Back from the Brink

Oh, boy, folks, have I had a crazy few weeks. Grab a cuppa coffee/tea/wine/beverage of your choice and let me tell you all about it.

So I needed a mini break of blogging because I hadn't quite figured out how to manage my writing, my "new" job, family, life, and blogging all at the same time. I think I've figured it out now, so we're gonna try a trial of me blogging on Tuesdays and Saturdays for a while, and see how it works. Please bear with me as I reintegrate myself into the blogosphere.

This is your brain on editing.
Any questions?

Then there was the writing. In late October not only was I trying to manage some pretty intense revision on my novel (currently listed on my WIPs page as FIGHTING FATE, though I plan to change the title to IN FLAMES). I wanted to get a full round of revision finished before NaNoWriMo started, while also juggling my NaNo prep. That took a LOT out of me, and I edited until my brains turned into liquid goo. Seriously. It was messy.

My own personal NaNo shield

On November first, having finished that round of editing, I was happy to accept my NaNo fate. I greeted it with a warm, strong handshake. And on the fateful afternoon of November 1st, I had an extra meeting with my boss, wherein he asked me to work overtime in preparation for our display at an upcoming conference (I work for a small, specialty academic publisher). And in my inner ear, I heard my NaNo plans go *squish*. My boss and I negotiated trading the days in early November for days around Thanksgiving, so not all was lost, but it put some stress on my NaNo plans nonetheless.

As of November 12th, one-third of the way through the month, I had only written about 14K over the course of 4 authentic writing days. Ouch.

On the morning on November 13th, as I'm leaving my house to pick up a friend, I grab my phone to let her know I'm coming, and see that I have a missed text message from my boss--who, I might add, never sends me text messages. It said, more or less, that he was in the hospital, post-surgery after having had a heart attack. Everything okay. Call to talk about conference prep. SERIOUSLY. My boss is in the intensive care unit on a Sunday morning and wants to talk about conference prep. Now, granted, the conference started on the 17th. My boss isn't really all that Type-A, but we did still have a lot of work to do, and that essentially took the editorial side of our house from 3 to 2 employees doing the bulk of the work (we have a few work-study students, but regular employees, we are three). So now add more overtime work to my schedule over the next three days, making the first day of the conference (Nov 17th) day 5 for writing. Not a good sign.

See how the Jell-O powder gets all goopy with a little water?

Not to mention that on the 17th and the 18th I was about as worthless a writer as an uncooked box of Jell-O, from working 10hour days three days in a row, and the emotional turmoil of talking to my boss on the phone while he was doped on morphine and falling asleep. Yup, powdery Jell-O.

Somehow, though, I managed to pull a few days writing between 5-6K. Don't ask me how. Perhaps some superhuman feats of strength that even kryptonite couldn't squelch. Who knows? But I have to attribute at least a little of my success to Hart Johnson and her stupendous idea for hour-long sprint-writing sessions. I think those were ultimately my saving grace. Coordinated over Facebook, I would periodically join Hart, among others, on these sprints, and both the time and the community support helped a ton.

And, imagine, through all of that, I actually won!

Granted, according to my word verification, I only have 50,002 words, but I don't care! I'm 2 words over what they need (although, according to my Scrivener file, I have 50,019), and that's what matters.

Anyway, now it's December. A little over two weeks until the holiday break comes, which will entail lots of time with family, friends, and fruitcake. I'm already celebrating by eating too many sweets and listening to Christmas music while I cook and bake. And, dangit all, I am MAKING these cookies if it kills me. I just have to find some sweet rice flour first...

Be seeing you around the blogosphere!

Return to the Old Life?

My real job started again today.  Well, actually, it never technically stopped.  I just stopped.  That's the beauty of freelance work, right?  If you don't do, it just doesn't get done.  I've promised my boss it will, and it will, just not by the time classes start on, er, Monday.

I suspect, due to a rush job that needs to be completed in the next 6-7 weeks, I won't be here quite as much.  It makes me very sad to admit this because it also means I won't have as much time for my own writing.  And while I'm taking a creative writing class, I don't imagine it will affect my work for NaNoWriMo this year.

I've been saying it all summer, but I need to prioritize.  I have a job with a definite deadline, and another one with a loose deadline.  I'm training a new employee at the publisher today and tomorrow, and I'll be her go-to person when she has questions.  Plus classes.  Plus writing.  Plus husband.  Plus laundry and cleaning and cooking and, oh, I should probably start going to the gym again. 

But not necessarily in that order.

In addition to my entire life that needs order and structure, I think my writing life does, too.  At the moment, I'm trying to follow too many blogs (and I love most of them and don't want to give them up!), have my own blog which I have already let slip over the past couple of days, working on helping out the folks in my new online critique group, putting my work over there, and, oh yeah, keeping up with my editing and planning for NaNoWriMo.  *whew*  Again, not necessarily in that order.  Unfortunately, for the past couple of weeks, other tasks from this list have trumped my own writing, and I'm not thrilled about this.

Oh, and no where in there did I mention reading.  I'm currently reading a memoir—Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bordain—an MG—Princess for Hire by Lindsey Leavitt—and Stephen King's On Writing is calling to me.  Oh, and a novel I won on GoodReads—No Place for Heroes by Laura Restrepo—and the novel I won from a FB contest—The Handbook for Lightening Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone.  And The Possessed by Elif Batuman, which I've been yearning to read for months and recently got my hands on.  Ack!

So, my attempt to organize and prioritize continues.  I think in addition to setting a minimum number of hours to work each day on the editing side, plus assuming I might do some school work here and there :) I'm going to set myself weekly goals for reading and writing.  Hopefully this will take the daily pressure off if I need to spend more time on my German, or the formatting on my editing job isn't working and takes twice as long as it should.  The writing will happen—it always does—but motivation to edit the text afterward tends to be elusive, and that's what needs to happen most right now.

Okay, ramble over.  We now return you to your regularly scheduling blogging.

How do you prioritize your life?  How do you fit writing into your (presumably) already hectic schedule?

PS—If you're doing NaNoWriMo this year, feel free to add me as your buddy.  I'm Rosie-C over there :)

Delusions of a Bloggy World

Do you schedule your posts?  
Or do you post when you finish writing?

"Overwhelmed" does not describe my blogged-out feeling this morning.  I spent my computer time this weekend writing instead of blogging or blogosphering.  Silly me to think that writing was more important!  What was I thinking?  Bad writer!  Bad!

Oh, wait.....

Anyway, this morning, I casually thought I could hop onto blogger and catch up. 

But, being Monday morning, and having more than twelve hours between my sleepy eyes and midnight GMT, I'm pretty sure every one of the 87,000 (rounding down) blogs that I follow had posted.  I couldn't even count the number of posts I needed to scroll through just to get to "1 hour ago". 

I know this goes both ways.  Some people think it's better to post in the morning.  These people (I assume, and please correct me) check their blog roll once or twice per day, and so if your post doesn't come up at the right time, they'll miss it.  But if everyone is posting at the same time, and you have 400 blog posts to read before breakfast, you can't possibly read them all.  Granted, for some blogs, if I miss them on my scroll, I'll seek them out.  But not all of them.  It would be impossible. 

So, beyond the questions above, how do you choose amongst the hundreds of blog posts published between 12:01 and 1 AM GMT (or any arbitrary hour-long period in any arbitrary timezone of a M/W/F morning)?  What makes you want to read a blog post?  What makes you pass one by?

Disclaimer: This post will be published upon completion.  Posts last week were scheduled.  I was riding the high from WriteOnCon, and wrote more blog posts in one day than anyone should tolerate.  Thus, scheduling.


PS—I would like to introduce you to one of my little muses.  She's a tiny monster who finds joy in knocking eggplants off the counter, chasing toy mice, bottle caps, and cherry tomatoes around the kitchen linoleum, and dreams of saving with world with the PowerPuff Girls.

Cyber-Suck, Or How I Learn to Stand on One Foot

Dear Fellow Blogophiles,

Let me describe for you my past week (which, oddly enough, I also happen to be learning to do in my Macedonian class this week, but that's completely unrelated).  I wake up early, some mornings do yoga, have my tea and cereal (or muffins one morning :) and spend about an hour on Blogger since so many people post or schedule their posts GMT 4:00-13:00 (–5).  In this time, I never get through everything I want to read, and leave at least a dozen posts open in tabs in my Firefox window.

After the morning routine (се туширам, мијам забите...) I head to class.  Including travel time, this takes about 5:30 hours—all in all not bad, considering some people have real 9-5 jobs, so I'm not complaining.  Frequently on our breaks I will even hop on the computer, check my email, and even log into Blogger to respond to someone who's commented on a post—that's how excited I am when you guys comment.  Yes, I'm a dork, but a friendly dork :)

After I come home, I get on Blogger and try catching up again or writing my own post.  I frequently discover that hours have passed and I still have 2 dozen tabs open that I want to read.  But, obviously, I have to stop, do my homework (домашна работа), make dinner (правам вечера), clean up (мијам садови), and then spend time with my husband who I haven't seen all day.  After a while, I'm exhausted, so I move upstairs and read until I pass out.

Do you notice what's missing here?  Do you see the obvious problem?

As if this weren't bad enough, I've now thrown Twitter into the mix.  Btw, folks, I don't get it.  I understand the potential.  Tweet about your new books, others ReTweet, and thousands more than otherwise will buy the book.  And that's awesome.  I haven't seen any of that yet, and instead have seen a lot of people talking about their flights being delayed on their way to SCBWI.  It actually feels similar to an incredibly disorganized chat room that I used to frequent on a dial-up modem, designed entirely in ASCII.  I know people love Twitter, and I know I just need time to sort it out, find more people to follow, figure out what an interesting Tweet might actually be, but all the time I'm dedicating to Twit-covery is yet more time I'm not writing.

I'm still new on the blogoscene, all things considered.  I'm still learning my way.  But do you have any advice for a poor girl with a time-management problem who just wants to write AND blog-network AND support her friends' blogs AND encourage new followers AND Twick-or-Tweet AND have a real life?  Is the answer: stop sleeping?  It all comes down to balance, and I've never been good at standing on one foot much less organizing my time.  *sigh*



How do you do it?  How do you manage your life, your writing, and cyberspace?