I’m going to be one of the reviewers for Steve Pavlina’s new book. You can see a discussion of its release here.
I’m expecting my review copy any day now, so look for my review soon. I’ll keep you updated.
Monthly Archives: September 2008
Books that change you
Have you ever read something that changed the way you look at things, work, write, interact with people, etc.? It doesn’t have to be a classic or even something terribly well-written. Here are a couple from my list, what’s yours?
Eugene O’Neill’s early plays
O’Neill is arguable one of the United States’ greatest playwrights, and he was the subject of my Master’s thesis. So, I read pretty much everything he’d ever written. Let me tell you, some of his early stuff is bad. Really. Incredibly. Bad.
How did this influence me? I figured that if someone could start out writing so badly and turn out so great, then I shouldn’t kick myself when I turn out something awful. It was a concrete reminder that even great writers churn out their fair share of garbage.
Elizabeth Zimmermann
I’m a knitter, and Elizabeth Zimmermann is a bit of a guru in many knitting circles. If I had to sum up her philosophy, then it would be to do what you want and not worry about rules, should’s, ought-to’s, etc.
What better advice can there be for a writer?
Write what you feel compelled to write, how you want to write it. Don’t worry about all the naysayers, those who tell you what you really should be writing and how it ought to be done.
While these may seem a bit odd, I think it’s testament that we often find inspiration in strange places.
Getting Things Done
Yes, a productivity book. In general, I think productivity books are a huge source of procrastination. Isn’t it fun to make lists and plans? It absolves us from actually getting down to work.
I like this because it gave me a simple way of keeping track of what I need to do and knowing exactly where I am in a project. Once I started thinking about my work as a project that’s divisible into small, manageable parts, I had a much easier time getting started.
StevePavlina.com
Okay, so this one isn’t a book. The site is full of advice on personal development, but I particularly like his discussions of polarity. To summarize, people operate from either a polarity of love or of fear. It’s a useful way to examine others’ behavior, or my own.
So, I can understand a competitive coworker when I understand that he’s operating from a fear polarity. If nothing else, it helps me not take his snide comments personally.
Writer Reactions, Responses
In my last post I asked about how people react to you when you tell them you’re a writer. Below are the responses I got. I was surprised that no one gets the odd responses that I seem to, but maybe it’s just me.
When I say I’m a writer the response is usually, one of surprise but then one of interest.
Most people think it is a cool profession. I’m already known as an artsy creative type from my former career as a photographer. A few people, very few when I think of it, ask me what kind of writing I do. Those that do, also write in some form or fashion.Fun question. Now that you’ve asked it, I’ll be paying more attention in the future.
I don’t think I am a writer just expressing my words, not a pro B. Well people found my blogpost useful/ Entertaining. few say I go rude in case of linking to officials but well that’s something subject to Officials popularity !!
They are impressed… until they realize I’m not making my living at it. Then, I can almost see myself being slotted into the “deadbeat” category of their minds. LOL! Thankfully, I’ve grown a thicker skin of late.
I’ve revealed my blog to several of my friends and family and they were all shocked.
They often say:
“Wow, you do not seem like the author behind this blog”
“You write more than you do for your classes!”
“I don’t believe someone like you can write this professionally”
I often say, “Yeah, right??”. It seems as if I don’t even believe I can write like I did.
It is a great hobby and very productive. I have found myself to procrastinate much less when it comes to writing papers for class.
I’m not a writer. I’m a librarian. We love writers.
Me
- Blank stares. I think sometimes people just don’t know how to react, so they just don’t.
- “Romances, right?” First off, I have nothing against romances or romance writers. It’s not the comment, it’s the tone that puts me off. This one tends to come from guys. I’m not sure why they assume a woman writer does romance, but that seems to be the case. The fact that they usually say it with a little sneer gets my goat though.
- “You mean like….” (insert whatever movie is popular at the time). This comes from people who know that I do speculative fiction, so they’ll plug in anything from Harry Potter to a Stephen King.
- And then they’re the diggers. “What do you write about?” “What’s your novel about now?” “Can I read something?” I don’t talk about a novel in progress, and some people just can’t seem to accept that. They push like a gossiping teenager.
I think being a writer is exotic enough to elicit oddball responses, and I’m sure other artistic jobs are more or less the same.
Writer Reactions
I’m putting together a post on how people react when they learn that you’re a writer. Leave a comment here, or send me a twitter– cornerscribe. Whether the comments are funny, dumb or absolutely rude, I want to hear them, and I’ll share a couple stories of my own.
I’ll link to your blog and/or twitter profile and post the results later this week.
Goal Update
Write 1000 words on the novel daily
I missed a couple days of writing, but I ended up with about 6000 words for the week. Right now, the novel is my top priority. I’m about 35,000 words in, and I think it’s good. I’m hoping to have it finished and ready to “rest” for a month while I do NaNoWriMo.
Write 3 blog posts for each blog
I so missed this one. I should have done nine posts; I did four.
Go through my email
I did manage to do this one, off and on through the week. That was only because I installed Digsby and was able to check my email when I’m updating twitter.
Leave 40 comments on others’ blogs
This one was way too ambitious I’m afraid. I’m not one to leave useless comments, so finding someting useful to say on forty posts is a bit much. I think I left about a dozen comments through the week on various blogs.
Spend 2 hours visiting Entrecard blogs and dropping cards
I did about an hour of Entrecard promotions this week.
- Spend one hour on the Zombie short story I have going
- Buy some ad campaigns for the blogs
- Check elance for projects I might like to bid on
- Write two articles to sell on Constant Content
I didn’t get to any of this work this week. Oh well… better luck next time.
For next week, I think I’ll keep the goals the same and see what happens.
Review
Setting goals isn’t very useful unless you review how you’re doing in meeting the goals. That’s why I post my goals publicly, and review how I’m doing publicly as well.
Even more so for me, it’s important to think about why I’m “hitting” or “missing” my goals. I think I’m simply over-scheduling myself. I work full time and have a life outside my work and writing, like everyone does. And, (gasp!) I do give myself a night off from my writing from time to time.
So why do I set such lofty goals? Part of the reason is that I believe that if I push myself, I’ll get more completed than if I don’t. If my goal were something doable, like writing 7000 words/week only, then I’d almost certainy meet the goal, but how far beyond that would I go? Honestly, I’m afraid not that far. However, if I push myself to do more than I can reasonably expect to accomplish, I do more than I originally expected to.
I realize that logic may seem odd to some people. I’m accustomed to working like that though. When I was in college, I also held down a job. I remember one of my instructors would try to talk me into quitting one each time I’d see her for registration. I couldn’t afford to quit my job, so I was frustrated that she kept pushing me to, essentially, postpone college until I could be a full-time student. I think that was when I began to push myself to do more than I might reasonably expect.
In my “real” job, I work in the IT field, which is notorious for high work loads. It’s common for me to have much more work to do than I can expect to finish in the next few days, or even couple weeks.
I think I’ve simply gotten accustomed to pushing myself to do more, and even more. The good news is that I can get a lot accomplished sometimes. The bad news is that I tend to get stressed because of the pressure I put on myself.
Anyone else have issues like these?
My new toy
I got one of these. The Dell Mini is an ultra-small laptop, about 9 inches by 7 inches and only 2 pounds. I chose the Ubuntu version — I have no particular desire to put windows on such a small laptop. Besides, I’m a linux fan anyway. I also passed up on the upgrades and webcam. I think the base configuration is plenty for what I’ll do.
I’ve been looking for something like this for a while, so I was really excited when these were announced back in May. Dell took a while getting them out, but here they are. Unfortunately, I won’t have an update or pics of it for a while; it doesn’t ship until mid-October! On the bright side, it’s going to get here before NaNoWriMo.
I hope to use this for an on-the-go writing and blogging computer. The keyboard is small (obviously), so it will take some getting used to, but I think I’ll really enjoy using it. I’ll keep you updated.
Preparing for NaNoWriMo
Photo by Terwilliger911
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, then you know that I’ve participated in National Novel Writing Month for the last few years. If you’re unfamiliar with the idea, he’re’s a summary.
- It takes place for the entire month of November
- You commit to writing 50,000 words on your novel
- You can’t pre-write any of the novel, but you can outline
- You “win” by completing the 50k word count by the end of the month
Sounds crazy, right? I think it’s a great way to get most of a rough draft down on paper, and if you haven’t tried it, I’d highly recommend you give it a go.
Writing that much, that quickly, isn’t an easy thing to do (I know). If you’re planning on participating, you need to start doing some planning now. The most important thing you should do is get yourself accustomed to writing daily and achieving a set word count.
I’d recommend a goal of 1000 words a day. That’s doable without wearing yourself out before NaNo begins. That’s my typical word count goal per day whether I’m prepping for NaNo or not. Also, get used to writing every day if you don’t already. Missing even one or two days during NaNo can leave you feeling hopelessly behind.
The second thing you can do is work on outlining and/or backstory for your November novel. You can’t start writing before-hand, but you can think about your characters, their backstory and where you want your story to go. I’m not a pre-plotter, so I don’t do that, but I know some people do, and they find it helpful.
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