Sunday Links: August 19, 2012 Edition

It's almost back-to-school time here in Ohio. Our kids have one more week of break but my wife starts up her classes this coming week. A busy time and a reminder that I've been writing seriously for over a year now. In fact, in less than two weeks I'll hit the one year mark of writing every day. I've got something special planned to mark that occasion, so watch for an announcement in the next couple of weeks along those lines.

Also, around the end of August and beginning of September I'm going to take a short blogging hiatus for a week to ten days. I haven't worked out the timing exactly, but I'll publish dates for the hiatus both here and on my Write Every Day blog. I'll still be writing, but I'll be spending that time focused on my fiction. I also expect that I'll be doing a fair amount of work relating to the Unidentified Funny Objects anthology at that point in time since it will be the end of our submission period which presumably will mean a flood of submissions and also the need to have final discussions within the editorial team on which of the stories that have been held over for possible inclusion will make the cut.

Look for official hiatus dates to show up in my Sunday post a week from today.

Below are the links I've found relating to writing which I want to share with my readers. If you have come across any interesting links recently, I'd certainly be interested in knowing about those as well!

Six More Time Management Tips for Writers

One of my most popular blog posts is an entry from last October titled "Eight Time Management Tips for Writers." With another half-year or so of experiences to fall back on, here are six more tips for writers who would like to find ways to improve their time usage.

1. Don't just have "a" goal, have "goals." My first tip last time was to have a goal, and that's a good starting spot. Without a goal and a way to measure progress towards your goal it's really hard to have a sense of how well things are going -- you can easily delude yourself either negatively ("Oh, I'm getting nothing accomplished" when you really are.) or "positively" ("I'm making fantastic progress" when, if you looked at it objectively, you might not be making good progress relative to where you hope to be. However, just having a single goal is a rather narrow way of looking at your writing, certainly if you're thinking of it in terms of a career (first, second, or third) but also even if you're thinking of it in terms of a hobby/avocation which you still want to approach seriously. Better is to have multiple goals and for some of them to be short-term and others to be long-term. How you define "short-term" and "long-term" is somewhat up to your own comfort level. Personally, I've liked having my short-term goals oriented around a month and my long-term goals oriented around a year. That doesn't mean I don't sometimes have to shift plans mid-month, but it's a place to start and gives a certain rhythm to things which I personally find appealing. As with any of these tips, don't be afraid to play around with different ways of implementing them and seeing which (if any) of those ways works for you.

Sunday Links & The Week in #storyeachnight: February 12, 2012 Edition

I'm still working on adjusting to my new blogging schedule of Monday, Thursday, Sunday after having done Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday for several months. It sort of feels weird only writing up one mid-week blog post. I'm going to give it a while, though, and see how I feel about it after a couple of months.

One routine I've picked up recently is reading a short story every day/night and tweeting about it. Nicole Cushing has been doing this on the #storyeachnight hashtag for quite a few months. Here are the stories I read this week along with the comments I made on them.


2/5 - "Exit Interview" by Lynne Heitman from BOSTON NOIR: Office/gender politics & a hostage situation.
2/6 - "Cellmate" by Theodore Sturgeon from an old paperback of E PLURIBUS UNICORN
2/7 - "Fever Dream" from THE VINTAGE BRADBURY: Child realizes a danger no one else sees. Some chilling aspects. But it also felt a bit dated and not just because it had a doctor making house calls. "Fever Dream" & last night's "Cellmate" were both late-40s Weird Tales stories. I felt that Sturgeon's held up better.
2/8 - "Night Nurse" by Harry Shannon from FAVORITE KILLS: A nightmarish trip to a hospital for the MC in this story.
2/9 - "Mrs. Hatcher's Evaluation" by James Van Pelt from 3/12 Asimov's. Fun story,very critical of modern education theory
2/10 - "The Secret of the City of Gold" by Ron Goulart from the 1-2/12 issue of F&SF. It featured series character Harry Challenge, seems to have been intended to evoke the feel of old (old) school pulp fiction. I think I tend to be more forgiving of originals than pastiches & this didn't strike me as a terribly amusing pastiche.
2/11 - "Scrap Dragon" by Naomi Kritzer from the 1-2/12 F&SF. A fairy tale or bedtime story with LOTS of..."editorial" suggestions by the "listener." Quite enjoyable; it put a smile on my face.

As I do every Sunday, I've gathered together links I've liked/gotten something out of from things I've read this week. Here are this week's links...

Using a Routine

I've talked a lot in the past about how having a routine (writing every day, blogging on specific days, etc.) seems to be a major factor in my ability to keep progressing towards my writing goals. Within those routines, though, I don't have smaller routines. For example, I don't always write in the same place, or at the same time of day, or for the same amount of time, etc. Probably the closest thing to another "routine" that I have is that I always do first drafts in Google Docs and then revise in Word. That, plus if I have trouble focusing, I'll put some instrumental music through headphones to help me avoid distractions.

Generally speaking, those things which I might call "micro-routines" haven't seemed like something I've really needed so far. But, as I've mentioned in the past, every writer works differently. So, I found it interesting to read Eric J. Krause's post on his own writing routine. This post focuses on the routine of an individual writing session -- how he breaks it up in half with a little break time in the middle, etc. He, too, points out that the specifics which work for him won't necessarily work for everyone and suggests some alternative ways of arranging your sessions.

Like I said, I haven't found a need to add that type of routine to my other writing routines so far. But if I reach a point where I'm having consistently frustrating writing sessions, I think I'll be likely to come back to this post and see what from it I might adapt for my own writing.

As with so many things I've discussed before, the most important thing here is to find what works for you and stick to it. That probably will mean taking a little piece of advice here and a little piece of advice there and so on. And that's just fine. There's no reason that your big picture writing habits should look much like anyone else's as long as you're making progress towards your goals.

What routines have you found that work for you?

A Juggling Act

Today handling my writing has felt like a real juggling act. I felt this way a bit once before, back around late-September, early-October. In brief, I’ve got so many short stories out on submission and so many new ones that I’m working on that my head is spinning. I had to sit down at one point and make myself some notes on what I was working on and prioritize things. Even after that, I felt like I was looking at quite a lot of things that were high priority!

I generally follow the dictum of “start at the top, work your way down” and also try to avoid having stories sitting around unsubmitted for any serious length of time. I’ve got 27 stories out on submission right now. That feels like a lot, to me. At least at the moment, it does. It also means that when I get a rejection in, it can be a bit of a struggle to find a market that I don’t already have something out to which would be appropriate for the story and which I want to submit to.

This led to me needing to do something embarrassing today.

Sunday Links: October 30th, 2011 Edition

I've been mentioning NaNoWriMo during each of these Sunday Link posts in October, now the time is almost at hand. I still have a bit of work I'd like to get done as prep work, but I have a reasonably good feeling about where I stand. Hopefully a week from today I'll still be feeling optimistic. Anyone who wants to be a writing buddy on the site and hasn't found me there yet can add me as a buddy via my NaNo site profile.

In addition to the good news I got earlier this week about my story being accepted as one of the winners for the October Kazka Press Flash Fiction contest I also heard today that my story "My Name is Imago Montoya..." finished in 8th place in the second Platform-Building Writers' Campaign challenge. Woo-hoo! Thanks to Saba from Of Thoughts and Words, Margo Kelly, and Janice Seagraves from Janice's Home for donating the prizes which I won and to Rachael Harrie and all the others who volunteered to coordinate the challenge.

Now for this week's links!

Eight Time Management Tips for Writers

Writing takes time. There's just no two ways around that. And most writers will have other activities and priorities vying for their time. It's a common complaint that someone wants to be a writer but can't find the time. There may be some cases where this is simply a excuse. Where there's the desire to say that a person wants to be a writer without putting any skin in the game. That's not what I'm looking to discuss here. That sort of thinking can come from a variety of sources but needs a totally different set of tools than the problem where someone is 100% genuine in their desire to find time to write but is struggling with putting that desire into practice.

With that in mind, here are eight tools that can be used to help writers manage their time:

Sunday Links: September 18, 2011 Edition

Time to revisit the past week. It's seen me dive into writing a novel in addition to continuing work on my short fiction. The upcoming week has me a bit concerned. I'm on a good roll with my Seinfeld Chain (up to 17 days as of last night) but the next five days I'm going to be in training for my day job nearly 12 hours a day when you include transit time. Will I end up using a Mulligan? I hope not.

I came across some great blog posts around the internet this week, and I'm happy to present them past the jump. I hope everyone had a good week and has a great week this coming week.

Striking a Balance

Along with my recent leap back into actively writing fiction, I've also been exploring the social media world as it relates to writers and writing. I've been on Facebook for quite a while now and also had a Twitter account which I mostly used to keep track of news relating to my beloved Columbus Blue Jackets. I even had a blog briefly a couple of years ago where I rambled about whatever came into my mind; I don't think anyone visited it except for maybe some Russian spamming sites. Recently, I've been following, liking, and blogging about writing like a man possessed.

Not long ago, Twitter told me that I had hit a limit for the number of accounts I could follow. I'd already been giving some thought to how much time I was spending talking about writing as opposed to actually doing writing. This was another reminder that I needed to make sure I was maintaining an appropriate balance.

But how do I know where that balance is? What would be some signs that I'd missed the mark? Here are three that come to mind: