Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 187

On to Week Two

After a stellar start to the new year last week, this week may be a bit more of a struggle. I seem to have come down with either a bad allergy attack or a mild head cold. It fits the timing pattern for a cold picked up from the kids -- hitting Sunday afternoon -- but I was also outdoors for a while in some pretty gusty winds Sunday after church when we had a groundbreaking ceremony for a new building, and that could have set off allergies. I have that church music workshop on Friday and Saturday, so I need to be well by then. Basically, the treatment is the same, with antihistamines and lots of liquids. I still need to get work done, so that will be my challenge, going over the editor's suggestions while sneezing and sniffling. I was hoping to do a little extra work every day so I don't have to use one of my "vacation" days (I really am hoping to set and stick to a policy this year) for the workshop on Friday. One of my policies is that doing something work-related (like a convention) counts as work, but non-work things would be treated the way non-work things would be in any other job. We'll see how long this lasts, but I have good intentions at the moment.

Fortunately, other than the sniffling and sneezing, I don't feel that bad. I have energy and am in a moderately good mood. So maybe it is just allergies.

Over the weekend I did some OnDemand TV catching up. I think I'm finally up-to-date with Almost Human, the series about a cop teamed up with an android partner, and I'm enjoying it. It's not really to the point where I'd feel a loss if I missed an episode, but I enjoy it when it's on. The key thing about the show is the relationship between the two partners. I'm a sucker for buddy cops when it's done well, and this is done well with some nice twists. I'm not so thrilled with the world building, as it doesn't always make sense to me (and I'm not a huge fan of "the future is going to suck!" science fiction), and the plots can be so-so, but the two main characters are golden.

I was very ho-hum on the pilot for Intelligence, which is basically a serious version of Chuck, without the Buy More. There's the guy with the computer in his brain and the sexy, bad-ass woman assigned to protect him. The pilot struck me as very paint-by-numbers, where I felt like I could see the screenplay right there on the screen -- there's the exposition speech in which one character lays out the premise to another character, there's the point of manufactured conflict between the two main characters, there's the moment of bonding between the unlikely partners that will form them into a team. It looks like they got past the conflict pretty quickly, so that bit in particular seemed to come from some checklist of things they thought they should be doing (though I bet there's still a bit of pointless bickering). I'll watch the next episode, but if I'm still seeing the screenplay superimposed over the actual action, I'll give it a pass.

Meanwhile, I don't know what the heck is going on over at Downton Abbey. There doesn't seem to be a storyline I care much for this season. I guess the main appeal to that series for me, aside from the clothes and setting, was the relationship between Mary and Matthew. Now that we're in the 20s and I don't like the clothes, and with Matthew out of the picture, there's little to keep my interest other than the Dowager Countess's quips.

I may ease off on the organizing this week, since I have to take Friday off and since I'm not feeling great and need to get well before the weekend. It's probably best not to be stirring up more dust.

What is it About Thursdays?

I know the "I never could get the hang of Thursdays" thing has become a cliche, but it's so very true. There's just something about Thursdays that seems to trip me up. It may be that my enthusiasm for the week has started to wear off, or that I'm tired after Wednesday night, or that the things that didn't get done earlier in the week because of whatever thing I was focusing on have piled up and must be dealt with, and then that keeps me from dealing with the thing I was focusing on. At any rate, meeting my work time quota was a bit of a struggle yesterday and stretched into the evening, but I powered through and did it. Today I may skip my organizing session to do some other housework and laundry. I'd been using online episodes of BBC radio dramas as background noise to time my work sessions, and that forced me to do them every day, since the stories I was following were about to expire. Now I've made it through the ones I wanted to hear, and that means I have a little more flexibility. I do need to find some other online things to listen to, though, for future work. I think I need to catch up on Welcome to Night Vale, for one thing.

I still have some time management issues, since I'm still not getting everything done that I'd like to. What has helped is making the things that should be a priority a priority. I know that seems blindingly obvious, but somehow it can be really hard to function that way. I have a book on dealing with procrastination, and its suggestion was to schedule the stuff you want to do, leaving open time for the stuff you need to do. That takes the pressure off the things you need to do and limits the time you spend on "time wasters." That worked up to a point, but I think the way it got ingrained into my head was making the time wasters into a priority. This time around, I've identified the things I'm most likely to waste time on and set up rules for dealing with them, mainly that I don't until I've reached my writing goal for the day. That means I actually reach my goal and I have an incentive to do so.

One nice thing about pushing myself to focus on work during the week is that the weekend now feels like a weekend. When you're self-employed and work at home, there's a danger of turning into the Dowager Countess on Downton Abbey: "What's a weekend?" You may end up getting lots of work done on the weekend. Or you may play during the week. The days start to blur. Now I'm looking forward to a couple of days without the to-do list.

I'll still be busy. There's a women's group brunch at church on Saturday morning, then a "meeting"/social gathering with friends Saturday afternoon. And then there are some special events at church Sunday that will extend the day.

Now, off to do dishes and laundry and then settle down for some more revisions so I can maybe relax this evening.

Enchanted, Inc. Origins

It's a good thing I wrapped up that screenplay because last night I came home from choir practice to find a package on my doorstep that was the next round of edits and revision notes on the YA book. Time to dive back into that one! And I had just re-read the book that was so rudely interrupted by revisions the last time and was eager to get back into it.

The children's choir got interesting. My lesson plans went right out the window. We had a shortage of teachers and youth helpers in preschool, so we were spreading teachers out and I ended up helping in preschool because that teacher didn't have help and had more kids. Meanwhile, I couldn't get our CD player to play properly. I could sometimes get it to play some tracks on the CD, but not the tracks I actually needed. But hey, that means I already have lesson plans for next week, since we didn't do anything I had planned.

I made it through the boxes in the office closet and found a lot of hidden treasures, things I haven't been able to find but knew I wouldn't have thrown out. One of these was my initial notebook when I first started working on the idea that became the book that became Enchanted, Inc.

A few funny things I remembered/discovered from flipping through that notebook:

The first book I read to research the series was a history on the House of Morgan. At that time, I didn't know what the magical corporation would look like, so I was looking into businesses that had been based in lower Manhattan for a long time and that might have a multinational presence, which mostly meant banks. Reading that book told me that banking wasn't that magical, though I did eventually use that research for the third book, when Katie was helping Philip track down what had happened to his family's business.

I think I was initially planning the business to be more incompetent, to do a Dilbert-like satire of the American corporation. In fact, I read a Scott Adams book on the workplace. Also something to the effect of "when smart people work for dumb bosses." I ended up using that for the Mimi part of the book, and while there was some corporate idiocy at MSI, I couldn't make myself make the whole operation be incompetent, not once I'd decided that Merlin would be the CEO.

I have a few scribbled notes from my initial research trip to New York, mostly about stuff that happened on the train on my way into the city. Then I have a point-by-point list of things you'd pass walking from the approximate location of the office to the approximate location of Katie's apartment.

I had a real Twilight Zone moment from looking at my initial list of potential characters. I first wrote them down as roles, stuff like "good-looking guy at new office." Then there are a few more notes to flesh them out. When it came to naming them, there's a list of potential names in the margin as I tried them on and then discarded them until I found the name that fit perfectly. I've joked that I like the TV series Haven because it's like alt universe fan fiction for my series, where Katie and Owen are cops in a small town in Maine, since we've got the snarky gal who's immune to magic and the painfully shy but smart and professionally competent guy with a troubled childhood. The TV series characters are named Audrey and Nathan. Well, I'd totally forgotten this, but the first name I have written down for the character who became Owen is Nathan. It's then crossed out with Owen written beneath it. There are already way too many parallels in characters and plot points between the two series, but that almost extended to names?

I'm not accusing anyone of stealing anything because I doubt anyone associated with the show is even remotely aware of my books, and it was in development a long time, and some of the plot elements that have come out that eerily mirror my books happened on-screen between the time I wrote them and the time they were published, so we must have been writing those things at about the same time. No one but me ever would have known about the name thing, the notebook with that information has been buried in my office closet since at least 2007, and I'd even forgotten it. I may need to look into a tinfoil hat, though. Or else contact these writers and say that since we've apparently been collaborating psychically, maybe we should do so deliberately.

Now I need to find new homes for all the stuff I unearthed so I can find it more easily in the future.

Continuing Virtue

Yet another day of virtue. I cleared out another big box from the office closet and just have one more to go. I also de-Christmassed the house and got everything back to the garage. The stuff that gets stored in the house hasn't been put away yet, but it goes in the office closet, so I want to finish clearing it out and arranging it before I put more stuff in it. However, I didn't meet my writing time goal for the day -- but that was because I finished the screenplay. I figure that finishing a project automatically counts as meeting the goal for the day, since I don't really want to dive into a new project for just 45 minutes.

The screenplay will require a lot of revision, I'm sure, but that will go on the back burner while I work on something else. Even if I don't end up doing anything with this screenplay, I think it's been a beneficial exercise. For one thing, it was a different form of writing, so it forced my brain into new patterns. It made me focus on action and dialogue to convey absolutely everything rather than being able to rely on narrative. It made me look at how to create more active, condensed scenes instead of using summary. After I get some other stuff done, I'll take another look at it, do some revisions, then talk to my agent about the viability of seeing if maybe the agent who represents my books in Hollywood can do anything with it. If not, I may novelize it and self-publish it as a Christmas season release.

Now, though, I need to get back into that book I was working on. Today will mean re-reading what I've written to get my head back into it, to see where I was going and to maybe replot it (using what I learned from structuring a screenplay).

Meanwhile, choir starts again tonight, so I need to come up with a lesson plan. We have the man who collects flutes coming, which will eat up some time with an activity, so I don't need much more. I'm sure a lot of time will be spent with the kids eagerly telling me what they got for Christmas. Next weekend, I'm going to a workshop on choral directing, with a lot of sessions about little kids, so maybe that will give me new ideas of things to do with them.

I think I'm going to re-start the writing posts next week. I don't have any ideas burning to get out, so I'm taking questions or suggestions. What do you want to know about writing or publishing? Is there anything you want tips about?

Holiday Reading Book Report

My first real workday of the new year went reasonably well, but there really is only so much virtue one can cram into a single day, so I didn't quite get everything I wanted done. I did manage to meet my writing time goal, and I spent half an hour sorting through one of the boxes in the office closet, with almost all of it being trashed. And I deleted a couple of hundred e-mails from my in-box. If I meet my writing time goal today, I might finish the first draft of the screenplay. It's definitely going to need a lot of rewriting. I'm likely going to come up a bit short, but then there are some scenes that may need fleshing out because I've been so afraid of having more story than time and haven't developed things fully. Once that draft's done, I have some editing work I need to do on something else, and then I may get back to that novel I was working on.

Now, for some book discussion. I read a lot over the holidays, and there were a couple of things I wanted to discuss.

I read The Cuckoo's Calling by "Robert Galbraith," JK Rowling's attempted stealth book before she was outed. I saw it on the library shelf and thought I'd heard of it, then didn't realize what it was until I took it home. I have mixed feelings about the "outing" of the author. If she wanted the book to be judged on its own merits and to try something different, then she had that right. But on the other hand, I might never heard of this book otherwise, and I really liked it. It feels like the start of a series, and I hope the experience of having her authorship revealed doesn't sour her on continuing the series.

One other good reason for taking a pen name for this book was that it's so very different from the Harry Potter series. If you're expecting whimsy and magic, it's not there, and it's rather gritty and adult, so I can imagine the outrage if some clueless parent just grabbed a book off the shelf for a child because JK Rowling is the child's favorite author. Basically, this is a hardboiled detective novel with a few twists. We've got our bitter, down-on-his-luck PI and his plucky Girl Friday assistant, but in modern London and with resources like cell phones and the Internet. The plot was twisty enough that I didn't figure out the bad guy, although all the clues were right there. The red herrings all seemed really viable. I like the main characters and want to see more about how they progress, as this was essentially an origin story, showing how the Girl Friday arrived and how that turned things around for the PI. To some extent, it's as much her story as it is his, as she's a small-town-girl-trying-to-make-it-in-the-city temp who happens to fall into the job of her dreams and finds that she's surprisingly good at this sort of thing.

I haven't heard any rumors about any more books about these characters, but I want them.

I also read The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova, the author of The Historian. This is another of those literary mystery-type books, with a story within a story, as the book tells the story of someone uncovering another story. This one wasn't quite as twisty or layered, though, and there isn't a fantasy or supernatural element (though I kept expecting one). It's the story of a psychiatrist who takes the case of a prominent painter who was arrested for attempting to slash a painting in a museum. He won't talk, he keeps painting portraits of a particular woman, and he has a stack of antique letters to and from an obscure French artist. To learn more about what's going on with him, the doctor tracks down the man's ex-wife and ex-girlfriend and has the letters translated. The narrative skips around from the doctor telling his story about his investigation to the ex-wife telling the story of their courtship, marriage and divorce to the ex-girlfriend telling about their relationship, all with the letters interspersed. I have to say that some of the stories strained credibility because in some cases they were supposed to be someone telling a story in conversation, except the language is so literary and focusing on the kind of details that come up in writing, not in speech. These people tell all kinds of stuff in a way that sounds like something in a novel, not the way you'd expect a person to talk to a psychiatrist. I'm still not sure I understand what was really going on, and the resolution didn't quite work.

But it was still a really compelling read, especially as it built toward the end and we found out what had happened in the past. It also, strangely, made me want to do something artistic. I'm not very visually minded and am no real artist, but my parents gave me various art supplies over the years, and I went through phases of playing with them. I was rather decent at drawing at one time. I've even had a drawing published -- when I was working on the school newspaper, I sold an ad to the town's preschool and drew a little illustration for the ad. They started using that art in all their ads and as a logo (technically a copyright violation, but I'll let it slide). There's a cafe in town that has local business ads on the tables under lamination, so it's fun to go eat there and see my own artwork on the table. I haven't really done anything artistic in years, but while reading this book, I caught myself looking at the continuing education art course listings for the community college, until sanity prevailed and I remembered that I don't have the time to devote to that sort of thing. But maybe I'll get out the pencils and pastels more often because it's good to use that side of the brain every so often. Anyway, I like it when a book spills over into my real life like that and makes me want to do something, so I consider that a mark in this book's favor. So, if you like books about research and are interested in art, it could be enjoyable. Just don't set your expectations high for the kind of twists and shocks that were in The Historian.

Kicking off the Work Year

So, today's the first real workday of the new year, the one in which I'm going to change everything, and I haven't made such a great start, since I slept rather late due to staying up reading rather late. At least this time the book I stayed up to finish only disappointed me rather than infuriating me.

I did have a very productive weekend, though. Saturday was nice and warm, though very windy, so since my patio is sheltered, it was a good day for getting work done out there. I got the space cleared off and then assembled my storage box and put everything away in there. I also swept off the patio and pulled the dead moonflower vines off the trellis. Then I got in a good half hour of office organizing. Sunday there was a drastic temperature change and the headache that always comes with it, so I was a bit less productive, but I still did some office organizing. I'm very close to being done with sorting everything.

I've discovered that the Emergency Clean seems to have been the cause of most of the office mess, as that's what most of the boxes have been. When I need to drastically clean the living room quickly, then everything that's sitting out gets shoved into a box and tossed into the office. That's stuff like newspapers or magazines that have something in them that I want to clip and keep, clippings or documents that need to be filed, or things that need to be shredded. And then the box gets forgotten. I've now thrown out, clipped and filed all the stuff in those boxes, and I have a big stack of things to shred.

Now I'm down to the Clean Sweep boxes. There used to be a home improvement reality show about organizing in which professional organizers and decorators tackled a problem room by forcing a clean sweep. Everything in the room was removed and dumped on the lawn, where the victims were forced to sort it into "keep," "sell" and "toss" piles, with the "keep" pile limited by the size of the tarp available for it (and sometimes they had to go through that pile and sort it again). There was the usual manufactured reality show drama of couples or families arguing over things to keep, and then they did silly competitions for the yard sale. Meanwhile, the organizers and decorators would re-do the room and arrange storage for the few things they were keeping.

Well, the summer that Enchanted, Inc. was on submission, I got bored and stressed and needed a distraction, so I decided that the way to clean and organize my office was to play Clean Sweep. I didn't move out all the furniture, but I removed everything from the desk and put it in boxes that I moved out onto the loft. Then I was gradually working my way through the boxes and putting things away. But midway through that project, the book sold, and then I had to deal with copy edits and had to write the sequel, so the boxes sat there on the loft, and whenever I needed something in them, I'd have to go digging. Then in an emergency clean moment (I think when a reporter wanted to interview me in my home) they got shoved into the office closet. I think at least one box is keepsakes, but we'll see how much I want or need to keep. The keepsake thing is going to be my problem because I keep finding things that I don't necessarily need and might not miss if I forgot they were there, but finding and seeing them gives me joy so I can't make myself deliberately toss them.

Weirdest thing found in yesterday's cleaning: My contractor badge from a former client, where I sometimes had to work on-site. The weird thing about it was that the sweater I was wearing in the ID photo was the same one I was wearing yesterday when I found it. I guess over the years it got demoted from work attire to wear-around-the-house attire.

Today I need to meet my writing time goal (and I'd like to get closer to finishing this Christmas movie screenplay now that the holidays are over and I'm no longer in the mood). I also need to do some marketing/publishing work and do another half hour or so of office sorting, though first I probably need to put away some of the things I found that were very out of place (like the screwdriver I found in one box). So far, I'm being good and sticking to the work rules I've established, and I need to coast on that enthusiasm long enough to make it a new habit.

The Reading Year in Review

I kind of failed at my day of fun. I was in the car, heading out, when I suddenly got a raging case of the Don't Wannas, and since it was supposed to be fun, there was no point in forcing myself. I went as far as the grocery store and then stopped off to pick up some bread and some pasta (good thing, since I wouldn't have had enough for dinner otherwise) and then went back home and indulged in some office cleaning. I've now made it to the boxes that have been sitting in my closet for ages. I also surpassed my writing goal for the day, so I think I'm going to attempt my full goal today.

I've tabulated my year in reading, so here's a wrap-up:

I read 100 books (just barely making it under the wire). Only 7 were re-reads, which may be a new record for me, and most of those were reference books relating to something I was writing when I decided that I needed a refresher from the books themselves rather than just a look at notes taken from them. By far, my biggest reading category was fantasy, with "women's fiction" (broadly lumping together things that are kind of romance-like but not published as genre romance) coming in second, but still with half as many books as fantasy. There was some overlap because I counted those fantasy-like books that are shelved as mainstream in both categories. I didn't have any particular author who dominated my reading this year. The most I had by any one author was four books, and there were a number of authors in that category. I'd say my biggest reading trend was that women's fiction/fantasy crossover, mostly because I was reading for market research and trying to categorize the book I was getting ready for submission and help my agent with the targeting. Overall, I think my reading was fairly diverse, with a mix of "literary" and "commercial," and a mix of historical and contemporary among the various genres.

The stand-out books of the year (my reading, not necessarily published in this year) were The Rook by Daniel O'Malley and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Those were the ones that really lingered in my mind and made me want more. The new series that really caught my fancy was the Tufa books by Alex Bledsoe. I devoured the first two and will eagerly grab any more that come along.

I was trying to do better about reading new fantasy books as they came out so I can be a better nominator and voter for the various awards. I don't know how well I managed that. Maybe I should track release dates in my reading log.

I read some interesting stuff late in the year that I need to do a full report on in a separate post.

My latest library haul was relatively serious, but I think that had more to do with the fact that they were already pulling books off shelves prior to the remodeling and I was just grabbing what was immediately visible. I have a book on hold that I need to pick up, so I guess I'll get to test the pick-up window. I was going to drive through yesterday, but they had the drive blocked with construction stuff, so I couldn't tell if it was meant to be open.

I'm hoping to do a lot of reading this weekend. It's my last free weekend for a while, with two very busy weekends ahead of me. Saturday is supposed to be nice, so I may get my patio storage unit set up before the next cold front hits.

Happy New Year!

The next couple of days for me will be the gradual transition back to post-holiday "normal" time. I've got some fun planned for today but will also try to hit at least half of my targeted work goal for the day. I was surprised to find that some of the TV networks are going back to normal so soon after the holiday. There's a new Elementary on tonight and a new Grimm tomorrow night. And then Downton Abbey is back Sunday night. We'll see if I forgive them for the way they ended the last season. As I recall, Downton Abbey had a lot to do with the start of the knitting obsession because I needed some form of stress relief while watching.

I had a quiet start to the new year. I ended up skipping the annual party in part because I had a case of sniffles that I was afraid was the start of a possible cold and in part because I just plain didn't really want to go and was eager for the excuse. I needed quiet, and spending hours surrounded by people -- even people I like -- didn't appeal much to me. I rewatched the Doctor Who Christmas episode and rewatched the first Hobbit movie on HBO. Rewatching that movie has made me less interested in seeing the second part. These movies are so bloated that they've lost the original story. I found myself dozing off during the pointless (and endless) action scenes and perking up during the quieter moments that actually came from the book.

On New Year's Day, after watching the Rose Parade I got back into cleaning/organizing my office. I'd found out that they were re-airing the BBC Radio version of Neverwhere. I'd heard the first episode earlier last year, then got sidetracked, and the rest were gone from streaming by the time I went back to it. I cleaned and sorted around my desk while listening to the first couple of episodes and may make that a habit until I finish the series. I got my desk sort of cleaned off and organized the office supplies cart. Then I started sorting through boxes.

I found a big stash of pages I'd torn from magazines during what must have been a previous purge of said magazines. I subscribed to Glamour during my twenties and thirties, and it looks like I must have been looking to it as some kind of guide for life when I was in my 20s (though at the time I was writing contemporary romance novels, so I suspect a lot of the things I pulled were meant as research material). They used to have a feature at the end of each issue that was a list -- things like "things every woman should own" or "things you should get rid of." A lot of them were stuff like "things every woman should do before she's 30." I figure I passed the expiration date on those. Looking back at those lists, the "every woman" stuff irks me, because a lot of it was based on their idea of an ideal lifestyle that doesn't apply to everyone. In some respects, I guess I fell short (on just about everything to do with romantic relationships), but by 30 I'd had multiple books published and had bought a house and traveled abroad, so I think I did pretty well without having the requisite number of relationships, including one I'd be willing to go back to (I don't have any exes I want anything to do with -- that's why they're exes. I've run into a few former crushes, and that pretty much ended the crush).

Needless to say, that whole box got tipped into the recycling bin. Now I'm sorting through a box of recipes, and I'm finding some keepers there. I also found the instruction book for an appliance in there, so I definitely can't just toss the whole box. I need to force myself to try at least one new recipe every week or so to work through all these things I've saved. Most of them, I'll admit, fall into the category of "why did I save this?" but there have been a few where I remembered why it sounded good.

Now I need to get into a habit of shredding things because at least one box I found in the office was essentially a "stuff I need to shred" box. I have to remember to do that in small batches so I don't burn out the shredder. And I need to not lose interest in the project before it's done.

Year in Review

I've reached the point in the screenplay that's like the middle of a novel, where all the detailed scenes I had in mind for the set-up have been written, but there's a gap before the detailed scenes I have in mind for the resolution. It's the "and then stuff happens" part of the synopsis. So now I have to figure out detailed scenes for the middle.

Meanwhile, I've updated the Plan for World Domination for the coming year. I tried to make all my goals reachable so that I don't burst out of the gate with great enthusiasm, only to be discouraged when I can't sustain it. I can always increase my goals if the ones I set become too easy. The main thing is that I've set both a daily and weekly quota for writing time. If I go over the daily goals early in the week and reach the weekly quota early, then I get a free day. But if I go over my goal to a certain degree, I think I'm going to come up with some kind of other reward rather than time off.

Achievements for the past year: Sold a book. Published a book. Submitted a book to publishers. And after the final accounting, I think I might have matched my best day job year in income (though the expenses are an estimate, so the final total will come when I do taxes). In non-work things, I've done more hiking this year than I've done in any previous year, so that means I did accomplish at least one thing on my goals for the year list, to make more time to do the things I enjoy and move things off the "I've always wanted to" list to the "things I do" list. I learned to knit in a big way, going in one year from only being able to knit scarves in straight lines to doing fancy lace and complicated cables. I got a start on organizing my office, and having a better filing system has already made life easier. I just need to get back into the project and finish it.

I didn't see enough movies to do a "best of" list. I'm still tabulating the reading for the year, so I haven't yet found the patterns or decided what my best books for the year would be.

As for next year, aside from my writing time plan, professionally I want to do better at networking. I will also have to up my social media game, since I have a young adult book coming out. I may even have delve into (gulp) Twitter. Personally, I want to get back into sewing now that I have a machine. I used to do it as a kid, and I've even done a few things totally by hand as an adult. I'll probably start with easy wear-around-the-house clothes before I start tackling steampunk costumes. I would like to get my house organized so that I can start doing some remodeling and improvements. I should probably devote a little more time to music, since it's something I love, and I may as well try to do it well.

Now, happy new year!

Ready for the New Year

I'm back home again after a Christmas break that was mostly spent reading. I got through about four books in the few days at my parents' house, which was nice. I don't seem to let myself just sit and read much at home. There's always something I should be doing.

I discovered that the little blue box I drive (a Ford Focus) might be bigger on the inside. I was worried when I saw that one of the presents under the tree for me was a huge thing covered in a red sheet rather than wrapped up in paper. The sheet turned out to cover two boxes, one a container with two swivel patio chairs and one a patio storage box (in flat pack, with assembly required). I accused my parents of coming up with a scheme to make me visit more often because I was sure it would take multiple trips to get it all home, especially considering that they also gave me a sewing machine and I had a huge suitcase. But it all fit, and without even having to lower the back seats. The storage box fit sideways in the trunk, with room for my suitcase on top. The chairs fit upside down on the back seats, with room for the cushions under them in the space between the arms and the seat and the bases on top. The sewing machine went on the passenger seat floor. And I managed to unload it all at home. The storage box is still in the garage because I'll have to clean off the patio a bit to situate it, as the stuff that will be stored in it is currently sitting where it will go. That will have to wait for a warm day. But the chairs are on the patio and set up.

I'll need to finish clearing out the office to have room for the sewing machine, and I'll probably pay a visit to Ikea to find a table for it. Now I have an incentive to finish cleaning out the office because there are a few things I want to make.

Normally I find myself energized and eager to work after the new year, but I came back from Christmas feeling all motivated about writing. Some of that may be due to looking at my progress for the year and realizing that I don't seem to have done much. The amount of time I spent writing this year is way down, and I didn't write an entire book this year. I did revisions on book 7 and got that ready for publication, and I did revisions on the new book for my editor. I did a final pass on the book that's currently on submission. Otherwise, I started a book that still needs to be finished and I wrote a novella (or more)-length story that needs a lot of work, either a lot of editing or a lot of fleshing out. And then I started a screenplay that still needs to be finished. Next year, I really need to make an effort to dedicate a certain amount of time to writing and get more stuff produced.

I think another thing that triggered my eagerness to work was looking at real estate. I discovered that the town where I go to church has started redeveloping its old downtown area, with a lot of new stuff that still fits that old, turn-of-the-century look. They're building new houses that look a lot like Craftsman bungalows, and they're situated around a park and near the farmer's market. I love old houses, but around here they tend not to be well located, and I know they require a lot of upkeep. My 1984 house is driving me nuts, so a 1917 house would probably kill me. But a new house that looks old and is in a good location would be cool. Then I saw the prices they're asking and saw pictures of the interiors, which have no "old house" charm. Then I checked the listings for things in my neighborhood, and I can get a lot more house for a lot less, even if it looks 1990s instead of early 1900s. I can trade a fake-old look for still being in walking distance of a library, plus having more than $100,000 more money to use for other things. Not that I'm planning to sell this house anytime soon. It needs a lot of work done to be ready to sell, and once that work is done, I imagine I'd enjoy living in it more. But that did start me thinking about where I am financially, and I know that if I want to improve my circumstances, I will have to work more. Fortunately, having the option of self-publishing means that working more can improve my circumstances. I'm not just writing more things to be rejected.

On the up side for the year, I did get a book published and sell a book to a major publisher. That new sale was a long time coming. There are other cool things in the works. I made more money this year than in any other year since I've been self-employed, and came close to matching my highest salary from when I had a day job (and I may just make it, depending on what might come in from Amazon by the end of the year). I'd love to say that working less led to more money, but this was money earned on work done in the past ten years.

My reading was also down this year. I guess I can blame the knitting because I was doing that instead of reading while watching TV. Otherwise, this was the year of lots of home repairs. That took a lot of time and mental energy. There are more repairs to be done, but maybe they won't be in emergency mode and I'll be more in control of the situation instead of waiting for a contractor someone else hired.

And I intend to get a start on my productivity by working on my screenplay today.