Linda Maye Adams's Blog, page 23

Ghosts Forever in the Stars

This is my collection from the Heroes/Heroines Collection class. I’m glad I took the class and I’m glad I’m done. It was a little bit too much for me. With a full time job, there’s only so much time in the day to do writing and publishing. Taking a class–or in my case, three!–it made things kind of crazy.

But I have a new collection of short stories, these from the five most recent Great Challenge stories.

Five twisted tales of the paranormal in space…

A murder, the ghost says he did it…can Hope Delgado find the truth in Ship of Dream Treasures?

In Ghost’s Obsession, a ghost creates chaos for the Hope and crew of S.C. Kangjun but it hides a deadly secret.

Hope faces insurmountable obstacles in Eavesdropper of the Stars when a ghost threatens to destroy everything.

In Places of Shadows and Threads, Hope plunges into a nightmare she may not be able to escape.

A routine training mission in Ghost’s Gambit turns into disaster for Hope…can she save her friends?

If you like space opera, read these page-turning stories for deep-space thrills and chills!

Yes, I want my copy!

Anthology Finalist for Colorado Book Awards

Monsters, Movies & Mayhem is a finalist in the Colorado Book Awards! Pretty cool. My story in it is called Alien Pizza.

Copies are available from all the usual suspects.

Research for Fiction Writers: Why Research? It’s Fiction (Part II)

A man works at a laptop with a cat while drinking coffee. Flat lay.

Image by Viacheslav Partola

This question is easy to ask when you think of research as being homework.  As soon as you left school, you were probably pretty glad to never do homework again. 

Homework’s not fun (well, for most of us), and fiction is fun.  If you’re just making up stuff, then why does it matter?

Well, there are two reasons.

1.      Because it’ll Feed the Idea Factory

The idea is often treated as the end-all thing.  That you must have the perfect idea to launch with the story.  That just the right idea will magically transform the story into a best seller.  And that good ideas are so hard to get.  None of it is true, but many writers still find it a challenging area.

Our ability to get ideas atrophies as we head into adulthood.  Stories are magical fun when we’re kids and we can go off and have wild adventures.  Underpants can be evil.  Aliens can have three heads and googly eyes.  Or a girl detective can solve mysteries.

The adults cringe and don’t say anything about how uncomfortable this makes them while their disapproval filters in any way.  People like conformity and creativity is anything but conformity.

We pick up on that disapproval or maybe we’re even told it directly.  By the time we become adults, the creativity goes into hiding in favor of being like everyone else. Even in today’s economy, coming up with ideas is big business, judging from the number of business books on the topic.  But even there, the conformity slips in.  You can be creative, but don’t color too far outside one line.

As I write this, I’m part of the Great Challenge, which is writing a short story a week for an entire year.  I’ve done thirty so far.  Thirty!  It’s taught me a lot about not only coming up with ideas to start a story but how to twist them into my own.

That’s where research comes in.  Research is a very personal thing.  If you’re doing it right, you’re checking out topics that you enjoy learning more about.  I like reading about Hollywood in the 1940s-1970s, but Hollywood in the 2000s?  Phht!  Not at all.  Though I knew a lot about Hollywood just from reading when I was growing up, I never thought I could do anything with it because I disliked modern Hollywood so much.

Those kinds of things are a big influence on where you get your ideas. Even if you forget the book you read, there’s going to be one piece in it that will swim around in your back brain and pop up in the right story at the right time.

But that’s not going to happen if you’re not feeding your brain with new material.

2.      So the Story Feels Right to Reader

Have you ever read a story that felt vaguely unsatisfying, though you couldn’t pin down why?  It just felt like it was missing something.  Or maybe it just never quite grabbed you.

The story has to feel right to the reader.

If it doesn’t, they could put the book down in the first few pages. as I did while critiquing a chapter from a young writer.  Her character visited a hospital emergency room and I immediately got knocked out of the story by a suspension in disbelief issue.  The writer had never been to the emergency room, so she described it like it was a doctor’s office.  The result was that it didn’t feel right to me.

Most readers probably won’t think about why as much as we writers do.  They’ll disengage from the book and never pick it up again.

But if your story feels right to the reader…

They might read the whole book in one sitting, get to the end, and have to buy the next one.

Pretty big deal.

It starts with the telling details and how much a few details can have a huge impact.  You get some of that from personal experience, but the rest of it comes from research.

But let’s see it in actual practice.

Imagine that your character has to go into a mine.  Okay, what kind of mine is it?  Is it a gold mine?  How big is it?  Is it old and abandoned?  Is it active?  How deep does it go?  What does it smell like?  What does air inside feel like?

All these pesky little telling details show what your character’s opinions of the mine are.  He might think the entrance reminds him of a mausoleum, which gets the reader squirming with excitement and turning pages because something is going to happen.

Research gives you opportunities to make your characters complex through their view of the setting.

But as you research, you find a few interesting ideas that fires up your muse.  You discover that with so little light in the mine, it’s easy to get disoriented.  The meandering tunnels make this worse.  So now your imagination is thinking the character was bitten by a rattlesnake hiding inside the mine and now he can’t find his way out.

This was just a minute to look up these.  I used “dangers of mining” for my search.  It created possibilities of complications for the character and story.  That’s what good research helps you with.

Where the fiction comes in might be taking a story about an abandoned mine from overseas and plopping it in your location, then making changes to fit the story.  If you want to see how this is done, watch the TV series Law and Order.  They took headlines from the news and added their embellishments and character motivations.

Research can be pretty important in helping you write your story!

ActionsIdentify some potential things in your current story that you might want to dig a little more on.  You don’t have to do anything other than make a list.  Key is that it’s a topic that interests you.
Can you identify the one thing I did wrong at the beginning with the research for the Hawaii story?  It’s not going to be what you think.
Download a note-taking software like Evernote or Microsoft OneNote.  If you’re not familiar with the tool, play with it.  Read some blogs or books to learn how to use the features. 

Is there one better for writing fiction?  In my opinion, it’s Evernote.  It was designed to curate information.  Microsoft OneNote was designed more for students to take notes while in class.  But either will work.  Key is to make sure you pick a program user friendly to you.Pro Writing Tip

Never leave your reader to imagine something.  You’re giving up control of your story to the reader instead of being in control. 

Research for Fiction Writers: Hate Research? (Part I)

Digital cyberspace with particles and digital data network connections, Future technology digital abstract background concept.

Image Copyright by kanawatvector

As I write my 29th(!) story in the Great Challenge, I’m finding that I need to rely more and more on researching details. The collection of five stories I’m writing is science fiction, which requires a whole new level of detail above what I’ve ever done before, or even thought of (and I’m probably still not doing enough). Little things like the difference between meteor and meteorite, or what color can a moon be.

So I was inspired to start posting my future book, Research for Fiction Writers. Still need a subtitle there.

Introduction

What do you think of when someone talks about research?

Probably school.  You would have researched a term paper or another type of academic paper.  It would have involved finding at least three sources, quoting them, and making a bibliography.  Then the teacher grades you.

Then comes fiction writing.

It’s not a term paper.  But when you ask about researching a novel, everyone defaults back to their days in school. It’s so confusing that some writers ask if they should add footnotes of their sources to a novel.

But there’s a fundamental difference between what you did in school and what you do for fiction writing. 

Research in school teaches you critical thinking and problem-solving skills as you learn the topic.  You might be trying to learn a new skill for a career, get a degree, or just get a good grade.

Research for fiction is to make the story feel right to the reader.

The writers who love research more than writing tell you to assemble a fat binder and expect to take a year (or more) doing the research.  They inform you that you have to know every possible detail before you even start the story, even if you don’t need it.

Others say to research every possible detail out of fear that the reader will give them a bad grade.   Is it any wonder some writers think of research as homework?

It’s enough to drive you away from research entirely!

Linda’s Hot Mess of Research

After breaking up with a co-author, I launched into the “get back on the horse” novel.   I took an existing idea I’d had for a long time and turned it into a contemporary fantasy in an alternate world based on Hawaii.

I had some experience with Hawaii.  I’d been on vacation there in the 1980s.  But it was clear after taking just one advanced writing course that I needed to pay a lot more attention to the setting. I didn’t know enough about the location to build my setting, so I needed to do research.

But I wrestled with the idea of it.  I’m not detail-oriented.  Thinking about how to do “telling details” overwhelmed me.  How did I research when I couldn’t even figure out what details I needed?

Then came the second problem: I don’t use outlines when I write, called a pantser.   I just jump into the story and figure out what’s next when I write.  How do you know what to research when you don’t know what you need?  The only advice I found was to outline.  Since outlines didn’t work for me, I was ready to pull my hair out.

But I wanted to finish a novel, and that meant this was a skill I had to work on.

The only books available on research were for academic and non-fiction.  So I asked questions on message boards and looked up research tips on websites.  The answers I found were enough to make my eyes glaze over!

There seemed to be such an extreme of everyone either treating it like they were in college out of fear they were going to fail writing or those who preferred research to writing and would happily do it forever.  The fiction writers I did find were writing in the historical genre where the requirements were specific.  I didn’t find anything to help a writer like me who didn’t fit in any of those categories.  I just wanted to make the story feel like a tropical island without spending a year to do it (though a trip to Hawaii for on-site research wouldn’t have been off the table.  I don’t loathe research that much!).

Where was the middle ground?

I didn’t know, but I had a story to research.  So I dove into the deep end of the pool and started researching Hawaii.

Drive to the library for tour books.Drive to library sales for more books on Hawaii.Drive to the bookstore for more books that I purchased.Drive to the University of Maryland for books on the cultureSpent hours digging out the research portal on my library’s site for anything I could mine.

Every fact I recorded, I verified in two other sources.  Every book I touched, I put on a bibliography. 

More driving to office supply stores for yellow notepads.  I scratched out incoherent notes on them (my printing is so bad I can’t always read it).  When it came time to drive to the library, I couldn’t find the notepad I was using, so I grabbed another.  Notes were scattered everywhere.

Then I’d forgot to write down one of my sources, so I’d have to drive back to the library to get it because everyone who said anything about research said “Track your sources.” 

Somewhere along the way, I decided there was going to be an auction for a painting in the story—you guessed it!  Time to research auctions.  I grabbed one book from the library, but it didn’t feel like enough.  I lucked out scoring auction catalogs at a library sale.  Considered attending a local auction to get the experience and was probably lucky I couldn’t work it into my schedule.  After that, I thought I would need to know about paintings, so I read up on art and art forgery.

I hadn’t even started writing the book and I’d already invested a tremendous amount of time and money on research for it.

Finally, I made first contact with the story and started writing.

How much of the research did I use?

None.

I did on-the-spot research during the writing, all details I hadn’t thought of needing because I hadn’t started the story.

At least maybe I could save the work I’d done for a later project…  But the notes were discordant, scattered—and how would I organize them so I could use them?

I had a vision of a system that where I could plug all this information in and find it when I needed it.  I didn’t want to return to the well each time I needed to know the same fact.  I wanted a place to do a brain dump of information that interested me like an encyclopedia just made for Linda Maye Adams.  Evernote seemed to be a good option.

But…

Organizing it was a nightmare.

The default recommendation is to assign keywords to the notes.  I’m keyword stupid.  I’d put in a bunch of keywords.  Next time I’d put a note in, I’d forget about those keywords, create new ones that were similar but a little different.  Sometimes I spelled them wrong.  Then I’d repeat the same process on the next note.

My future self felt like it had to remember the keywords.  Of course, over time, everything got pushed out of my brain. 

One day I looked at what I had and I hadn’t used any of the research.  It felt like the junk drawer in your kitchen.  The notes I took were difficult to find and how I’d done the notes made them unusable.  They didn’t connect to anything else.  They just formed clutter in Evernote. I finally deleted them. 

There had to be a better way to do this.

—

Tune in next week, same Write-Time, same Write-Channel for why you should do research even though your story is fiction.. But first, what are your complaints about research when it comes to your novel? What frustrates you the most? Let me know in the comments. It might influence some of the later chapters!

3 Ways to Gamify Fiction Writing (That Isn’t a Word Count Goal)

Orange cat opening the door. She want to go inside. She use her paw to open it.

Image © mack2happy

Most writers focus on word count goals as a way to make progress with their writing.  I’ve never found them particularly helpful.  Sometimes they end up triggering my inner critic, especially because I do cycling. 

With cycling, sometimes paragraphs come out.  I’m a messy writer.  Sometimes my muse puts things in that I end up not using (and really need to come out).  But it’s terrible with word count goals because I can do a lot of writing and go into negative words (Scrivener for Windows would give me a negative word count).

But another option I’ve been reading about is gamification. Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong is a fascinating read on the topic.  The author uses examples in more stressful circumstances like surviving Seal training.

We’re going to hit some fun ones and apply it to writing fiction! But first, you’ll want to kick the inner critic to the curb.

Inner Critic Looks for a Foot in the Door

You know how the inner critic like gets in and monkey around with your story.  He’s always waiting for just that moment when the door opens a crack and sticks his foot in.  He can be sneaky, too, coming in through the back door, unnoticed.

But it’s common for writers to invite the inner critic openly for a visit because of the stories they tell themselves.  You’ve heard all of these:

“I hate first drafts!”“First drafts are torture!”“All first drafts are * Expletive *” (since I don’t want to do any swearing here).

This is a terrible story to tell yourself.  It sets up the writing of the draft to be excruciatingly painful and it stops being fun.  The inner critic rubs his hands gleefully together and moves in to take control.

Of course, the inner critic is trying to protect you from fear.  And it’s a weird kind of fear.  You’re probably imagining fear like what you would see a character in a movie experiencing fear at being stalked.

But fear can hide behind a lot of different things, including the types of stories you tell yourself.  At one point I worked with a writer who was terrified of submitting the manuscript to an agent. 

The story he kept telling himself?

“There’s something wrong with the first chapter.”

And he meddled with the first chapter and meddled and meddled.  It had the appearance of productivity and became destructivity.

So the first thing before you can gamify your writing is to look for signs of the inner critic.  Yeah, it leaves tracks like an animal you’re hunting (or hunting you, given this is the inner critic):

The inner critic is very negative.  Torture’s a pretty bad thing, and a lot of writers associate it with writing the first draft.

The inner critic ruminates (usually with negativity).  “That scene is terrible.  I’m never going to be a good writer.  Why do I write such awful scenes?” There are three stories in those sentences that no writer should be telling themselves.

The inner critic sucks up energy.  Negativity will always do that.  Ever been angry for hours?  Remember how exhausting it was?  It’s bad enough to have the pollen death star sucking up energy.  You don’t want to add to it!

And any place where you think you’re not good enough, feel like you don’t know enough, or even that your idea isn’t original enough.

If you’re up for some reading in the inner critic and all its wily ways, check out Banish Your Inner Critic: Silence the Voice of Self-Doubt to Unleash Your Creativity and Do Your Best Work (A Gift for Artists to Combat Self-doubt and Listen to Their Inner Voice): Jacobs, Denise: 9781633534711: Amazon.com: Books

Game on!

The goal of your games should be that they give you a challenge that stretches you, but not be so ambitious that you’re not going to succeed. 

Okay, you can tell here I like a good adventure story.  No need for any violence, blood, guts, or gore.  I don’t think those are any fun.  But an adventure?  Oh, yeah.

1. Battle to the End of the Page

You swashbuckle your way through those black marks on the page.  Your goal is to get to make the page number pop over to the next one.

Once you get that next page, give yourself a cheer.  Then maybe see if you can get it to pop over again in the next fifteen or twenty minutes.

Keep this one simple.  Just get to the next page, and once you do that, you can swing on your Tarzan vine for the next page.

2. Battle to Make the Hero/Heroine Miserable

I had a blast with this one in my Challenge #28 story, Ship of Dream Treasures.  I’d just taken a science fiction short story workshop, and the sum of it was “Describe everything.”  So I put my GALCOM heroine in a spacesuit so she could go into an atmosphere with poison air.  The suit makes her look like she’s a clown and the helmet is like wearing a fishbowl.  Of course, she has to walk across a tube in space (a space bridge, like a jet bridge) and she’s trying not to breathe too fast…and viewing a body.

3. Battle to Add More Detail

If you have a chair in your story, give us an additional word about the chair.  Is it an applewood chair?  Or is it a luxurious wing-back?  Or, like what I did, it’s a chair with programming to fit around the user who sits in it.  See how much you can get in and chuckle delightfully when your heroine’s opinion about the intelligent chairs gets into the story.

This is a great way to develop a lot of characterization.

Obviously, this is just the tip of the iceberg of the games we can use to have fun writing.  Do you have any games you try when you write?  Share away in the comments!

—

While you’re here, sign up for my newsletter and receive a free list of 7 Fiction Writing Craft Books to Skyrocket Your Skills.  One of the challenges of writing in the Internet age is that there’s a flood of information about writing.  You’ve discovered most of it doesn’t say anything new.  These books are a selection of books talk to the writer like you who wants to push their skills.

5 March Finds

Four Mile Run, Vriginia

Spring is slowly inching its way into Washington, DC. It’s still veering from hot to cold, normal for the changing of the seasons.  But the birds have all arrived, chirping, singing, hooting, snorting, and even tapping (a woodpecker that taps 17 times per second).  The pollen death star has already set its sights on us.

The photo is of Four Mile Run, a stream that’s actually still a little dry, though you can’t tell in the photo.

Meanwhile, I have links to share with you for March!

People focus on the wrong thing when using Evernote. Write better notes to improve your experience – Not the new oil

Notetaking has been a topic I’ve been focusing on a lot lately.  I’m tired of scribbled notes that I can’t even read from writing classes.  I also want a system that makes itself useful for writing research rather than being essentially a junk drawer.  This post highlights the real problem of collecting notes in any tool: you have to do something with the information other than collect it, like writing good notes.  It seems so obvious, and yet others I’ve talked to have had the same problem with junk drawers!

Pop Culture Portrays OCD as a Blessing. It’s Not. (longreads.com)

This is a fascinating read into what OCD is from someone who has it. Having grown up reading and studying everything Hollywood, I’m not surprised at how bad the portrayals are.  With the time limits imposed by film length, they take shortcuts all the time.  That’s how you end up with a guy with a big nose being a bad guy

The Return of the Fey by Dean Wesley Smith — Kickstarter

If you write fantasy, check out this Kickstarter.  It’s for Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s The Fey series, an epic fantasy.  As part of the Kickstarter, you can get videos on Lessons Learning from writing the books. And even if you only sign up for $5, you can get a lot of pop-up classes.  These consist of about 12-15 videos on a particular writing topic.  We’ve already hit five stretch goals, so this will land you the following pop-ups: Epic Fantasy World Building, Creating Believable Epic Fantasy Names, Writing Epic Fantasy Series, Using History to Write Epic Fantasy.  Dean does not outline, so these will address craft from that perspective.

GALCOM Log One | Universal Book Links Help You Find Books at Your Favorite Store! (books2read.com)

Story #27 in the challenge, which I just finished is another GALCOM story, called Ship of Dream Treasures.  It was a fun story.  I did double duty with it—the story is for my Heroes/Heroines Collection class.  You’ll get to see it about two months with four other stories (whatever the heck they are).  The link is to the first three books in the series, Crying Planet, Ghost Ship, and Cursed Planet. A fan describes these as being “like Star Trek.”

www.pulpmagazines.org – HOME PAGE

If you’re interested in reading some of the old pulp stories, this site scans in the original magazines.  You get the stories, and the wonderful artwork, both on the covers and in the stories themselves.  No one does that much anymore because it costs so much money, which is a shame.  It’d be cool having a story illustrated like that. By the way, you may run into John D. MacDonald’s stories.

What spring sightings are you seeing? Post in the comments.

3 Traits Good Writers Do

Holding magic book with flying letters

Image by efks

I’ve been spending time researching training for my IDP in my day job.  But  I’ve struggled to find courses that both challenge me and yet not be too difficult.  With writing, I’m always thinking about learning and looking for ways to push out. 

These are 3 traits good writers do:

Good writers embrace continuous learning

There was a writer I used to love to read.  Her stories transported me to her world and I loved the character.  She hit success on Book 4 and decided she’d didn’t need to learn anything else.

It showed in the work.  She’s now been writing for 20 years, sales are dipping, and she’s trying to recapture what she had in those early books.  I picked up one of those books.  The skill’s gone.

A good writer is always looking for the next thing to learn.  They explore different skills and try pushing their boundaries. 

When I created the Writing Worksheets for Pantsers I was surprised to find learning that no one talks about today in books from the 1960s. 

Good writers push the boundaries of their skills

At my writing group, Writer Jane kept submitting her writing to use for critique.  She wrote all the time, clocking in at least a million words.  Yet, her writing was stagnant. 

We told her to work on adding more five senses to enhance her characterization.  Instead, she zoomed her story to another writing group.  They told her “It’s great!  Don’t touch it!”  So she stays the same, year after year.  Wonders why no one will accept her books.

A good writer uses continuous learning to try new skills.  Maybe she experiments with doing a new type of viewpoint or a genre she’s never done before. 

This last week, I finished Story 26 in the Great Challenge.  I’d been a little stuck, so I used a new type of character I wouldn’t have never tried before.  Story went in a direction I didn’t expect.

 Good writers have fun

With the combination of winter and COVID-19, it’s easy to stay inside, and stay isolated.  Add writer with a side hustle and you forget that fun is essential to your creativity.

Take time to have fun.

Two weeks ago, I realized I needed to get out to fuel my creativity.  Even if it’s cold out, you can still drive around, which I did in a pouring rainstorm. 

The people in the house across the street probably thought I was crazy running out to the signs in the park.  It was a Civil War historical site and the information on the signs wasn’t online anywhere. 

Spring is around the corner.  I’m looking forward.

Leave a comment about how you’re going to fuel your creativity with something fun.

Surviving a Side Hustle and a Day Job: Foundation Strategy

Sneaker shoes and arrows pointing in different directions on asphalt ground, choice concept

Image © Delpixart

The agent requested a full manuscript of my novel.

I should have been bouncing off the walls.  Instead, I was in a total panic.

What if the agent accepts it?  I’d have to learn how to write a new novel in less than a year.

It seemed insurmountable.  How did I do that?  This one had taken years. 

Like an onion, the layers peeled away.  I’d worked on the book every Saturday, probably writing 300-400 words.  It was sloppy writing, too.  I wrote, assuming I would revise, which became a self-fulling prophecy.  The time added up, fast.

Then it hit me.

I hadn’t made writing important enough to do.  It wasn’t anywhere on my priority list.

You can get all the time management books you want, but you make that single decision for your side hustle, something else will always end up being important.

Suddenly that novel that you wanted to finish in six months hasn’t been touched in a year. 

You hear a writer lecture, “All you have to do is get your butt to the chair and write.  It is that easy.”

The “easy” grates on you.  Makes you grit your teeth.  Does that author think your lazy or not trying hard enough?

So you come up with goals, like finishing four books in a year.  That’ll take care of that problem, you think.

And it doesn’t.  Side hustles are tough because a lot is going on.  If you haven’t cemented it as important, another priority is going to shove itself in that time. 

There is always something competing for your attention.  Making your side hustle important helps push it to the top of your list.

The New Definition of Goals

To accomplish what you want, time management gurus tell you that you have to prioritize to your goals.  But the books assume you want to be head of that department or vice president of your company.  If you’re doing a side hustle, maybe not so much.

During my annual review with Tiago Forte, I got a very different look at what a goal is.  He said that the traditional goals, SMART goals are more like a to-do list.  You identify a goal, accomplish it, and check it off.

It makes goals feel superficial.

That contributes to your feeling of overwhelm, and worse, adds to the perpetual busyness. 

Even writing fiction can turn into busyness.  You’re accomplishing your goal of 1K a day, so it looks like you’re prioritizing and you may not be.  You might be simply checking off a box.

Tiago Forte thinks the goals of the future will focus on an outcome that is personal for you.

That fits with simply making the mental shift to saying “This is important to me.”  It sounds insanely simple, and yet, it’s a fundamental shift in your thinking. 

This was the outcome I came up with for the Pantser Writing Worksheets:

Have evergreen content that I can make money with and not have to spend a lot of time maintaining.

So…your turn.  Come up with one goal and create a personal outcome for it.  The outcome should be personal for you and something that is in your control if you complete the project.  It should also be realistically doable for you.

Have fun!  If you feel brave enough, post your goal/outcome below.  Don’t forget to include a deadline to finish it.

Exposing Opportunity with an Annual Review

Crisis or opportunity words on wooden road sign with left and right arrows.

Image by ogichobanov

2020 was a year of a lot of changes.  We’re all dealing with the isolation COVID-19 restrictions have caused.  Other writers are complaining that their creativity has dried up.  I’m doing the Great Challenge, writing a short story a week for a year.  I just finished Story 24, a historical mystery called Ransom.

So when Tiago Forte offered his Annual Review class in early January, I thought about it for a few days and decided to sign up for it.  I wanted something that would help me make sense of all the things that had happened to me and give me a different perspective.  I mentioned it in February Finds and Peggy wanted to know more:

Wait – there’s a class on conduction an annual review? That includes listing links of interest? How did I not know about this?

I’ve followed Chris Guillebeau’s (sp?) advice for conducting an annual review, but he doesn’t go into that kind of detail.

— Peggy

This is the annual review from Chris she’s referring to. What I took is very different from what Chris describes.

Anyway, I wasn’t sure what to expect until I got there.  It was a “cohort,” which meant about six hours of actual class time on zoom over the weekend, and additional breakout sessions with different participants.  Those groups were small enough that everyone talked.  

It was divided into four categories:

PreparationRememberConnectCreate

Each consisted of a series of questions that we could work through.  It wasn’t about answering every question, but answering the ones that draw our attention to them.

In Preparation, it was a short list of questions, just for initial thoughts. 

Remember was about gathering information from the last year.  There was a gratitude list, and a lot of questions that simply were about what went right.

This was where the lists Peggy asked about came in.  Tiago talked about using social media tools to save links we run across over the year.  These lists are the story of me from the year.  Things that I’m interested in, things that catch my eye, things that make me laugh.

It was an answer to something that I’d had challenges with.  There is so much information out there zooming by.  Articles may be of interest to me like this Barnes and Noble one, but they’re not worth saving in Evernote as a reference because they’re not going to be used again.

Connect was reflecting on what we came up with in Remember, especially things that surprised us.  Questions included lessons learned, what stories are you letting go of, and what advice you would like to give yourself. The Words We Say to Ourselves came from a comment another attendee said.  I realized I had to stop criticizing myself for not being as good a writer as I thought I should be—heck, I won a Silver Honorable Mention for Teddy Bear Man.  And I was on the shortlist for the Unmasked anthology.

Every bit of this was liking peeling away the layers of an onion and finding more layers underneath.

Create was about the goals.  Tiago had what he believes is an update to how goals are done.  Currently, they’re like checking off a to-do list.  He thinks we might culturally shift to thinking about the outcomes instead.  That helps put the focus on what you want to do.

That’s how I ended up doing the Writing Worksheets for Pantsers.  I wanted something that would be relatively easy to do and could make money without requiring work from me.  I’d purchased a workshop on making printables from I Heart Planners a few years ago. It intrigued me, but I wanted a way to sell them that wasn’t going to be a time suck.  It didn’t seem like there was any way to do that, so the idea floated away for a few years.

The idea of worksheets resurfaced as a goal during the annual review, and now it’s a reality.

The Annual Review class doesn’t stop at the end of the weekend session we had.  We’re doing monthly Zoom calls to update everyone on our progress and get new ideas.

If you’re interested, sign Tiogo’s site and monitor next year for the class.

Video Finds for Monday

The hardest thing about February is the lack of vegetables at the farmer’s market. There just isn’t a lot growing right now (understandably so, given that wind chill’s been at sixteen and yesterday I had to chisel ice off my car. At this point, it ends up being kale, chard, carrots, potatoes, and apples. Even herbs, which are supposed to be all year round are hard to find at the grocery store. One of the problems with ordering groceries online is that no one can get parsley right!

Dinosaur Wars!

My first experience with dinosaurs was the La Brea Tarpits, which I wished many times when I was kid. On hot days, the smell of tar was pretty strong. We’d walk past these pools of thick black tar, bubbling in places. Statues of animals caught in the tar raised their heads in desperate cries for help. My memory distorts this image a bit. I’m positive dinosaurs were found in the tarpits, but a more recent trip, I found that no, there weren’t any dinosaurs. But the museum had many dinosaur bones to look at. Trivia note: The oil bubbling up in Beverly Hillbillies was inspired by the LaBrea Tarpts because tar does bubble up like that.

Dinosaur fossils are extremely collectable. It’s created a lot of problems for universities wanting to study the bones because collectors are snatching them up for millions of dollars. The collectors say there isn’t enough universities to dig up all the bones. What would you do if you found a dinosaur skeleton in your backyard?

Octopuses are Aliens

My first experience with octopuses was seeing it on the TV show Sea Hunt (when stations still aired black and white shows). Mike Nelson tangled with one of those in an exciting battle! Eight limbs versus two human limbs.

This is a fascinating look at what science has learned about octopuses. Their body type allows them to hide in very small places that even a cat couldn’t do. They have an amazing ability to camouflage, even doing different texture. But they’re also like 5 year old children. They like exploring and if they’re bored, they like to play.

Fascinating fact: Octopuses can see with its skin.

Dogs in Boots

This started out as research for Murder in the Lodge. There’s a diva-dog in the story and there’s a snowstorm. The boots started out as a running joke in the story. But when I hit a sticking point and left a future note for myself in the form of several questions. I realized it was a rabbit hole. So the boots mostly came out, but it was a lot of fun watching the video. We’re so cold in Virginia that any dogs out on walks are wearing boots and sweaters, and in some cases, head coverings to protect the ears.