Posts in the "Balance" Category

• Still Life With Grumpy Logic

  Balance

  About three years ago, I started doing something that sorta shocked my poor Mom, who had to spend my high school years parading up and down the hallway every morning, banging a metal garbage can a la R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket to get me to school on time.

  I started setting my alarm for 5 a.m.

  It is possible that there are weirdos out there reading this who think such a thing represents normal behavior. Oh, perhaps it comes naturally to you? Are you a “morning person?” Go back to Alpha Centauri, freak. It’s not normal at all, at least not for me. (more…)

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• With enough caffiene, I can control the world with my BRaiNzZzz

  Balance

  I swear to god, not only am I psychic, but I’ve got Courtney’s brain on speed dial.  I was sitting down to suggest we talk about finding time to write and she’s already on it.  So, last week I made a spreadsheet of my normal week and mathematically proved that it’s impossible to be me.  With MATH, people.  MATH.

  There just isn’t enough time to do everything I do in a normal week and when I start trying to figure out how to do more? Imaginary numbers get involved.  There was a bit with Avagadro’s number before I realized it was just a fools errand.

  I LOVE writing.  I have ideas outlined out for another ten books if I just had time to write them.  But time is the ultimate scarce resource.  After work, kids, eating, cleaning, exercise, six hours of sleep a night, I have exactly 25 hours a week to write, watch TV, spend quality time with The Spouse, go out and Do Things, or sleep more.  It’s more like 12 hours of probable writing time if the kids don’t get sick and nothing catches on fire.    Lately not so much due to the implosion of my childcare situation.  If I could stop watching Castle and Fringe, I’d increase my available writing hours by 15%, but I don’t see that happening any time soon.  I obviously need to learn to sleep less. (more…)

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• Schmalance

  Balance

  Consider Batman. He’s Bruce Wayne in the day, crime-fighting vigilante at night.

  Consider Janus, the two-faced god. God of gates, of doorways. Of portals.

  Consider the thermos. It keeps the hot hot. It keeps the cold cold. How do it know?

  Yeah, that’s a lot of considering.

  Here’s the deal: forty years ago, if you had a book deal, you could live off the advance for the year it took you to write your next novel. Not well. You wouldn’t be living large, but you could get by.

  Back then – when all the world was young and there was no internet, iPhone, iPad to distract you and the American populace still spent money on books -  if you sold your novel, you could assume the auctorial mantle, buy a bunch of turtleneck sweaters with patches on the elbows, a pipe, some funny hats and dedicate your days to deathless prose. Writing – something you might’ve done at night or catch-as-catch-can – could now become your life. (more…)

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• Do you manage success or failure? (Hint: It’s both…)

  Balance

  

  In some ways, this is not so difficult a nut to crack. How do you find time for writing? You make the time, that’s how. You’ll hear this said from different author in different ways. “Butt in chair” is a common refrain. There’s also “just do it” and “you have to make the time” and, my personal favorite, “there’s only room for one obsession in your life.”

  These can seem a bit callous, but the reality is that there’s no easy way to become a steady, professional-level writer if you don’t commit yourself. I think people can fall into the trap of thinking that writing is easy. After all, we all read, and plenty of us write in our daily jobs. Writing for a living can’t be that much tougher, can it?

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• It’s Always Something

  Balance

  They say don’t quit your day job, and they’re very right, but sometimes the fates make career decisions for you. You’d think not having a day job would make the balancing act easier. It does and doesn’t. Either you have time or money, and sometimes, it’s neither. As Gilda Radner used to say when playing her SNL character Roseanne Roseannadanna, “It’s always something.”

  Being a professional fiction writer requires one part self-discipline, one part bloodymindedness and one part talent. Note that I listed talent last. Talent alone won’t get you anywhere. Bloodymindedness (as I use it here) comes down to being mule-stubborn — simply put. So, that leaves self-discipline. To be honest, I used to hate the concept because it brought to mind the word “punishment.” Then one day I was told to check into its roots. (As it turns out, that would be the word “disciple.”) At that moment it occurred to me that self-discipline is about love. It’s about belief in what you’re doing. That belief starts with you. Has to. You have to love and believe in your work to do what it takes. You have to believe enough to carve out time to write, to surround yourself with supportive people who will allow you your time to create, and nurture your creative self. If you don’t have those people, find them. If you have people who try to stop you — and face it, we all do at times — either get them out of your life entirely, learn to ignore them, or do as I did, learn that those people are a valuable form of lesson and a means of giving you strength to overcome future hardships because you’re going to need that strength. Because, baby, there are going to be a lot of challenges.

  That said, the usual boring time-management tips apply. I tend to feel overwhelmed sometimes. So, I use lists. (It makes me feel better to cross things off as a sign that I’ve done something with my day.) Scheduling, as stated before, is important too, but really, it’s self-discipline that’s key.

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• Balance. Let Me Show You It.

  Balance

  
  This morning I got up at 5:10 a.m., walked the dogs, and wrote two posts for the Amazon.com book blog where I’m guest-posting. I responded to some overnight tweets about my book and some email, worked out, made breakfast, and got dropped off at work by my fine partner, as we only have one car.

  Today I have fielded client requests at the marketing agency I work for, written a client press release and blog post, client web copy, opened two more client jobs, got estimates and invoiced another job, and started working on a ¾ page ad concept and copy for another client. I have blogged for the company, posted to their Twitter account, and then caught up on mine. I have tracked various marketing efforts for clients and for my book. I am starting in on writing up case studies for our company blog.

  About lunchtime today, I realized I’d totally forgotten to write up this post for today over here at the Night Bazaar.

  Oh yeah, good times. (more…)

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• Choose your sacrifices well

  Balance

  You’d think as a figure skater I should know something about balance. (Yep, that’s me in the pic, competing at Adult Nationals a couple years ago.) Yet my son is almost 2 years old and I still struggle daily in balancing motherhood against my other identities: writer, wife, engineer, skater, skier, climber.

  The trade-offs are difficult enough between motherhood and my day job – I work part time, and sometimes that’s what I hoped it would be, the best of both worlds. Other times it feels like double the stress for half the pay, since performance expectations don’t always reduce along with hours (here I mean my own expectations as much as anyone else’s!). Add writing into the mix – a pursuit that requires focus and free time, both vanishingly rare quantities with a toddler around – and some days I think I must be insane for refusing to give it up. (My husband is certain I am insane.) (more…)

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• Stealing Time

  Balance

  
  Those TV shows where writers always have a fancy office and no distractions totally lied to us.

  I was working full time at a job doing programming and computer support when I wrote my first novel, The Element of Fire. I wrote at work during slow periods, waiting for programs to run or for someone to call for help. I didn’t have a home computer at that point. I printed out what I’d written during the day and took it home to read over and edit, and then hand wrote new material on the weekends.

  My boss knew what I was doing — he was a big SF/F fan, too. But the office was also so small, it would have been impossible to conceal it. We were crammed into a space slightly larger than a walk-in closet with two mainframes plus workstations, a server, and other equipment. It was also cold and noisy, due to the intense air conditioning and air cleaners needed for the mainframes. The large HP printer was an important source of warmth essential for fighting off hypothermia. I wrote The Element of Fire, City of Bones, and half of The Death of the Necromancer in that room. My hearing and my sinuses never quite recovered, but it gave me the ability to write under just about any conditions and ignore distractions. Even now, when I write at home, I need some kind of noise in the room and often write with the TV on.
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