I felt strongly that four hours of Raoul would be too much, so I scheduled three... and I'd about reached my limit at 2:45, so that worked well! Raoul is totally coming together... I have two pages of point-form notes of scenes, and a good twelve pages of notes and ideas and things that go together and all sorts of stuff. Tomorrow, another day of building stuff, and then we might be ready to put the stuff into some sort of organized shape.

Writing Project: Raoul
Time Planned: 3 hours
Time Spent: 3 hours
Favourite Part: seeing the story arc for the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the book. It's coming together!

Exercise: 30 minutes elliptical, 30 minutes weights
One Fun Thing I Did Today: I had $28 in my 101 fund. I spent $27.25 on material, and I'm gonna make me a skirt! I think I have way more than I need, but better that than not enough. It'll be a circle-type skirt so it's nice and flowy. I found a website before about how to do this skirt... must locate. It's a 101 item to sew something and wear it, so that'll be awesome! It's black fabric with a big teal floral pattern, and way nicer than I'm describing it.

April 21, 2008: what a difference planning makes!

I built myself a seriously detailed schedule for today. And I stuck to it! I often make schedules, but they're usually full of stuff like "do two hour task" in a time slot of one hour. Today, I did not do this. I was rational about it. And I spent four hours on Raoul (and am starting to really see where it'll be going), cleaned out a bookshelf, knit two rows on the sweater of doom, called Rogers' tech support to find out about getting my Palm online (talk about your two-hour task... only took 45 minutes to find someone who could tell me what it would cost), made a dentist appointment, and did a bit of a few other 101 tasks.

Now, the real proof of the pudding (mmm... pudding...) is whether I can do it again tomorrow. Sometimes when I have a fabulous day the next day is... lacklustre, shall we say. Tomorrow will be just as good as today, I know it. :)

Writing Project: Raoul
Time Planned: 4 hours
Time Spent: like 3:55 (I was done and didn't want to start a new section)
Favourite Part: getting chills recognizing how the male and female main characters are linked together

Exercise: 45 minute tempo run
One Fun Thing I Did Today: wore Wes's phone headset while talking to Rogers - I felt like a tech support person myself