Jaymi Elford's Blog

There are times, like right now, when I am so steeped in reality that I find it hard to unclench my teeth, and my fists and do what it is that I love doing. It’s been awhile since I really put pen to paper… and today I just got a reminder about doing it.

Neil Gaiman addressed a graduating class this year. This was his speech. I highly recommend creatives watch it:

Thanks for the reminders once more, Neil.

So, in-between all this house hunting insanity (and it has been really insane, but that’s a topic for another post), my domain host sends me an email to let me know that my old theme’s design was compromised. Well, I couldn’t have that. Therefore I updated my theme to this one. It’s a bit more simplistic and I sorta like it. And it should be free from issues.

It’s 4 months into 2012 and I have been absent on this blog. Why? Well, there’s a lot of factors that have contributed to my absence. I got hit with plague, and con crud in December-February, and my depression has been a bit out of control. Before those months, I have been busy with my tarot business and writing my first tarot book, finding ways to support myself and teaching tarot. I have quite a bit of a backlog of things to post about and will try and do that soon!

It's 4 months into 2012 and I have been absent on this blog. Why? Well, there's a lot of factors that have contributed to my absence. I got hit with plague, and con crud in December-February, and my depression has been a bit out of control. Before those months, I have been busy with my tarot business and writing my first tarot book, finding ways to support myself and teaching tarot. I have quite a bit of a backlog of things to post about and will try and do that soon!

I stepped up my reading habits this year and here's a nice graphic of all the books I read in 2011. I also completed my GoodReads.com reading challenge of 100 books in one year.

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Jaymi's 2011 book montage

Jaymi's favorite books »

Share book reviews and ratings with Jaymi, and even join a book club on Goodreads.

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Tarot Inspired Life was written in 2011 as my first non-fiction (nano rebel) entry for NaNoWriMo. I am currently editing this book for publication. Usually I attempt to keep posts of my adventures through the month but as you can see, this was the first month I was a NaNoWriMo ML, which meant that I wrangled the cats during this month. Writing a novel, helping 100 Wrimos, and trying to keep up with everything isn't an easy task.

Download inspirational NaNoWriMo Macbook Air Desktop (featuring artwork from the Steampunk Tarot)

For a year or two now, kender and I have been discussing the option of him getting his motorcycle license. Last Tuesday, this dream came true when he passed his license test with flying colors. Then he began the long process of finding his bike… which took a lot less time than I expected. He bought a brand new Kawasaki ER-6n (the n stands for nekid) in a beautiful blue shade.

He spent all last weekend riding it around the neighborhood and city streets. After the first ride on Sunday, he announced that he was ready for me to hop on the bike. So a very nervous jaymi tossed on her 20-year old leather biker jacket, jeans, and kender’s old autocross helmet and fitted herself on the back of the bike for a short loop around the neighborhood. I wasn’t sure about how I’d feel but after a week’s worth of rides, I can say that I’m loving it.

We’ve been riding together for every day this week, with me growing more and more accustomed to the bike, kender’s ride style, and the gear that we’ve purchased for me now. Since various attempts at getting photos to various parental units have failed, I’m using this time to share some of the images of the bike with ya all. Hopefully we’ll have some images of me on the bike in the future.

This is not a bike that we’ll be able to go cross country, or even camping on. Mostly it’s to save gas money for kender’s commute and for us to have some weekend fun with. Who knows, in the future we may upgrade to a touring bike and join the ranks of people who use their motorcycles for camping adventures.

For a year or two now, kender and I have been discussing the option of him getting his motorcycle license. Last Tuesday, this dream came true when he passed his license test with flying colors. Then he began the long process of finding his bike… which took a lot less time than I expected. He bought a brand new Kawasaki ER-6n (the n stands for nekid) in a beautiful blue shade.

He spent all last weekend riding it around the neighborhood and city streets. After the first ride on Sunday, he announced that he was ready for me to hop on the bike. So a very nervous jaymi tossed on her 20-year old leather biker jacket, jeans, and kender's old autocross helmet and fitted herself on the back of the bike for a short loop around the neighborhood. I wasn't sure about how I'd feel but after a week's worth of rides, I can say that I'm loving it.





We've been riding together for every day this week, with me growing more and more accustomed to the bike, kender's ride style, and the gear that we've purchased for me now. Since various attempts at getting photos to various parental units have failed, I'm using this time to share some of the images of the bike with ya all. Hopefully we'll have some images of me on the bike in the future.

This is not a bike that we'll be able to go cross country, or even camping on. Mostly it's to save gas money for kender's commute and for us to have some weekend fun with. Who knows, in the future we may upgrade to a touring bike and join the ranks of people who use their motorcycles for camping adventures.

Since I returned home from the Readers Studio last Monday, I've had so much to write about. Namely, my experiences at the convention. In between writing those posts, comes all the other stuff that wants my attention. And while I "should be working" on those things, what's caught my attention right now, is this post on how I deal with "overwhelm" and how I knock things off my list.

TL;DR version: I'm not sure if what I write below is a system, but I do have a daily order to getting things done. Breathing helps, so does focusing the attention on where the passion lies and then working on one thing at a time.

I don't deal well with overwhelm. I love having lots of projects going on at once but of course, this means that occasionally they collide and I feel lost and overwhelmed with it all and wish I can do it all, when i know i can't. Today is one of those days.

My current writing to-do list looks like this:



Write RS11 posts (about 5 of them)

Continue writing ETT book draft

Write emails to peeps

Work on reviews for W&P

Write potential tarot essay for publications.

Earlier, I posted this to my Twitter feed:

Feeling overwhelmed with all the things I gotta write and catch up on. It's another hunker down and do it day.

Which got this response on Facebook from a friend:

Would love to know how you deal with that. Do you have a 'system' or other advice?

To tell you the truth, there is no real cut and dry thing to how I get so much done. I'm not even sure I have a system. I do keep a list of everything I want to do in a day but I don't really nail it down with priorities. Setting priorities usually backfires on me because while I may set a deadline, my mind will want to work on the bottom thing. So I've decided not to do this unless I have a HUGE external deadline looming.

I usually work on a project until I run out of steam, or need feedback, or whatnot. This allows me to rotate through various projects during the day and never allows me to feel bored.

All this said, however, I do have some bits of a system that I do daily that gives me large chunks of time for writing.

First thing every morning, I go exercise. Running is my meditation and it allows me that sacred 30 minutes of having no thoughts fluttering through my mind. My mind is so hyper that there are times when I wish I could turn it off.Lately I've been adding 15 minutes of weightlifting and another half hour of stationary bike into the mix.

Once I'm done with the exercise, I stay out and about to complete any errands. This includes library runs, post office runs, groceries, etc. I find that if I don't get the out of house items done, then these tasks weigh on my mind and nothing "gets done" at home.

Once I am at home, I take some time to check email and then clear out the social media clutter. I'm horrible at replying sometimes, so I do a quick scan to make sure I've written a response that needs to be addressed. (I usually try and respond to things in 24 hours or less. If not, it's because I feel overwhelmed and have no idea what to say.)

Then I look at my writing to-do list and pick one item that can be completed in short time. Usually, this is a blog post or email. Something to get the juices flowing and the achievement meter up. Sometimes, I'll fire up the industrial music and pick a good hard beat to get the juices going. Having the music pumped in through headphones also helps to focus that energy.

Once quick items are out of the way, I get to the long-term projects. These I work on in small chucks– half hour to an hour. Doing short bursts of energy on these projects gives me the ability to feel like I've worked on them, as well as giving my body a break from being at the keyboard for so long. I sometimes forget to breathe, so this regime also allows me the time to breathe and refocus energies to the next item on the list.

I also try not to write past the time my hubby comes home. I want to reserve the time during the evenings for him and me. So far, it's worked pretty well.

Feel free to post any questions about this… until then, I'm off to work on those Readers Studio posts!

I've been keeping a writer's journal/notebook/thing for years now. At first, I used a simple bound notebooks where I'd scribble stories, ideas for stories, freewriting, dialog snippets, and character descriptions. Later, I tracked submissions and notes on stories, freewriting, character descriptions, etc. as well as submission tracking and various odds and ends of my work. A few years ago, I switched to a Circa binding system. Lofty goals of keeping an orderly and organized notebook ran through my head. I had tabs for Submissions, Work in Progress (WIPs), Characters, Settings, and Quotes. I made fancy labels and had a fancy case to set this all in. And guess what? I never used it.

Recently I dusted off that notebook and revisited the idea of keeping a usable writer's notebook. Having done NaNoWriMo for a decade and relearning how to do scene tracking helped spur this decision as I needed to figure out how to collect all the new data.

The first thing I did was to think about what I wanted to track and how much obsessive organization I wanted to dump into this thing. When I write by hand, I tend to write haphazardly and without rhyme or reason. I write longhand in short bursts of time because of the death grip I grip pens with (I am getting better— big barreled pens help). Therefore, realistically, I need a notebook that's simple and flexible to manage both fiction and nonfiction works in progress (WIPs). I didn't want to micromanage sections down to plot, theme, character, dialog, setting, because I'd never use it. So, this incarnation of my writer's notebook had to follow the Keep It Simple, Stup!d method.

The new notebook, then, contains the following sections:

Submission Tracker. I wanted to keep a written list of current projects and their status of Draft, Revision, or Published. In the past I just listed the names and then a date of publication but I decided that this wasn't really good book-keeping. So in the new book, I use a Cornell Note sheet and in the open left hand space, I list three boxes: D (for draft), R (for revision), and P (for published). Next to this, in the gridded box, I have the name of the project, and then I list the start date, any info on the publishing place, and when the item got published. I draw an X through each D/R/P box as the piece goes through my writing process.

Work In Progress. This section contains whatever notes and scenes I track on each current fiction or non-fiction piece. It also contains tarot readings done for characters and plot.

Freewriting. Occasionally I enjoy taking time to just write with a pen and see where the Muse takes me. This section contains those bits and pieces that may or may not end up being entered into Scrivener.

Quotes. I collect quotes and wanted a place to write or paste sections of prose that I enjoyed reading. I've got quotes from fiction titles, author interviews, and other various locations stored in here for my reading pleasure. Sometimes this reminds me why I'm in the writing biz altogether.

Blank papers. What's a good notebook without a steady and handy supply of blank papers to jot things down. This section seems pretty self explanatory, really. I hope.

Pocket Folder. Trailing the blank papers, I have a pocket to stuff handouts, biz cards or materials that I've printed out and don't want to manually bind into the circa notebook. I foresee items in the folder rotating in and out depending on what I'm working on and where I am at in my career.

And there you have it. This the new writer's notebook, and amazingly I do use it and have been since I made it.