Kate Larking's Blog: Anxiety Ink, page 74

Preparing for Freedom

As I finish out my last week at work, I’m eager to be free but also filled with a lot of anxiety about the coming changes.

I seem to be paralyzed and without a plan of what I intend to do for at least the next 2.5 months that I have free from work commitments.

Based off this article, I am going to address some of the preliminary plans for the next year as I intend to tackle my writer with an increased professional certainty.

50 Ways Writers Can Prepare For the New Year

Buy a new notebook.

I have tons of notebooks at home. Mostly journals that are super pretty and I have been terrified to write in because I feel like it’s sullying them in their pristine glory. That’s an angst for another day but I do believe I have notebooks and paper covered.


Review what you have written this year.

I have 1 short story written and published (In the Fight Like A Girl anthology). I wrote drafts of a few others. I completed an entire draft of my book, interWIRED and had it professionally critiqued/edited.


Finish any unfinished blog pieces, articles, etc., which speak to you.

Well, I’ve fallen a bit behind on this. I no longer have a buffer of blog posts ready for Anxiety Ink and I have not been able to concentrate on my personal site (which had to be wiped and transferred over to a different hosting account. Woe is me). I have a Holiday Present Post planned for next Wednesday, though! The only thing that was really left unfinished was a post about depression and the writer.


Reflect on why pieces were left unfinished.

The reason why the depression and the writer posts were left behind is because I made the hard, proactive choices to change my life’s situation. It was so dynamic over the past few days that it was difficult to keep up with my changing mental state every time I returned to the draft.


Purge those you don’t want to finish. (Get them out of your daily eyesight.)

I will archive my 2013 projects and start fresh for 2014.


Buy new journals for various projects to keep your ideas/writings organized.

Still have a ton of journals. The only thing I think I need is an organizing system. I have some filing cabinet-esque drawers but I need to get some folders. I usually like to write loose-leaf notes and they get lost all over.

Set up a writing environment to meditate and journal.

I have an amazing office that my wife built me and I will concentrate on setting it up, clearing it out, hiding all the tangential projects that are really just procrastination projects, and buckle down to work.


Go fallow in December, enjoying food and family, then emerge on “writing side” in January.

I do plan on resting for a week with the holidays an working on plans for more writing the last week of December/first week of January. I want to concentrate on getting my health back on track (I won’t be binging on cookies as much this year–been unhealthy for too long and I’m a little sick of it all) and starting to walk/run again.


Update your website.

Oh lordy. This is a big one. A project will need to be setting up my personal webpage and blog. I’ve let it fall to the side for months and now I really need to take it seriously and concentrate on my professional writing image.


Get a fresh haircut.

Gotta say, I can understand why this is in here. But I’m still pretty professionally clean-cut and I don’t think I need to spend this money right now. Maybe as a reward before the next job hunt?


Add a few new pieces to spruce up your wardrobe and make it current.

Did that. Got some new sweaters for work a month ago and now… There will be no work. I might need more comfy writing pants, though!


Get ready for interviews.

Dude. Not famous. Seems like a vain step. Maybe when I get a contract I can start thinking about things like blog tours and interviews like that.


Prepare for author events.

See above.


Update or create your media kit so that you will have promotional materials ready for book promotions.

I have business cards! Go me! I have plans to work on my personal webpage! Go me! However, the main thing I am missing is promotional materials for Anxiety Ink. We are talking about how to brand it and I want to be ready for my next year’s circuit of conferences with something to direct people to this group blog.


Take care of any nagging health issues — emotional, spiritual or physical.

DOING THAT. Big time. I am taking two months to get me and my life on track.


Organize your files.

As in above, I am going to make the files in the first place.


Update your contact list.

This is one thing I regularly update. I’m a frequent mailer so I keep a lot of addresses up to date.

Update your software.

Got a new computer this year. I think I’m on top of it but my desktop is a bit behind.


Get your receipts and write-off lists together and have them ready for tax season.

*Looks at empty palms* Yeah…no income from this yet. I don’t think I can claim expenses.


Start planning which events and trade-shows you want to go to next year.

On it! Here is the list so far:

When Words Collide – Calgary
Sirens – Portland, OR
World Fantasy – Washington, DC




Get a travel budget together.

Yeah, I might need that. *Starts fiddling with numbers and savings*


Research and note materials needed for applications. Get everything lined up now so you can find out all of the pertinent information.

No applications to make.


Buy a sketchbook to map ideas or expand a writing in graphical format.

Have sketchbooks and printer paper.


Buy new pens, pencils and erasers.

Oh lord, do I have pens. But I always love new ones. But if I go out and spend money now, the wife will kill me, you know?

Check your keyboard — do you love it? If not, invest in a really great keyboard.

This may need to be addressed. Mac keyboards are awful. They are flat and pretty, yes, but not ergonomical at all. If I begin to experience problems, I will need to look into getting a different keyboard.


Note your most productive and creative writing times. Block them off and scheduled into your calendar.

Mornings. I will wake up early, still, just like I would with a job. Write. Workout. Do a chore or two. And write some more.


Get plenty of rest.

I’m one of those 9-hour-a-night sleepers. I need 9 hours. For example, today, I had 8. And I feel like sleeping at my keyboard.


Hydrate! Hydrate! Hydrate!

This might be something I really have to work on. I’m really bad in that I think coffee is hydration. I am going to be really cognizant about drinking more tea and water.


Have a passion-based purpose for writing. (It will keep you motivated during dry spells and focused on your mission, rather than just your feelings.)

Sanity. Writing = Sanity.


Make a mini vision board that represents your commitment to writing for 2014. (Look at it when you need a reminder.)

CRAFT TIME?! Ooooh! Elisa! Come visit! We need to craft vision boards!


Create a lovely environment to write in, complete with a rad new desk and decorations which inspire creativity.

Wife built office. Must use office.


Prepare a music ‘playlist’. If you can write to different types of music based on the tone of the writing piece, try these music playlist categories: Pump Me Up, Romantic Tunes, I am the Bomb-Diggety, etc.

I’m on the fence about music and writing. Sometimes I feel I need music to write and, other times, I feel that if I have music playing I’m distracted and can’t keep my concentration on the piece. I may follow this in that I will make different playlists based on different stories for when I go running.


Test out new productivity approaches to see if they might be a good fit for you.

That’s pretty much what January will consist of. Does this schedule work? Yes? No? Repeat.


Complete all your strategic planning for next year in terms of health, money, and marketing.

For the whole next year? It’s a little too variable right now. If we end up expecting a child, the whole plan will be thrown out the window. The good news is that the wife is taking a personal finance course for her MBA this semester, which pretty much means we will be communicating about personal finances to a ridiculous degree for the next few months.

Go hard all the way through 2013! (And then 2014 will rock out by osmosis.)

Went hard through November. Rest time, plan time.


Put away the fear you have around writing.

Put it away. Just put it away. That seems so simple with how it is worded in the list but it’s really not. Why do you think we named the blog Anxiety Ink, hmm? Because it’s an ongoing struggle. But I will resolve to finish pieces before I judge them. It is so much easier to edit a piece than it is to continually work on it and draft it from scratch, expecting it to turn out perfectly.


Consider partnering with a writing coach to help you meet your goals.

Who needs a writing coach when I have friends like I do? I might need a life coach to find balance in my life but I will work on defining my crit circle and being really faithful to those relationships in order to better myself as a writer, reader, and friend.


Check the copywriting on your website and make sure that it is current.

HAH. Gotta make the website first, hmm?


Add tags to entries in your digital journal.

This sounds like procrastination to me. But I will check over Anxiety Ink to make sure all my posts are tagged up correctly.


Make a backup of your digital writing entries.

Oh DropBox, how I love thee. Oh email, how I keep emailing storied to myself as backup like the olden days.


Add photos to any digital journal entries.

Yo, photos? And seriously, who adds those AFTER posting them?


Print digital entries and make a notebook of your writings for 2013.

Hmmm, an interesting idea. I might like to have a hard copy of Anxiety essays to refer back to in the future. But this sounds like a lot of paper.


Gather your favorite candle scents and oils for the new year. (Your writing brain loves scent stimulation.)

My cat is a doofus. He has burned off his whiskers several times in the very few times we have had candles lit. It takes a lot of supervision to have a cat as dumb as mine, but at least he is sloth-like. As for scented oils… I’m a little adverse to them. We will see if I end up writing and living in quasi-squalor and need as-scent-ance (AHAHAHAHA PUN! Horrible horrible pun).


Remove any blog posts that are outdated (events, interview, etc.)

You think the internet doesn’t keep things even if you remove them?


Check the links in your blog posts to ensure they are still working.

Okay, this one sounds like procrastination. But also a good review for our blog team to make sure the world isn’t broken.


Create guest blogger guidelines.

We would have to decide on guest bloggers first.


Organize your computer’s desktop.

Will do when I purge 2013 writing to clean things up.


Update your Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn files.

Uggh, social media work! I really hate balancing all of these things but I guess that I should look into managing them or finding a way to connect some of them so I can post easily. I need to look into different twitter-facebook-deck software.


Stock up on your favorite coffees and teas.

Now this sounds like a good one. We are flush on tea but we go through coffee fast!


Set writing goals for 2014.

This sounds like a post for New Years. Stay tuned.

To Write A Series

Someone asked me for a post on writing a series. My response was . . . less than eloquent. I know nothing at all about writing a series. Note how that hasn’t stopped me from attempting one.

Actually, I have a few series running around my head: a duet, quartet, novels with sequel potential, episodic series . . . but this is the first try at crafting, so all I can tell you is how I’m approaching it.

A single novel is hard enough. Now, I’m writing the second of seven. They’re not episodic; they’re meant to be read in order, and I hope that at the end of it, events and developments will tie back into elements of the earlier books. This means I actually have to *gasp!* plan. Most of all, I can’t let the looming specter of the SERIES overwhelm me.

So I approached the series planning like I do novel planning. After all, all seven books together do make a single story — aside from scope, I don’t see a whole lot of difference between writing a story in one novel or writing it in several. The three-act structure touted in screenwriting classes doesn’t work for my brain. Instead, I have my seven “beats” that provide me with a focus and a framework to go from. That’s not why I decided on seven books, but it has made the planning easier.

Planning the series this way made nailing down the over-arching plot much easier and gave defined objectives to each book. Those objectives, in turn, helped me define the seven individual plots. Once I knew the plot — could sum it up in a sentence or two — the steps needed to reach the goal became much clearer. And the clearer the goals, the easier the writing.

Of course, this series has also been percolating for over three years. We’ll see how long it takes me to write.

I know that not all the series in my head will use the same method, but it seems to be working so far for this one! If any of you have run across good resources for writing a series, I’d love to hear about them.

An Ordered Life?

I came across this glaringly apropos quote while checking my email this evening: “Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.” -Gustave Flaubert

 

The Steady and Well-Ordered Part

While absorbing these word, in the back of my mind sat the knowledge that I needed to write a blog post for tomorrow morning. I never leave my posts to the last minute, I know better than anyone that life can easily get in the way and make it so that doing things at the last minute is not only incredibly difficult but also nearly, or sometimes totally, impossible. Today is a good day though –obviously, since you’re reading this post.

I am an organizer. It is both wonderful and frustrating. Wonderful because I know where everything is, I rarely have to scramble, everything is planned three steps ahead of me, and surprises are minimal; and it provides the illusion that I am always on the ball. Frustrating because it’s time consuming, requires diligence, requires forethought, and requires planning. This week I am not organized, because life roundhouse kicked me in the butt and I am still dusting off my rear and dealing with the bruise.

Last Wednesday night my computer spontaneously shut down and decided it wasn’t turning back on. Ever. I didn’t freak out –high fives for me. When I realized it wasn’t a problem I could solve on my own, I knew I needed to replace my machine sooner than I had intended. I’m lucky I have generous parents who were willing to buy and give me my Christmas gift early. I took my old computer to tech people and prayed to the universe that all of my documents could be recovered. My last few backups failed and I didn’t put the newest pieces of work and research in my drop box like I had intended. Frickety frack. Yeah.

But all went well! The tech people said my hard drive had barely been able to give up the goods but the goods they did give up. Phew! With new machine in hand –a week later– and all of my work in front of me I am finally able to breathe normally. Yet, I’m still not organized. Why, you ask? Because my computer meeting it’s well-earned retirement isn’t all that has changed in the past few weeks.

I now have a full time job I have to work around –why does that feel like an oxymoron? Not to mention it’s holiday season, people I’m friendly with expect to see my face occasionally, appointments and errands are necessary, my house and clothes don’t clean themselves, my body doesn’t magically get the exercise it needs while I do nothing, and pets require attention. Oh, and I need food and sleep to survive.

It’s only week two so I’m allowed to be feeling out of sorts but I sure hope I get the rhythm of this new routine soon because my life is totally unbalanced and barely ordered at the moment. Granted, after this weekend the organizational part will be fixed (by golly it better be!!), but the balanced part feels like it’s going to be a long time coming.

 

The Fierce and Original Work Part

Um, my work can’t be fierce or original if I have none. I’m afraid writing has been pushed off the to-do list entirely recently. Between work and commandeering my mom’s computer for sporadic periods of time, no writing has been done for some time. This post is actually the first bit of writing I’ve done since I started at my new job on the 3rd of December, and the HOURS of research I put in the day before seem so insignificant in the time that has passed. Luckily, I have a project in mind that really needs to be done. That ought to get me in gear and willing to put writing on the table.

All in all, Monsieur Flaubert’s words have effectively made me feel small and pathetic. Awesome! Time to get cracking and practice BICHOK: Butt In Chair, Hands On Keyboard.

Ciao.

 

 

Thanks to Shoshanna Evers for the BICHOK acronym, found in How to Write Hot Sex.

Oh, and the project I need to get done also needs attention from readers! Please, check out What Follows and support us if you can: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1869717111/what-follows-a-fantasy-anthology

Choices

I have been working at my current job for some time. When I started, I thought it was a company I could settle into and understand the business, let myself grow, stretch my skills, and balance my life.

Lately, not so much.

After a catalogue of issues (and frequent searches of Canadian Labour Laws), I have submitted my notice. I end work on December 20th and get to spend my first holiday off in three years. I get to appreciate freedom, family, and face change.

For the last few months, I have been on writing overdrive. All I have wanted is to write and practice this art that intoxicates me and captures every aspect of my imagination.

I now get that option.

Savings will be tested. Self-motivation and dedication will be proven.

I have been sitting for months thinking…why did rappers have to commercialize the phrase, “you only live once”? I feel it in my bones, I only live once. I’ll only be this age once, no matter how many times my characters get to live it.

Imagination is a wonderful thing. It makes life more full and lets you experience more aspects than you would otherwise. You get to be other people, you get to believe in magic and dragons.

But life is full of choices. And sometimes we get lost and we lose sight of what we really, really want. We dissolve our present into the dreamy nature of fantasy, of story. And we cope with things from our real life by letting our minds wander the distances of our ideas.

On Monday, I chose my dreams. I chose the life I want to live. Was it a financially wise decision? No! But do I have the capacity to do it at this point in my life? Yes. Do I have the love and support of my family and friends? I am so freakin’ lucky, I do.

I’m going to take a shot at this. I’m going to work hard and I won’t live in a safe job with destructive regrets. I made a choice. I’m scared shitless but I’m going to work my ass off and make my family and friends proud that they gave me this opportunity, this time.

Selfish

*Inspired by Kate’s post last week.

Growing up, we hear over and over again, “Don’t be selfish.” Visions of selflessness are touted instead. Rather than the message of simple respect and consideration for others, we’re taught that we should never put our own needs before others.

But that thinking is so terribly flawed. If you put everyone else’s happiness before your own, or sacrifice your own for others’, how does that make sense? It leaves you without happiness to put out in the world. And really? Trying to make other people happy when you’re not is a herculean task.

Finding that balance — giving enough of yourself, without giving too much — takes constant trial and error. Creativity is one of those things we’ve been conditioned to feel guilty about. It’s selfish. Why write (or paint, or dance) when there is cooking/cleaning/paying work to be done? But the only way to get anywhere following our passions is to make that a priority.

One way to do that is to set boundaries. Have time set aside for whatever creative work you do and protect it. For that bit of the day, creating is the priority. No one else is allowed to disrespect or interfere with that.

Don’t get defensive, don’t make excuses. Some people will treat them as invitation for challenge, scenting the guilt.

You might be surprised how many people won’t question you. This is something you love to do and is important to you; why shouldn’t you set aside time for it?

Selfishness can be a healthy thing. It’s overcoming our own feelings of guilt that are the hardest.

Beta Readers: You Need Them, Especially When You Think Otherwise

So there I was a couple of weeks ago: I had just done my first read through of my fae story after letting it rest for over a month and it wasn’t that bad. I mean, I was satisfied with it and it didn’t seem like a washy pile of BS. Thinking that the deadline was Oct. 30 and my calendar saying mid-October, I felt pretty good about myself. LOTS of time to fine-tune, I thought.

However, I had a step to go: one of my rules is to always run a piece by a beta reader. I chose Kate because she initiated the fae story challenge and because when I bat my eye lashes she doesn’t quite know how to tell me to f#@k off. I cheered, because something was nagging at me about the story and I just couldn’t figure out what. And Kate’s good at figuring that kind of thing out.

She tore it to shreds. Not literally, but the red ink everywhere might as well be shredded edges. If I didn’t need the edits she wrote down I think she would have stomped on the whole document in frustration. With a quivering lip –ok, my lip wasn’t really quivering but I was like WTF– I asked what was wrong. A lot of things. So many things I can’t believe I didn’t see myself. *cry*

But after our lengthy conversation she assured me that it was salvageable. My story needed to be overhauled to the extreme, but there was something there.

THIS IS WHY A WRITER NEEDS (GOOD) BETA READERS: First, they give your story zero quarter and kick it when it’s down. They beat the ever living snot out of it. Second, when the tear-down is over they pick it up, dust it off, and tell it where it needs improvement. Third, they reassure you it doesn’t suck and motivate you to fix it instead of tossing it.

Then you get to start all over again! Yay! *cry*

Drafting is a bittersweet process but you can’t rely only on your set of eyes. When you come at your story for the 5th time and know it inside and out it’s really hard to see where the problems are, even after a long period of time. Beta readers are invaluable, and I urge every writer out there to assemble a team of people who won’t sugar coat their words and only give positive feedback. Good is nice, but negative lets you know where stuff is and isn’t working. I’ve learned to revel in the negative –I used to be one of those that would get all wide-eyed in the face of constructive criticism and wonder, in my Di Nero voice, “you talkin’ to me?” You have to grow and learn to take it, it’s part of being a writer.

As always though, any feedback given can and should be taken with a grain of salt. They’re suggestions, but take them seriously. Constantly ask why? Why did they say that, hate that, love that, etc. At the end of the day if you really don’t want to change something –don’t. But if all of your readers are pointing out the same thing and you just love it to pieces, you might have to kill it. It’s tough but writing involves killing your babies, no matter how good you think they are.

I’ve killed my baby and redrafted it. Now I need to edit my Fae story like mad before Nov. 30th, which is the actual due date. Ciao.

Frustration

There are times in our lives where we are immensely frustrated, forced to a standstill, mind a tornado of options that all seem at once impossible and possible. The clutter of choices threatens to overtake our sense, drown our sanity and undermine our present.

That is a place I am in right now.

Epic Frustration with Life.

I have been spoiled in the last few years. I am with the love of my life. I have met some amazing people. I have fallen back in love with the actual action of writing. I am working hard to conquer my depression. I am in a great financial situation.

But I am not happy with the balance in my life. I am working full-time, slightly more, losing my sanity in the a job that doesn’t give me anything to learn. I coast on my skills with excel and databases and not really gleaning any story-fodder from the work.

I have dreams, of course, as all writers and all people do. I want to start a family. I want to write full time. I want to feel fulfilled at the end of the day, not strained and unbalanced.

As a result, I have been struggling more and more against depression. I have lost any semblance of fitness in my life and I sleep for more hours of the day than I care to admit just to recharge my batteries between work days.

All the while, I feel smashed with guilt. I should be more productive. I should be revelling in the priviledge of having a decent job, good money, fantastic benefits, a loving family, and a drive to write. But I squander that in my exhaustion and depression.

I feel that I should take a step back. I wonder if I should ask my family if they would support me working part-time, writing as much as I can, building my dream. Then I feel selfish and childish. I should be an adult and responsible. I should have a handle on the depressing realities of life and should adapt to that.

I am unabashedly jealous of those near me who can work part-time and write with abandon. I find myself jealous of the other Inkettes, thinking their lives must be beautiful and easy. Subconsciously, I fill in all the things I don’t know about others’ lives with positives and everything I don’t know about my own is filled with negatives. Any space in my life, I feel I can’t relax in it. It is literally negative space.

For now, I am working hard to set up my family for the future. The house is being renovated and very-old-things being replaced with things that will work better and last longer.

Am I the only one who drowns when I really need to stand up and work for balance?

Sneaky Influences

When I think of the influences on my writing, I think Tamora Pierce, Andre Norton, Anne McCaffrey. The authors I read and loved when I was still graduating from chapter books and beginning to discover the world of adult novels. I can look back on the books I read then and recognize my favorite character types and dramatic situations and plot twists. The things I like to read also tend to be the things I like to write.

But sometimes we don’t recognize our influences. Sometimes they’re too far back in memory.

A couple years ago, my mother was on a quest to find every Golden Book ever for my now-five-year-old brother, and she rediscovered the Theodore Mouse stories. She told me, “Now I know where you got it!” ‘It’ being my wanderlust, my fascination for experiencing different cultures.

I had no idea what she was talking about. How could a children’s book I didn’t even remember have influenced such a deeply ingrained part of me?

But I read them. And I remembered them. Not so much the stories, but my impressions and the wonder those stories invoked before I ever learned to read. They were some of those books that became hyper-real. And yes, it is safe to say that they initiated my wanderlust.

And the influences aren’t confined to books.

I was still pretty young when I watched Xena: Warrior Princess. I loved it, though even then the dialogue sounded strange. Of course, I was blind to the whitewashing and historical inaccuracies, not to mention the Mary Sue-ness of it all.

On a whim earlier this year, I started re-watching the show. It was worse than I expected. Then I started seeing my stories. Old, old stories that are never to see the light of day.

Images and impressions I didn’t remember as being from the show have stuck with my writer-brain. I still have to be heavy-handed in editing out the melodrama that always makes it to the page in my first drafts. The snarky banter is a harder cut than the melodrama, and more of it sneaks through.

If I don’t know where my story elements are coming from, it’s harder to make my story my own. Whatever comes out sounds derivative and unoriginal.

Learning your own influences is important. When you write, you learn what the words — the phrases, the slang, the language — you’re using really mean. It’s the same thing. You’re learning where things come from so you can better learn how to use it.

NaNoWriMo Progress Post, The Last – M. J.

The last few days have been AWESOME. No day job, nowhere I’ve needed to go . . . and lots of writing.

I am glad I didn’t try to do an official, proper NaNo. With the insanity the decided November would be a great month to explode in my face, I’m proud of the amount I’ve so far accomplished. As a slow writer with very little self-discipline, this is impressive. The NaNo energy and community has been fantastic to get me this far.

So the end of November wraps up something like this:

 

 

15 / 30 chapters. 50% done!

Now I keep doing this for another month. Let’s see how I do with a new job, less time off, and more holidays . . .

Final NaNoWriMo 2013 Update – Kate

November has drawn to an end and I have done my best. I revised my goal to be 35K and I have Elisa to thank for making me pound out those last 2,500 words on the last day, in between our random bickering, Vietnamese curry, and animal delinquency.

Final Tally

35349 / 35000 words. 101% done!

I manage to finish a novel, start on two separate ones (Oops), and write most of a short story for a sale anthology. I hope I can make it into that one.

I am awaiting edits/slaughtering from Laura Anne with a little too much anticipation. I feel that writing is the one of the main things in my life that is right now going in the right, productive direction and I can’t wait to keep this up.

Even today, I wrote 1500 more words and finished up that short story. Melissa was kind enough to slaughter two cultural aspects on it and, while I waited for her to turn that around, I read a book. A whole book.

NaNoWriMo, while lovely, really put my life into a new balance. I loved writing more, but I missed the bit of reading I would normally do. My TBR shelf is a monster, but that is a post for another day.