But my first love when it comes to genre is epic fantasy. Not the edgy epic fantasy that's selling now days (apparently), but old school epic fantasy with elves and dragons and all that. Not necessarily gaming lines, though it seems that gaming has made almost every old school epic fantasy seem like an AD&D novel (not knocking them; I love Drizzt myself), but the Tolkienesque, poetic, beautiful epic fantasy. I love the magic, the lush settings, the magical races, all of it.

Being somewhat pragmatic, however, when Assassin's didn't get requests, I had to reevaluate what I was writing. I want to be a successful writer, as in making even a little bit off my work and having it being published by someone other than myself (which is not to say self-publishing is bad, it's just not what I'm aiming for). I knew my epic fantasy would be a hard sell, but not getting any requests at all isn't just a hard sell. Assassin's is still out there, making small press rounds, but I decided to set aside its sequels and another loosely associated epic series and focus on my urban fantasy ideas.

But not only is Charms struggling (though getting better responses than Assassin's, they're still rejections and few requests), I was getting more and more irritated with writing in general, more and more frustrated with the process, and less and less creative. While Tirs (the sequel to Charms) "works", I've been struggling with adding things it needs. And my other urban, Shades, came to a complete stop. It was getting tot he point where I didn't even want to look at either of these novels. I don't know if Charms getting picked up would solve the problem, but I do know any kind of "success" would be meaningless if I'm not enjoying what I'm doing.

So I set aside Shades and picked up the first in another epic series that I'd started when I was initially playing around with and getting used to my novel plot building process. I've always been a two projects at a time kind of girl. I work on one as my main during the week and the other as an alternate on weekends, which helps keep me interested in what I'm doing. I decided to keep Tirs as my main focus and to work on Phoenix as my alternate. And guess what happened? My love for writing came back, Tirs became easier to work with, my frustration diminished (though in some ways it's not gone, but I think that's par for the coarse right now), and my irritation has gone away.

Apparently I need a little epic in my life.

I write because I need to write, I know that sounds cliche, but it's true. I don't write, I become someone people can't live with. We found this out when I did some long term subbing and grading homework took over my nights for several months. Right now, I'm not hemmed in by a contract. Yes, I need to think of my career as well, but I'm also free to write anything, including in the genre that's my blood. Like I said, I enjoy urban fantasy, but it's not my first love. It is, however, a genre that's doing well right now and can help me have a career. And since I work 2 projects at the same time, I can try to balance the two and hopefully keep my sanity.

So far, it seems to be working. Finding a balance usually does.

And I know better.

But knowing this is a long road career isn't helping. I adored Assassins. I thought Charms was going to get better than it has. I've had two shorts that I thought were my best work, were kick ass pieces, and they have yet to be accepted either. So now I'm questioning everything: my taste, my creativity, my ability. The only thing not with a big question mark is that I'm still trying and still going to be writing. Because this is what I do. And regardless of market reaction, this is what I love. It's who I am, it's what I'm happiest doing (even when I'm bitching and being miserable about some aspect of it).

It's like my husband and his cooking. Culinary school was the first time he got A's. Even chef instructors he never met knew who he was, and in a good way. His passion was so apparent. His chefs in his jobs all see his potential. He was born to be a chef.

And that's how I feel about my writing. I've done a lot of other things in my life, things to try to make money (which is important) but never made me happy. Writing is what makes me happy, and right now I have the time to focus on my writing. And that's what I need to hang onto when the frustration and the angst and the doubts creep in.

And, really, that's all there is.

Time to go sub Charms to another agent or two.

The one part of the writing process I don't particularly enjoy is revisions. It's not so bad with shorts, but with novels, it can get ugly. I go through a phase where I hate the book, I hate looking at it, I hate dealing with it at all. It's not been bad enough to stall me on a book, until now. With Tirs (the sequel to Charms, it got so bad, I couldn't seem to do more than a page at a time. Now, as much as I dislike this part of the process, this is the worst it's ever been, and I had to sit back and try to figure out why. In the past, stalling meant there was something wrong with the process, but I knew my basic process was fine and my main plot works. But I also knew I had a lot of work in the middle of the book, including making current subplots stronger and possibly adding a plot. Usually all that stuff is done when I revise, and this time it wasn't. And in a way, that's where the process broke down. I needed to make sure that main plot worked, that there weren't leaps in logic to it, but once I had that decided, I jumped into revisions the book wasn't ready for.

So I decided to strip the book back to that alpha checked draft (where I know the main plot worked, but everything else is still missing). As soon as I did, I felt better about working on the book. Not that it will be easy: I have A LOT to rework and add to the draft. But this felt like the right move: get everything in place THEN get to revisions. I'll probably still hit a hate phase, but hopefully it won't be a can't even pick it up and try phase.

It's not the first time I've had to go backwards with a draft. I did it with Assassin's after 4 attempts to write straight through failed (and thus my process was born). I've done it with two other books that are currently on hold. And if I ever pick up Music again, I'll have to do it with that to figure out how to fix it. Each time I've gone backwards, I've come out with a better book. And the work done before I went back isn't wasted either. With Tirs, a lot of the problems with the alpha draft were still apparent in the revisions.

So, still keeping Tirs as my main project for now. My secondary project is still somewhat in limbo. I'm having trouble in my plotting phase getting from the middle to certain events towards the end. A few have suggested moving on to the next phase, but I think I've had enough books prove to em that I need those plot events in place (and the transitions in between) before I move past getting the plot down. Going backwards has helped with certain projects, but it's not something I want to deliberately aim for.

But urban is still selling well, and as noted above, Charms is getting more personalized notes in the rejections that indicate the book is generally good, it's just not rung any bells for anyone yet. (And I'm well aware that it may not snag an agent, I'm just a "top down" kind of writer: if I'm going to reach for the stars, I'm reaching all the way up. Until I've exhausted all the agents accepting UF, I'm subbing to agents, then I'll move on from there.) With that in mind, I've been revising the sequel.

And yesterday I started to wonder if I should be revising the sequel or if I should be focusing on another idea that I've begun plot building but have had some trouble with finalizing the outline. I can work on both, but one needs to be the primary project, and if Charms doesn't get picked up somewhere, it's unlikely the sequel will have a market. I know my critters would like me to keep going on the sequel (and the love does soften the blow of the rejections coming in), but I also have to think of my goals: to get a book in print, preferably without resorting to self-publication (not that this is a bad choice for those who want to self-pub, it's just not on my horizons right now).

The problem is, while I'm trying to figure this out? I'm working on neither, and that's worse than working on the "wrong" book. My instinct is to keep working on the Charms sequel as the primary project, but I'm not sure how much of that is from not wanting to fight the new idea.

Which is probably me over thinking the whole thing.

It seems to me that other authors I've watched debut over the past few years may have had a sequel in mind, but they always worked on a different project. I could be wrong about that though.

I think I'm just going to have to follow my instincts. Going against the grain will only make the work on the other project harder, and it's hard enough as it is. Granted, I've been working very hard on my habits (well, until last year, anyway) so I can work under a time constraint and so on, and having to work on something I'm having trouble with would fall into working on those habits. But I think I can put off pushing myself into that corner for a little while longer. I need a novel accepted somewhere before it becomes an issue. And if I end up working with a small press, it'll be even less of an issue since most of them are more flexible than the traditional big publisher.

Honestly, I know I make this harder than it should be. The time before you have a publisher is probably the freest time you have as a writer. Once you have contracts, your options of what to work on and time and so on become significantly more limited, even with small presses. But submitting, getting rejections (good and bad), and having to submit elsewhere, well it all just plays with my head a little. I'm trying to approach this thing called writing as a career, granted, a career I enjoy doing, but a career none the less, and that means I have to be more thoughtful about what I'm doing.

Too bad being more thoughtful only adds to the angst. lol

The one thing that has changed significantly over this past year is the projects I'm working on. So here's the current/updated list of active work or work being submitted (there are A LOT more ideas, they just aren't in any kind of development other than a paragraph in my ideas and inspirations notebook).

Assassin's Choice
Tolkien-esque (or game-esque) Epic Fantasy. This one is making the rounds of small presses for the most part now. I've thought about trunking it once or twice, but I know epic is a hard sell, especially traditional/"game" epic, and I love the book too much to give up until all avenues are exhausted.

Blood Charms
Urban Fantasy, book 1 of The Shunned, 3rd person. Still submitting to agents, with a few nibbles and a few positive rejections under its belt. Currently the full is out. Waiting for response before starting a new round of submissions.

Music of the Mists
YA Fantasy. Reached the end of the rough and realized there was a problem in the story arc/conflict. Have set it aside for now. Not sure if/when I'll pick it back up since it would require a complete rewrite from scratch after I figure out the problem and how to fix it. With so much else waiting for attention, I'm in no hurry to get back to it.

Crown of Tirs
Urban Fantasy, book 2 in The Shunned, 3rd person. Deep revisions. Once I get through the current round, I might set it aside for a bit to give Charms a chance to sell somewhere, especially since I have a couple of other projects that could use my attention.

Phoenix Rising
Epic Fantasy, same world as Assassin's but much earlier in Alden's history, House Thalionrhoe book 1. The series follows the rise and fall of a single family/house. Been picking away at this but not doing any concentrated work on it. I'm nearing the end of the rough draft. It'll probably continue to be a back burner project for now.

Shades of Reyn
Urban Fantasy. Same world, opposite coastline and different main character as Charms and Tirs. This is still in development, but it may take the place of Tirs in terms of how much focus it gets once the current round of revisions are done. I really like some of the ideas I'm developing for it but need to work out a few holes in the story line. The basic plot/conflict are solid, just have a couple of places where getting from point A to point B aren't completely worked out yet. Currently working on the outline/narrative draft.

That's the major work in progress. Still have a novella and several shorts that I poke at occasionally, but I'm still not inclined to put a lot of work into them at this point.

Sales this past year:
"Into Stone" by Chamberton Publishing first for their Limelight: A Golden Light Anthology then for their Chimera Series of short stories (it was 1 of 2 published this way)

"Human" was just accepted by Grim Corps Magazine (no publication date yet).

"Human" in particular was a nice sale. It's always been a hard to place story. "Into Stone" has never had the same problem.

I tried to simplify my goals for this next year a little. Since I need to make room for exercise and more house related duties, I'm trying to cut out a bunch of other things I'm doing to make space. Dropping out of LJ, for the most part, helps since there were several communities I updated as often as once a day (most were less than that) and my journal entries there, when I did them, could take up to 2 hours. Some time needs to come from being more focused again in the evenings. Once the dishes are done, it's my writing time, but I've had trouble just getting started lately, and that has got to stop. I've already begun the trimming of stuff, now I need to work on that focus thing.

Goals this upcoming year:

Personal
» lose 30 pounds
» take care of everyone's glasses

Reading & Writing
» read 40 books (see me on Good Reads
» finish Tirs
» Shades to v3
» Phoenix

Other
» move all my reviews to Good Reads
» update/clean up Alden more consistently (1/week at least)

There's a lot I can't control, but I'm thinking 2013 will be a good year overall. We're in a place where we're happy and healthy and have a chance to work on the financial mess made these past few years and have no plans to move. A lot less upheaval in a better place means a less stressful year. I hope.

*knocks on wood*

Change is the one constant in life. To be successful in any endeavor, we must be able to adapt to change. In a way, a regular job with a boss and a steady paycheck can anchor us and help us weather the other changes in our lives. Writers who don't have that constant have to find a way to navigate change while maintaining their commitment to their craft, and it can be very easy to end up where I am now.

So, for me, it's time to rebuild. I need a new routine that takes into account my domestic goddess duties, which are more time consuming since I no longer have children in the house to help, and my part time editing job while at the same time making sure I make time for and do my writing. I'm also spending more time working out so I can lose over 100 pounds. It's a lot to work in, but these are my priorities, and everything else I choose to do has to be taken on in light of these things. A lot of evaluation going on in my life right now. It's been haphazard in recent months as my schedules and routines have fallen apart and my environment has changed, but now, as life becomes less volatile, it's time for me to determine what I'm doing in a more deliberate way.

Some habits got broken over the last year, especially my night time writing/revising habits. It's time to reclaim them. Other habits are new and finding space for them has been challenging. The good news is that we are finally in a better place and focusing on survival is no longer eating up all my resources. Transitioning into a new schedule has been a little harder than I expected, but the foundation is there just waiting for me to grab hold again.

Hopefully, as I get myself back together as a writer, there will be more going on here at Alden. Journeys is going to transition into my being my writer blog (hopefully with more interesting content than my LJ ever had, though a few of those posts may end up coming over here as well since I'm leaving LJ as a blogging platform). There are a lot of updates that need to be made here at Alden, including the layout (since the all green has been here a few years now), and being around here more should help. It won't happen instantaneously—rebuilding takes time and there's a lot of bad habits and laziness to clear out now—but it will happen. Just don't mind the dust between now and then.

When I finally picked up Assassin's again (after nearly 10 years of not writing at all), I struggled to get it finished. Every writer I talked to at the time said to just write through from beginning to end, but I never could seem to hit the end. Somewhere in the middle, I just puttered out. I tried chapter by chapter. I tried going back over and revising chapters before writing the next chapter. I tried putting them all in one file and writing from where I'd ended. Nothing worked. I tried starting over more than once. I'd stall out every time. Because I was being told that this is how "real" writers write, I figure something was wrong with the book and finally set it aside "for good."

Problem was the same thing happened to the next book. And then next one after that. And I finally realized it wasn't the books at all. It was the way I was trying to write them. I picked Assassin's up again and decided that, even if it never got published (and I'm still working on that), I would use it to learn how I needed to write to actually get a finished book. From that, my novel plot building process was born, and I've yet failed to get a completed 0 or rough draft. I can even set books aside and pick them back up later and still finish them.

Recently I finished a 0 draft and was getting ready to get it to the rough draft and start revisions when I realized I had a case of a book actually having a problem. There was next to no real conflict through the middle of the book, the ending was a resolution but not one that was all that good (granted, it was the natural resolution of the story, so it wasn't the wrong resolution, it just wasn't particularly interesting), and there were a few other issues and structural problems along the way through the story. It will need a lot of work at the basic ground level to be a workable novel. While there are some things in the story that will remain the same, the story itself will have to be changed, and 90% of the book has to be scrapped to make it work. And that's a lot. A lot more than I'm willing to invest right now.

So I've let Music of the Mists go, at least for now.

When a book works, but the writing gets hard is not a time to let it go. When a book works, and maybe the techniques are above your skill level, it might be time to set it aside until you have the skills to do what you want to do...or it might be time to push through and use it to learn those skills. When a book doesn't work from the basic story, and you can't see how to fix it without destroying it, it may be time to let go. It's hard to let go of a book, and every author has to decide for him or herself when the time has come to do so, but the point here is to make sure it's for the right reasons. All novels have places where they become "difficult", where the work is more than what we expected. It's when the book has problems that can only be fixed by destroying the story you wanted to tell that it may be time to let go. Only the author can decide that. But I want to encourage writers who are in the middle of a tough spot in their stories, whether it be trying to reach the end or fighting their way through revisions, to not give up. One day you may have a story that you have to let go of, at least for awhile, but make sure it's because there's a flaw that would destroy the story, not because the writing has become difficult.

I may pick up Mists again one day, try to figure out how to fix the structural problems it has without destroying the story, but for now, I need to let it go. I've got a lot of stories to tell, stories with all the right pieces in place. This one is just one that's not working. Learning when to let go keeps me from sinking time into something that's too deeply flawed to work as is; learning when not to let go helps me finish those stories that do work even when they're difficult. Because of this, I'll be able to tell more of the stories I have waiting in the wings. And for me, that's one of the main reasons I write: to tell my stories.

I think I mentioned before that when I first started writing, it was hard getting into some kind of regular schedule. There were weeks when I was lucky to get 500 words. But I persisted and slowly developed a habit of writing almost every day. It took years, and I've had to adjust the timing or the how a number of times over the years. For awhile there, I had to do 10 to 20 minute sprints. When I was substitute teaching, I had to learn to write in the spaces between classes: when I had free time or at lunch. More recently, I've changed to night time writing, bridging the end of one day and the beginning of the next. But regardless of the how or the when, I kept working on trying to write every day. Weekly goals helped (although I rarely made them at first). But the biggest help was persistence. I was determined to make writing a part of my day, and I never gave up on it even when I missed days at a time. And eventually, without me even realizing it, I developed a habit of writing most days.

And now, when my life has been in upheaval, I get to reap one of the important benefits of developing that habit: I kept writing. Except for the days we were actually moving, and the days of packing and the first few of unpacking, I've been writing most every day. Everything else may have gone down the drain, but not my writing. And now that things are settling, I'm not having to struggle to keep on writing. I have had to adjust back to that bridge time, and I've had to work a bit to put down more words (since, yes I was writing, but I wasn't writing a lot during the upheaval), but the actual writing? Not a struggle (at least once I was no longer exhausted). As a result, the second book in the Randi Kayde series is well on its way, and I'm nearing the end of the first in another series.

It's so easy to let life derail us, at least for me. I've been stressed, sick, worried about where we were going to live, and so on and so forth, yet I've continued to write. At the time I was developing this habit, it was frustrating. One week, I'd have 350 words, the next 2000, and the next none. I couldn't understand why I couldn't just sit down and make sure to write something, anything, every day. But I kept at it, and now when I've needed that habit the most, it's paid off.

If you're struggling to make writing your habit, remember two things:

1. You don't find the time to write, you make it.

2. Keep at it. Don't let missing a day or three stop you. Eventually, you'll get there.

Turns out it wasn't as easy as we'd hoped.

We honestly were looking for a rent to own and ended up in attempting to buy instead. There were a lot of things going on around the sale (and still are) that made it even more stressful than it really needed to be, and I found myself unable to do do as much as I was used to doing. Instead of swapping between two novels, I could only focus on one. Short stories? Ignored. Submissions pretty much were ignored as well. My energy and focus was so completely wrapped up in surviving the process, I barely had enough left to write and manage the few responsibilities I have other than motherhood.

And you know, sometimes we have to focus on what's the most important in our lives and let other things go because there's just no space for them. But at the same time, I was still writing and attempted to keep to my usual routines as much as possible. It's the habits and routines of my day that help keep me grounded when everything else is going crazy or the stress is so high all I want to do is sleep. And it is those habits that help me settle into new routines and new places when I need to. And, honestly, they help keep me sane. If I let the stress overwhelm me enough to stop me from writing, I don't think I'd get through as well.

By the same token, there were days when I didn't get out of bed, when the lure of sleeping of the stress was too much to ignore. And sometimes we all need a day in bed. It's not wrong, it's not bad (as much as my inner responsibility voice would imply otherwise). As long as you're not spending days or weeks in bed, a day off of life isn't a bad thing and can help you face the next day better than you would have without the day off.

Things are not still resolved when it comes to where we'll finally be living and whether or not we'll own this house, but things ARE better than they were. We went through some of the worst stress I've ever experienced, but we came out of it in a better place, regardless of whether or not we get to keep the house. And I'm slowly recovering my ability to work on more than one novel, I'm kinda looking at my short stories again, and I've been submitting. I'm slowly building back up to the level of work managed that I was doing before things got really bad. And it's not nearly as hard as it would be if I had let everything go.

And I'll take that.

I'm not 100% happy with Charms, but I do think a lot of that has to do with not being too sure of the genre. It's one I read, but not one I imagined writing until flaws in the Anita Blake series began to frustrate me enough to bring out that "I can do this" feeling. Even the YA I've begun working on falls in the epic fantasy genre. And while urban fantasy is still fantasy, it's definitely not my comfort zone, so me being less than 100% happy with it is to be expected.

My process with Charms was trimmed down some. I skipped a few drafts and discovered the important parts of the process for me are the foundations, the plotting form and outline, the first narrative draft, and the notes draft. I did do a separate building draft, but it felt more like a sketchy rough draft than an individual draft, and I suspect it won't be as necessary in a lot of my future novel work (though some novels may indeed require that extra step). The revisions were easier, but only because there was no separate revision to deal solely with language, so a lot less hair pulling. Still, there was a lot I had to work out that was genre related as well as specific to the story that made the revisions frustrating, just in a different way.

What I think was most interesting happened when I sent it off to betas. When I sent Assassin's out, I was at a loss for a week or two. With Charms, I was diving into the YA before I even sent it out. I'm sure the time difference in writing (two years versus twenty) made a huge difference—I wasn't nearly as attached to Charms as I was to Assassin's. Doesn't mean that I'm not wondering how it's going and checking email hoping to see an early response, but it was definitely easier to let go of and move on to the next project.

I still have one more step to go through with Charms: polishing and submitting. And there's already one difference I'm aware of between the books: epic isn't in a good place right now, while urban is (granted, paranormal has overtaken urban, but urban isn't down and out the way epic is). I sent A.C. out knowing the chances of it being picked up were slim even if agents felt it was well written and publishable. There's just not much of a market for it. Charms has a better chance, assuming I've written the story well. At this point, I'm no more nervous about it than I was with Assassin's, but then my finger isn't on the send button either.

For now, I'm working on a YA and developing the Charms sequel as a weekend project. I'm actually pretty happy that I made the transition from one novel to another so easily. I hate flailing around. I really do. So, I'm kinda hoping this is one difference that will stick with me, that it's not just a difference, but a way in which I've grown as a writer.

When there's a lot going on in my life, especially a lot that takes most of my energy and focus just to survive, things other than surviving become footnotes in my day. If I can find whatever I need to do it, then I do it; if not, well, then it doesn't get done. I suspect most of us are this way. We have a finite amount of ourselves to put into anything. When survival takes up most of that, everything that's not important has to be pushed aside. And this is where I was, pretty much, for most of 2011: skating from one crises to the next, keeping a roof over our heads, juggling the bills, doing everything I could to keep my family housed and fed while making sure my husband finished school.

Where I was fortunate was time. I stay home because my son needs me, and with only one car, there was no way to make a job work, assuming I could find one I could do during the limited hours I had open. So I had more time to do other things, even when most my other resources were pretty low. And instead of using that time to sleep or to worry, I wrote. I worked on Charms almost every day. It was probably the one thing that saved me from letting our circumstances drag me down. And I attribute that ability to keep writing, despite the stress life was piling on my shoulders, to the habits and routines I've spent years developing.

I started tracking weekly word counts and goals back in 2004/2005. I originally used a refillable planner, but later decided on separate annual planners. The first year was spotty at best. I didn't list any goals, was lucky to get 500 words in a week, and had entire months where I wrote nothing at all either in the planner or on paper. That started to change in 2007. I'd miss a day or two a week, but most days have writing progress recorded. The lowest week: 232 words. Most weeks averaged 2 or 3000 words. And I did have one week where I made over 9000 words. Just seeing the annual word count rise was enough to encourage me to keep going. By the end of 2008, I was including small, weekly to do lists. Those lists got larger, and I started breaking them down into daily to do lists by 2009. I learned to keep the planner next to me, open so I could see my list for the day. Just that one thing helped me to develop a habit of working on my writing every day.

And that habit and this year's planner have kept me writing through all the stress of this year. My planner is by my bed. I take it, and anything I need to work on, with me when I go places, if I can. Each night, I write the next's day's to do list, which always includes some writing. Each day, I cross things off as I get them done. This year, despite everything, I averaged about 6-9000 words/week, with some weeks as high as 15-20,000 words. My total word count this year is just over 584,000 with another 6-10,000 probably before the end of the year. I admit that the count would probably be significantly lower if I'd been working, but the habits I started developing in 2004 saved me this year. They kept me writing even when it was almost too depressing to keep doing much of anything anymore. And I can't highlight the encouragement and company of fellow writings enough. They believed in me, and that helped keep me going when I could no longer find a reason to believe in myself.

And I learned one other thing: that I can do it. We look at circumstances we've not experienced and say, "oh, there's no way I could do that!" I'm here to say we can. I've learned it a day at a time, a week at a time, a month at a time. You make your goals doable. You write them down. You cross them off as you finish. You track your progress, and that progress will keep you going when you don't see progress happening anywhere else. When you're ready to give up, those habits kick in, and the next thing you know, you're doing whatever it is you needed to do that day. They become our strength when we feel we have none. They help push us onward when no other reward is in sight.

Yea, it was a bad year in so many ways. But sometimes it takes a bad year to see what we're really made of, to see that we have the strength to do the things we need or want to do in spite of it all. And in the end, we come out even stronger and we've learned something about ourselves.

Keep on writing. No matter what.

But sometimes I need to. This was pointed out to me last week when I finally went to OneNote to start tracking my submissions. I'd tried OneNote before, thinking about using it for world building, but my dabbling in it (a few years ago) only frustrated me with it. And, honestly, once you get the basics, it's not all that hard of a program. I just liked the way I already did things. I understood it. I didn't have to learn anything new. So I closed OneNote and any idea of ever using it again.

Until my submissions records, which were all on paper. My numbers were a mess, pages sometimes went missing. I knew there had to be a better way, but I'd tried Sonar and didn't like it. I poked around, and the only free program that looked promising wouldn't install on my machine. And just the idea of Excel drove me back to paper, no questions asked. I did open Excel a couple of times, but...no, just no. Then I decided to look at OneNote again. A few stops and starts later, a lot of transferring records by hand (and untangling more than a few messes) later, I now have a system very similar in set up to my paper system but better. It's more flexible and all in one place. And I'm submitting more again because it's all easier to see.

That's the thing about finding the right tools. They encourage productivity. And even if they have a learning curve in the beginning, once they're down, they're as easy as whatever old method they replace. But to find the right tools, I have to do more than tinker and follow my gut reaction (which generally tends to be "my old way is easier" almost every time, to be honest). I need to be willing to put in a little time, really see if something will be useful.

Not sure how much I'll take that to heart: I am kinda set in my ways these days. I have so much going on that time out to learn something new that might help is hard to justify. But if OneNote proved anything it's that a little investment can go a long way to making things easier in the future.

Not that I'm ready to go diving into Excel any time soon.

A big part of this is how my ADHD and my brain function. My ADHD isn't particularly a visible problem. It literally is in my head. My brain just doesn't slow down. I once did a stream of consciousness writing exercise that was supposed to last 5 minutes. I only made it to 3. In that three minutes, I wrote down only bits and pieces of thoughts that covered more than a half dozen topics, and that wasn't even everything. I couldn't write fast enough to keep up. This is also why it's so hard for me to go to sleep at night: my brain just won't slow down enough. I eventually trained myself to tell myself stories to get to sleep, but it still takes awhile.

So, I'm constantly pushing to keep busy because my brain is always busy and always has something else for me to work on. The problem is, sometimes a person needs to stop and take a break. Usually my idea of a break is just to switch projects and think about something else for awhile. But even I know that's not really a break. I'm still doing. And we all need time when we're not really doing: time watching TV, time playing games, time reading. Time when we're engaged in a pleasurable activity that doesn't require "work". And that's where I struggle.

Some of that struggle is the way things are for me right now. We've got one car, and even if my husband wasn't using it all the time, we'd have to save on the gas so he has it for work. We don't live near any place I can walk to, even the nearest bus stop is too far for me (and the buses around here are pretty useless anyway). There's no porch, no garden. I occasionally go grocery shopping with the husband, but we can't afford to go out. So I'm pretty much stuck in the house all day and all night with 4 cats and a dog, plus the family when they're home.

But the need for not doing comes out whether I want it to or not. I have a project to get to, but I'm wandering the web aimlessly. I get sucked up into watching programming online. These aren't BAD things, but because I push myself so much and don't make time for the leisure, they end up swallowing up more time than if I just made time to give in to my inner hookie monster. I push myself until that monster is bigger than me, sometimes until it makes me sick and all I can do is sleep. The brain runs down, loses energy, loses its creativity, the motivation follows, and then I become physically run down. It's not the best way to do things and stay productive. The down time is much longer when I let myself run into the ground like that.

Thing is, knowing this intellectually doesn't stop me from doing it. Despite running down, my brain never actually runs out, and that pushes me to keep busy, even if I end up having to climb over a 20 foot high mental wall just to get things to work. I am learning though. I am trying to find ways to let myself -lay hookie even if my brain doesn't stop. When I'm fighting to get the ideas on paper, or to figure out what's going on with a web site, or whatever, I need to stop and take stock, maybe take a REAL break (not a project shift, but an actual break). And I need to get back into reading before bed, maybe pick up my cross stitching again. Leisure activities.

I didn't play hookie when I was kid except for one class I bailed on three times because no way was I dissecting a cat. So, really, it's no surprise that I don't play hookie now. If there's something I need to work on, well, I work on it to the best of my ability. I was raised to give 150%. Giving in to the hookie monster goes against the grain. But I need to find a way. We all need little breaks during the day, away from work, away from Twitter and Facebook, away from all that. And we all need to give in to our inner hookie monsters now and then and just go and play. It's part of what keeps us healthy.

My initial concern with switching from Charms, which has a clean, straightforward language level, to Quest For Ehlarayn, which will be more poetic like its predecessor, Assassin's Choice, was navigating the language difference. Interesting enough, it's not been the difference in language that's been a problem, however. While I'll still have some work to do with it when it's near ready for polishing, I fell back into the "sound" of the Alden novels fairly easily for Quest. It was so easy that I was pretty impressed with myself, actually.

Of course, that's when I ran into trouble.

There's another area where the two books differ quite a bit: description. The Alden books have rich details with some descriptions running a bit on the long side. They're not Moby Dick length (sorry, just can't spend 2 or 3 pages on how white something is), but they're not short, sharp bits either. Honestly, the descriptions in Charms also aren't short, sharp bits, but they are significantly shorter than in the Alden novels. A.C. earned me the title of description queen in the workshop where I participate. So imagine my surprise when the one thing I've been having trouble with is the placement and writing of descriptions.

Like language, how descriptions are used is a matter of voice, and one thing I've learned in writing shorts is to vary my voice to the needs of the story. The thing is, shorts are, well, short. They don't require focus for months at a time the way a novel does, so it's easy to adjust your voice accordingly when you pick up a new short. Now I'm finding that's not so easy when it comes to novels. I've been focused on Charms for pretty close to a year now. That's more than long enough for the style of that novel to feel more natural to me than the style of Assassin's, which became natural to me in the years I was focused on completing it. It also seems easier to go cleaner in language style than it is to go more poetic. I will redevelop that poetic voice and the description style I started with in Assassin's, but it will take some time and patience. The good news is that's what revisions are for: taking time to work out the various aspects of a book until they are "right".

I really shouldn't have been surprised that something ended up being harder than I expected. Writing is always a journey, and journeys always leave their mark. And I've only finished one book (Charms, while my second completed draft, still has a round or two of revisions to go before it's done and ready for submission), so not being used to swapping between two different styles of writing will present some challenges. A lot of authors have two or more different types of books on the shelves and have to swap between them, so it's a skill that can be learned. I just have to do what I've been doing: keep working on it and moving forward.

Pretty much wasn't anywhere near close.

Now days I write almost every day, and between revisions and fresh words, I usually manage somewhere between 6 and 10k a week (compared to a lucky 500-1000 a few years ago). I've figured out how I need to write (I'm definitely NOT a pantser!), finished one novel and have another on the way (and almost done...and in less than 20 years!), and am able to write through most distractions. I still have problems meeting self-imposed deadlines, but some of that has to do with the critting process and my way of writing, and I'm getting better at it. For my second book, I'll miss my self-imposed deadline to get the book out to beta readers by a few months rather than a few years. Big difference.

The changes didn't happen over night. The first record keeping I did of my writing was back in 2003, I believe (I no longer have those pages). The first record I can still access is from 2006, and my first day recorded 3852 words, with nothing else worked on for the rest of the week. I didn't started tracking weekly goals the following year, and daily goals the year after that (although even then, I wasn't writing or making goals every day like I do now). But I was committed to writing and becoming published, and I've been committed to the journey, to becoming a better writer, a stronger writer, and a more consistent writer. When that contract comes my way, I want to be ready for it, not still struggling to find my stride.

There's a post by John Scalzi, How to Have a Writing Career Like Mine, where the point is that each career path is different. And while I'm pretty sure most people don't want MY career path (I mean, come on, 20 years on one novel? No novels published in the eight years since I started keeping records? Not exactly inspiring), there are things I've learned along my career path that others might find useful for their own.

First, commit to your writing. This means a lot of things, from figuring out how you need to write to learning the industry to developing a daily writing habit. Few people get published by accident, and no one will do any of the work of commitment for you. Only you can decide how important a career in writing is to you, and only you can do what's necessary to achieve it. And your commitment will be tested. Financial difficulties will force you to get a job (figure out how to write between the cracks. Children and family will distract you (figure out how to train them to leave you alone during your writing time or find a time when they aren't around). You'll get sick (okay, have to admit, still haven't figure out how to overcome that one). Your commitment will show in how you meet the challenges.

Second, keeping a record has been invaluable. I'm a progress oriented person: I need to see that progress has been made. A blog or journal helps, but nearly as much as a physical record for me. And it took me a little time to figure out what format worked for me, but I eventually found a planner by Burde with vertical columns that just rocks for me. It has an extra column where I can list my goals for the week, and the daily columns have enough room for my daily goals and recording my progress on various projects. You can see an example of it here and find them at B&N. I prefer the larger books because of space. A similar planner I found was the At-A-Glance Outlink Weekly/Monthly Planner. Didn't like the horizontal layout of the days, but it was the only other planner I located with a vertical column for notes. Regardless of how you do it, seeing progress can be encouraging. It gives you sense of "I can do it! I know I can because I've already done it!"

Finally, for me, goals go a long way to keeping me on track and getting things done. Do I get all my goals for a day or week done? No, but I don't let it frustrate me too much either. Some days are just like that, especially when you have ADHD, 7 people living in your home, and any number of emergencies and whatnot that need your attention. That's just life. But I find without some kind of to do list, I tend to go off track more often and get even less done. Goals aren't a straight jacket for me. They set out a path for me to take and help keep me on track with my progress and my commitment.

Those three things—commitment, recording my progress, and weekly and daily goals—are the foundation of the progress I've made over the years. I'm more focused, I can write through almost anything, and I get more done in one day now than I used to get done in a week. Now I feel I'll be ready, or close to ready, when that contract comes my way.

And it really is cool to be able to look back and see how far I've come.