every given saturday

I’m determined to regain the excitement of my earlier blogging days, when I was posting regularly. Even with all the other stuff I have going on, I really enjoyed telling people every Saturday that I had a new blog post up. So I’m joining an initiative hosted by WordPress this year. They’ve got a challenge underway right now called The Weekly Post in which bloggers strive to make one post each week.

There’s a Daily Post challenge, too, but I don’t see daily posting in my future anytime soon.

WordPress posts ideas for topics every day — which is nice if you’re one of those folks who needs a little help coming up with something to write about. I’ll probably be using one of their topics from time to time, but hopefully the challenge will be a helpful way for me to get back onto my usual weekly schedule. I’ll be tagging those weekly posts with a special “postaweek” tag, so you can organize them if you so desire.

Anybody want to join me?

a new way to the new year

I’ve always had a hard time getting excited about the new year.

The interval between New Year’s Day and my January birthday inspire me to take stock of the preceding 12 months, examining all the things I set out to do, the things I accomplished and the surprises that popped up along the way. But every year at about this time, I usually spend more time thinking about all the ways I lost sight of my goals – or kept sight of them and fell short anyway. I can’t help but look at where I thought I’d be by now, and I always wonder what happened to divert me from my goals.

Where am I? Can I still get to where I want to be? Do I still want to be there?

Then, after a few days of New Year’s blues, my annual case of This Year Will Be Different sets in. This is when I set this year’s goals, sometimes wiping the old slate clean and sometimes adjusting previous aspirations for this year’s uses. The excitement is a nice change from New Year’s blues. I’m not a huge believer in the New Year’s resolution per se – typically because I have trouble choosing a specific resolution – but an arrangement of goals and a set of life changes geared toward accomplishing them can inspire me right up until I hit the first setback. I’ve written about the timely appearance of setbacks before, here.

But in the spirit of the season, and after a four-month absence from this blog (now that definitely deepened the New Year’s blues), I’ve decided that This Year Will Be Different. I’ve already started doing some things differently.

First off, I’m taking Margie Lawson’s Defeating Self-Defeating Behaviors class. I don’t want to go into it too much here – there is a lot of material, and it’s terrific – but let’s just say that my previous goal-setting methods were perhaps less than optimal. I’m trying out her methods now, and the idea of setting a daily set of goals instead of a yearly roster of them, which can cascade down at the slightest disruption, has worked out brilliantly so far.

Secondly, I’ve started doing the unthinkable. I’ve started getting up earlier. Much earlier. Like, are-you-serious-it’s-still-dark-out earlier.

And I love it.

There’s nothing going on around here at 5:30 in the morning. When I’m traveling, I find that 5:30 or so is a great time to check out the streets of a big city, to watch the way it’s just waking up. The world is at its most open then, vulnerable and authentic and receptive to observation. It’s a great time to take stock of the day to come and a wonderful time to be writing. I always thought my mind would be too foggy to write, but so far the opposite’s been true.

The other upside is that by the time I get to work, I’ve been up for several hours. I feel better about my day job in a strange way – it’s like it’s okay to deal with that now that I’ve already given several hours to my real work. The writing feels more like my first priority if I’m actually doing it first.

And finally, I’m going out on a limb more often this year. I’m working harder at putting the writing out there. Above my desk right now I’ve got 16 index cards, each of which has the name (or the main characters) of one of my story ideas on it. Sixteen’s a lot, but I’ve found that looking at them every time I sit down here is making it easier for me to commit some of each day’s work to one of them.

Also from the Out On A Limb files – I’ve entered my very first pitch into a contest. Over at the group blog, Passionate Reads, my pitch for Project NSA is posted with 25 or so others, all of us vying for the attention of Ellora’s Cave editor Grace Bradley. She’ll pick 10 of them herself to move on to the next round (entry of the first chapter), but the pitch that receives the most votes from blog visitors will also be moving forward to the next round, if it’s not among the 10 she’s already chosen. Honestly, it feels good just to be in the company of all the other terrific pitches. But – also honestly – it’d feel pretty good to take the top prize, which is a line-by-line critique of my first three chapters.

So I’m asking you all for a favor. Visit the contest page, and pick one of us to vote for. I’d definitely appreciate your vote, of course, but be sure and pick the pitch you like the best! I’ll appreciate your attention all the more if I know I’ve earned it.

And then maybe you’ll come back here to let me know how your 2011 is going so far. You know how much I love to hear from you!

 

money … flowing like a river

Rules are made for the common good, which is all very good for the common.  ~ Jasmine Guy, as Whitley Gilbert

Last post, I went after one of my least favorite writing “rules”: Write What You Know.  My favorite teacher never fed me that party line — thank God — and I think I’ve been the better writer for it.  Today I want to go after another rule that’s doing some people more harm than good:

Money Always Flows Toward The Writer.

Before I really get rolling, I want to say that my stance regarding the flow of money is not quite so rigid as my position against WWYK.  Certainly we want money flowing toward the writer.  My opposition is to the dogmatic application of the MoneyFlow rule.  The truth is that not only will money flow away from the writer from time to time, but that the writer should encourage that to happen.

If money always flows to the writer, how are we to buy the things we need to have?  Seriously.  Are we really going up to the register with our box of purple ballpoint pens and telling the cashier, “Hey, no, I’m a writer.  So I don’t have to pay for these.  In fact, you should give me twenty dollars.”

(If we are supposed to be doing that, by the way, I really do need to hear about it, since I’m spending my own money on that stuff.)

The Money Flow rule, applied dogmatically, would seem to prohibit spending any money, not just on pencils and pens and that wonderful stuff but on classes and memberships and things like that.  Not a good result.  Writers need to send money flowing away from them sometimes.  We just need to watch where it flows and why it’s flowing there.

Some of the things I pay for are writing necessities.  There are the pencils and pens I mentioned earlier.  I didn’t pay for my laptop (my dad gave it to me as a gift), but I’ve spent money on flash drives and printer cartridges and paper.  I paid for my AlphaSmart when I thought the Internet was distracting me, and then I paid for a cable to connect it to my computer.  I need that stuff, and it’s been worthwhile to spend on it.

Some of the best money I spend on writing every year goes toward my membership dues for Romance Writers of America and the Virginia Romance Writers.  Every year, I get back more than I pay for.  Just the 12 issues of the Romance Writers Report, the downloadable handouts from each year’s National Conference and the online copy of Keys to Success are worth my annual dues, and the RWA has so much more to offer than those three things.  I’ve learned so much from regular meetings with the VRW (and from the Meetings After The Meetings, at lunch), and I’ve made some great friends I probably wouldn’t have met if money hadn’t been flowing from the writer.  It’s possible to do some networking and keep up with the industry and improve the actual writing without paying a dime.  But I know I’m getting real quality for my money, and if I didn’t think that was the case, I wouldn’t spend it.

Certainly the writing world is full of scams and shadiness and good old-fashioned wastes of money.  I’m a firm believer in investigating spending opportunities before I allow money to flow away from me.  Money doesn’t flow anywhere unless I know what I’m likely to get back — and whether I’m likely to get something every bit as good or better without paying for it.  But I spend money on my writing when it’s worthwhile to do so.

As a romance writer, I often have to grit my teeth and try to respond gracefully when people treat my work like a hobby (graceful responses are listed in Keys to Success, by the way).  But the MoneyFlow rule has made writing one of the only businesses in existence in which owners are actively discouraged from investing money into their own enterprises.  The MoneyFlow rule has the power to close doors and keep them closed.  Don’t let this bit of dogma keep you from getting ahead.

it’s always something!

It’s always something, isn’t it?  I guess some people would say that if it isn’t one thing, it’s another.  It amounts to the same thing either way, right?

On the first of the month, I said I was going to rededicate myself to the fine art of getting some words down onto the page.  I actually wrote that post on the 23^rd of February.  On the afternoon of the 24^th, overtime hours became available at my job.  I’m an hourly employee, and a temp on top of that, so when overtime is available, it’s basically mandatory for me, economy being what it is and all.  So I basically worked overtime every day after writing that promise, including the weekend, right up until the second of March, when the overtime went away and my job went with it.

The rest of the week has gone like this:

March 3, morning: Called around for another assignment.

March 3, noon: Went to church, to pray for another assignment.

March 3: afternoon: Received another assignment, to start March 5. 

I want to pause here to say, with complete seriousness and sincerity, that prayer works.

March 3, evening: Volunteer work.

March 3, night: Celebratory dinner, capped off with resolve to live like a full-time writer March 4.  The plan was to sit down at 9 on the morning of March 4 and work the dream schedule I have posted on my bulletin board (9 to 1, writing; 1 to 2, lunch; 2 to 6, writing).

March 4, 9 a.m.: Turned on laptop.

March 4, 9:03 a.m.: Received call from temp agency asking whether I can report to work immediately.

March 4, 9:07 a.m.: Closed laptop and reported to work immediately.

March 4, evening: Catching up on blog.  Ordinarily, I’d give this time to my promise, and I’m going to do that as soon as I’m done here.  But during Overtime Week, two of my fellow bloggers wrote that my little operation is a blog of interest to them.  I was so excited!  I read Denise and Gale quite often myself, and I always love what they have to say.  So I want to have something up for any of their readers who might happen by, as well as for my readers, who have probably come to expect the occasional accountability collapse from me.

Anyway, this is where I’ve been, and this is why the nifty word counter over there is still reading ZERO.  I feel better for having said this to you all.  It just seems like whenever I get myself resolved to take care of business, something happens to throw a wrench into the works.

What about you?  Is it always something for anyone else?

don’t go knockin’ …

Genre-bashing.  I’d be willing to bet that a lot of people reading this have experienced it in one way or another, either as romance writers or romance readers.  And while it’s never enjoyable to have someone attack your home genre, what’s even worse is when the attacker doesn’t have much experience with your genre.  I don’t mind hearing from people who honestly don’t like romance.  It’s a big world, and there’s plenty out there to read, thank God.  What bothers me is that so many romance haters have either not read romance at all; have read a single romance and feel comfortable attacking the entire genre; or read their last romance in 1971.

Romance is a bigger world today than it’s ever been, and I often tell people that there’s a romance novel out there for everyone.  Exploring the wide world of romance is lots of fun, I think.  In fact, just recently, I finished reading Tamera Alexander’s Rekindled, an inspirational historical romance.  I didn’t think it would be my cup of tea, but I started reading it on the recommendation of a classmate.  Last week, as I was reading it on the bus to work, I was so engrossed in it that I nearly missed my stop.  I can’t remember the last time I was that into a book, and it felt terrific.  The best part is that I’m re-examining my preconceptions about inspirational romance.  I’m used to a much spicier read, but I didn’t miss the explicit content at all.  In fact, I came away from the book ready to examine the way I approach the sex in my own stories.  (I’ll have a lot more to say about Rekindled in the next book report.)

Anyway, my experience with Rekindled got me thinking.  Instead of engaging in a defense of the genre here — which would come off as, well, defensive — I thought we might have a little community sharing instead.  I found Rekindled through a recommendation from a writer in the know.  Why don’t we all share a recommendation for the reluctant romance reader?  What would you suggest for a reader who might need a reintroduction to the modern romance novel?  How about for a reader who thinks all romance is fluff?  Or the reader who thinks romances are about perfect people with perfect lives?

Or how about this — what would you suggest for a male reader who’s romance-curious?

Aw, yeah!  What books would you recommend as a gateway to the romance genre — or its subgenres?