Starting All Over Again...

Wow. Almost 2 years since the last post in this blog. But this is not a reflection on the topic itself, just the dedication of the author who writes about it. Finding time to write is still an obsession of mine and an issue for most of the writers I meet. How do we find time to write during our busy lives? We are not full-time professionals or best-selling authors who live solely by the royalties of our hugely successful best-seller backlists, as well as our current #1 New York Times best-selling novel that happens to be a hit with critics as well as fans.

We have day jobs. We are stay-at-home moms and dads. We sell everything from ad space in the local weekly to new Hummers (good luck with that in this economy). We fix things: cars, laser printers, leaky toilets, and leaky heart valves. We drive yellow school buses, build condos, roof houses, teach classes, and millions of other things. But that is just during our day jobs.

We then start the second shift and wash clothes, cook (or order) dinners, play with kids, help with reading or algebra, read Goodnight Moon (yet again), and look for monsters under beds. We go to soccer practice, Rotary meetings, bowling tournaments, and dental appointments. We also gossip on the phone with friends, play games on Facebook, watch endless hours of Oprah, Dr. Phil, and people who are Lost or Dancing with Stars. We aimlessly surf the web, obsess over bad economic news, and stare off into space.

But we all want something more: A novel on the shelf at the local Barnes & Noble, an interview with Matt and Meredith about your latest project, a room full of literary awards, or an illustrated family history to hand down from generation to generation. We want to find a little bit of room (and time) for our dreams in this never-slowing-runaway-train of a life we live.

I hope that this blog will help you find that. Through the advice and anecdotes from another extremely busy working writer; tidbits of time-saving knowledge or habits from other writers; links to helpful sites and products; and some good time-management info, I hope to help you discover and live your creative writing dream in 15 minutes a day.

Free eBook on Writing from Noah Lukeman

Those of you who know me know that I love a bargain, and here is one of my favorite writing gurus, Noah Lukeman, offering a FREE e-book How to Write a Great Query Letter at: http://lukeman.com/greatquery/Great-Query-May-07.pdf. So go forth and get a copy. You won’t be disappointed.

This book will help you develop your packaging of your manuscripts for publication. And Noah Lukeman is one of the best experts on the writing/publishing world out there right now with an interest in helping writers learn the ropes of the publishing business.

Be sure to check out his books: The First Five Pages and The Plot Thickens two excellent books for anyone who is serious about getting his/her fiction published.

Vacation

I broke one of the rules that so many writers live by this past week: Write everyday. On some types of vacations it is nearly impossible to write. It is not that I can’t find the time to write, I usually can, it’s just that the situation just isn’t quite right for writing.

The reasons (excuses)

• Even when you are not driving, you are either navigating or, at least in my case, drifting off to sleep. And to help keep the driver awake and motivated, we always listen to books on CD which is always distraction.
• Hotel room, 2 double beds, 3 kids… you do the math.
• Our vacations usually involve a lot of sightseeing and a lot of walking, so you don’t always have a lot of energy left over at the end of the day to write, and you are usually up early to be there when the museum/park/tourist trap opens.
• It takes a lot of time and energy to feed yourself on the road.
• Laptops are hard to use unless you have an uncluttered flat surface to set them on. And with 3 kids in a single hotel room, how much uncluttered flat surface do you think you have??
• I hate writing in my notebook on my lap… the only place you can write on in a car or crowded room

So I’m not a Stephen King or Walter Mosley and don’t do well writing anywhere at anytime. I need a consistent place and routine to make it work for me. I also still prefer to have no one else in the room when I write. I can do it with others there, but prefer to be alone. And I’m sure Mr. King and Mr. Mosley can afford a condo or at least an extra hotel room when traveling on vacation.

Put It on a Post-It

I find it easy to lose track of what I’m working on and when I’m working on it, so I have found a new way to keep myself reminded. Post-Its… I am always working on at least 3 projects at the same time, but I used to get lost and forgot what I was working on… But now I list my top 3 to 5 projects on a Post-It, and post it in a prominent location in all of the areas where I might write. I have one in my cubicle at work, and another at my desk at home. I even use this nasty little Freeware utility, Stickies, to constantly remind me of my priorities on my desktop. You can download this free at http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies/download.html. So use one of the greatest office-product inventions of the 20th century to improve your writing productivity today.

Multi-Tasking Prevents Madness

Want to avoid writer’s block that limits your productivity? Work on more than one project at a time. So if you do get stuck on one project, you can jump to another one and keep typing away.

I usually work on 3 to 5 projects at one time with a blend of long-term projects (book-length projects or client projects that involve at least 10 hours worth of project time) and short-term ones with rapidly approaching deadlines, and some not-so-urgent (but important) other projects such as self-promotion materials, experimental-projects, or just thinking-on-paper projects (brainstorming).

This blend allows me to leap into a completely different project if I do get stuck and the change of pace often helps my mind work out whatever problem I have with the first project in the “background.”

Don’t work on more than 5 projects though. Working on more than 5 waters down your focus on the rest of them, and you lose track of your progress on all of them. Plus, you run the risk of never completing ANY project.

If you are afraid of forgetting future project ideas, list them with some notes in an idea notebook or folder, or keep a separate file for your ideas on the desktop of your computer or some other prominent location.

10 Things You Shouldn't Be Doing Instead of Writing

1. Watching coverage of the Anna-Nichole Smith debacle. Why watch hours of boring court procedures, when you can watch trailer trash go at it on Springer and that will only waste an hour of your time. Trust me... you'll hear one way or another where they bury her rotting silicon-enhanced corpse and who gets custody of the infant who everyone claims to be thinking about, but no one really is. Pray for that poor girl, she's going to need all of the help she can get.

2. Watching coverage of Britney. Is she in rehab? Is she out of rehab? Does she got a new tattoo? Is she passed out drunk pantie-less in the back of a limo with Paris and Lindsey? Trust me... you'll hear about it one way or another.

3. Reading spam in search of brilliant new writing inspiration, a hot new stock tip, or the best prices on Viagra. Trust me... no one is going to give you $10 million dollars for giving some rich individual who is caught in difficult circumstances access to your bank account.

4. Not even Anna-Nichole... or Britney...

5. Playing Marvel Ultimate Alliance... well, it is pretty fun... Spider-Man and Iron Man really kick ass, so maybe you can play it a little while, but not too long... get back to work.

6. Watching ice melt. It is February... it ain't going to melt. For a very long time. It sucks, but you have to deal with it.

7. Obsessively watching the weather waiting for the next big snow storm or Alberta Clipper, and wondering if your power company will manage to keep the juice flowing so you don't lose that brilliant thought when the power suddenly dies. It never really is the same when you try to recreate it later, is it??

8. Cleaning out your fridge... unless of course you lost power for over a day and the food is starting to smell like a teenage boy's wet sneaker (and the lad doesn't wear socks... ever...). Then of course you may have to do it.

9. Obsessing over the right pen or notebook. Just grab one and go. You will always want the perfect pen and notebook... get the one that is almost perfect and get started.

10. Wasting time reading silly blogs like this... I appreciate the love... really, but get back to work now.

15-Minutes is a LONG Time

When I was in third grade, I wanted to take piano lessons and I went every Thursday at 5pm to Mrs. Croskey’s, a retired music teacher’s house, for my lesson for almost 3 years. I never got very far. Why? Because I hated to practice. I didn’t feel comfortable holding my hands in the proper playing position, I couldn’t seem to get those notes memorized, but mostly, I just wanted to read comic books, explore the woods behind my house, or watch TV, instead of practice… and it showed. I’m sure Mrs. Croskey dreaded 5pm on Thursday every bit as much as I did. Many weeks the only time that I played my assigned pieces was during that lesson.

Every once in a while, my mom would banish me to the basement where the old upright piano that we got from our neighbors across the street resided and demand that I practice for 15 minutes. Right next to the piano on a planter was a clock designed to look like a miniature grandfather clock, and instead of playing, I’d stare at the clock and watch the agonizingly slow movement of the minute hand. Every once in a while my mom would shout, “I don’t hear you playing!” and I’d tap out a few bars of whatever piece my music book was open to and resume staring at the clock. I couldn’t believe how long 15 minutes could be.

15 minutes IS a lot of time. And the first thing that a 15-Minute Writer has to do is know exactly how long 15 minutes really is. This is one of the most difficult tasks that I ask the students in any of my 15-Minute Writer classes to do:

Find a calm, quiet place, set a watch, microwave or egg timer for a fifteen minute countdown. And just sit there for fifteen minutes… and do nothing. Do not doze. Do not do any other activity but stare at the wall or the clock. Do not have a radio, TV, phone or any other distraction that will interrupt your fifteen minutes. You will discover how long fifteen minutes really is once you dedicate it to doing absolutely nothing.

Do it, and post what happened in Comments below. How did you feel? Was it easy? Hard? Be honest. No cheating!

Starting Over

Sometimes you have to admit that you’ve lost your way, and this is one of those times. This blog suffered from a major flaw from the beginning: my approach to it. I was writing about what and how I’m doing writing this book (the proposal and the manuscript), when what I should have been doing all along is providing good CONTENT and INFORMATION of how to find and use 15 minutes each day to achieve your writing dreams.

I mean, let’s face it. Who cares how many chapter summaries I complete in a day, where I steal my time from to write, or what my latest excuse is for not keeping up with this blog. This blog needs to be the rough draft of the book itself, filled with time saving ideas, writing exercises, useful links, writing info and inspiration, so that what this blog will be. I promise.

Things I've Done in 15 Minutes or Less

Some of the things that I've done in 15 minutes or less over the last couple of days:

• Buried Barry Pepper, a gentle teddy-bear hamster who was a favorite of my daughter, in a Lipton Tea box. I even broke a new shovel trying to dig under a root, but I was racing to beat the rain and managed to get the job done.
• Drove to drop off the minivan to replace a cup holder that won't slide back in.
• Created temporary file folders for and filed about 100 papers in my filing cabinet
• Ate a ham and Baby-Swiss sandwich on wheat bread, pistachio nuts, carrot sticks and drank a Coke.
• Made calls to schedule haircuts for me and the boys, check on class enrollment for my November 18th 15-Minute Writer class, and harass my buddy Matt about picking up my wood stove to take it to get the door welded.
• Play one campaign game of Blitz: The League on my PS2, as the Columbus Crushers, destroying the Arizona Outlaws 37 to 20.

Oh, and signed up for NaNoWriMo, where I'm not going to write my novel but a combination of 50,000 words of this proposal and the book itself.

Knocked out chapter summaries for 15 and 16 today.

Tick... Tick... Tick...

I'm getting rolling again on this project, but desperately don't want to bore anyone to tears by stating what my daily work entails (although I will sometimes do that) instead I'll focus on the writing life, advice for those trying to squeeze in their words in hectic, busy lives. So a little bit about writing, a bit about time management, and a pinch of motivation.

Tomorrow: What can you do in 15 minutes? This week, I'm going to keep a time log of sorts where I'm going to note what tasks I take 15 minutes to do. I want to capture a variety of tasks that will help me track what I do on a daily basis, as well as prove to myself and my readers that 15 minutes is actually a LOT of time. So check out the blog this week for details...