Kate Larking's Blog: Anxiety Ink, page 60

Trust

Creativity can be an incredible vulnerability.  Things we create have a tie to our souls – to the deepest truths of who we are that maybe even we aren’t aware of.

Creating something is scary and can be scariest when released into the world, our of control to shelter and protect. It’s terrifying to know your baby is out there to be judged and maybe mocked. There’s a reason analogies to children abound.

One way to conquer that fear – or lessen it, at least – is to give it the support and make it as ready as possible. For stories, that means editing, editing, maybe rewriting, and more editing. It means having beta readers, or a critique group: eyes aside from our own to catch the things that, because of our closeness, we just can’t.

It’s hard to trust someone with your creativity. And someone who doesn’t have your trust won’t be able to help you the way you want or need. People who aren’t creatively safe can hurt, maybe even kill that baby.

So it’s important to surround the creative process, whatever yours happens to be, with people you trust creatively.

They can be rare, hard to find. It takes a certain sort of alchemy. I wish there were a handy formula to follow, but you have to trust yourself and your instincts (and that can sometimes be the hardest part of all).

So whom do you trust?

The post Trust appeared first on Anxiety Ink.

Writer Mindfulness: I Learned I Might Be Sabotaging Myself

During WWC, the second workshop I attended was called Mindsets, Mindfulness, and Mind Muscles for Writers, hosted by Julie Wright. I took a lot away from this presentation and I hope I can impart some of that wisdom to others who need it. Obviously, I want to start by saying that this is how I filtered her presentation and if anything seems off I take full responsibility.

Wright focused on ways writers can get around the writing blocks they unconsciously create and the types of mindsets writers need to mould in themselves before they even sit in front of a blank page. She worked around the notion that many writers hate writing but love having written. Who can’t identify with that?

To start, Wright identified three qualities great writers possess: will, skill, and creativity. Will was the big ticket idea because it lends itself to the other two.

Will is focus and staying power, it’s what gets you in the chair, keeps you in the chair, and has you write. Will is getting yourself to do the hard thing over and over. Always easier said than done because there are things that affect will, like mindset, inner dialogue, and mental energy.

Mindset is one’s underlying beliefs about the fundamentals of writing. Do you believe writers are born or made? Is talent natural or learned? Do you respect talent or hard work? Depending on how you answer these questions, you either have a fixed or growth mindset. And your mindset affects your motivation to write.

FIXED

- natural talent

- setting out to prove something

- success OR failure –black and white

- terrified of failure

- effort has no value –great writers find writing easy

GROWTH

- talent can be developed

- setting out to improve –growth, change, grey-scale focus

- failure is a learning opportunity

- effort is what matters, only with effort can you grow

Look at the columns above and honestly acknowledge which parts you identify with. If you’re like me you’re going to pull parts from both mindsets. And you’re going to be frustrated. I’m asking you to do this not because Wright asked me and everyone else who attended her panel to do it, I promise. It’s because I found it eye-opening.

If you can figure out how you currently approach the act of writing from a psychological perspective, you can figure out how to approach it better. This is writer mindfulness. In order to do this, ask yourself about the writers you admire and how they approach writing. That’s where we learn, right?

I think all writers are familiar with inner dialogue –and I’m not talking about the stuff that goes into a story. I’m talking about what Wright appropriately called “the inner shit committee.” If you don’t have one, I envy you. If you do, I don’t really need to tell you about the little voices in your head that tear you down. At this point in the panel, Wright said something that struck me hard: it’s important that you separate yourself from the self-criticism because it knocks you down, it does not build you up!

I’ve always operated with the notion that I need to be my toughest critique in order to get my butt in gear. It never occurred to me that I was basically eroding my will to do everything. Because I sure as heck am not just mean to myself when I tackle writing. I honestly thought I was helping myself, but I’ve realized that we live in a world that criticizes us constantly. We don’t have to do it to ourselves.

So be nice to yourself!

Finally, there’s mental energy. Does anyone else find that they have a lack of mental energy? I sure hope I’m not the only one. Anyway, Wright said mental energy is the physical side of will and EVERY decision made EVERY minute of EVERY day involves a mental challenge of wills. That means deciding what to eat for breakfast, whether or not to work out, when you’re going to write. All of these decisions are zapping your limited energy reserves. The best way to combat this are routine and habits. Know when you’re going to do activities and plan your day ahead. You’ll thank yourself when you’re not exhausted when you finally decide to write.

That’s my very quick rundown of Wright’s excellent presentation. I’m still practicing all the activities I listed, and a few more, but if change was so easy self-help books wouldn’t sell!

The post Writer Mindfulness: I Learned I Might Be Sabotaging Myself appeared first on Anxiety Ink.

Lick Your Butt: Writing Lessons From the Cat

I’m SURE Kate has already posted something correlating cats and writing. I’m not even going to bother check. I adopted my first kitten ever (with her help!) on August fifth and OMGKITTEN. :ahem: Sorry, got a little sidetracked. That is to say, since welcoming this wee thing into my home, I have learned some useful things about writing from him. (Yes, that is an actual picture of him, all dressed up for his Internet debut. Thanks for the tie, Kate!)

1. Fail spectacularly… My kitten, Rachmaninov (but you can call him Noodle), fails on a daily basis. Spectacularly. I was Skyping my husband once and started choking with laughter and almost disconnected the call because Noodle had jumped from the bed straight into the wall. There was no window, nothing he could possibly have been aiming at. He just splatted onto the wall, bounced off, and shot out of the bedroom. It was epic.

That is what how we need to approach our writing. Don’t be afraid to splat on the wall. Try something that seems crazy. Hell, just do something. Don’t worry about what it looks like.

3. …then brush it off. When Noodle fails particularly hard, he always immediately sits down and licks his paws with the most blase indifferent attitude I have ever seen. And then he scampers off, sassily, on his next adventure. So after you splat into the wall (which needs to be code for “write yourself into a corner”) just pick yourself up and do something else. Try again. Don’t linger in your failures–but learn your lesson first (or try to). (Okay, that part is definitely not a Noodle-ism. He splats all the time. But still!) The trick is to not identify ourselves as our failures.

Brene Brown has some great discussions on guilt and shame but what struck me is the difference in their definitions. Guilt says you’re sorry for something you’ve done; shame says you’re sorry for something you are. So: our failures are something we do, not something we are. Do something else. If we keep ourselves trapped in the mindset of failure, we will never get past it. Deep thoughts from a kitten who licks his butt all the time, right?

3. And about the butt licking… Noodle really likes to be clean. Really. He will lick and lick and lick. His paws. His stomach. His butt. Yeah. Once as I watched him meticulously clean between his claws I thought, you know, that is really unsavory, but what’s the alternative, staying dirty? We have to clean ourselves up. Writers tend to know when they’re copping out or taking a short-cut in their work. We all have that one part of the story we hope our CP’s won’t comment on (and do you notice how it never works, by the way? They notice it seems weak because it is weak, duh.) Anyway, all that to say, if we don’t take responsibility for licking our butts, our stories will get really rank. So do everyone a favor and revise the parts you know need work.

4. Snuggle. Okay, I know a lot of cats aren’t the love-on type, but Noodle is a real cuddlebug. In fact, I can guarantee you that every day around 3 o’clock, I will be lying on the bed with the kitten on my face (*not a euphemism*) because that is how he likes to spend every day around 3 o’clock. He will come over and mewl plaintively until I snuggle him, and he will not stop unless we go lie down and have a real cuddlefest. (TMI? Crazy cat lady? You decide.)

The thing is, it’s really easy for cats to be stuck up. A lot are. Just like it’s really easy for writers to be…disdainful. Of other writers. Of reviewers. Of readers. We’re the genius creators who should be worshipped, right? But whereas at least cats have a precedence for that (Kate, you should’ve lived in ancient Egypt), writers don’t. So get off your pedestal, put down the chip on your shoulder, and interact a bit. With everyone. Anyone. Don’t be afraid to give readers what they want. (Not the same as catering or writing to the market, by the way!) But I have encountered orneryness that resist the idea of being likable. (Okay, this may apply more to literary/adult writers than YA but whatever.) Give a little, get a little, that’s all I’m saying. Publishing is, after all, an industry.

5. Be yourself. Noodle is so full of personality. He’s a charmer and a skirt-chaser, a purrmonster and a cuddlebug. He’s my favorite kitten. He spends most of his time sleeping somewhere near me while I work, but can be counted on to go into what my husband dubbed “spasticat” mode a few times a day. Those times are pretty much the same every day too, same as our cuddle session. Noodle knows what works for him.

And so should you. Not an outliner? Don’t outline. Need playlists or a pinterest board completed for a project before you can write? Do that. Your process is your own and don’t let anyone tell you there’s a One True Way to write. Whatever gets you from page one to the end. Unless it’s licking your butt, because then we need to talk.

The post Lick Your Butt: Writing Lessons From the Cat appeared first on Anxiety Ink.

Ideas, Inklings, and Conversation

Fellow-Inkette Jessica Corra and I were talking a few weeks ago about ideas, inklings, and creativity. Specifically, it started with how we don’t consider ourselves to be creative people.

When I think about creative people, I imagine a person who dresses eccentrically and thinks in a divergent manner when approaching issues. Jessica’s perspective on the topic: “I’ve decided lately I’m not actually a very creative person. I

don’t have flashes of great idea.” The few times we would consider ourselves creative is when someone brings an idea and we muse, “What if…?” and it’s like the pieces of the world have come together in a constructive fashion–but for someone else’s idea.

When I have an idea, it starts small. I see someone who strikes me like they are the embodiment of a muse or I imagine injecting fantasy onto some familiar situation. I fixate on that hint of writing magic I just saw, found, experienced that stole away my consciousness for a moment and transported me to a land of story where I want to explore. I grab onto that inkling and wonder how I can expand it and make it a whole.

Source

Even as my ideas become more divergent, more creative, I find myself drawn back to this inkling of an idea, this initial source. I fear that if I don’t look back, I’ll lose that idea’s resonance, that magic that entranced me and inspired me. To write, our ideas need to have that intensity maintained–otherwise, how will we keep up our inspiration, our momentum, our desire to write for 80,000 words (or more) and countless drafts? If we lose that vision, how do we keep our spirits up in the face of emotionally-taxing edits?

But conversation while in the formative stages of an idea can save us. When I take that idea to another person, like Jessica, and she says, “Have you considered XYZ to implement it?” My mind is blown. She reached further than I dared and brought the next inkling so close I could grasp it, combine it with my initial idea, and move forward with more confidence in the story idea.

Does her help mean that this story is no longer my idea, my story? No. We could probably take the same two inklings and still end up with wildly different stories, different lengths, different plots. That is what it means to be a writer, a creator, an artist. We all have our own styles, our own beliefs, our own magic we bring to the page.

A quote from my conversation with Jessica to round out this post:

I think this can be good to make sure we keep our visions and that our stories don’t die and lie flat on the page, but I think too we need to let ourselves evolve and let our ideas emerge. I mean, it’s not like we can’t cut an idea after we’ve accepted it and go back. We can. That’s part of the fun of being a creator. Everything is mutable.

The post Ideas, Inklings, and Conversation appeared first on Anxiety Ink.

Reading Direction

Shakespeare was a master at developing characters, building them not so much out of stated descriptions but in the language – even the very sounds of the words as much as the words themselves.

Think of Romeo and Juliet, for example. Romeo’s mother. She appears only twice in the whole play, has three lines, then dies offstage without any great explanation. My roommate in Seattle majored in theater at Cornish, and one of her instructors had a theory based on textual analysis – the words she speaks, the sounds within those words, and the shortness of her lines – that Lady Montague had some sort of respiratory condition. In which case, her seemingly random death at the end, reportedly caused by grief, becomes a little more believable.

While that’s only one expert’s theory, it has stuck with me.

I have been told that writers relinquish control of a story once it’s out of our hands and into a reader’s. Each person reads how she will, with different emphasis, and pronunciation, and pacing. Emphasize a different word, and the meaning of the whole changes.

But that isn’t entirely true. I see it with poets. They often direct how someone will read (whether they know it or not) with sounds and line breaks and punctuation, or lack thereof. Children’s picture books are another fantastic example.

A comma is a quick breath, a period is a long one. Semi-colons are languid and generally to be avoided when you want to set a fast or frantic pace.

Alliteration can be corny, but well-placed sibilance can give life to a forest’s rustling leaves. It’s easy to forget, when the words exist on the page and in our heads but not in the air, the simple magic of sound.

It is another layer to the craft of writing – one I certainly haven’t mastered but can admire and attempt to learn from.

The post Reading Direction appeared first on Anxiety Ink.

How “Small Victories” Came to Be

On September 24, 2014 What Follows was published! Not only does the anthology contain a plethora of fantasy short stories, it offers pieces from Anxiety Ink’s own Kate Larking and M.J. King! It also has my fantasy debut “Small Victories” inside.

Since we decided as a group to go indie on this project (i.e.: self-publish the anthology), it’s up to each and every one of us to push the book. As April said, “we are our own marketing machine,” but, because I’m friends with Kate, I can’t just scream at you to buy my book. I’m not that type of personality at all but it’s helpful to know she’d disown me if I tried.

So, instead of telling you to buy the book, I’m going to talk about my story’s conception and try to pique your interest! I’ve been blogging about the story for months but it’s hard to make it stand out while it’s faceless.

Many –many– months ago, Kate sent me an email and told me to contact the editor she’d worked with on FLaG because she had a new anthology idea in the works. I did so promptly, then bought FLaG and set to reading. A few emails later I was invited onto April’s next project. A few more emails later and the theme was sent our way.

Kate and I were working together in her basement right after we learned we were to tackle immortals dealing with the end of the world. I told her about my first brain-child, worried that I was taking on too much because I wanted to depict three different apocalyptic scenarios: zombies, global flooding, and a disease epidemic. I figured go big or go home with such a theme. Except I was having a helluva time trying to tie in immortals to those apocalypses let alone come up with a complete story. Kate was researching different mythological apocalypses looking for her own starting point. Then she said “Ragnarok.”

Hilarity ensued as we talked our problems out and something one of us said sent the other’s wheels turning. I left that cold day having dropped the zombies and disease in favour of valkyries and ice with plans to research two more pantheons’s mythological end of days for my story. I knew I wanted to tie in the Olympians because I’m a Greek mythology dork but I couldn’t have told you offhand that day what world-ending catastrophe Zeus and his gang were tied to.

I also didn’t want to stay western. I enjoy a global perspective so I didn’t want my story to be only, well, white-bread. I learned a lot about more eastern cultures in the early stages of plotting my story. As well as their respective mythological creatures. I had so many I wanted to go with, like ancient Babylon. At the end of the day I chose one that had a finite apocalypse that would work with my other two, I could grasp quickly, and write adequately.

I want to italicize, bold, and underline here that I still don’t know everything there is to know about the cultures in my story. I learned enough basic stuff so that I wouldn’t offend or look like a complete ignoramus. Even then, I took a lot of liberties because you can’t learn a culture in a month, let alone three cultures. That said, I’m sure anyone with more knowledge than myself will scoff, roll their eyes, and so on.

I shall hide behind this screen: my story is fiction AND fantasy. Moving on.

I wrote my first draft for NaNoWriMo 2013. It was close to 10 000 words and nothing like the draft I have now. And not just because I took April’s 6500 word cut-off to heart and got my piece edited to 7000 words before I broke down and asked April for more. She said as long as I kept it under 9k she’d be happy –insert *facecat* here. I learned a lot editing those 3500 words away and I made my story tight. It flows like it never would have.

I had a lot of fun writing my story, researching new cultures, and Googling pictures of lakes in Argentina. and am happy with what I put out. I think the extra time it took our group to get to publication (a failed Kickstarter, a failed Indiegogo, and a failed deal with a small publisher) gave me time I truly needed to mould “Small Victories.” Heck, I didn’t even have my current ending or title until the very last draft!

All I can say is I sincerely hope people enjoy their time with my apocalypses as much as I did.

 

 

  If you’re interested in checking out What Follows and supporting lesser-known writers, you can

  purchase the anthology from the following retailers:

Kobo
Amazon
Smashwords
Barnes and Noble

The post How “Small Victories” Came to Be appeared first on Anxiety Ink.

Ask an Editor: What’s your job, anyway?

In this month’s Ask an Editor feature, I’m going to answer something that’s not really a question I get asked a lot, but should! Because a lot of people don’t actually know. So!

What’s your job, anyway?

There are many different types of editors. Kate goes over them in her book, Novel Marketing, but I’m going to do a bit of a run-down here because it’s good information.

So there are line editors who only bother with–you guessed it–your sentences. These are editors who focus on your grammar and your line-by-line correctness. They make sure your hero’s eyes haven’t changed colour from one scene to the next and that the word in this sentence is being used appropriately, including sometimes checking if a word was even in use in the year your book is set, when writing historical.

I do that too because I’m exceedingly thorough and I don’t want to make more work for our amazing line editors at Samhain. I’m a content editor, which means I do big picture edits (as well as line edits.) So I’m going to tell you to rewrite half your scenes because they don’t support your theme. Or that in order to be salable, the romantic leads should at least appear to like each other. Or that you’re being culturally insensitive in all of your scenes with the Native American character and they need to be rewritten. Basically, I’m the person everyone loves to hate. (But then in the end, love, because nobody wants to let a book out into the wild with those kinds of errors, right?)

Here’s how it works for me at Samhain. Keep in mind I’m an acquisitions editor, which means I select the books I edit to be published out of the slushpile myself. So I read your your manuscript and offer a contract. Some time passes and then I send you forms to fill out about marketing the book, what you’d like to see on the cover, where you live, basics like that. Then I edit the book.

My first passes tend to be brutal. When I first started editing, I would frequently have to apologize to my authors for being a little too blunt. I’ve learned to softshoe it a bit (I hope). (Maybe ask Kate; she’s had me edit her.) I will mark up awkward sentences, weak motivations, plot holes, poor characterization, inconsistencies, basically, ANYTHING you can imagine wrong with your book, I am on the lookout for.

But don’t worry! I try to offer as many solutions as possible whenever I point out a problem. So I send an edit letter talking through the major issues along with the marked up manuscript. The author and I rinse and repeat this process until I’m satisfied with the book and then I pass it along to someone who specializes in line edits.

There are also developmental editors who will work with you from the premise to the drafting to come up with a workable idea and execute it. Sometimes my authors ask me for input on things while they’re drafting, but it’s not my main job.

At my publisher, I’m also responsible for being my authors’ first point of contact on any problem and either taking care of it or pointing them to the person who can; I facilitate dialogue between the author and the art and marketing departments for cover art and marketing, and, of course, I talk up my amazing authors and their books on social media because I love them. I cultivate a list of authors based on my own interests and how we work together. I’ve had some authors change to other editors because we weren’t the best fit, and I’ve taken on some authors from my colleagues because I’ve worked with them better. As an acquisitions/content editor, I intend to be with my authors for the long haul, even though I acquire on a book-by-book basis.

So on any given day, I will edit 60-80 pages, read half a manuscript from the slushpile, fill out forms for marketing, and send an author her cover art. (You’d be amazed at how much time gets sucked up by forms and email!)

Or play with my cat.

I mean, it’s kind of a toss-up, really.

So I hope that answers the question of what I do, because I think it’s good to know where I’m coming from when I answer your questions. Do you have anything you’re dying to ask an editor?

The post Ask an Editor: What’s your job, anyway? appeared first on Anxiety Ink.

The Rush to Publish

We are living in a world now where it is very easy to publish a book. You can write almost anything, any length, with any degree of editing, and upload it as an eBook. Even the eBook vendor websites have means to automatically format your book into the correct file format (despite questionable formatting quality results) and even draft up a cover so you don’t have to recruit a designer, secure licenses for art, etc, to put it all together. Publishing a book right now is so simple!

But should you rush to publish?

When I started this year, I was hoping to start publishing my fiction via self-published eBook as well as query a novel to traditional publishers. I focused my time on my non-fiction early in the year and I encountered a duality I hadn’t expected to find in my writing career: my non-fiction writing style is enormously different from my fiction writing style. As a result of sending most of my time of upping the quality of my non-fiction work for publication over the summer (Novel Marketing), I let my fiction style drift, waiting for when I could go back and concentrate on it.

So while I was confident in my non-fiction for publication, my fiction skills had taken a back seat. I needed to build my plotting, style, setting, atmosphere, and character development skills before I could even think about publishing my first standalone fiction. Recognizing this disparity and need for improvement was a tough pill to swallow–I wanted to be an ambitious writer and start building my fiction author brand. But I had to face the truth: I wasn’t ready yet.

When I give lectures based on Novel Marketing, the first thing I mention is the pivotal first step of fiction marketing: writing a quality book. This means the prose is up to par, the book is edited, the formatting isn’t glitchy, and the cover doesn’t reek of amateur half-effort. I can handle covers, I can format a book, I know great editors–but my prose and story structure are not where I want them to be yet. As a result, I point to that section of the presentation and say, “With my fiction writing, this is where I am. I am putting off publishing my fiction until I improve this area of my work.”

Some of the audience may discredit my marketing advice given that my fiction brand isn’t strong at this point in time, despite the fact that I have a degree in marketing and have done my research. Others, though, tell me at the end, “I am so glad you mentioned that you aren’t ready to publish your fiction yet.”

Acknowledging weak areas in your writing to a crowd is a tough bite to swallow. But I really wanted it to resonate with the audience that just because you can publish quickly doesn’t mean you should.

Are you waiting to publish? Or do you finally think you’re prepared?

The post The Rush to Publish appeared first on Anxiety Ink.

Blank Page Jitters

For no small number of us, there is a moment when we first open that blank document or pristine notebook and the enormity of what we’re about to do rises like the white cliffs of Dover. The power and potential is overwhelming. It’s terrifying.

Maybe a part of you whispers, “Start it tomorrow. There’s always tomorrow.” Maybe you suddenly remember laundry, or vacuuming or errands that desperately need running. If you’re being productive, it doesn’t count as procrastination, right?

You’re about to create something from nothing. You’re about to take this thought – this abstract concept in your head – and translate it, however, inaccurately, to something other people can read and interpret for themselves. And this story of yours is going to need a beginning, middle, and end, plot twists and pinch points, believable characters that have their own arcs and developments . . . it’s a lot to face.

I had an art teacher in high school who told us to make random marks on any new paper or surface, just to break the expectations and inhibitions that tend to crop up in the face of a blank slate.

It usually works, too. At least, it does for me.

But not always. And even when I’m not at the start of a project, I can find it overwhelming. The pen goes down. I find excuses and distractions that keep me away.

The problem is that the whole story won’t just spring out, fully and perfectly formed with the click of a pen, and some eternally naive part of me keeps expecting that it might. Expectations and frustrations abound.

When I’m facing the whole project as one monstrous entity, I get absolutely nothing done. Times like this, the tally system (which is still working amazingly, by the way) saves my ass. All it requires is a word. One single word. One word and I’ve written for the day. It counts. But if I’ve written one word, the second isn’t any harder.

There’s a lot more to crafting a story and tackling the million-and-one problems and complications that come go with that, but at its most basic, writing a story just requires putting a word on the page at a time.

The post Blank Page Jitters appeared first on Anxiety Ink.

Goal Checkup 3

Wow, I’m last aboard the accountability train this time around. It actually feels good to know that I’m not the only one following the goals conceptualized in January and their progress as 2014 flies by. I just reread all of my goal posts and wish this checkup was as cheerful as the one I wrote in June. Unfortunately, checkup #3 is going to smack of the mopiness of March’s update.

Right around July my life hit ANOTHER hectic snag and I’m still trying to regain my balance. Actually, since writing this post at the start of the week, balance has officially gone overboard. Things at work have been affecting my personal life more than I wanted to admit and I can no longer ignore it. And I really tried to ignore it.

Bad idea.

All of this is not to say that goals haven’t been checked off my list during this last interval. I’m just crossing them off excruciatingly slowly while I adjust to yet another schedule change and prep for a few things that are going to be time consuming during October.

What all of this translates to is frustration. I’m very frustrated with a lot of aspects of my creative life right now. And I know that I am the problem. If I want a good final checkup before the end of the year I need to get back in my groove. And there’s no better place to start than by listing accomplishments and accomplishments-to-be:

“Brew Disaster” was rejected from the place I said I submitted it to during the last round of checkups. I sent it out right after that and am still waiting on a response from that magazine.
What Follows was self-published on September 24; my story “Small Victories” is 100% complete and up for sale. Yay!
I had a serious heart to heart with myself about exercise and health a while ago. I decided that I really needed to put fitness at the top of my priority list for a while because my physical health so impacts my quality of life and ability to function. Unfortunately, working the hours I currently do, work-out time is really cutting into writing time. I am not making 1000 words a week. I plan to let winter hibernation help with this problem.
I haven’t been reading very much lately either, so while I still intend to read three Shakespeare plays this year (two more to go after reading Hamlet!) and follow my 5th old book rule, its slow going right now. However, I did have a realization about myself in this regard: I am reader before I am a writer. I plan to write a blog post about this at some point because it’s relevant to my writing.
Anxiety Ink has a brand new member! Look at us go as a team!
I really need to underline my “act like a smoker” goal because my head space can get so cluttered during the day and I know taking a breather would really help.
Who’s a chef? Not me!
I did a financial health checkup just over a week ago and learned that I’m not doing abysmally with budgeting. I have a few spending habits I need to curb but other than that I’m as golden as I can be in my current circumstances. If I keep affirming this my stress levels will go down…
Recently at work we had a meeting about negative attitudes, we’re all trying to get into the habit of positivity. I intend for it to translate to my personal life.
I’m not sure if NaNo is going to happen this year. Especially now (Thursday vs. Tuesday).
I am at a stand-still with the book I’m writing. I need to dive back in and not listen to my fear.
I have taken steps with the personal website! Small steps, but steps nonetheless.
I’m a part of the newsletter team for ARWA this season, so I am assuredly more involved.

That’s about where I’m at at this point!

The post Goal Checkup 3 appeared first on Anxiety Ink.