The 15-Minute Writer

New Year's Resolutions? Meh...

2012-01-10T13:17:00.001-05:00

This is the first year in a long time that I haven’t made any resolutions. My typical resolutions are the following:

Write xxx # of words per day.
Start an exercise program.
Make xxxx $ in freelance income this year.
Post 7 blog posts each week.
Finish and publish the next book by October 1st.
Etc...

You get the idea. I set lofty goals and then feel like absolute shit when I fail to reach them for whatever reason.

Now granted, it helps to have SOMETHING written down and something to work towards. And considering that I’m STILL unemployed and have just a little freelance work trickling in, maybe I SHOULD make a few resolutions, but I’m trying something a bit different this year.

I’m going to create new habits and only focus on one habit at a time. This month, I’m getting addicted to writing. You heard me right. Get myself addicted to a GOOD thing. I’m going to force myself to set a timer at least once a day and just write for 15 minutes. Even if I have no idea where I’m taking it, I’m going to do it. I signed up for an online flash fiction that requires that I critique at least 4 stories a month and (suggests) that I write at least one. I have 3 blogs of which I'm trying to grow and build traffic for. I have Tweets to my (currently) 215 followers to create and find. I have an outline of a book project to work on. I have freelance work to find and produce. There is plenty of substance for this addiction.

Courtesy of Matt via Flickr

So whether it is a freelance assignment, a blog post or creative work on one of my many incomplete projects, I’m going to force myself out of the box occasionally, ignore whatever crises seem to be on hand, and take that time to write something outside of the box. I'm going to stop being obsessed with one problem at a time. Stop retreating into distractions such as Words with Friends tournaments with my buddies, seeking the top Bejeweled Blitz score of all of my Facebook friends, or obsessive TV series watching. December featured a run of the last 3 seasons of Dr. Who on Netflix...

In addition, December had the death of a close friend, a washing machine that could not be repaired and needed to be replaced, a gas furnace that, was too expensive to repair, also needed to be replaced, and, of course, the holidays. So the 30-Day Writing Challenge was a miserable, epic FAIL.

This is always the darkest part of the year for me. After the holidays are over, here in Ohio winter usually bites down hard… with gray skies and a deep, painful cold that makes you just want to roll yourself up in quilts and hibernate until the sun comes back.

But I’m going to fight this. I have to.

So what do you do to chase away the mid-winter blues? How do you keep productive during stressful, busy times? And what are your New Year's Resolutions (if you have any)? Comment below.

Holiday Promotion Disaster

2011-12-04T22:43:00.001-05:00

30-Day 15-Minute Writer Challenge: Day #3

Have you ever had one of those days that nothing goes according to plan? Yesterday, Kristen and I planned a quick trip to the Kroger Marketplace to spend the $130 "credit" we had earned for a special promotion. There were several problems with this:

Courtesy of Jason Brackins via Flickr

The nearest Kroger Marketplace store was 30 minutes away.
There are only about 7 Kroger Marketplace locations in the Columbus area, while the number of Kroger stores offering holiday "credit" numbers over 50. The credit was redeemable only at the Marketplace locations.
The time to redeem your credit was limited to 4 days.
The types of items that you could use your credit on were limited. Mainly toys, housewares, clothing (although I didn't see any clothing at this particular location), some office supplies and some cleaning supplies.
No price tags on any of the items, so if the item was removed from the shelf where the price was listed, you had no idea how much the item was.
A stipulation that you had to spend ALL of the credit or you'd have to pay full price for the items you bought. For example, if I bought $129.85 worth of goods, the credit was no good and I'd waste it unless I found something else last minute to push it up over the $130 mark. And none of this information was communicated in a clear, meaningful way until you entered the store.

Result: Mass chaos. The first clue should have been when we couldn't find a space in the parking lot. Once we entered the store, it was packed with irritated looking people. Since you couldn't redeem the credit on grocery items, the reason for the crowd was unclear... until you hit the Marketplace section of the store.

I have never seen shelves picked so clean. Not even during the last week of a going out of business sale. The store was trashed. Discarded items tossed everywhere. The lines for checking out were stretched to the back of the store and wound around the aisles. None of the scan-it-yourself bar code scanners worked, none of the items that qualified for the credit were marked, so you had to find a harried Kroger employee with a hand scanner and ask them to scan the items for you so you could add up what you spent so far as well as determine if the item was even eligible to be used for the program.

So our modest goals of picking up a new frying pan, a couple of nifty Christmas decorations and a few board games for the kids had to be abandoned. We bought exciting things like a cake server, basting brushes, some storage containers, a clock, a couple of card games, a sock drawer organizer... etc. Nothing that could be useful to give someone else as a gift or something that we really needed, but we didn't want to waste the credit since we were already in the store.

I get it. Companies want to attract customers with special programs around the holidays. They offer special deals but also count on the power of our (the customer's) laziness to offset the cost to the company for those special deals. We forget we have the credit. We forget about the date when you can redeem that credit. We don't take the time to read the fine print and show up to redeem the credit too late. This is why stores offer mail-in rebates. The stores get to offer a great deal, but the customer has to do some work to get that deal, and a lot of us don't do that. It's a win-win for the company. They graciously offer great deals, yet only take a hit on part of the cost.

But this one was clearly an epic fail. The customers weren't happy, the employees weren't happy and really got the worst job of trying to manage this poorly planned fiasco, while the brilliant marketing executive who came up with this gimmick was probably sleeping in on this sunny Saturday morning, oblivious of the hurricane that he unleashed for the Kroger employees and managers around the state.

We spent 3 hours at a store when we planned on a quick 30 minute trip to shop for a few things on our list and take it easy the rest of the day. No one in the checkout lines was smiling. None of the employees were either.With a little foresight, planning and communication of essential information, this could have been a good experience. Kroger failed.

What should you take away from this rant? Ideas are great. Ideas are wonderful. But if the idea has no organization to support it it will die, and in extreme cases like this one, it will maim you and others along with it.

Finding 15-Minutes to Write: Batch Your Tasks

2011-12-02T22:18:00.001-05:00

30-Day 15-Minute Writing Challenge - Day #2

I spent my initial 15-minute session generating content for my Provocative Phrase Friday writing prompts on the Grist for the Muse blog. By tackling these all at once, I generated about 3 months-worth of content for these posts. Granted they still need some edits and select the perfect provocative photo prompts to complete the posts, but the hard work is done. I spent about another 30 minutes putting together enough content to last well over 6 months.

Batching tasks is one of the ways that you can save time by handling several closely related tasks at the same time. Some of the common ways to do this:

Make all of your phone calls at the same time
Save errands in a specific part of town and do them in one trip
Pay bills all at once at a specific time of the month

Finding 15 Minutes to Write: Use a DVR

2011-12-01T15:35:00.001-05:00

Post #1 in the 30-Day 15-Minute Writing Challenge

TV is one of my biggest time wasters. If a television is on and I am in the room doing something else, I will watch it. I try to avoid looking at it at all when there’s work to be done, but I still love TV. I love watching House, The Middle, The Office, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad... you get the idea.

Luckily, I have had Tivo since the first series was manufactured over 10 years ago, and never have looked back. Since then, the rest of the world seems to have caught up with me and DVRs are common in homes now, whether purchased by the saavy consumer or provided by their local cable company.

Courtesy of the autowitch via Flickr

What does this have to do with writing? According to Wikipedia: The average number of minutes of TV advertising for each hour of commercial television in the US is between 15 to 18 minutes per hour. But that amount seems to be similar in the rest of the world. The UK: Between 12 to 15 minutes per HALF HOUR?!? Germany: 12 to 20 minutes per hour (depending on the time of day). Argentina: 12 minutes per hour. Russia: Around 15 minutes per hour. The Philippines: A max of 18 minutes per hour.

So even if I limited myself to watching 6 hours a week of live TV, I’m wasting 90 minutes of time that could be recovered simply by using my DVR to skip through the commercials. If I watch sporting events, such as an NFL game, I’m probably wasting even more time per hour.

I rarely watch a program at the time that it originally airs. Sometimes I miss the entire series of TV shows, discovering them later on Netflix, Amazon Prime or some other video streaming service, when I have time to sit and watch several episodes in row; Like I did when I watched Joss Whedon’s incredible sci-fi/western mash-up series, Firefly when I was stuck in bed with pneumonia last Christmas.

Time is precious, so if you are going to “waste” it watching TV, use a DVR and put that recovered time to work with your writing. Tune in tomorrow for post #2 in the 30-Day 15-Minute Writing Challenge.

The One Thing You Must Know About Writing

2011-11-29T12:29:00.001-05:00

This is the one thing that I just wish I could remember when I have those dark days where I lose faith in myself. Those days where I wonder why I bother doing this at all, this writing thing. Those days where I loathe myself for not getting the writing done, ensnared in resistance and full of excuses (sometimes even good ones) about why it isn’t happening.

Yes, I’m unemployed. Yes there are challenges, doctor’s appointments, band practice, sick kids and the never ending time-consuming tasks of eating, sleeping, laundry and the occasional home repair project… but everyone has them. And what they are is the sneaky way that resistance or the Inner Critic slip into your life and sabotage your efforts.

Courtesy of Eddie Van 3000 via Flickr

I’ve been fighting and losing the battle the last couple of months. I have good intentions, but get sidelined and manage to put off the writing for just a little while longer, or tell myself that this cover letter is the most important thing I have to do today, when, in truth, there is plenty of time for both.

Maybe I don’t like the particular project I’m working on. Maybe I’m just not in the mood to draft the copy for the sales page on my website right now, but the fact of the matter is: It is important and not having it done is preventing me from completing other tasks that depend on it.

Maybe I’m not in a mood to write a blog post, because who’s going to read it anyway… at least that is what the critic is telling me right before I open Microsoft Word and begin typing… then decide to check my Twitter feed instead.

But if I decide to sit down and set a timer and write for just 15 minutes, and vow not to check email for that period of time, act on a random thought that occurs during that time (such is the power of the web) and focus on just getting something down, I often find myself resetting that timer for another 15 minutes and then another, and soon enough, the dreaded project is done and I FEEL GREAT! Even if I only do 15-minutes, my brain lets me relax because it has checked writing off of today's must-do list.

That is the part that I always forget about. The guilt-free, anxious feeling erased from the rest of my day which allows me to enjoy watching some Walking Dead, stupid videos on YouTube, or reading for pleasure without that timer that seems to always be ticking in my head.

You are never going to feel that the time is right to write. It never happens. There is always something more important, more urgent to do. You will never feel less tired, in the mood, or more inspired than you do right now.

Make a promise to yourself to write just 15 minutes a day. Mark it on your calendar, your to-do list or put it on a post it note that you carry with you everywhere, and do it. Write for at least 15 minutes a day, during the entire month of December with no excuses and see how you feel at the end of the month.

Who's going to join me? With apologies to Tom Petty: "Sometimes the starting is the hardest part..."

Reading Elimination Tournament Round 1: Does Anyone Want Free Books?

2011-09-23T13:56:00.000-04:00

No one so far has wanted any of the books that have been eliminated. Did I scare you off? Just wondering.

I’ve really been falling behind on these posts for the Reading Elimination Tournament, and I just need to get Round 1 finished so we can move on to analyze the survivors and keep reading. So here is the latest round of reviews.

The Golden Compass – Philip Pullman (1995)

I’ve heard about this series for quite some time and been meaning to read them, and The Golden Compass does not disappoint you. Within the first five pages we're introduced to Lyra and her daemon who looks like a moth. We also have them sneaking into a forbidden room, almost getting caught, and witnessing a possible poisoning. The otherworldly feel of this book is amplified by little details such as the daemons. I like how this book starts out in the middle of the action and with a significant event within the first five pages. It sets up some elements of the fancy world and beckons you to read more about it. On to round two.

The Grid – Philip Kerr (1995)

The Grid has an interesting premise, a high-tech office tower that is completely run by computers, yet it turns bad and starts to kill people trapped inside. What's not to like about that? However, I have to make a decision based on the first five pages, and these pages seem to be laying out a lot of background which may or may not be necessary to get the book underway. The description is okay but we still have no idea who the protagonist might be, nor any foreshadowing of what is about to happen within the story and barely any dialogue at all. Although this book slides into one of my areas of interest: technology gone stark raving mad, I'm going to have to eliminate this one based on the content of the first five pages.

The Difference Engine – William Gibson and Bruce Sterling (1991)

This book is acknowledged as one of the pillars of the steampunk genre. Within the first five pages we are introduced to Sybil, a woman who appears to be a prostitute in an alternate Victorian England. In this reality computers have existed for a while and are used to research information about anyone. Although I don't typically enjoy the Victorian era setting in stories, the map in the front of the book showing the world of this 1855 (which looks a lot different than the actual world of 1855) is interesting. I'm sure this book needs a little more time to get started, and I'm intrigued to give it a chance. Round two for this one.

The Hollow Man – Dan Simmons (1992)

Dan Simmons is one of my favorite authors. In the first five pages we meet Bremen and his wife dying of cancer. They are both telepathic. He tries to fill her last night on earth with good memories via that link. She dies around page 5. This is a great way to hook a reader in. Needless to say, this one is one of the 32 to go to the next round.

Books Eliminated So Far (and available if you want them):

21 – Jeremy Iversen (2005)
Farm Fatale – Wendy Holden (2001)
Freezing -- Penelope Evans (1997)
Stronghold: Dragonstar Book 1 – Melanie Rawn (1990)
Man of the House – Stephen McCauley (1996)
Strawberry Tattoo -- Lauren Henderson (1999)
Lying Awake -- Mark Salzman (2000)
The Feast of Love -- Charles Baxter (2000)
Love Invents Us -- Amy Bloom (1997)
Night Duty – Melitta Breznik (1999)
The Grid -- Phillip Kerr (1995)

Bonus Books! (because I've finished reading them)

Lord of Chaos (Wheel of Time Book 6) – Robert Jordan (1995)
Crown of Swords (Wheel of Time Book 7) – Robert Jordan (1997)

15-Minute Writer Site Review - Dumb Little Man: Tips for Life

2011-09-22T13:19:00.000-04:00

Dumb Little Man: Tips for Life is another good source of “brain hacks” which consist of detailed, well-written articles from a talented group of writers, who really understand what makes us tick, and how we can stop sabotaging ourselves.

Although this blog is focused on being more efficient and eliminating roadblocks to productivity, many articles address issues of interest to writers, such as these recent posts:

This site posts several new articles every week, and also has over 2000 articles of additional content for you. It also allows you to follow it via Facebook, email, RSS feed, or Twitter. As a result, this site is a must-add to any 15-Minute Writer’s blog roll. I've added it to mine.

Dumb Little Man: Tips for Life gets ***** out of 5 stars.

15-Minute Writer Rating Scale: * - SPAM is more enjoyable and entertaining; ** - Content not fit for a link farm; *** - An OK site, probably won't be back here often; **** - Good resource, bookmark and visit often; ***** - An essential resource to consult daily.

The Reading Elimination Tournament: Round 1 – Show Me, Don’t Tell Me

2011-09-07T11:14:00.000-04:00

I critique a lot of manuscripts. And one of the most common issues I encounter is fiction that tells a story instead of showing me what is happening and leading me to draw my own conclusion. Telling is pedantic and boring. Showing is dynamic and responsible for many of those" oh wow" moments we encounter in fiction.

Case in point: Stephen King is a master of showing. In The Dead Zone he doesn't tell us that Greg Stillson is an evil man, he shows us by having him sell cheap, overpriced Bibles to rural residents which fall apart days after the purchase, and most of all, by kicking a farm dog to death for no reason other than it annoyed him. He doesn't come right out and say this man is evil, he shows us.

It is easy for the reader to draw the right conclusion from the scene he presents. So whenever you have a choice, try to present the scene to the reader and not tell him what conclusions to draw from it. Let your words paint the picture and create the sensations of being there.

The Sportswriter – Richard Ford (1986)

This book makes you feel like you have sat down with an interesting person who is telling you his life story. This is an engaging first-person point of view, which suggests several of the conflicts to come within the story; giving up a literary career to be a sportswriter, unresolved grief from the death of the child, and possibly conflict with an ex-wife. There is no dialogue per se yet, but the description and the telling of the tale urges me to read on. On to the next round.

Seven Types of Ambiguity – Elliot Perlman (2003)

I like the concept described on the back cover the book. It is divided into seven sections with each having a completely different narrator, which changes the point of view dramatically. The book is covered with rave reviews on the back cover, front cover and inside pages. I also like the first person narrator voice for the first five pages because it is so conversational. The thing I like about this section is that the narrator describes the character, Simon, by how the narrator thinks he is seen by Simon. It's still unclear to me whether the narrator is male or female. I am very intrigued by this unusual point of view and the lyrical description of these characters. The seven section structure, mentioned on the back cover, also intrigues me. This one goes to the next round.

The Dead Zone – Stephen King (1980)

This book spawned a movie and a successful USA series starring Michael Anthony Hall, so what else does it need? It is amazing that I haven't read this book yet since it features some of my favorite subjects, Armageddon, predicting the future, and impossible choices. The other thing that makes this great is within the first five pages Stephen King shows that he's a master of showing not telling. He doesn't specifically tell us what Johnny's cryptic warning means when he awakens from the bump on the head which gave him predictive powers. He shows us. He doesn't tell us that Greg Stillson is an evil man, he shows us, and in such an intriguing way that compels you to keep reading. This one goes the next round.

Night Duty – Melitta Breznik (1999)

There are a couple things right off the bat that I do not like about this book. The first of which is the lack of any dialogue. Flipping through the first 20 or 25 pages of the book, I do not see any dialogue whatsoever, and long, dense paragraphs of text. The first pages provide detail for an autopsy and has a somewhat artificial beginning with "the story begins a long time before my birth, in the German city during the war…”

I don't like pages of long description with no hook, no apparent character or conflict. This one never had a chance. It is eliminated.

Books Eliminated So Far (and available if you want them):

21 – Jeremy Iversen (2005)
Farm Fatale – Wendy Holden (2001)
Freezing -- Penelope Evans (1997)
Stronghold: Dragonstar Book 1 – Melanie Rawn (1990)
Man of the House – Stephen McCauley (1996)
Strawberry Tattoo -- Lauren Henderson (1999)
Lying Awake -- Mark Salzman (2000)
The Feast of Love -- Charles Baxter (2000)
Love Invents Us -- Amy Bloom (1997)
Night Duty – Melitta Breznik (1999)

Bonus Books! (because I've finished reading them)

Lord of Chaos (Wheel of Time Book 6) – Robert Jordan (1995)
Crown of Swords (Wheel of Time Book 7) – Robert Jordan (1997)

Letter to Your 16 Year-Old Self

2011-09-02T09:29:00.000-04:00

This sounds like an interesting book and an interesting writing exercise. Dear Me: A Letter to My Sixteen-Year-Old Self, edited by Joseph Galliano (Atria, $20, on-sale Oct. 25) with J.K. Rowling writing the forward to it.

I always have remembered my teenaged years as mostly miserable. A feeling of straining to reach for grown-up responsibilities combined with fear of them while mourning for a childhood that was too quickly eroding away.

Courtesy of Arty Smokes via Flickr

Having reconnected with many of the kids I grew up with on Facebook, I now realize that these feelings were pretty universal, even for those who I saw as “having it all together,” with normal families, great academic performance, with hot girlfriends and boyfriends and respect as athletes.

I fit into none of these groups and hung out with friends who played Dungeons & Dragons, watched sci-fi TV, explored the forests in our neighborhoods, read comic books and listened to pop and classic rock music and endlessly discussed and argued about the nuances of them all.

At 16, I felt at my core that I was hopelessly geeky and stupid. I was embarrassed that I was a terrible driver who took over 18 months to get my license when most boys tested and received it on their 16th birthdays.

I liked a lot of girls and even dated a few, but didn’t really know how to talk to them. I was so afraid of saying something stupid or revealing the true geek I was, that conversations with them often contained long, awkward silences. Academically, I struggled mightily at math and science while in English, which I considered by best subject, I was convinced that being placed in the Advanced Placement program was a mistake.

I would have loved to play football or baseball, as a passionate fan of these games, but I was awkward and uncoordinated with no natural ability, and as I discovered as an adult, very poor depth perception that made it almost impossible to judge the speed and distance of an approaching fastball, or where I had to stand to catch a punt. I grew quickly and was skinny despite all of my efforts to bulk up by drinking milkshakes packed with raw eggs and eating tremendous amounts of food at every meal. Occasionally, I worked out with the encouragement of my friends, even though I was mortified by how weak I was and extremely self-conscious of it. I hated it, so it never lasted.

I knew so little about the world and was afraid of so much of it. I felt like the world had a giant blueprint of how you were supposed to act and what you were supposed to know that everyone else had been given, but I somehow I missed that day at school and fell left behind. Above all I just wanted people to like me, and was mystified when a few people did not.

I think the teenage years, which are worshiped in our culture as being wonderful and carefree, are a mass of hard choices, unfair rules, and unwritten codes. It is a world where adults are skeptical of, or actively dislike you. It is a confusing time where we are introduced to sex, drugs, death, violence and alcohol. Even if you weren’t involved with any of these, you are exposed to it. And all the while you are completely unprepared to deal with it, and the knowledge that our parents weren’t perfect or had all of the answers we needed (or didn't want to hear us ask the questions if they did). For most of us, these were some of the worst years of our lives, filled with regret and bad decisions.

There are lots of things I’d like to go back and tell my 16 year-old self, but I think I can boil it all down to this:

“Relax and don’t be so hard on yourself. You don’t have to be perfect all of the time. It doesn't matter what other people think of you, just what you believe in your heart. Don't let anyone make you feel stupid, ugly or unloved. You are a great person with a great future ahead of you. Believe it and hold on just a little longer.”

What would you tell your 16 year-old self?

5 Things I Learned About Writing by Building a Tree House

2011-08-29T15:40:00.000-04:00

Although the tree house is not completely finished, it is nearly complete, and I learned a few things while completely out of my element during the last phases of construction.

1. You don’t have to have a precise plan.

When you start a project, you don’t need an exact plan, as long as you have a rough idea of what you think the final product should look like at the end.

Our tree house plan was sketched out on 2 pieces of graph paper on the first morning of construction and provided all of the necessary info to complete the project.

If you are stuck on a writing project: Get a sheet of paper, even a plain piece of paper, and set a timer for 15 minutes and write down everything you can think of about the project. Feel free to MindMap the idea, cut and paste words and pictures from other sources, ask questions, etc. Add more pages if necessary. Use this as the basis of your project.

2. You don’t have to take on a big project alone.

My cre

It is always good to have a crew to help you out. Whether it is writing buddy that you can bounce ideas off of, a group of reliable peers to critique your writing, or a good editor to help perfect your prose toward the end of the project, you don’t have to bear the entire burden of the project alone. So hook up with a group of writers either locally or online, but preferably nearby so you can get some needed social time with other word lovers.

3. The right tools make all of the difference in the world.

Even when writing it is important to know what tools you need and how to use them properly. Word choice, grammar, and when you must follow and break the rules are critical to getting a project done.

Knowing how to use the thesaurus, your word processor, research tools and methods, and grammar resources are almost as important as the writing process itself. So invest in the best tools your money can buy and learn how to use them.

4. You can get a lot done in a hurry if you have a goal.

Two days from wobbly deck to framed, walled and roofed tree house. They were 8 to 9 hour days, but consistent effort got us there. If you find a gap of time, whether it is 15 minutes, a couple of hours, or a couple of days, focus all of your effort on getting as much as you can done in that amount of time.

Working fast can give you the push and momentum to keep going, even when you hit a difficult spot.

5. Seek advice from experts.

My Dad is a mechanical genius. He can fix, build, renovate or refurbish anything. He taught people how to run and repair heavy equipment (cranes, bulldozers, graders, etc.) for over 30 years. He dug a pond in our backyard, built a barn, deck, and transformed a cinder block basement into a family room and bedroom. He has built gazebos and go carts, clocks, cedar chests and entertainment centers. There is nothing he cannot do with his hands.

Unfortunately, his genius apparently has skipped a generation. I am barely qualified to shop for myself at Home Depot. Any project I take on takes forever to finish, with many trips back and forth to the hardware store, with a lot of trial and error in between, to get a job done.

Picture of a man not qualified to shop
for himself at Home Depot

It is OK to seek the counsel of those who are more knowledgeable and experienced than you.

It often saves a lot of time and wasted effort. Most people are flattered and pleased when you come to them seeking advice and generous with their expertise. So seek out mentors and experts to help you along in your journey. People often forget that writing is, at heart, a collaborative art, where one writer’s work often builds upon or borrows from many other writers.

My Dad gave up two entire days to help me make a dream for my kids come true. I don’t think that they believed that I’d ever get the tree house done, and without his help it probably never would have happened. I can never thank him enough for this gift. Thank you Dad!

Weekly Word Count – August 15th through August 21st 2011

2011-08-26T14:39:00.000-04:00

I know I sound like a broken record, but this week I have a good excuse for the lack of output. I built a TREE HOUSE.

Actually, I didn’t build it, I just helped. My Dad visited for a couple of days and created a plan out of my vague idea of what I wanted for the kids. The first thing we had to do was “fix-up” phase one of the plan, which was the deck that took me all of last summer to build. A pretty good effort according to my Dad, who is a certified expert in such things, except for the fact that it needed to be reinforced in order to make it safer. Then once he figured out all of the angles for the construction so it would have a sloped roof, we constructed the frame of the house.

So day one of the process consisted of, looking at the deck, figuring out how large the tree house was going to be (5’ by 7’), what design we wanted (doors, windows, type of roof) and then creating a shopping list.

Then it was off to Menard's where we purchased 40 2x4x8’s, 10 sheets of plywood, one roll of roofing material, 3 additional 4x4x8’s to reinforce the deck, some aluminum screen, door hinges and hardware and we were ready to roll. By noon we had everything that we needed and began construction.

As Dad and I reinforced the deck, the boys unloaded the lumber out of the van. One the deck was properly reinforced, we began cutting and constructing the sides of the house on the ground. It is amazing how easy a construction project can be when you have the right tools. With my dad’s saw and nail gun, the sides were assembled and good to go by 7pm on the first day.

On Day 2, we lifted the walls up onto the deck, clamped them together, nailed them in place and then began cutting the plywood sides for the house. While this was going on, I laid the roof beams in place and settled the plywood for the roof in place. This was completed by lunchtime.

After a quick lunch of Nick’s Pizza and sweet corn from Neely’s farm I worked on nailing the plywood for the room in place while Dad and Ben marked and cut out the door for the house. Once I had the first part of the roof in place, I was “trapped” on the roof while screwing the entire roof down tight from on top. While Dad and Leah cut out the windows for the house, I nailed the rolled roofing into place on the roof. A very hot job.

And by 5pm, all that is left to do is painting and putting the screens for the door and windows in place. I am amazed what a difference that 2 days can make.

In addition almost another day was sucked up by taking Addie to Cincinnati for an appointment with a specialist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Figure in the 2 hour drive each way, the 2 hours for the appointment itself, and then (of course) lunch at a Chinese restaurant afterwards and the day is pretty much shot.

What does this have to do with the Weekly Word Count? Not a lot, other than giving me a tale to tell to pad the word count at the end of the week with some nifty pictures to boot, and a couple of lessons about the project that can be translated over from the construction realm to writing. Word Count for the Week: 1,789.

I’m not going to bother breaking it down for you… Next week will be better I promise. Next Week: Lessons I Learned About Writing from Building a Tree House!

Reading Elimination Tournament – Round 1: Set the Right Pace

2011-08-24T09:37:00.000-04:00

Pacing is a challenge for any modern day fiction writer. It seems like our literature now reflects our frenetic-paced lives. The story has to burst from the gate and leap into a story immediately, while not confusing the reader with too little information or boring the reader with too much. Pacing is a difficult balance to maintain throughout an entire story, but in the first five pages it is like walking on a high wire without a net or a clown to break your fall. You need to engage the reader and hook him/her into the story with a bit of mystery, but not too much mystery or you lose the reader’s attention.

Which of your favorite stories or novels have fantastic beginnings? Who are the authors that are the masters of stringing the reader along keeping them up way too late reading? Post them in the comments below.

Vicious Spring – Hollis Hampton Jones (2003)

First of all there is a great cover quote from Jay McInerney: “Fast, nasty, shocking and strangely touching. It knocked me out.” This coming from author of the granddaddy of all party books: Bright Lights, Big City. The back cover and the first five pages reveal a narrator who does drugs because she's bored, has a boyfriend in his 30’s who works at a strip club, and she becomes a lap dancer. The first five pages include drugs, suggestions of sex, senseless vandalism and the fire alarm sprinklers going off inside school. It has interesting narrative voice and an intriguing first-person point of view that I want to read more about. On to the next round.

Love Invents Us – Amy Bloom (1997)

The back cover promises realistic characters and interesting situations. The first part of the book is about Elizabeth, an elementary school-aged girl who is modeling first with store owner. She, as the narrator, does not seem to be bothered by this action, although it feels a little creepy. He doesn't seem to molest her in any way, but you wonder what may happen later. Elizabeth seems to be starving for attention and love. The narrative voice is not that interesting in the beginning, and even though I want to see where the story might go, I’m afraid it will be somewhere very sad and ugly. I'm not sure that I’m up for this type of tale right now. This one is eliminated.

The Feast of Love – Charles Baxter (2000)

This one is weird because the narrator’s name is Charles Baxter which happens to be the name of the author. This one has a very slow start, talking about optical floaters that look like cogs in the machine in about of insomnia. This book is a National Book Award finalist, so I suppose I should give it more time, but there are a lot of books in this tournament and if I am honest with myself, the book doesn’t engage me enough to compel me to keep reading, so I am eliminating this one.

The Sweet Hereafter – Russell Banks (1991)

This book has many favorable blurbs, and of course, was an award-winning movie, which I haven't seen. Russell Banks has a very good reputation and the back cover copy promises a morality play that addresses one of life's most agonizing questions: When the worst thing happens, who could you blame? The first five pages are told from the point of view of what I think is a bus driver, who has hit something. This has happened in the past, and suggests, or at least makes me think, that a child was hit. This novel seems to start off a little slow, but I think I want some more time to read this to see if it can recover from the slow start by reading an additional 20 pages or so. But again, there are many tough choices ahead of me to cut this list down to 32, so I'll list this as a maybe for now.

Books Eliminated So Far (and available if you want them):

21 – Jeremy Iversen (2005)
Farm Fatale – Wendy Holden (2001)
Freezing -- Penelope Evans (1997)
Stronghold: Dragonstar Book 1 – Melanie Rawn (1990)
Man of the House – Stephen McCauley (1996)
Strawberry Tattoo -- Lauren Henderson (1999)
Lying Awake -- Mark Salzman (2000)
The Feast of Love -- Charles Baxter (2000)
Love Invents Us -- Amy Bloom (1997)

Bonus Books! (because I've finished reading them)

Lord of Chaos (Wheel of Time Book 6) – Robert Jordan (1995)
Crown of Swords (Wheel of Time Book 7) – Robert Jordan (1997)

Weekly Word Count –August 8th through August 14th 2011

2011-08-22T08:22:00.000-04:00

**NOTE: Sorry for the delay on last week's Weekly Word Count. I had it written, just forgot to post it (along with several other blog posts last week) so today you are getting 2 for 1!**

Week 2 of being free from my day job has been a bit of a transition. A simple post on Facebook asking for freelance assignments generated a lot of help from my friends, acquaintances and former students. They forwarded job postings, leads on good companies to consider, and even a couple of possible future assignments. All this being said, I am disappointed with my output again last week: a mere 2,754 words.

My best day was Friday with 1,579 words, 1,205 of which were a white paper draft for a client. I wrote no new content for the blogs last week, only tweaked a couple of articles that were already waiting to be posted. Another 329 words were devoted to my “business plan” which is more of an all-encompassing task list of the things I need to do to make this writing biz happen. This is good for helping me think on paper about all of the things that need to be done and roughly in what order. The rest of the words were strictly job search related. In other words, very little creative output at all. The days sort of blended together with my mood swerving from cool confidence to stomach sinking panic. Depending on the day and the content of my email inbox.

I realized that I still have a lot of things to do. I needed to gather writing samples from all of my recent writing projects for an online portfolio, which has become a bit of a problem since some of my writing samples were still on 3.5” diskettes, and none of the three old computers I had with floppy drives were functioning. Enter eBay and $12.99 for a new USB floppy drive delivered on Monday, and I was sifting through a massive data jungle filled with my obsessive need to back up everything repeatedly, but never seeming to overwrite older files. I’ve now located a couple of dozen files which might serve as possible writing samples. I’m trying to gather a variety of different documents to show off the scope of my writing talent.

I also needed to install WordPress onto my primary website which was challenging to sift through all of the data transfer and behind the scenes set up with the web hosting service, but it is done, Now all I have to do is configure and launch it when I’m ready. Which will hopefully be next week.

Then over the weekend I forced myself to get out of my office and head down to the local coffee shop for our monthly writers group meeting and spent the rest of the weekend with family… So two of my (traditionally) most productive days were completely empty of words which also dragged the count down.

I don’t know what this really says about me or my situation other than reinforcing that there is NEVER a perfect time to write. Even if you have a lot of time, life tends to find ways to seep into it and leach a little of it away.

This week is a new week and there is a lot planned for it, so I’m definitely going to need to manage it well and get stuff done whenever I can.

Reading Elimination Tournament – Boldly Go Where You Have Never Gone Before

2011-08-09T11:38:00.000-04:00

A good writer can immerse you in a world that you have no knowledge of and make you believe in it. Every detail. Every aspect of it. In this edition’s Reading Elimination Tournament entries, all four authors do this: Elwood Reid, takes us into the realm of Big-Ten college football as an elite athlete. Mark Saltzman takes us into a Carmelite monastery outside of Los Angeles to see life through the eyes of a nun. Paul Hoover travels through time back to the late 1960’s to experience home life through the point of view of a conscientious objector in small town Illinois. Finally, A.M Homes (a woman, for those of you who are not familiar with her) leaps into the body of a nervous, insecure teenage boy about to experience drastic changes in his life.

As a reader, the writer has to make me trust that you know what you are talking about. You have to set up scenes with specific details, riveting dialog, and engaging events that the average reader can relate to and believe possible. And the writer has to make it interesting, or at least interesting enough to keep the reader turning pages.

The first five pages should establish what the world of the book is about. Where are we? When are we? Who are we? What are we going to learn about this subject that we may or may not know about? If we know about it, is it true? If we don’t know about it, is it interesting? What are the rules of this world? Are there conflicts already brewing? The first five pages are critical for setting the expectations for the reader.

If I Don't Six – Elwood Reid (1998)

This story feels like a realistic tale about an interesting situation; the life of the elite collegiate athlete. The protagonist is a jock, one who is self-aware enough to reveal interesting insights which go beyond the surface. It grabs my attention and holds it. The protagonist is also from Cleveland, so Ohio plays a prominent role within the story, and is another reason the story interests me. The author manages to define other characters through vivid actions and insights revealed with the dialogue. This is very well done and goes on to the next round.

Saigon, Illinois – Paul Hoover (1988)

This book is set in the late 1960s it starts off with the main character Holder, setting up his appeal as a conscientious objector to avoid the draft for the Vietnam War. You can tell from the interactions between the draft board and Holder that he is a one of those clever and somewhat funny characters that you would like to learn more about. He seems to be in the midst of much of the conflict that occurs during that era. I like the character enough that I might want to move this on to the next round, but it is on the borderline. So it’s going into the maybe pile for now, but I’m leaning toward passing it to the next round.

Jack – A. M. Homes (1989)

This book starts in the middle of a driving lesson with a nervous teenage narrator in the driver’s seat. I like the observations of the narrator when dad takes over behind the wheel. Jack’s description comparing how his dad does the things that an experienced driver does without thinking, and the labor-intensive thought process of a beginning driver is great and true-to-life is brilliant. The character is likable and his observations interesting. Homes does a good job of presenting the teenage mind. I'm going to put this one on the maybe pile, but I'm leaning toward sending it to the next round.

Lying Awake – Mark Salzman (2000)

This one has an interesting premise; a nun has spiritual enlightenment, but also dangerous headaches which may require medical intervention. Are the two related? This is another book that starts out slow, describing the details of life in a convent. The structure is interesting, short paragraphs broken up with lines of prayer in between. The problem is that little is revealed about the character, we don’t even know her name yet, just the details of daily life of a Carmelite nun. There is not a hint of conflict within these pages either. The back cover promises that it is coming, but I don’t think that interesting description is enough to overcome the lack of character definition or conflict. I’m eliminating this one.

Books Eliminated So Far (and available if you want them):

21 – Jeremy Iversen (2005)
Farm Fatale – Wendy Holden (2001)
Freezing -- Penelope Evans (1997)
Stronghold: Dragonstar Book 1 – Melanie Rawn (1990)
Man of the House – Stephen McCauley (1996)
Strawberry Tattoo -- Lauren Henderson (1999)
Lying Awake -- Mark Salzman (2000)

Bonus Books! (because I've finished reading them)

Lord of Chaos (Wheel of Time Book 6) – Robert Jordan (1995)
Crown of Swords (Wheel of Time Book 7) – Robert Jordan (1997)

Weekly Word Count – August 1st through 7th, 2011

2011-08-08T16:19:00.000-04:00

Okay this week's total 4264 words. Probably not as high as I would've liked, but okay considering the circumstances. The first thing to understand is that I lost my job on Monday so I was a bit busy wrapping up my work life at the company I’ve worked at for the last 10 years: Packing up my desk, turning in my laptop, processing paperwork, and saying goodbye to friends and co-workers who have been such a big part of my life for so long. It is hard to process when it happens to you, even if in your heart you believe that this is a good thing.

Courtesy of Ian Aberle via Flickr

Luckily, I have some freelance work lined up and about half of those words written this week were devoted to working on a client project. The rest of the words were for the blogs and a little on updating my LinkedIn profile.

Losing your job is never a good thing but it does force you to make changes, and to be honest I was unhappy there for a very long time. I've always had this dream in the back of my head of making my own living as a freelance writer, and maybe this is the opportunity to do just that. I've been slowly preparing for this day for some time, buying equipment, software, office supplies, and trying to line up clients for possible future business, but it is difficult to work on any freelance projects when you have a full-time job. I'm not sure what the future holds, but I'm optimistic this change will be for the better.

For anyone who has the dream of having enough time to write that novel, that book or that screenplay, I now have it and I plan on exploiting it to the fullest.

This afternoon I have been reorganizing my office and beginning to assemble the research material for my next book: Creative Thinking for Creative Writers. I plan on beginning a draft or an outline by the end of the week. I have to fight through the nervousness and the temptation to spend all my time looking for a new full-time position because I know that this is not what I want, but I need to be realistic, and make sure that secondary parachute is packed and ready to go just in case of emergency.

So if you know of anyone who needs a good freelance writer with lots of technical and business experience, please let me know and stay tuned for more details about the journey. Thank you.

Reading Elimination Tournament – The Power of the First Sentence

2011-08-05T10:24:00.000-04:00

Never underestimate the power of the first sentence of a novel. That sentence sets the tone. That sentence is the first lure on your line to hook the reader. Just as the first five pages are critical, the first sentence is the most important words within those first five pages. For example, the first line from Salem Falls:

“Several miles into his journey, Jack St. Bride decided to give up his former life.”

A character making a declaration, but characters making declarations always leads to conflict. Stating something shocking such as the first line from The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint:

“If I tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years-old the mailman ran over my head."

This creates an image that is vivid and horrifying, but as the reader, you want to know what happened next. You NEED to know. So you keep on reading. That is the ideal first sentence.

A Firing Offense – George P. Pelecanos (1992)

This book establishes the setting on page 1 and the description is excellent. The narrator Nick Stephanos is an advertising director with an attitude who immediately gets into a conflict with his stuffed shirt boss. Good discussion and good dialogue in the first five pages carries this to the next round. Even though it is a mystery and we have yet to see any evidence of a crime, it doesn't matter. The strength of description and interesting narrator make this work and compels you to keep reading.

Salem Falls – Jodi Picoult (2001)

This book is by one of my current favorite authors, Jodi Picoult. The back cover copy promises conflict, and a modern-day witch-hunt for a stranger looking to bury his past, and the typical Jodi Picoult plot which dwells not in black and white but in shades of gray. The first five pages introduce Jack, who has just been released from prison. The other major character, Addie, is dealing with the arrest of her alcoholic father. Both are nice quick scenes, have good dialogue, and suggest the conflict to come. This one goes the next round.

The Silence – Jim Krause (2004)

The back cover promises a series of catastrophic natural events which throws the world into mass panic and a virtual silence. Communication systems and computer technologies are devastated. Law and order have all but vanished as domestic terrorism and vigilante justice battle to control the terrified population. The first five pages introduce three of the four major characters in the book and hints at the conflict about to ensue. It seems to be starting slow, but I will give it a benefit of the doubt. The writer might just need a little more time to develop his premise. I want to read more so this one moves on to the next round.

The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint – Brady Udall (2001)

As mentioned in the opening paragraph above, a good way to start a book is with a sentence that either shocks or provokes you to keep reading to find out more. This book paints an image of a highly dysfunctional family and yet has good description that helps you see the world where the protagonist lives. It has a first-person point of view and I want to know more about the character. I’m passing this one on to round two.

Weekly Word Count: Summary of July 2011

2011-08-02T22:43:00.000-04:00

Does anyone else do this? Last month, I moved away from my model of tracking the amount of time I spent writing (in 15-minute increments of course) to tracking actual word count. I had the optimistic goal of writing 30,000 words (a little under 1000 words or 4 double-spaced typed pages a day). I considered these words to be “raw output” for blog entries, freelance work and my creative projects.

Courtesy of cinderellasg via Flickr

I thought, hmm 1000 words of raw output shouldn’t be hard at all. Using Dragon Naturally Speaking some of the time, I should be able to crank out that much and still have time for editing some of the raw words into content… Right? Wrong. Most days I generated between 300 and 500 words. July’s grand total: 13,026 words, for a daily average of about 434 words, or a little under half of my goal.

I found that I had hit good word count numbers during the early part of the month, getting more than 1300 words for several days. It really wasn’t that hard. The problem was that the rough output was not publishable, especially the words generated by using Dragon Naturally Speaking. The program worked well, but in the situations where it didn’t work, it created errors that would be embarrassing if it was sent out there. Dragon is working out to be a decent tool, but it does require careful editing, because it does manage to enter the wrong word occasionally and those wrong words are not going to be caught by the spell check.

Later in the month, a lot of rewriting of the raw output reduced the daily word count significantly. I also had some freelance work that didn’t help me boost the numbers since it required a lot of editing and several revisions.

This month I’m changing the approach a little and not only tracking the daily word count, but the number of words generated for each of my writing projects. I am planning to go well beyond last month’s 30,000 word goal (for reasons to be explained next week) and I’ll try to keep track of what I manage to achieve in 15 minute. I’ll post a summary every Monday so you can see my progress. So until next Monday… keep on writing!

Reading Elimination Tournament - Round 1: Style Matters

2011-07-28T11:10:00.000-04:00

These four books present distinct approaches to the first five pages. Each of them establishes a writing style which the reader can expect throughout the rest of the book. Style can establish a unique narrative voice; establish the rules within the world of the book or the pacing of the action within the book. Sometimes you don’t need a lot of conflict or action to hook the reader in… if you do it well.

Strawberry Tattoo – Lauren Henderson (1999)

This one has an interesting cover, but the language and description on the first few pages seems forced and not very engaging. The first two pages are taken up with a dream sequence and nothing really seems to happen. No hint of conflict (other than vague assertions that the character did something “very bad” due to a alcohol/chemical induced blackout). This provides no real hint of who the narrator is or what she wants. It also claims to be a mystery on the inside cover flap. If it is, it starts way too slow for a mystery and there is no evidence of a crime at all within the first five pages. There is nothing here that makes me want to keep on reading. I'm eliminating this one.

Outlaw School – Rebecca Ore (2000)

On the first page of this book we encounter the protagonist, Jane’s, first memory; a memory of absolute terror. Through this scene you get an indication of how bad of a mother she has and one of the obstacles that Jane will have to overcome even before she faces the Orwellian society outside of her family. Jane possesses great intelligence, and this doesn't fit within the society of this book. The first five pages presents a world where people are tightly controlled by the class into which they are born in, not by intelligence or abilities. An interesting world sketched within the first five pages that I want to read more about. This one goes on to round two.

The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad – Minister Faust (2004)

First of all, an intriguing title earns a +1 bonus. The character (narrator) is an honors English major (another +1 for an English major character… English majors always get a bad rap). An epilogue at the very beginning of the book? Unusual, but this supports the style established by the unique book title and cover design. The narrative voice is interesting and engaging (+1). Character information is presented in a role-playing game-like sheet (I love when authors find clever ways of presenting or introducing characters in such a way that does not seem forced +1). Pop culture references to Star Wars, Star Trek and comic books within the first five pages and on the back cover, not only helps establish the writing style, but all appeal to the geek in me (+3… one for each geek reference). With the arbitrary +7 score, this one’s a no brainer and going to the next round.

Tokyo Sucker Punch – Isaac Adamson (2000)

This book has a protagonist from Cleveland which is a big plus. (I’ll even give this an arbitrary +1 score for that.) Cleveland, like English majors, always gets a bad rap… I mean when was the last time you saw Cleveland mentioned in the national media without a joke attached to it? Having grown up in the Cleveland area (even though I don’t live there now) I still get offended by this… Anyway, I digress…

The back cover copy suggests an interesting combination part noir detective novel and part Chinese martial arts film. The first five pages have plenty of action, including the geisha in distress and a fight between the protagonist and Yakuza. It is sort of interesting, but not that engaging to me. I can't put my finger on what I don’t like about it. The author isn’t from the Cleveland area though so this might end up being a sly dig on Cleveland (the butt of the joke again), but the Adamson does not come across this way (yet) Maybe I need a few more pages to make a definitive decision, but there are many good books in this round and the arbitrary +1 score might not be enough to save it from elimination this round. It is a maybe for now, but definitely leaning heavily towards elimination.

Books Eliminated So Far (and available if you want them):

21 – Jeremy Iversen (2005)
Farm Fatale – Wendy Holden (2001)
Freezing -- Penelope Evans (1997)
Stronghold: Dragonstar Book 1 – Melanie Rawn (1990)
Man of the House – Stephen McCauley (1996)
Strawberry Tattoo -- Lauren Henderson (1999)

Bonus Books! (because I've finished reading them)

Lord of Chaos (Wheel of Time Book 6) – Robert Jordan (1995)
Crown of Swords (Wheel of Time Book 7) – Robert Jordan (1997)

15 Minute Goal Setting for Your Writing

2011-07-27T16:57:00.000-04:00

This article courtesy of the duolit Blog is a perfect fit for The 15-Minute Writer. The article entitled: No Excuses: 15 Minute Goal Setting for Authors is an incredible use of a 15-minute writing session. Based on the 15 Minutes and You're Done feature in Real Simple magazine, the author breaks down the goal setting process into short, manageable tasks. It blazes through the goal setting process by having the writer list various goal categories, then list the possible goals within that selected category, next edit the goals to make sure that they are realistic and measurable, then break down that goal into small manageable tasks, and finally do some cleanup work such as adding due dates to the tasks and adding them to a calendar.

This article has a way of making an intimidating process approachable and is a must for any writer who wants to write but has no idea how to get started. Using great examples in each of the steps, this article illustrates this process for the writer so he/she can imitate it.

I love the idea of making goal setting a 15-minute process. I highly recommend you check out this article.

I’m also adding this blog to my blogroll for The 15-Minute Writer since the other content I’ve skimmed on the site is also excellent.

Reading Elimination Tournament - Round 1: Book Hoarding? or Just Procrastinating?

2011-07-26T15:56:00.000-04:00

Maybe this is typical of a book hoarder… I don’t know. But three out of four of these books I cannot make up my mind on. They all set up future conflict in the book well, and all three of the situations are very interesting. But, we are early enough in the process that I can afford to be lenient in the culling of my selections. Or is this just procrastination? Hmmm.

@expectations – Kit Reed (2000)

This book was written before the prevalence of massive multi-player online games, but it definitely foreshadows the prevalence of online romance as well as how it can ruin a real-life romance. The interesting thing about Jenny the main character is that she's carrying on this romance in such a way that it seems like cheating, but yet her husband didn't tell her important information him, such as he has children and that they’d have to move away from where she lives. This is an interesting conflict, and I'm intrigued by this situation, but the writing doesn't really grab me.

I'm putting this one on the maybe pile for now, and leaning toward passing it on to the next round.

Skipped Parts – Tim Sandlin (1991)

I like the narrator in this one and the writer places us easily into the setting and sets up a situation for the conflict the narrator will encounter. He is a likable smart 13-year-old boy in a typical situation, being the new kid in town, and the struggles that come along with it. This seems to be a combination of a fish out of water and coming-of-age story. I want to read more about this one. On to round two.

L.A. Woman – Cathy Yardley (2002)

This book seems to be another one of those domestic dramas so popular in the chick lit genre, as well as seems to be a familiar theme present within the books I selected for this tournament. On the back cover, we have promises of a stable woman in a relationship with a man full of excuses. The first five pages illustrates this very well. Good dialogue and a good argument over the phone establishes the conflict right away. Sarah's boyfriend is a jerk and something is going to happen very soon. Again I don't like these are domestic dilemma type books very much, but this one does set up a conflict with good dialogue right away, so I may give this one a chance to go on to the next round. We'll have to see what the quality of the other books in this round are. This one is in the maybe pile for now.

Being Alexander – Nancy Sparling (2002)

I really didn't want to like this book. The cover is ugly. The situation established on the back seems trite, but the author does a great job creating sympathy for the main character Alex. Sparling does a great job of showing us the kind of abuse he puts up with before the promised transformation on the back cover. This abuse almost is beyond belief, but you find yourself wanting to see Alex getting even with everyone who has wronged him. I will put this one on the maybe pile but I'm leaning towards moving it onto the next round.

Books Eliminated So Far (and available if you want them):

21 – Jeremy Iversen (2005)
Farm Fatale – Wendy Holden (2001)
Freezing -- Penelope Evans (1997)
Stronghold: Dragonstar Book 1 – Melanie Rawn (1990)
Man of the House – Stephen McCauley (1996)

Bonus Books! (because I've finished reading them)

Lord of Chaos (Wheel of Time Book 6) – Robert Jordan (1995)
Crown of Swords (Wheel of Time Book 7) – Robert Jordan (1997)

Reading Elimination Tournament – Round 1: Make the Reader Care About Your Character

2011-07-21T07:12:00.001-04:00

Another important question to answer within the first five pages: Why should I care about what happens to this character? Typically the reader is introduced to the protagonist within the first five pages of the book, and first impressions in fiction, just like in life, are critical in determining if you want to know more about this person.

As a writer, your goal is to get the reader to buy into the character, to love the character as if he/she is a member of her family. You need to do this with mystery, an interesting situation or a strong emotion. And you need to do it fast. Throw the character in the middle of a situation or conflict. Show the character in action giving us a hint of what to expect out of the character throughout the rest of the book, and maybe even show us a glimpse of this character’s “fatal flaw.” Pick up your favorite books and read the first five pages again. Does the author establish the character within these pages? I’m betting that he does. Give it a try. Post comments about how this worked within your favorite books.

Silicon Follies – Thomas Scoville (2001)

The opening scene of this book is intriguing. I like this image:

“It was a sea of cubicles. Every twenty yards an oversized potted palm rose up like a desert island, a cluster of a upholstered chairs marooned and huddling at the base. High overhead, box girders braced up a brooding sheet metal sky."

These opening paragraphs establish the setting of the book, a soulless Silicon Valley high-tech company, and we are introduced to Paul, our protagonist, a writer who somehow has found himself in a mind numbing programming job that he hates. Here we go again with another writer protagonist and one that is in a high-tech job that they hate. This sounds all too-familiar to me, and like a winner. Onto the next round.

The Man of the House – Stephen McCauley (1996)

I bought this book off of the clearance table at Half-Price books for $.50, which might explain why bought it in the first place. The back cover copy is mildly interesting, but yet not so much so that it carries my interest. In the first five pages there isn't much going on. This appears to be another domestic drama without a lot of conflict or action immediately apparent. The character has some interesting insights, but none interesting enough to answer the most important question: Why should I care about this character? Therefore I'm eliminating this book.

Downbelow Station – C. J. Cherryh (1981)

I have no idea how long I’ve owned this book, but it's about time that I decide whether to read it or not. And even though the book does not introduce any characters during the first five pages, the narrative sets up an intriguing situation that I want know more about. This book already feels like it's ahead of its time so I want to read more. Some books just break all those rules that you establish for them. On to round two.

The Book of Joe – Jonathan Tropper (2004)

I’m a sucker for writer protagonists. What can I say? This is a personal bias that you just are going to have to put up with throughout this tournament. So, a writer protagonist (+1), a killer first line:

"Just a few scant months after my mother's suicide, I walked into the garage, looking for my baseball glove, and discovered Cindy Pozner on her knees, animatedly performing fellatio on my older brother, Brad." (+1 for the line, +2 for including allusions to death and sex within the first line)

A jaded author narrator who wrote a best-selling autobiographical book so incendiary, that his entire hometown tried to sue him for libel. (+1 for introducing conflict). And now he must return to that town to deal with his father stroke (+1 for setting up a situation where the character needs to confront this conflict immediately).

In addition, we learn a great deal about the character (+1); that he's having trouble with relationships, that he still loves his high school girlfriend, that he's been a jerk to her, and that he seems to have regrets about what happened with the town. Lots of conflict, a solid narrative voice and killer first line and the arbitrary +7 number equals going to the next round.

Books Eliminated So Far (and available if you want them):

21 – Jeremy Iversen (2005)
Farm Fatale – Wendy Holden (2001)
Freezing -- Penelope Evans (1997)
Stronghold: Dragonstar Book 1 – Melanie Rawn (1990)
Man of the House – Stephen McCauley (1996)

Bonus Books! (because I've finished reading them)

Lord of Chaos (Wheel of Time Book 6) – Robert Jordan (1995)
Crown of Swords (Wheel of Time Book 7) – Robert Jordan (1997)

Are You Ready for Disaster? (Part 2)

2011-07-20T11:38:00.000-04:00

In Part 1 I discussed how to manage your files (both paper and electronic). Part 2 covers how to handle some trickier (and potentially expensive) problems.

Dealing with hardware failure

Courtesy of David Baker via Flickr

Equipment has a way of breaking down at the worst possible time. Either in the midst of trying to meet a critical deadline or needing something to print out without smudges or fading ink as the cartridge starts running out.

A good solution for this is to hold on to an old working computer and printer. At a minimum it should have a working CD-ROM drive and internet access. You can also keep it protected using free anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. They don’t have to be fancy, simple programs such as avast! or AVG Anti-Virus & Anti-Spyware for virus protection and Ad-Aware and Spyware Terminator for spyware protection are powerful enough to keep your computer safe for a short period of time.

You also might consider keeping the old system loaded with the common software programs that you use (even just an older version of them), or use cloud applications such as Google Docs to do your work while your primary computer is getting fixed.

If you don’t have an old computer available, you can always check out Craigslist to find cheap used computer equipment and printers.

A backup printer is pretty inexpensive. You can get a good one for well under $100. Most printer companies make money from printers through replacement ink or toner cartridges these days. This shouldn’t be a huge factor though since this is a backup printer. Since many stores bundle inkjet printers with a new desktop computer purchase, there are many people who already have a printer who might not necessarily need an extra one and sell them on eBay or Craigslist for $50 or less. This is a worthwhile investment if you ever have a desperate need to print a document.

Addressing the loss of primary phone service

Losing phone service is a little more tricky to deal with. Most people now have mobile phones that can serve as a backup in case that your landline goes down, but if you’ve gone completely wireless, a service such as Skype setup on your computer might be a good option for you.

Handling the loss of internet access

Losing internet access is a pain but the easiest problem to address. With all of the businesses offering free Wi-Fi these days, the cost of Internet access could be as inexpensive as a cup of coffee or an order of fries. In addition, many libraries offer free Wi-Fi access so all you have to do is bring your laptop or your cell phone to download critical email or information. Learn where your local free Wi-Fi access points are so you know where to go in the case of Internet access emergency.

Are there other writing disasters that you have encountered? Comment below and let me know about it.

Reading Elimination Tournament - Round 1: "What Happens Next?"

2011-07-18T07:46:00.012-04:00

The most important objective a writer has to achieve within the first five pages of a book is to compel the reader to ask the question: “What happens next?” If you can manage this, you might have them hooked, but in order to set the hook completely, you need to provide an answer to another question: “Why should I keep reading this?”

Lord Foul's Bane – Stephen R Donaldson (1977)

This book has been one of those legendary staples of fantasy fiction that I never have managed to get around to reading. I have probably owned this book since junior high school. If the yellowing pages aren't a definite indication, the Dee’s Paperback Exchange stamp on the inside cover tells me that I bought it in the town I grew up in a long, long time ago.

The book starts out as Thomas Covenant is walking two miles into town to pay his phone bill while the reaction of the people he passes by suggests that he's done something horrible or frightening. He has a rare disease that desensitizes his nerves which requires him to be aware of inadvertently hurting himself. The disease seems to be very depressing or debilitating. No words seem to be spoken to him during this walk, and most of the conflict has been set up through his thoughts and reactions of the people he passes. This conflict is engaging enough that I want to read more. I'm sending this on to the next round.

Lonesome Dove – Larry McMurtry (1985)

The fact that this is a Pulitzer Prize-winning epic masterpiece of the American West, should be enough to pass it to the next round, but I need to be fair. The first five pages are filled with sensory details that give you a clear picture of the world of Lonesome Dove. The text helps you get a sense of who the characters are even though the only one we've met so far is Augustus. There is no definitive sign of conflict so far, except for some hinted at between Call and Augustus. This is enough to get me to read more. On the next round.

Stronghold: Dragonstar Book 1 – Melanie Rawn (1990)

This book turns out to be the first book in a second trilogy, and assumes that you have read the earlier trilogy, and familiar with the characters presented on the first pages along with the historical events alluded to. Going to have to pass on this one and give it away to someone who has read the first series of books.

The Outlaws of Sherwood – Robin McKinley (1988)

This book is a retelling of the legend of Robin Hood, and on the first page we learn that he's more of a fletcher (arrow maker) than he is an archer. There are a lot of big paragraphs dense with words and description which make it hard for me to get interested. But McKinley is a Newberry Award-winning author, and I may be willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I'm not sure I'm that interested in continuing to read this book. I will put this down as a maybe for now, and see what the other books in the round may bring.

Books Eliminated So Far (and available if you want them):

21 – Jeremy Iversen (2005)
Farm Fatale – Wendy Holden (2001)
Freezing -- Penelope Evans (1997)
Stronghold: Dragonstar Book 1 – Melanie Rawn (1990)

Reading Elimination Tournament – Round 1: The Next 4 Books

2011-07-16T08:54:00.002-04:00

Sometimes a book can be eliminated by something such as a boring cover design, or in the case of one of these books, a layout that is difficult to read. This might be because of the use of tiny print, such as when a publisher decides to print a large book, but still wants to keep the paper and print costs low. All elements of publishing a book need to be carefully considered during the process. A poor cover can lead to lost sales, no matter how brilliant the words behind the cover may be.

elsewhere – Gabrielle Zevon (2005)

The first 4 pages are told from the POV of Lucy, a dog, and it is an interesting narrative voice. Page 5 introduces us to Liz Hall, the presumed protagonist of the book, in a strange place. The back cover promises an interesting story by using a letter Liz wrote to one of her professors. Here is the first line of that letter: “By now, you have probably heard that I’m dead.” That is the way to hook a reader in to keep his/her interest. This one was an easy decision: on to the next round.

100 Years of Solitude – Gabriela Garcia Marquez (1992)

A book by a Nobel Prize winning writer and selection from Oprah's book club which is of course very high praise and credentials. It starts off with a vivid description as well as an interesting situation with the character obsessed with science and discoveries. It is intriguing and maybe I will give it a few more pages, but am not sure where this book is going. I'll put it in the maybe pile, leaning towards eliminating it. I think it has not been eliminated for certain because I feel very conflicted about dumping a book from a Noble Prize winning author this early in the reading. I’ll have to see on this one. In the Maybe pile for now…

Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates (1992)

This is a short book using short chapters with a style of narration that seems to start from the end of the story, and moves backwards from that point, telling us how we got to that end. This seems like a difficult story structure to attempt, and I’d like to see how it Oates does this. It could be an excellent books showcasing how the plot and structure of fiction works.

Even though there is little dialogue, the voice of this book hooks you in and hooks you in good. It was hard to put down even after reading the first five pages. This one goes to the next round.

Freezing – Penelope Evans (1997)

This book has a design flaw which is a strike against it. The words are crammed together in a tight formation with little white space. The words are large enough, but I still don't like the crowed layout of the pages.

The back cover promises a conflict between real life and a computer online fantasy game, which is why I probably bought the book in the first place. There is little dialogue in the first five pages, and a lot of narrative introducing many characters quickly, but not allowing me to differentiate between any of them. Nothing here sticks with me or pushes me to continue reading. This one is eliminated.

Books Eliminated So Far (and available if you want them):

21 – Jeremy Iversen (2005)
Farm Fatale – Wendy Holden (2001)
Freezing -- Penelope Evans (1997)

Are You Ready for Disaster? (Part 1)

2011-07-15T14:47:00.000-04:00

A severe thunderstorm rolled through the area Monday night. Several lightning bolts struck fairly close to the house, one of which managed to blow out our cable modem. This was quite a challenge for us, I need to have Internet access and phone service for my day job, not to mention that my wife is currently taking an online class, so any downtime is a huge problem. And, of course, the cable company couldn’t replace the modem for until over two days later. So I sneaked off to local cafés and McDonald's to sponge off their free Wi-Fi in order to check e-mail and do just enough to keep up with things.

There isn't much we could've done about this, but this does bring to mind many other potential disasters and all writers should be prepared for:

Losing critical project files
Misplacing paper copies of notes and information
Dealing with the failure of critical hardware, such as a computer or printer
Addressing the loss of primary phone service
Handling the loss of internet access

Losing critical project files
This is the easiest disaster to prevent, but the hardest for some of us to remember to do. Scheduling daily backups is critical to avoid the most painful of situations: file loss. Whether through file corruption, equipment failure or simply losing your storage media, there is nothing (and I mean NOTHING) worse than losing your only copy of a novel or book proposal.

Photo courtesy of Leszek Leszekcynski via Flickr

With high capacity flash drives costing less than $10 at any store, you should have a couple of them around at all times. But other methods for backing up files are available, such as using a rewritable CD in your CD-ROM drive for your daily backups. Just let the new files overwrite the old ones.

There are also online solutions such as Dropbox, Google Docs or even e-mailing critical files to yourself at the end of the work day. These types of solutions are also good because they provide off-site storage. That way even if your house burns down or is flooded, you always have your backups in another location. If you don’t feel comfortable relying on online storage for off-site storage, consider storing back up files (either on flash drives or CD-ROMs) at a friend’s house or even in your car.

Misplacing paper copies of notes and information
Managing paper is one of the biggest challenges any writer faces. Little is more frustrating than digging through reams of paper and notebook pages to find those critical notes you took from a phone interview or careful research.

When I start a new project, I select a hanging file folder, label it clearly, and put it in a prominent place in my work area. Then I simply put any information related to that project into that hanging file folder. I also use manila file folders to organize information within the hanging file folder. That way all of the information is in one place and harder to lose.

Another option to consider is to create electronic copies of your paper files by using a scanner or photocopier. With multi-function printer/scanner/copiers costing less than $100 at many electronic and office supply stores (probably even cheaper on Craigslist), this might be an excellent way to “back-up” your important papers. You can also use a digital camera or a phone camera with a decent resolution to capture info quickly.

The Fiction Elimination Tournament – Round 1: The First Four Books

2011-07-07T17:58:00.000-04:00

Just because a book gets eliminated in the first round doesn't necessarily mean it is a bad book or that it is poorly written. It just means that the book didn't grab my attention for whatever reason or it just wasn't for me. You'll occasionally hear an agent say something along those lines. "Good book, but I'm just not into it."

Evaluating writing, anyone's writing, is always subjective. Every reader will bring unique life experiences, preferences, and personal biases to the pages. For example: Charles Dickens is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. Many read and love each and every one of his works. I find them too long, overwritten, and boring. I can get the essence of any of his books through Cliffs Notes, because I simply cannot read one of them without a collegiate dictionary sitting right next to it. This spoils the "suspension of disbelief" for me when I'm reading.

Layover - Lisa Zeidner (1999)
I've never heard of this writer before, but it has many positive critical comments on the front and back cover and on the first few inside pages. The back cover copy suggests a great deal of conflict. The first five pages present the protagonist Claire as likable. We learn right away that her child has died and through her actions can see that she is still grieving. These are little actions such as lying about having a grown son, staying extra days in hotel rooms without being charged, and avoiding calls from her philandering husband. This reaction feels realistic, the conflict has been established and I want to continue reading. This one goes on to round two.

Farm Fatale – Wendy Holden (2001)
What was I thinking on this one? Boring cover, sort of intriguing back cover copy, but that is it. The first five pages sets up the trite premise. Girl tired of living in city. Boy likes living in city. Girl tries to convince boy to live in country. Conflict and hilarity will ensue. The problem is I don't care. It's not enough to keep me reading. This one is eliminated.

About the Author – John Colapinto (2001)
The narrator is a wannabe writer, but seems to be coming up with every excuse not to write. Because of the back cover copy, you can conclude that his roommate is writing about the narrator’s exploits in the party world. The narrator brings home a girl who is a palm reader for a one night stand and she determines that he is going to come into a lot of money very soon, and at the end of the five pages the roommate’s laptop has been stolen. The narrative voice is interesting even though the narrator is somewhat unlikable, but you want to know more. This goes on to the next round.

21 – Jeremy Iversen (2005)
Dude. The story starts out with frat boys getting wasted for the protagonist, Brad's, 21st birthday. This is a set up for the requisite party scene and the dialogue is pretty boring. The first five pages doesn't allow me to care about what happens to the character. And that is the most important thing you have to do in the first five pages: Make the reader care. Maybe this is just slow starter, but unless there are a lot of other crappy books in this pile, I think this one is eliminated… Bro.

Books Eliminated So Far (and available if you want them):

21 – Jeremy Iversen (2005)
Farm Fatale – Wendy Holden (2001)

Reading Elimination Tournament Begins - Preview of Round 1

2011-06-29T13:38:00.000-04:00

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying if a book doesn't make it past the first round that it isn't a good book. That might be the case, but a publisher somewhere decided to take a chance on it, so it probably isn't too bad... It just might not be the book for me... and some of these books have been sitting on my bookshelf for almost 20 years. Either I'm going to read it soon, or not at all... and if I'm not going to read it, I need to pass these books on. They've been here too long.

Here are the criteria that I'm using to determine if a book goes on to the second round:

Whether the first five pages grab and hold my attention making me interested in continuing to read the book.
The summary on the back of the book.
The blurbs and critical acclaim on the inside of the book.
The design of the book cover. You all know that you do it... such a cliche, but we do all judge a book by its cover.
The author's name and reputation. This might not seem fair, but all publishers (and most readers too) evaluate the writer's name recognition, sales of past books, awards won, and respect of their peers.

I then will divide these into 8 groups of 8 books and write up what I liked about them, what I didn't like and why it passes to the next round or fails. I may also place some of the books in a "maybe" pile where I'll evaluate them against the other maybes if I need to do so.

Without further ado, here is the list of 64 books:

The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad – Minister Faust (2004)
The Risk Pool – Richard Russo (1986)
100 Years of Solitude – Gabriela Garcia Marquez (1992)
@expectations – Kit Reed (2000)
If I Don't Six – Elwood Reid (1998)
LA Woman – Cathy Yardley (2002)
Lonesome Dove – Larry McMurtry (1985)
Freezing – Penelope Evans (1997)
A Slipping Down Life – and Tyler (1970)
The Outlaws of Sherwood – Robin McKinley (1988)
The Businessmen – Thomas M. Disch (1984)
The Dead Zone – Stephen King (1979)
The Hollow Man – Dan Simmons (1992)
The Golden Compass – Philip Pullman (1995)
Life After God – Douglas Copeland (1994)
Silicon Follies – Thomas Scoville (2001)
Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
Saigon, Illinois – Paul Hoover (1988)
A Firing Offense – George P. Pellicano's (1992)
A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham (1990)
About the Author – John Colapinto (2001)
Outlaw School – Rebecca Ore (2000)
Music for Torching – A.M. Homes (1999)
Farm Fatale – Wendy Holden (2001)
The Sweet Hereafter – Russell Banks (1991)
Tokyo Sucker Punch – Isaac Adamson (2000)
Layover - Lisa Zeidner (1999)
Lying Awake – Mark Salzman (2000)
A Bigamist's Daughter – Alice McDermott (1982)
Treason – Orson Scott card (1979)
The Grid – Philip Kerr (1995)
The Difference Engine – William Gibson and Bruce sterling (1991)
Stronghold: Dragonstar Book 1 – Melanie Rawn (1990)
Manifold Time – Stephen Baxter (2000)
Lord Foul's Bane – Stephen R Donaldson (1977)
Downbelow Station – C. J. Cherryh (1981)
Night Duty – Melitta Breznik (1999)
Love Invents Us – Amy Bloom (1997)
Salem Falls – Jodi Picoult (2001)
elsewhere – Gabrielle Zevon (2005)
The Feast of Love – Charles Baxter (2000)
Seven Types of Ambiguity – Elliot Perlman (2003)
Skipped Parts – Tim Sandlin (1991)
21 – Jeremy Iversen (2005)
The Silence – Jim Krause (2004)
A Regular Guy – Mona Simpson (1996)
The Man of the House – Stephen McCauley (1996)
Man Crazy – Joyce Carol Oates (1997)
Jack – A.M. Homes (1989)
Paris Trout – Pete Dexter (1988)
The Sportswriter – Richard Ford (1986)
The Book of Joe – Jonathan Tropper (2004)
The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint – Brady Udall (2001)
Being Alexander – Nancy Sparling (2002)
Crossing to Safety – Wallace Stegner (1987)
The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields (1993)
The Love Letter – Cathleen Schine (1995)
Ceremony – Leslie Marmon Silko (1977)
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy (1997)
John Henry Days – Colson Whitehead (2001)
Vicious Spring – Hollis Hampton Jones (2003)
Geek Love – Katherine Dunn (1983)
Strawberry Tattoo – Lauren Henderson (1999)
Turn-of-the-Century – Kurt Anderson (1999)

Reading Elimination Tournament -- 64 Books, So Little Time

2011-06-27T10:33:00.000-04:00

I buy a lot of books. My particular weakness, trade paperbacks in the bargain bins of Half-Price Books, at library book sales or wherever else I pick them up. As a result, I have a huge backlog of books that I may never get too and my shelves are overflowing, so I need to get rid of some books. So here is what I'm going to do. I'm going to take 64 books off of my shelves and I'm going to put them in an elimination tournament. I'd love to do this as a March Madness thing, but let's face it, even following my bizarre rules, no one can possibly read 64 books in a month so here's how the process works:

Round #1 -- I read the first 5 pages of these 64 random books from my collection and select the 32 books that I'm most interested in continuing to read. I'm going to focus on the writing craft of these books and note what interested me (or didn't) and give you at least a brief description of why it made it (or didn't) to the next round.
Round #2 -- From the reading of the first five pages I will organize the remaining books into "brackets" of those that are sort of alike. In the books that I've selected is a wide range of literary tastes: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Literary, Popular Fiction, and even some award winners and classics. I will read the first 25 pages of these books and eliminate 16 of them.
Round #3 -- The Sweet 16: I will read an additional 25 pages of these books (50 pages) and eliminate 8 of them... At this point I may "set aside" some of the books to finish later even if I eliminate them, but who knows.
Round #4 -- The Elite 8: These books I will read to the end, or until I get bored of it, and eliminate the number to the Final 4.
Round #5 -- Down to 2.
Round #6 -- Determines the Grand Champion of the 2011Reading Elimination Tournament.

How does this benefit you? Free books! If you want a book that has been eliminated, just let me know and I'll give it to you (either in person, or ship it to you for the media mail shipping cost (probably $2.50). Unless the books in the final rounds absolutely enthrall me, causing me to add it to my Fiction Hall of Fame, chances are that most of the "winners" will be available for you as well.

Great Writing Means Nothing If You Don't "Ship" It

2011-06-15T13:18:00.001-04:00

I finished up Seth Godin’s Linchpin on a week ago on Friday and a couple of the concepts within the book have been with me all week. One of which is the importance of deadlines.

I have a huge problem with deadlines. I always have. I’m not good at setting them or keeping them. But Seth has an interesting perspective on them. Bottom line: You can have great ideas and great products but they mean nothing if they don’t “ship.” You have to have a deadline or a drop dead ship date in order to force yourself to get the item out the door. It is tempting to hang onto an project wanting to tweak it a bit more, make one more revision or find that perfect window when the stars align perfectly and the time is right for you to release your book.

Do you want to write a novel? Set a deadline for completion. Feel crazy? Tell people about that deadline. Tell a LOT of people about it. And then… remind them about it. OFTEN.

So what have you been avoiding shipping? A novel to an agent? Submitting a short story or article to a magazine? Just getting a regular writing practice started? Showing your work to a local writing group? Set a date. Make it a reasonable one, but make the date. Write it down somewhere where you can see it every day. Tell people about it. And no matter what happens… you “ship” that product on that day. No matter what. If you don’t think it is good enough, don’t worry about it. You can always make a few revisions later. Even big publishers have made corrections before printing another edition of a book. Remember no one and nothing is perfect. Perfection is a tool of control for your Inner Critic.

I’ve had several projects in my queue for years. I have them in various states of completion, but I never seem to push through that wall to get the product to the shipment date.

Case in point: My Fantasy Sci-Fi JumpStart Jar. I have the supplies. The label has been designed, finalized and printed. The content for the jar was 90% completed when I lost my source files stored on my flash drive. And guess what? I never backed up the files. This totally deflated any enthusiasm I had for the project. Essentially, I had to start over from scratch. This happened almost 2 years ago, and I’ve worked my way back up having it about 60% complete right now. Very slowly. I work on it for a couple of days here and there, but have not made a continuous effort to get it done. Sometimes these efforts are months apart. With that amount of time passing you lose focus. You forget where you left off. You forget how far along you are in the project, and it takes a lot more energy to get focused and push it forward.

So here is my bold statement: The Fantasy Sci-Fi JumpStart Jar will ship on June 30^th. Order it now. It will be completed and good to go on that very day. No matter what.

Don't Let Thinking Get in the Way of Your Writing

2011-05-25T10:52:00.000-04:00

This short article on Lifehacker reminded me of something I try to instill in all of my writing students. That you must always be writing to be a writer, and 95% of a writer's success depends on how well they do the simplest thing: Showing up and doing the work.

Thinking about writing and intending to do it is not enough. You need to do it NOW. And this is why daily practice is important. Even if you are not working on a specific project, you need to be writing about something. Even if it is about how your new dog, Rosie, is the stupidest dog you've ever owned and makes the 2nd stupidest dog you've ever owned, Sunny, look like a Rhode Scholar in comparison...

The practice is what allows you to enter the "zone" where you don't think when you write, you just do it.

Getting that Writing Project Started

2011-05-23T16:37:00.000-04:00

Every writing project is overwhelming. When I finally decide to start a new project, no matter what it is, I have a moment where I feel my stomach flutter and a heaviness in my chest. The closest feeling I can compare to it is the anxiousness before the first day of school as a child; a mixture of excitement and dread. The thrill of learning new things, mixed with regret for the loss of freedom.

There is nothing harder than staring at a blank screen in your word processor wondering to yourself, "What the hell was I going to write about?" This always gives your Inner Critic a place to slither a few doubts into your head, and start the negative chattering: "Why are you doing this? Don't you have to steam clean the hall carpet? Wouldn't you rather read the next chapter in The Hunger Games instead? You don't have a clue what you are doing, do you? The words will never make it what it is in your head... so why bother?" And on and on.

Any time you take on a new project, whether it is a technical magazine article involving a lot of research and interviews, starting a novel, or even weeding all of the flowerbeds and planting flowers in them, when you face the enormity of the task... your Inner Critic is ALWAYS going to advise you to procrastinate.

Take a deep breath, and take 15 minutes to list of every single task you need to do in order to complete the project. Items on the list can be as big as conducting an interview with a the premiere expert in the field or as small as going to the post office to buy stamps to send out query letters with SASEs. Do not stop writing until the 15 minutes are up. If you are running out of ideas for more tasks, look at the existing ones on your list and see if you can break them into even SMALLER tasks.

If you look at it as one huge project, it is daunting. But if you tackle just one of the little tasks on the list, and work on it until you are finished, it is not so bad. You might even feel inspired to start another. You might become addicted to the feeling of sweet victory when you cross another task off.

Pretty soon you notice that you have a chapter done, then two, then ten, and then you have a first draft completed, then a second, then a final, and the next thing you know, you are shopping around for agents and publishers.

This is at the heart of what this blog is about: The 15-Minute Writer: How to Achieve Your Creative Writing Dreams in 15 Minutes a Day. This blog helps you develop the skills necessary to become an excellent writer, teachs you how to break down these huge writing tasks into manageable 15-minute tasks, and shows you how to manage your time to get these tasks done.

Get a timer, or use a timer app on your iPod, smartphone, or the web, set it for 15 minutes and begin chasing that dream today!

Spring Cleaning Your Writing

2011-05-10T15:28:00.000-04:00

It is hard to believe that May is already here. With all of the rain we've had over the last 6 weeks, the lawn has already gotten away from us and we already are behind on our annual battle with Mother Nature.

Spring around our house always signifies some sort of spring cleaning, where we get rid of the stuff in our lives that isn’t working.

A few of years ago, I had a lawn mower that was 6 years-old and falling apart. If you could get it started (and each spring, that was a big IF) it rattled and wheezed… mainly due to several stupid things that I did to it… like when I replaced the blade for the mower and installed the new one on upside-down, causing it to rattle and vibrate considerably, cutting the grass with the dull edge of the blade, and then being too clueless to realize what I had done… at least until all of the bolts on the mower started vibrating right out of their sockets, causing major parts of the mower, such as the gas tank, to simply fall off.

My friend Matt, after taking a look at the situation and laughing at me for what I had done, thought that the solution would be to buy another used mower, which in his capable hands, worked great... but a week later when I tried to get it started (after about an hour of yanking on the pull cord, wheezing and swearing). I failed miserably. I gave up, loaded the two beat-up and barely-functional mowers onto the trailer headed toward the Stoutsville Auction (an annual event which raises money for the local firefighters), and went on down to the locally-owned Toro lawnmower dealer and bought a brand new mower with a 5 year warranty.

And I haven’t had a problem with it since. The saved time and aggravation alone while using this mower has paid for itself 10 times over. Sometimes spending extra money does solve a difficult problem better than buying the cheapest or easiest solution.

So what’s not working in your writing life? What are those little writing obstacles that prevent you from sitting down at the keyboard day after day?

Does your old computer take 30 minutes to boot up? Are you missing deadlines because of watching the season finales of your favorite TV shows? Are you spending too much time writing email and not enough time writing your novel? Are you still editing that manuscript instead of sending it on to the agent or publisher as you had intended months ago?

Well, May is the perfect month to change all of that. Inventory the things that inhibit your writing. Are you not writing because your desk chair is uncomfortable? Get a new one. Are you spending too much time playing that addictive little Solitaire game installed on your computer instead of writing? Delete it. Do you have a mouse that doesn’t quite work right, or a keyboard that makes your wrists numb after 30 minutes of typing? Trash it! Get rid of distracting clutter in your writing space. Throw out magazines that you always had planned on reading, but never have. If you can’t make the time to read them now, you never will. Pitch those pens that don’t work. File or toss those “important” papers that are piled everywhere. I am as guilty of this as anyone. If you saw my office right now, you’d know this to be true.

But, sometimes you just need a little fresh air and some encouragement to get rid of the bad habits that have inhibited your writing during the long winter months and start spring with a clean slate. So make that list, get out your broom, and start cleaning!

Finding Moments with the Muse: 6 Ways the Pros Find Time to Write

2011-04-22T16:07:00.000-04:00

The statistics are in. We work longer and harder now than we ever did before. Two-income households, the difficulty of balancing work and family life, information overload and more all suck time away from our writing. But guess what? The best-selling pros faced the exact same time crunch as you do now, and here’s how they worked around it.

Write early in the morning

Drag yourself out of bed a half hour early everyday and write. This will give you three hours and thirty minutes of writing time a week. Many famous authors have taken this approach.

Anthony Trollope woke up everyday at 5:20am before beginning his full-time job at the post office, and wrote 250 words every 15 minutes. He regularly produced over 40 pages a week.

After her husband died, Mary Higgins Clark wrote from 5 to 7am, before her 5 children woke up for school.

Write at night

If your energy level is high enough, try staying up a little later each night after everyone else has settled down for the night. This was the preferred method of Dostoyevsky.

Colleen McCullough worked as a Research Assistant during the day, and wrote two drafts of The Thorn Birds in 3 months, averaging 50 pages a night.

Write during coffee breaks

When your co-workers are taking their coffee or smoke breaks, stay at your desk, or find some place where you can write in a notebook. If you get two 15-minute breaks a day, use one of them to gain an extra hour and 15 minutes of writing time a week.

John Grisham used this approach while working as a lawyer. Whenever he had a few minutes, he would write. He wrote during court recesses, while waiting for client meetings, or whenever he could squeeze it in.

Write when the kids nap

J.K. Rowling often let her baby sleep while she wrote about Harry, Ron Weasley and friends at a local coffee shop. Try to flex to the baby’s schedule or write a couple of times a week during the kid’s “quiet time.”

Or do what Anne Tyler, the author of The Accidental Tourist and Breathing Lessons, did and write while your kids are at school. Tyler wrote from 9am to 3:30pm every day.

Go into the office early or leave a little bit later and write

I try to do this a couple of days a week, and it seems to work well. Not that I am any sort of a famous writer or anything, but taking 15 minutes at the beginning of my work day really does help get some writing done.

Use a tape recorder and dictate your work during a commute

Barbara Cartland, one of the most prolific novelists of all time, dictated most of her novels using a tape recorder. They probably were not dictated during a commute, more than likely they were dictated lounging on an elegant divan, with a couple of foo-foo dogs on her lap… but you get the picture.

Schedule writing office hours during a weekend or day off

I get up early on weekends. An hour later than when I would normally wake up for an average work day, but when it is still quiet around the house. Two books: The Weekend Novelist and The Weekend Novelist Writes a Mystery by Robert Ray explore how to write using the weekend hours to produce a novel in one year.

These ideas, combined with a few unique ones of your own, should help you find at least 3 to 5 hours each week to get that writing project done. What are some of your tips and tricks for finding time to write?

8 Ways Reorganizing Your Writing Space Benefits You

2011-04-13T16:31:00.000-04:00

Sorry for my absence from posting here last week. I was busy cleaning and reorganizing my office. Yes, the office. It probably hasn't been cleaned and organized thoroughly.. .well ever. I spent at least 15 hours last week emptying, sorting, purging, rearranging, sweeping, vacuuming, recycling and discovering things that have been missing for years. And I haven't even BEGUN to deal with my Brazil-sized rain-forest-worth of paper yet...

Also, there needs to be some examination in the near future about WHY I decided to do this right now...

Not my desk, but this gives you the idea of what I'm dealing with

Here are 8 ways that reorganizing your writing workspace can benefit you:

Change your perspective on your work -- For so long now, I've been limited by the way I set up my desk. My monitor was smashed up against the wall and I was not able to position it as I would like, and it wasted a lot of space. The light was also poor in the area, not horribly so, but bad enough. After turning the desk around 90 degrees, it freed up where I could place the monitor and allowed plenty of desk space to fit my laptop and the old 20" CRT monitor as well as some additional workspace. A better layout makes it more appealing to work there and probably will encourage me to spend more time there.
Free up space -- I have this affliction. I don't like to throw out things that are "still good." That is things that will be useful for someone at some point, not in a freaky Hoarder kind of way, just in a I hate to waste money kind of way. Case in point, a sealed package of thank you cards for "my daughters baby shower gift." My baby daughter just turned 16 and is driving. I don't think I'll be sending them out anytime soon, but they took up space in my desk drawer because I saw them as being still useful.
Limit choices -- I had a complete desk drawer full of pens, pencils, markers, dry-erase markers that was difficult to open it was so packed. I also had 4 pen/pencil holder cups on my desk. I never have to buy another writing instrument again... ever. That is if I liked ball-point pens or pencils, (which I don't) so I kept a few of each type of instrument and packed the rest up to donate to the schools in the area.
Make it easier to find stuff -- When you organize in piles, it is quite easy to lose important stuff under the gun. When looking for one thing, I often pile other things on top of more things... which often results in other important stuff getting buried.
Find untold caches of office supplies -- Buried in my desk drawers and in several other areas of the office were Post-It Notes and index cards of all sizes and colors. When I have a hard time finding these things, I just bought more. Now I have enough Post-Its and index cards to last me for the next 3 years...
Get rid of stuff that's not relevant to your work -- Some organization tip I read stated to keep the items you use most frequently in the easiest to reach storage area in your work space. Here are some of the things that I pulled out of my upper left-hand desk drawer: two decks of playing cards, old customs forms that are no longer used by the post office, a broken Sony Digital camera (I've had 2 cameras since then), 3 AC adapters for unknown electronic devices, 5 plastic kid's meal toys that I kept on my desk for some reason at one point, a 160GB external hard drive (not currently in use) a large velour bag of dice from my Dungeons & Dragons role-playing days (I haven't played in almost 20 years), manuals from my bosses OfficeJet from 10 years ago (the printer died at least 4 years ago and was trashed), several Cleveland Indians Topps baseball cards from 1986 (none of them good players or memorable to anyone other than a Cleveland Indians fan), and the usual crap mentioned above: Post-Its in a rainbow of colors, pens, push pins (loose - OUCH!), binder clips, index cards, envelopes, etc.) Just imagine what I pulled out of the bigger drawers!

Also, my desk had a credenza which provided 3 more drawers of junk space, as well as additional square footage on the desktop. The drawback: It wasn't working for me, the height of it was about 6 inches shorter than the desk which made the space hard to use (I had to bend over to write on it, so it just became more area to pile up more clutter). I removed it and consolidated all of the crap in those drawers into the 3 remaining drawers. Guess what? It has been almost a week and I don't miss any of it! It wasn't relevant, so I removed it!
Provide plenty of goods -- For the church youth mission trip indoor "yard sale" in May.
Create a better view of the door -- Never sit with your back to a door. Ever.

Next: Stay tuned for my attack on "paper mountain."

Most Brilliant Product Ever Invented? Or the End of Civilization?

2011-04-01T16:53:00.000-04:00

Either this is the most brilliant consumer product ever imagined and manufactured, or a sign that the end of civilization as we know it is near. April Fool's joke? I'm not so sure... it looks like PopCap games, the makers of addictive games like Bejeweled and Bookworm, have diversified into interactive microwave ovens. These allow you to play games on it while you wait for your Quaker Instant Oatmeal to cook.

Are we so pathetic that we need to be entertained while nuking our Ham 'n Cheese Hot Pockets? Hmmm, come to think of it... yes... It would be sort of cool to have one...

Getting It All Done - Quick and Dirty Tips

2011-03-30T13:39:00.000-04:00

There are tons of organizational gurus out there these days. Oprah has about 12 of them on speed-dial. Getting organized is now a multi-million dollar industry. Because, let's face it, our lives are a mess.

As part of the Quick and Dirty Tips website, the Get-It-Done Guy, Stever Robbins' podcast the Get-It-Done Guy's Quick and Dirty Tips Guide to Work Less and Do More, now has over 170 episodes and covers all sorts of tricks and techniques for handling almost any type of organizational task.

From forming a new habit (Episode #163) to creating text macros (Episode #167), Robbins covers techincal issues and decisions (such as buying a computer - #154), dealing with specific organizational problems (such as organizing gift and credit cards - #165 or planning a successful group trip - #161), or general work habits (such as how to use the phone better - #151 or making good decisions - #111).

Stever Robbins also has a lot of great advice specific to writers to help us with the glut of information that all workers in the 21st century encounter... but writers in particular.

His podcast is short, too the point, and (at times) humorous. Whether he is advising you on how to file so you can find anything Instantly (#3), taking killer notes (#16), or keeping track of ideas (#153), Stever knows how to deliver the advice you need during a minute or two of your precious time.

How Much is Your Clutter Costing You?

2011-03-21T14:53:00.000-04:00

This article written by Peter Walsh, clutter crusher extraordinaire from Clean Sweep fame has a new book out Lighten Up: Love What You Have, Have What You Need, Be Happier with Less and excerpted on Lifehacker: How Much is Your Clutter Costing You?

He has some simple ways of adding up the costs by going through your house, room by room, and adding up the cost of all of the items you no longer use. It has a physical cost and (at times) an emotional cost as well.

He even uses a formula for calculating the cost of your clutter per square foot:

Value of your home ÷ Square footage of your home = Value of each square foot
_______________ ÷_______________ = _______________
So, if you live in a $250,000 home and it's 2,500 square feet, then each square foot is worth $100.
The value of each square foot of my home is: _______________
Now let's calculate how much of your home's space is occupied by things you don't use. Walk around your home and make a rough calculation of how many square feet are unusable because of the clutter. Don't forget the basement, closets, and garage!
The number of square feet in my home that are occupied by things I don't use: _______________
Now let's find out how much that wasted square footage is worth:
Value of square footage × Square feet occupied by things you don't use = Value of unusable space
_______________ x_______________ = _______________

This is interesting, but not as helpful for me. Another way to calculate these costs is in TIME. Such as when you spend 15 minutes looking for your car keys in the morning, or the hour spent looking for the medical form that you needed to complete so your son could sign up for soccer. Or the 2 hours you spend trying to find the Robo-Grip Pliers to fix the dripping kitchen sink, and then, not finding it, heading out to Lowes to purchase another tool to replace it. Time is money. And these days my time is more valuable than my money... most of the time.

But money is also something that gets wasted in the midst of clutter. You all know of my poor track record with flash drives. I have purchased 3 of them in the last 4 months, and have already "lost" one of them. I know that it will turn up eventually in a coat pocket, or under a stack of papers, but it is missing when I need it, so I buy another one for $12. The cost of replacing the Robo-Grip Pliers, $17.94 for a set of similar tools at Lowes. I've bought 3 vitamin capsule-sized microphones for my iPod Touch because I simply knew I wouldn't be able to keep track of them (at about $1.50 each) and already 2 of them are missing. 2 sets of iPod headphones (another $12). I bought a second copy of one of my favorite books on time management: Getting Things Done by David Allen, because I either lent it to someone and forgot who, or lost it altogether ($15). And close to $50 in lost or damaged library books this year alone.

So as you can see... clutter indeed has a cost. Think of all of the items and hours lost, and spring cleaning is a great time to clear out that clutter.

Have You Visited Lifehacker Yet?

2011-03-11T14:52:00.000-05:00

If you don't know about Lifehacker yet, you are missing great content. You will be seeing a lot of links from me here to that site. It has a lot of great tips on time management, self-improvement, as well as lots of practical advice on daily life, such as this article on getting better customer service, technical how-to's such as this one on recovering from an e-mail disaster, and reviews and information about products and services that may make your life better.

This site has fresh content hourly and you never know what kind of advice it will generate. Today's featured articles focus on disaster preparedness in the wake of the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

In addition, the site allows you to link it to your Facebook and Twitter accounts, see 49 of the most popular articles right now, and search the massive Lifehacker archives via the Search feature.

So do what I do, set up an RSS feed for it in Google Reader, or just bookmark it. Then, check it out daily. It will be well worth your time. Lifehacker gets ***** out of 5 stars.

15-Minute Writer Manifesto

2011-03-07T07:04:00.002-05:00

I did this for my other blog, Grist for the Muse, so it makes perfect sense to do the same with 15MW. I have struggled keeping a blog on this topic.

This was supposed to be inspiration and support for what was going to become my next book: The 15-Minute Writer: How to Live Your Creative Writing Dreams in Just 15 Minutes a Day. The proposal got fried on a flash drive that I didn’t back up. I have most of it in hard copy, but the topic really didn’t fire me up. I just didn’t connect with it. It felt like I had declared it to be my next book project simply because it was a cool premise with a cool elevator pitch that a couple of agents thought would be engaging. That was back in 2007. I do still like the concept though. The 15-Minute Writer will be a book someday, maybe even a series of books, but not for a while.

Writers finding time to write is a universal problem that few people address on an ongoing basis. I hope the 15-Minute Writer will fill this void with good advice, cool products, and excellent resources.

The 15-Minute Writer covers tips, tools and topics for your writing time-management needs to help you live your creative writing dream in Just 15-Minutes a Day. I will do this by adhering to the following guidelines:

Not to rely so much on my experiences and knowledge for the blog. You can get that anywhere on the web. I’ll still put together original articles and content, just not rely on it as much as a basis for the blog.
Focus on content that either helps you write faster, or saves you time and money which frees up some time for writing.
Post cool things of interest about writing, time management and organization that I stumble across on other blogs and web-pages.
Inject my “humble” opinions on these items of interest, when applicable.
Not be so afraid to inject my “humble” opinions on those items of interest, the writing life, or life in general.
Post more often. At least once a week, although I’d prefer to make a habit of posting 2 or 3 times a week, to keep you coming back to see what’s going on.
Answer and thank those who take the time to leave comments on my posts.
Share my journey – Because I struggle with these issues just like you do. I have a day job, 4 kids, a menagerie of pets, a house and a yard and all of the responsibilities that come along with them. So it is hard for me to juggle all of these flaming chainsaws and still get the writing done.
Stop being such a technical idiot. Learn to format these entries so they can be easily read. Maybe how to put a nifty picture or two in ‘em from time-to-time. I’d like to overhaul the design of this while I’m at it… but not right away.
Stop being such a perfectionist. Perfectionism wastes time.
Be entertaining. There are so many interesting and engaging writers out there. I want to be like them. And help you get writing done.
Continue the Shameless Self Promotion. A guy’s gotta eat, right?
Be available to answer your questions.
That these guidelines of this manifesto are fluid and subject to change as determined by my mood, audience response, and interests change.

Keeping It All Under Your Thumb

2010-02-15T09:18:00.001-05:00

This one is for all of you PC users out there. If your system is running slow and this little things like running Scandisk and Windows Cleanup don't seem to improve performance of the computer, consider re-imaging the hard drive and start with a fresh installation.

It is time consuming to do this, but even more time consuming and frustrating to be stuck with a sluggish computer.

Here's a tip to ease a little of the pain. Store many of the installation packages for the programs you use frequently on a thumb drive or CD-ROM. With the cost of these drives being less than $20 for 4 to 8GB of storage, you have room to store many programs and drivers as well as your critical files. You can also set this drive up as an emergency boot disk.

On my thumb drive I store my downloaded packages for my virus protection (I currently am using AVG Anti-Virus), anti-spyware packages (Spybot and Ad-Aware), the printer drivers for the 3 printers I use most often, OpenOffice installer, and various utilities such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, decompression software, iTunes, and a couple of other shareware utilities that I commonly use. Granted they are not always the latest version of the program, but once you have the program reinstalled, most packages ask if you'd like to update them anyway.

This gets all of those packages that you were going to reinstall anyway all in one place to make it a little bit faster to get your system back up and online.

Losing Things

2010-02-06T15:12:00.000-05:00

I am always losing things. Not just little things like the car keys for a few minutes or a favorite book that I lent to a friend and forgot about... We're talking about big things. Important things. Favorite things. Things that will cost me money if I don't find them soon.

Here are a few of them:

Car/House keys -- Attached to my blue bottle opener keychain with the logo of the company I worked for before the current one bought it. Maddening. The only keyring where I have all of my important keys in one place. I also have about 4 copies of our garage key floating somewhere out in the house somewhere.
2 Library books -- I am having a record year having broken 2 CDs from different books on CD and now I have 2 other books missing. I have no idea where they are, but I keep renewing them online in the hopes that I find them. I think it is to the point now for one of them that I need to 'fess up and pay for it.
RoboGrip adjustable wrench -- I use it a lot, but forgot where it is for now.
Switch plates for the kitchen outlets -- We took them off when painting the kitchen over a year ago, but I forgot where I put them. Serves me right for procrastinating.
The New HDTV remote -- We bought the TV in an insane "Black Friday" sale. The remote has been lost for about half of the time that we've owned it.
My planner/datebook -- Strange since the point of having one is so you don't forget what you have to do...

This list is an ongoing revolving door that never seems to end. And it constantly drives me crazy that I can't find these things that should never have gotten lost in the first place. I'm almost ready to start believing in Gremlins at this point. Or House Elves... a ghost?

I almost see the advantages of RFID tagging everything. Although it would be an invasion of privacy in some ways, a little too Big Brother-like for me, it would be nice to look up where all of your lost objects with a couple clicks of a mouse. Imagine how this would change the way we deal with mismatched socks, unidentified keys that we cannot part with, the REMOTE CONTROLS... Hmmmm.

Muse Reviews: Throw Out Fifty Things

2009-08-09T12:06:00.003-04:00

Throw Out Fifty Things: Clear the Clutter, Find Your Life by Gail Blanke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
If you saw the condition of my home office right now you’ll immediately understand why this book intrigued me. It has way too much stuff in it. Bookshelves overflowing. Papers piled in baskets, in computer paper boxes, or just scattered around. My daughter has clothes she wants to sell on eBay, I have hundreds of HeroClix figures and accessories that also need to go on eBay. Scrap wood, library books, old magazines, cardboard boxes, bags and packing material, old printer and computer equipment all stored haphazardly throughout what once was a rather large and impressive workspace.

Ms. Blanke takes a concept made popular by shows like TLC's Clean Sweep and presents an unintimidating method to attack the mind-boggling, energy draining piles of STUFF that we collect and retain under the idea that maybe we should keep this because it will be useful someday. She asks you to consider the value of the object vs. the amount of energy that it sucks up in exchange for its continued existence. Sure, those cheap wire hangers that you have gotten from the dry cleaner for every item that you’ve taken there since 1993 might come in handy someday… but do they need to take up all of the rod space in all of your closets? I have a huge Rubbermaid tub FILLED with just power adapters and cables that I don’t know what to do with. I have no idea what they go to… cell phone chargers, video game systems, computer monitors, portable phones, and more. All of the plugs are different, so when I find myself desperately seeking the proper adapter for recharging the video camera battery, it is never there.

Throw Out Fifty Things walks you through the process of getting rid of the stuff that is draining the energy away room by room and gives you options for passing along items that you no longer use to others or recycling them. Now Michael, you say, I could throw out 50 things in the front entryway of my house… sure you could, except for one little ingenious twist thrown in by Blanke. Any of the same object is considered to be only one object of the fifty to get rid of; Hence, all of those cheap hangers in every closet in the house… one item on the list. That tub of AC adapters? One more item and so on. So say good bye to all of those single socks with no mates, those ugly gifts that you received from Aunt Margret taking up precious space in your hall closets and attics. If it drains energy from you when you see it… no matter what it is or how useful it is… GET RID OF IT.

Among the 50 things that you are going to throw out are psychological. Ideas such as letting go of mistakes from the past, the need to have everyone like you, or having to do everything yourself. All of these things drain your energy that can be better spent elsewhere and contribute to the generation of physical clutter as well.

The book is easy to read and provides space for you to create your own list of throwaways as you work through the book. It also provides many examples from Ms. Blanke’s personal experience and those she encountered working as motivational consultant. Last, the book also provides a resource list for ideas on how to get rid of those things that you might not know what to do with, but are still usable or recyclable. All in all, excellent book with good information. I highly recommend it.

View all my reviews >>

Starting All Over Again...

2009-03-12T14:39:00.003-04:00

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

2007-07-06T15:42:00.000-04:00

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

2007-06-19T19:51:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-05T08:21:00.000-04:00

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

2007-04-11T21:13:00.000-04:00

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

2007-02-22T19:57:00.000-05:00

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

2007-01-09T13:32:00.000-05:00

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

2007-01-06T17:51:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-01T21:31:00.000-05:00

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...

2006-10-30T20:17:00.000-05:00

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...

Getting Back on Track

2006-10-28T17:39:00.000-04:00

I knew that getting through September and October would be tough. Teaching 4 classes, Cub Scout meetings and the annual Cub Scout camp out, working on a video project, and last, but not least, remodeling our master bathroom.

Six months ago, I thought that putting in a new shower stall, floor, and vanity would take a couple of weekends and a couple of vacation days to do the hard stuff (like plumbing and electrical) and would cost around $700 to $1000 at most. I started this project about 4 months ago, and now that we have sunk at least $1500 into the bathroom, and I've spent two days replacing the sub flooring, leveling out the cracks and gaps between the boards, and then sticking the self-adhesive vinyl tiles on a Masonite base. My dad suggested that I use glue on the tiles as well so that it will stay in place better. But the glue and the Masonite didn't work well together and the tile bubbled and oozed glue for over a week. So I had to buy several sheets of cement board, and do it again over the next two weekends... Fitting it into place, screwing it in place with a screw every six inches, then re-gluing and re-tiling the whole thing.

After the flooring is almost finished, we begin install the new toilet (it works great) and pull in the shower stall base to lay it down on the floor to see where it will fit. As it turned out, nowhere. The damn thing is too big and ends up too close to the toilet. Next we begin calculations to install the vanity and the new medicine cabinet. Guess what? They don't fit either, so pretty much everything that I bought over the last several months at Lowes has to go BACK to Lowes, and of course, there are no receipts to be found for the items... anywhere. Kristen and I tear apart the house, and all we can find are the small, $12.76 receipt for planter hooks, or the $6.43 receipt for screws and a small piece of wood. And we save ALL of our Lowes receipts.

So as this has proved. I am not even qualified to shop for my own home improvement supplies, let alone execute a do-it-yourself project. I need to stick to writing and spend my time more efficiently.

Getting Started is HARD

2006-09-25T15:23:00.000-04:00

I hate this about myself. Why is it that on weekends (or when I take a day off like today) when I sit down to write it takes me 15 minutes to a half-hour to go myself going? I check my email, answer any quick ones that I can respond to, check the progress of my fantasy football teams (both of them), read any news stories that catch my eye on my Google homepage, and give in to any fleeting curious impulse like looking up houses in my old neighborhoods online (if I'm lucky one day maybe one of my old houses will be up for sale!!), pricing wireless keyboards and mice on eBay, checking the status on the library books that I'm on the waiting list for, or checking one (or both blogs for comments).

Then when I at last get down to work, I wonder what took so damn long to get started. What is so different on these "free" days. Today I'm writing because I'm procrastinating doing some prep work on my bathroom floor. Today, Matt and a friend of his came over and reinforced a weak spot (AKA "hole") in the floor, and cut and fit another sheet of plywood for the floor. Now I need to smooth out the cracks, holes and uneven parts of the floor before we can move onto the next part.

I did manage to get chapter summaries done for chapters 1 and 27 today (so far). I'd like to finish at least 4 more today... well maybe after the flooring compound fun...

I have a confession.

2006-09-23T21:21:00.000-04:00

I haven't been working much on the book proposal this week. But that doesn't mean that I haven't been busy writing. With a flash fiction writing class starting this week, preparing for an interview of the last person who lived in the Reese-Peters House, before it was the Decorative Arts Center, caught up on several email messages that I wanted to follow-up on from the Columbus Writers Conference from last month, and the usual other job, chauffeur, dad, and handyman duties necessary to keep functioning around here.

There was a great series of interviews this week in Newsweek about the lessons that successful women have learned, and Martina Navratilova response really struck a chord with me about how a writer must approach the craft:

"Athletes just do not quit until they get it right, whether it is shooting free throws or practicing serves or practicing one particular shot. It is getting up when you don't feel like getting up for your training session, it is going to bed early even though you want to go out with your friends, it is only drinking half a beer when you really want to drink two. Everything it takes to get to your goal—that's the mentality of an athlete or a successful human being. Period.

I think we know when we are letting ourselves off the hook. If you look in the mirror and you really look yourself in the eye, the image you see forces you to be honest with yourself. As a result, you'll make the right choices."

To read the full interview (and the rest of the interviews), click here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14870681/site/newsweek/?page=2

I often see parallels between athletics and writing. Both depend on hours and hours of practice and preparation before you see a hint of success. They both depend on making sacrifices to position themselves for a chance at success. Anyone who wants to write... who really wants to write... makes the hard choices to turn off the TV and miss the latest episode of The Office, lets the dishes sit in the sink (unwashed), passes up lunch with a group of co-workers, and gets the writing done. Not only on that one day, but tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and so on.

Tomorrow, back to work on the proposal...

Music Lesson Interlude

2006-09-15T19:05:00.000-04:00

Task: The dreaded outline

Time stolen from: Writing during music lesson

Sorry I haven't been posting everyday, although I have been whittling away at the outline for the last several days and wanted to avoid boring everyone to death with the details of what I'm working on... since not a lot has changed. The outline is slowly getting organized into chapters, and I think that I'll be ready to start working on chapter summaries tomorrow.

Writing during waiting times always works good for me. Today I brought my laptop with me to my daughter's music lesson (she is taking piano and violin), and got a good 30 minutes of outline work done. I don't mind these types waits. Waiting for doctor's appointments, for oil changes and auto repairs, getting your driver's license renewed, etc. Always bring a notebook or reading to do when you think that you might be waiting for someone else.

The NFL Returns!!

2006-09-10T22:02:00.000-04:00

Task: Working on the Outline

Time Stolen From: TV watching (NFL Browns game)

There are a lot of ways to save time watching TV and one of the best ways I've found to save time watching one of my favorite things: the NFL, specifically Browns games on TV, is to use our TiVo (or any DVR) and record the game. I can cut the amount of time spent watching the game from about 3 1/2 to 4 hours to under 2 hours. Football games have TONS for commercials, not to mention lots of dead time and boring, busted plays. The only drawback is that you need to make sure you don't hear ANYTHING about the game, or have anyone reveal any interesting info about it. That is the only gap in the plan. Many times I allow the game to tape for about an hour or two, then I start watching the game until I catch up, then I go back to working on something else until more of the game is taped and watch the rest later.

Friday night surprise

2006-09-08T21:17:00.000-04:00

Task: Beginning the outline of the book

Time stolen from: Friday night

Pleasant surprise. Discovered that at some time in the past I started not one outline of the book, but two of them. I clearly have already been struggling with how to organize this book for some time now, and I'm still not sure if this will work, but it's a start. I'll keep playing with the structure until I get something that I like.

Catching up at lunch time

2006-09-07T12:23:00.000-04:00

Task(s): Writing proposal intro; drafting comparative titles

Time stolen from: Time gained from working from home instead of commuting

I work from home on Tuesdays and Wednesdays which saves about 70 to 75 minutes a day in commute time, even when I subtract the time it takes to drop off my daughter at school in the morning. At the end of my workday I set the blue timer and try to work on one or two 15-minute writing assignments and this seems to work well. This is the first post-Labor Day week of school and it seems like all sorts of activities start up now: Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, Board Meetings, planning meetings, writing classes, etc. If I don't put in that time right after my work shift, many nights it won't get done.

I am amazed at how drafting this proposal clarifies my thinking about the book and helps me slide the sections into a logical order. I'm almost ready to rewrite my example chapters and start constructing the proposed table-of-contents.

Upcoming Tasks:

Research figures for potential target audiences (not even sure where to begin here)
Finish reading Write Faster, Write Better
Begin revision of Chapter 1 as a sample chapter
Ask Nita about circulation numbers for WriteNOW newsletter
Ask Debi about hits or unique views on Flash Writing column on flashquake

Intensive Labor on Labor Day

2006-09-04T21:37:00.000-04:00

Task: Drafting the Overview section of the proposal

Time stolen from: Holiday weekend

I celebrated Labor Day by laboring intensively on removing 20+ year old tile from our master bathroom floor. Using a WonderBar and a hammer it is slowly splintering and coming up... very slowly. It is a tedious, sweaty, unpleasant job... one of those rare jobs that I'd put off doing to write. But it is difficult having one fully functional bathroom, so getting this done is a priority.

I just "flash wrote" my Overview section draft today. It is usually the last section that I write on any proposal, but I wanted to clarify my vision on what I am trying to do for this book. I liked what came out, a few unexpected things (a couple of new skills to develop for the 15-MW). The proposal is coming along nicely, although I did want to spend a lot more than 15 minutes each day of this weekend on it. Sometimes the bare minimum is all you can deliver.

Digging a deep hole

2006-09-02T23:29:00.000-04:00

Task(s): Adding direct sales outlets to Promotions/Publicity section

Time stolen from: Stayed up late... damn late...

Didn't put much time in today. Bought over $1,110.00 worth of stuff for remodelling our master bathroom at Lowes today. It took us almost 3 hours to get this stuff done.

A new shower stall, shower stall door, base, medicine cabinet, toilet, fixtures, some tin sheets to cover up the firewood, and we got a Troy-Bilt rototiller, normally $299, for $100 since it had been returned and repaired.

Bottom line: None of this stuff excited me or Kristen. Then, I had to clean up the garage to store all of these big boxes, put the seats back in the van, and then I trimmed the yard with the trimmer mower, which is always a messy job, and considering that the areas were so overgrown, that made it messier. Pretty exciting eh?

Early freedom leads to more work

2006-09-01T20:33:00.000-04:00

Task(s): Drafting a book proposal -- Finished draft of author profile; listed key contacts for publicity; listed potential target markets for the book

Time stolen from: Company let us leave 2 hours early today, so I used it.

I'm following the Nonfiction Book Proposal Cheat Sheet that Stefanie Von Borstel from the Full Circle Literary Agency gave everyone during her presentation at the Columbus Writer's Conference last weekend. She was a great presenter, very animated and used excellent examples to illustrate her points. She answered the one question about the book selling business that I have never been able to find a definitive answer to: How can you find out how many copies a book has actually sold? How are these numbers tracked? Her answer was that there are no real reliable ways to do this. You can use BookScan, if you are a major retailer, but even then the reported numbers are wildly inaccurate, not counting sales to libraries, book clubs, and other loop holes.

It sounds to me as if agents too have a difficult time getting accurate sales totals on books that they don't directly represent, so I don't feel so bad about this now. Several months ago I had chased this lead everywhere, searches, statistics, Publishers Weekly, I even asked Roxanne at Barnes and Noble how BookScan worked, and she didn't really know. They used it primarily for ordering books. i now realize that chasing down this data was just another way to put off the work of writing the proposal, a trick that the Inner Critic played to throw me off track, and force me to look for something that would be nice to have and make me think that it was essential for the proposal. WRONG!

Desperate Drafting

2006-08-31T20:32:00.000-04:00

Task: Drafting a book proposal -- Author Profile

Time stolen from: TV

Thank God the fall TV season hasn't really started yet. We just finished watching the season finale of Desperate Housewives on TiVo last night, after watching the entire season that we stored over the last couple of weeks. But now we have no other series stored up to watch. And favorites such as Battlestar Galactica, 24, My Name is Earl, and The Office haven't started up yet. I can't seem to be able to store up episodes of these shows.

Got the entire proposal template formatted and in place yesterday. Today I added in the essential book info for four comparative titles. Haven't written any comparison info for it yet. I plan on doing a lot of note taking and reading this weekend. Along with tearing out the remaining vinyl tile that I did such a poor job of installing about two years ago, removing some drywall remnants near where the shower stall was, and borrowing my father-in-law's truck to buy the new one from Lowe's and some other items that just won't fit in a Chevy Cavalier or Uplander.

Also added my standard profile info the Author Profile section. I have to add some additional info into this section about my publications, professional experience, teaching experience, etc.

Bones of a proposal

2006-08-30T19:06:00.000-04:00

Task: Setting up a book proposal template

Time stolen from: Wasteful net surfing

It is so easy to get sidetracked by the Web. One minute you are typing away and a thought comes into your head... does my high school chemistry teacher Mr. Ryan still teach at my old high school? You punch the school name into Google, and within a minute you are staring at his portrait and credentials, which leads to you wondering who else is still at the school, a few more pages and you have an overview of who is still there and who has been promoted, and so on... you get back to work and remember the question that your wife asked you this morning: If we know the Greek equivalents of Jupiter (Zeus), Saturn (Cronus), Neptune (Poseidon), and Pluto (Hades), what ancient Greek God was Uranus named after? A quick trip to http://www.nineplanets.org reveals that Uranus uses the ancient Greek name instead of the Roman one, so it breaks that pattern. So what is the Roman name for Uranus? Out to Wikipedia for the answer: Caelus. Which is definitely not as much fun to mis-pronounce like "your anus" or "urine us."

I waste net time shopping on eBay, looking up old classmates from high school or college on Myspace and wondering if I should try to use it to promote my current book and any future books. I think so, but I haven't had time to explore it further... yet. There are thousands of ways to waste time on the Web, and I'm doing my best to find all of them, but not right now...

Late and bleary and oh so weary...

2006-08-29T23:06:00.000-04:00

Task: Researching comparative titles / Search for similar book with similar title

Time stolen from: Stayed up late

Today was a crazy day. Got up for work, worked all day, finished up work on a Cub-Appolis 400 car (essentially a box that was painted, glued all sorts of packaging and advertisements, on the sides to make it look like a NASCAR), went to a Cub Scout recruiting meeting that lasted over 3 hours, and came home to send out a sales pitch for a potential manuscript critique client, and now catching up on blog entries and searching Amazon for more comparative titles. Maybe the Complete Idiot's Guide to Creative Writing by Laurie E. Rozakis would be a good one since it is part of an ongoing series, sort of what I hope the 15-Minute Writer will be.

Did not find any books on Amazon with a title similar to mine... maybe Angela was thinking of a different book?? I'll keep my eyes open. Here are some of the other titles I found out on Amazon with 15-minute in the title:

Frumpy to Foxy in 15 Minutes Flat: Style Advice for Every Woman by Elycia Rubin and Rita Mauceri
The Fame Game: How to Make the Most of Your 15 Minutes by Michael Flocker

Melissa agreed to do the logo in exchange for posting it as a sample for her website. Not a problem and the price is right!

Lunchtime Book Browsing

2006-08-28T12:26:00.000-04:00

Task: Researching comparative titles

Time stolen from: Took 15 minutes from a 45 min lunch

I know at least two out of the five comparative titles that I plan on using for the proposal. David Allen's wonderful time-management book, Getting Things Done, and David Fryxell's Write Faster, Write Better. Those are slam dunks. The rest are somewhat more difficult to determine and require some additional reading to pinpoint the best candidates.

A 15-minute search on Amazon has put a few on my RADAR: Get Organized, Get Published! by Don Aslett and Carol Cartaino, Write It Down Make It Happen: Knowing What You Want And Getting It by Henriette Anne Klauser and a couple of books that go for the more eclectic "gifty" format suggested by one of the agents that I met with over the weekend possibly Roberts Rules Of Writing: 101 Unconventional Lessons Every Writer Needs to Know by Robert Masello and Some Writers Deserve To Starve: 31 Brutal Truths about the Publishing Industry by Elaura Niles. On the other hand, are those "gifty" enough?

It's a place to start, so off to Amazon and the local library website to order and reserve some of the books that are not already on my shelf.

Upcoming 15-Minute (or less) Tasks:

Ask Melissa if she'll design a logo for the blog
Trip to library to browse books
Amazon surfing for more comparative titles to review
Set up book proposal template in Word

Getting Started

2006-08-27T07:52:00.000-04:00

Task: Creating a blog.

Time stolen from: Got up early (6:45 am on a Sunday)

I always try to sleep in on the weekends. Always. Not too late, usually until 8 or 8:30 am. Having children who get up early, and two of our three dogs sleeping in the bedroom with us, who start panting and whining to be let out anytime they hear the covers shift or an alarm go off anytime after 5 am has made the stay up late/wake up late weekend a legend of the distant past. But the room was hot, and I tossed and turned, looking at the clock, and finally got out of bed to get this started.

Spent the last two days at the Columbus Writers Conference and pitched the 15-Minute Writer concept to three agents. Two of which are interested in seeing a proposal. Time to get off my duff and start working on it. I have a rough draft of the book that I've used for a class last year, but it is far from what I want the finished product to look like. I hope the proposal will help me organize my thoughts better.