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.

"Great-Uncle's Visit" - A One Sentence Story

Twitter is a heck of a lot of fun sometimes. I know a lot of really cool writers there and though I haven't spent as much time keeping up on things the past week or two as I usually do, I somehow managed to not quite entirely miss out on the #1ss hashtag conversation which popped up last week. 1ss stands for "One Sentence Story" and began with Alex Shvartsman finding a sentence unbearably long when he was critiquing a piece by Anatoly Belilovsky. That sentence spawned a conversation which spawned a challenge and -- voila -- the #1ss hashtag! Writers were challenged to create the most interesting story consisting solely of one sentence.

M. Bennardo has kindly put together a list of all the resulting stories which were made publicly accessible for everyone's reading pleasure.

As far as my attempt, it is below.

Originally I had thought about trying to add a massive Degree of Difficulty aspect to mine by having the first word start with "A", the second with "B" and so on with repetition (or reversal if I wanted the real challenge of putting two "Z" words back-to-back) until done. So, that story might have started "After being certain David escaped from Galt House..." But my attempts at that proved too contrived and I abandoned that idea for the one which turned into the following story. According to Google Docs, it's 334 words long. (Good luck diagramming this sentence!)

Without further ado, let's slip back in time a bit and eavesdrop while a boy patiently listens an elderly relative during...

Great-Uncle's Visit

These things which we have discussed happened far in the distant past, back beyond your father’s day and his father’s day and that of his father’s father, back so far that when anyone tells these stories today they always begin the telling with “This legend” or “This myth” or “This fairy tale” but as I have told you such descriptions are themselves the myths, themselves the fairy tale, as all of these happenings were real and all of these things I spoke of are as real as you are -- as real as I am, even -- and should not be consigned to the category of stories with which to amuse; rather, these stories should be ones to catch the breath and prickle the skin and worry the soul for they are the real history of our world and the things which walk among us all and if the power of these creatures pales somewhat in light of modern technology, a position which I hope you will pardon me if I find somewhat lacking since this newfangled television which you are always watching with its Howdy Doody and its Mickey Mouse Club and its Davy Crockett is not as wonderous as a djinn (though the real Crockett was indeed a fearsome man and I know full well that he would understand the import of these histories which I am sharing with you) and neither are the most modern firearms any more deadly than a ravening pack of ghouls or ogres but even were I to concede that these creatures are no longer the most powerful forces on Earth that would not be the same as to say that they were powerless for, indeed, nothing could be further from the truth and I speak not just from a theoretical perspective but from one which is all too personal and so I ask you for the last time, boy, would you please keep that damnable pizza away from me -- the garlic gives me hives!

May #writemotivation Wrap-Up and My June Goals

I'd say something about this having been another challenging week for me but, well, that would feel a bit redundant -- haven't they all of late? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? Eh... Maybe.

I've managed to keep my Daily Writing Chain alive throughout the weekend through sheer stubbornness combined with a gentle nudge from my wife. I really think I would've declared Saturday my first "mulligan" day if she hadn't encouraged me to put the effort in to getting words down for the day. I really appreciate her willingness to encourage me in this sometimes-crazy-seeming activity.

This will be my final #writemotivation check-in post for May. I've done a poor job of keeping in touch with my hashtag cohorts but hope that it's been a good month for all of them and I'll look forward to July when -- if all goes well -- I'll be more active.

Without any further ado, here's the status on my May goals:

1) Except for a Memorial Day Weekend blogging hiatus, keep all my writing routines -- Daily Writing Chain (aka Seinfeld Chain), blogging schedule, etc. - As I mentioned above, I've done this. Just barely some days, but I've done it.

2) Write and submit one or more short stories for the first time. - Everything is as it was last week. I've completed the "write" portion. The "submit" portion looks shakier by the day, though if I can dedicate two hours or so to taking a final pass through a story, I should be able to meet that goal.

3) Make revisions to my non-fiction project based on feedback and my own editing of it. - Also where it was last week, no editing has started. However, I did a bit of tangentially-related work last week, writing some new words which will probably go into the final draft of the project.

4) Write 7,500 words of new fiction. (REVISED GOAL: Write an additional 2,500 words of fiction between 5/21 and the end of the month.) - 3,138 words of fiction written in the past week gets me to a total of 11,701 for the month, meeting both the original and revised goals

5) On 5/31, have two non-time-sensitive blog posts written and ready for future use on a day when I'm not able to post something "new." - This one should be fine. I have a new post for 5/31 partially completed.

6) Launch at least one new eBook - Done. "Levels of Trust" is live on Amazon.

Before we close the books on the goals for May, I want to define my June goals. And here they are:

My First Podcast! "The Morandini Genie" is Live at Cast of Wonders

I just had the fantastic experience of listening to someone else (Graeme Dunlop, to be precise) read one of my stories aloud. "The Morandini Genie" is today's entry from the Cast of Wonders podcast site. I'm very impressed with the presentation. The art on the webpage is neat and Dunlop did a fantastic job of characterizing and dramatizing the piece.

Longtime readers of my blog may recall that this story was originally the first entry in my (very short lived) "Call and Response Flash Fiction" contest/challenge where I opened the floor to readers to provide prompts for me to write a flash fiction based upon. I would pick my favorite, award the winner $5, and then write a story based on the prompt. David Powers King was the first winner of the contest with his prompt:

"A child finds a candlestick in the gutter on her way home from school."

David was thrilled with the story which I came up with from his prompt and I was very pleased when the Cast of Wonders folks said that they enjoyed it, too, and wanted to run it as a podcast.

And I've also learned something from my first podcast experience -- if you're doing a podcast with potentially-unfamiliar names, it might be good to make sure the pronunciation is clear to the podcaster! Graeme's intro mentions different potential ways of pronouncing "Morandini" depending on if you're from the UK, US, or Australia. The rhyming nature of the title provided the needed hint. Alas, I didn't rhyme "Jeter" (as in "Derek Jeter") with anything, so his name comes out rhyming with "sitter" rather than "Peter." It didn't disrupt my enjoyment of the piece, and -- like I said -- a good lesson learned! After all, I hope to have more podcasts in my future.

I hope that you enjoy listening to the piece if you click over. It's under ten minutes and, hey, here in the US it's a long weekend so finding a spare ten minutes shouldn't be too hard.

Enjoy the weekend and if you are traveling, be safe.

Microfiction Live on trapeze magazine

The micro-fiction accepted last week by trapeze magazine is live on their site today. I've only written one micro-fiction/twitter-length fiction since returning to writing last year. (The one which ran on Nanoism last year was originally written several years ago.)

"Levels of Trust" eBook Short Story Released

I mentioned previously that I'm looking to release one eBook per month between now and the end of the year. My May eBook release is a 2,900 word crime thriller short story titled "Levels of Trust." Here's a brief excerpt:

I went to the kitchen and fixed myself a drink. When that one was gone, I fixed another.

My phone — not Kurodi's — rang. "Unknown Caller" the display said. That was a bloody lie. I knew who was calling.

"Hello," I answered.

"Good evening. Do you have news for me?" Just hearing Evan Martel's voice made my pulse race.

"Yes. We're on for Saturday."

"Well done, Lawrence."

"Look, Evan, I've done my part. How about you don't drag this out. You know, for old time's sake?"

The son of a bitch laughed. "You're the one who wanted to put old times behind you, chum. Make sure things go off without a hitch Saturday. You'll get what you're owed afterwards." He hung up.

I set the phone down and noticed that my hands were trembling. There were a couple of inches of liquid left in my glass. I finished it off quickly, trying to chase away the sound of my old boss's voice.

I'd heard his voice twice now since leaving Durban and leaving his employ. The first time was two days ago, when he called to tell me about the job he had for me to do, using Kurodi's gang to cripple another bunch of crooks without getting his own hands dirty. I'd told him to sod off, that I didn't owe him a damn thing after how the last job went down. Being left a widower, I told him, was payment in full. I expected him to remind me that it hadn't been his fault she'd died; in fact, he might have tried to argue that it was my fault. That I was the one who'd gotten sloppy and left a trail.

But he didn't make that argument. "It was a shame that Elizabeth died like that," he'd said, his voice unctuous. "It seems to me that the only thing worse than losing a partner would be losing a child."

And here's the cover art.

Monday May 21st #writemotivation Check-In

Like I said in my Sunday Links post, the month has flown by for me. There's been a ton of great writing news, which is awesome, though I feel like I've been running short of time to do a lot of new writing work in the last several days. I did do critiques on about 20,000 words of fiction not too long ago and both of the people that I sent notes back to seemed to find them useful. So, that's been good. But since finishing a new story last Monday I've only made a small amount of progress on one of my ongoing fiction projects. I've still been writing every day, one way or the other, but I'm beginning to get a slightly "itchy" feeling about not having made much headway on fiction for almost a week.

And, on the whole, I feel like that's a good thing. It certainly could be a bad thing if I was letting it turn into negative self-talk or otherwise letting it get me down. But I think of it the same way that I hear some people talk about feeling antsy if they haven't exercised recently. It means that my brain is expecting me to be doing this thing and is reminding me that I really should spend some time on it soon! And since this "thing" is something that I really, really want to continue to make progress on, I'm not going to complain about that.

I'm going to do one thing, though, to give myself a bit of an extra nudge. I've already well surpassed my monthly fiction writing goal (as I'll discuss further below) but I want to take the last 1/3rd of May and aim to add an additional 1/3rd to my goal word count. So another 2500 words of fiction for May for me. There's no reason this should be hard, but it will be another little carrot out there to keep striving towards.

With this being Monday, it's time to update my goal status for the month for #writemotivation. Next Monday (or thereabouts) I'll have a final wrap-up for the month and also define my June goals.

1) Except for a Memorial Day Weekend blogging hiatus, keep all my writing routines -- Daily Writing Chain (aka Seinfeld Chain), blogging schedule, etc. - This has been going just fine. There've been some days recently when I've done close to the minimum 500 words for my Daily Writing Chain, but that's why I keep the number at that (relatively) easy target. The days I need to be able to have lots of time for other things, I do.

2) Write and submit one or more short stories for the first time. - I've completed two new stories this month, though neither has been submitted yet. There's a slim chance, I suppose, that I'll miss the "submit" portion of this goal as both the two I've completed are off with beta readers. If that happens, it happens, though I'll certainly keep the goal in mind as I plan the rest of my work for the month.

3) Make revisions to my non-fiction project based on feedback and my own editing of it. - I received feedback on this but haven't started on revisions yet.

4) Write 7,500 words of new fiction. - Even with several days recently with little or no fiction writing I'm at 8,563 for the month. If I meet my "bonus" goal above of another 2,500 words I'll be over 11,000 for the month.

5) On 5/31, have two non-time-sensitive blog posts written and ready for future use on a day when I'm not able to post something "new." - This one should be fine, unless I have to use one of my two reserved items for 5/31 itself.

6) Launch at least one new eBook - Earlier this week, I thought it was a bit less likely that I'd do one this month. However, there's a short story that's a reasonable length for a standalone $0.99 short which might be a good candidate for ePublication. It's a mystery/crime story which, on the one hand, means that it doesn't "fit" with my first ePub in terms of being a natural followup in the same genre. On the other hand, that means there's a dearth of good short fiction markets for it. I like this story quite a bit but couldn't find anywhere that I'd want to send it. I'm going to sleep on it for a day or two more, but I might go ahead and... if you'll pardon the saying... pull the trigger on making this one my May eBook.

Finally, an additional piece of news. As you may have seen, I've had an absolutely phenomenal run of sales recently to various publications. This news isn't a "sale" per se since no money is involved, but the one and only micro-fiction (Twitter-length story) in my inventory has been accepted by trapeze magazine and will be run on their site in the near future. I generally don't submit to non-paying venues but there are only a handful of paying venues for micro-fiction. Trapeze is run by Stephen Ramey, and I'm glad that he wanted to publish it on the site. As always, I'll let everyone know when it's available to read.

#writemotivation folks and others, have a fantastic week and be sure to be safe if you're traveling over Memorial Day weekend!