A Time For Everything

😑

I have them but not really because it's Monday. More because it's gloomy and raining, because my Dallas Stars have lost nine out of their last eleven games, and because there are some changes going on at work.

In Texas, all rain is good, even if several inches of snow melted into the coffers. But it's been cloudy for days and I'm ready for a bit of sunshine.

The outcome of sport shouldn't really have an effect and I know this, but it still stinks.

The changes at work aren't bad, but the transition is nerve wracking for me. (Also remembering that "change" is one of my words for the year. :0))

* * * * *

I spent a lot of writing time this weekend revising the cookie book for re-submission. My goal is to have them done and the new chapter one sent in by Thursday mid-morning. Theoretically, I could send chapter one in now, but I want to make sure I have the thread of resulting tweaks as close to complete as possible as well--just in case she requests the whole immediately.

KETO meals are going well. We've tried a couple new recipes and I have chicken-stuffed cabbage enchiladas on the menu for this week.

The dog got walked Sunday. I completely forgot on Saturday. It's easier to remember on Sunday because she gets bathed on Sunday afternoons, so the walk is the last thing she does to get stinky before we hop in the shower.

As you can see, there's not much going on...just the usual. Two weeks from now I'll be on my way back from a little jaunt to Alabama...

Yep, DD and I are making our run to the Buc-cee's just east of Mobile. I've been saving up my trips.

Hope you had a good weekend. Catch you on Wednesday.

I'm still stuck on book seven of the Ten Rigs series. I have no idea why I'm stuck yet again or still-- I haven't decided which it truly is. But as I mentioned last Wednesday, there are plenty of other projects that need my attention and so...

I turned my attention to planning/plotting a new book. There's a possibility of a hockey anthology with some other authors from the conference, so I'm planning the book and writing the book. Even if the anthology itself doesn't come to fruition--I'll still have a new book to publish.

It feels good to be (slightly) more energetic and productive on the writing front.

Of course, this cold front is somewhat of a mood killer, but it's sunny today, so there's that.

The exercising twice a day continues on as well even though I was very bad last Sunday and again yesterday... But I've been holding steady weight-wise. As long as it's not going up, I'm fine for now.

I'm crossing things off my to-do list regularly and not too many new things are getting added, so the load is lightening just a little. WHEW!

So...back to work for me, crossing stuff off. Have a great rest of your week.

"Darn," you're thinking, right? Y'all finally got a break from my hockey obsession and here we are again.

I just want to express my disappointment in the San Jose Sharks--who I'm sure are way more disappointed in themselves than I truly am--but I digress.

The Sharks were supposed to win the third round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs and send the St. Louis Blues home laden with disappointment. The Blues, you remember, won over my Dallas Stars in the second round of said playoffs and sent my boys home laden with that disappointment.

Instead, the Blues are moving on to the Stanley Cup Finals, playing the Boston Bruins. I hate the Bruins and I hate the Blues this year, so I don't know who'd I'd prefer to win. Not that it matters since it's not the Stars, the Golden Knights, or the Penguins.

 Now back to whatever I was originally going to ramble on about... Um... No, seriously, blog topics are a crap shoot. Did I think of something and forget because I didn't make a note somewhere? Did something happen in the world that I have an opinion on? Is there anything exciting going on in my life that rates coverage? No, no, and no.

Let me roll the metaphorical dice and see what occurs to me...

Okay, so...

I used to think life was busy with kids and that once they'd all grown up and moved away, life would be less busy, but that's not the case. It's not a bad thing, but anyone who has reached a certain age (it's different for everyone, I think) knows that time starts to pass faster. I do think you have to be at least 50 years old, though, yeah?

One of our speakers at writers group this past weekend talked about business plans. Now, several years ago, I put one together. It wasn't nearly as detailed as this person's but it served its purpose at the time.

Something she said struck a chord and is something I'd heard or considered before, but didn't really put into practice. Fast forward to two and a half months ago when an opportunity to participate in an anthology was passed along to me. I wanted to do it, but with all the hockey going on, could I pull it off?

I had to consider the deadlines, the scope of the project, if I could even come up with characters and a plot line, and how many days I'd be out of commission to write in the early morning because of a late night of hockey. I spent a weekend on characters and plot before I joined. If I didn't have that, there was no point. Then I figured up how many days were available to me and how many of them would be writing days. After that, I calculated how many words a day I had to write.

One of the woman's points when drawing up the business plan was how many books a year do you plan to write and or publish. You've obviously got to factor in your real life (day job, children, travel, etc) as well as how fast a writer are you.

It was a concept I'd considered previously but didn't do much with it, but I probably won't have the two books I wanted to publish out in the world this year. I will have the anthology I just mentioned and possibly another little volume of very short "coffee reads"--they're short enough to read while consuming a single cup of coffee--but not the two longer books I have despite both of them being half written.

The fact that they're both half-written and I can't seem to get them done maybe speaks to other issues. I'm trying to sort those...

Anyway. I need to try the approach of deciding on how many books to publish, how long they're going to be, plot and plan them, set deadlines maybe, sort daily word counts, and then--as Nike says--JUST DO IT.

Yeah, some of that ain't so easy. The plotting gets me every time.

Anyway, back to work. Have a great rest of your week.

Life is meh at the moment. Lots of not great stuff going on. The weather has been kinda dreary too which isn't helping. Any one crappy thing going on probably wouldn't be so bad, but all the things piled on top of or next to each other isn't fun. So yeah, life is just meh.

My other main life motto, aside from A Time for Everything, is "this too shall pass."

The sun will return in a day or two.

And all the other things plaguing me will either get better on their own or I'll have to take some action and move on.

In the meantime, it is Friday, so I have the weekend to chill out and I have hockey to watch.

Have a great weekend.

Once I leave work, I feel like I'm on the clock--more than I do during the day at work.

By the time I get home, I have three hours to cook, eat, watch tv with DH if that's what we do, wash dishes, do whatever else I might want/need to get done, and be in bed to read for a while and turn out the lights by 8:30--all in order to get up early enough to go to the gym.

Any night I might want to watch a hockey game means staying up way past my bed time and throwing the following day off track.

I've been thinking about going to the gym in the evenings instead, for a couple of reasons...

1) to switch things up and surprise my body. I've been going to the gym really early for going on two years now. My body might like a change of pace.

2) I might like a change of pace.

3) I can watch/listen to hockey games at the gym.

4) I can sleep later and not have to get up when it's super cold--not really an issue until we cycle around till next winter, but it's a consideration.

5) Summer's coming and it's going to light out and just generally "day time" for longer and I might want to enjoy that.

I'll keep pondering this question for a bit...

Anyway, it's Friday, so the weekend is upon us. Have a great one!!

I've been struggling again with this whole publishing journey.


I know all the best practices from a money-making stand point. But what's best for me?

Sure, I'd love to have a steady income stream in order to pay off debt and fix up the house and leave something to my kids. Unfortunately, publishing on the type of schedule that maximizes my money-making potential is stressing me out. All my friends are very encouraging. "You can do it, Jen." "I have every confidence in you, Jen."

And it's not that I don't think I can--eventually. I just can't yet. I've still got some learning to do.

On one of the Facebook groups to which I belong, someone shared a blog post from an author who I created a series bible for last year. I enjoyed all her books tremendously. But, as it turns out, this poor woman suffers with depression and really struggled to meet the deadline of the publisher she signed a contract with.

She talked about pinpointing when the writing was fun for her, i.e. not a chore, when she was most productive. She talked about what it means to be a writer. What "THEY" say... and what the realities are.

The fact is, we're all different. We all have a personal ecosystem going inside of us which includes not only physical health, but mental health, among other things. Each writer gets to decide for him- or herself what their writing life looks like in order to balance that ecosystem and get out of writing what they want or need from it.

I love writing and I don't think I'll ever stop, even if it ends up just be fan fiction. But I also think I can make money with my writing. So I want to try, but I have to keep the process realistic for my abilities and needs at any given time. Do I think in the future I can write faster and get where I want to be in terms of output? Yes, I do. But just like getting the physical body in shape, getting your writing abilities in shape takes time and effort as well.

So, with yet another timely "tale from the trench," I'm gonna do need/what I want to do to have fun on this journey.

My publishing journey is just that...mine. I've been of a mindset to publish the first three or four books in June as a sort of birthday present to myself. Disappointingly, I don't think that's going to happen.

Two things are at play and both are a subset of my friend and yours: TIME.

First--

If I want to publish my books on or around my birthday, I have five weeks from last Friday to ensure books one, two, and three are ready to go. That includes all final revisions based on comments from my editor, as well as having all file formats ready to upload, and having my website capable of processing payments. Those are just off the top of my head. There are probably a few more things I could come up with.

Twenty-eight days after that, all that same stuff for book four needs to be in place and same for book five twenty-eight days after that.

I'm struggling to get book six written (that plot issue I mentioned last Wednesday) so that it can go to the editor at the end of June.

The best recipe for success with indie publishing is to be able to publish something new every twenty-eight days for five or six months. I don't have enough "stock" yet. I'm in a better position than a lot of debut authors, especially ones that aren't part of any sort of writers group and don't get the benefit of learning from others paving the way. I could go forth with what I have and everything would work out fine. I know this. I'd still need to postpone at least a month though.

But I just don't feel like I'd be starting out on as firm a foot as I would like.

Second--

If I worked eight hour days just at this writing/publishing gig, I could probably get everything done and ready. But I can't work eight hour days just at this writing/publishing gig. I have a day job and a life. There might be a trip to Seattle in my near future before Sonshine's ship deploys for real. Fireworks season is also around the corner. Two of them actually--the State of Texas has added several and one of them falls over Memorial Day.

Plus if I want to work on my plotting skills, I need to read books or take workshops, and that requires time too.

I've also mentioned how I don't want to be a slave to the writing either. I know other writers who, it seems, are always chained to a deadline and a keyboard. They're grumpy and tired and have little fun.

Since it is my journey, I get to decide when to pull the trigger. I thought of waiting a whole 'nother year and doing it to celebrate my FIFTIETH birthday. I don't necessarily want to wait that long, but it's not off the table.

Seems like I have some serious thinking to do and some important decisions to make.

I'll keep you posted.

Hope you had a great weekend.

So I've got a lot of work adventuring ahead of me, but I don't want to become: "All writing and no play, makes Jen a dull/stressed/unhappy/cranky girl."

I've met too many authors like that and I never wanted to be one of them.

Since this "I'm going to indie publish my damn books" bug hit me about a month and a half ago, I've been going at various tasks pretty steadily.

I stopped listening to music in the car, because I was using the time to work out plot puzzles or character arcs in those ten/fifteen minutes between home and work.

I haven't gone in search of any other TV shows because I didn't want to get sucked in and get lured into a binge-watching frenzy.

I have re-read the same fan fics over and over because I know what happens and I won't be tempted into the reading rabbit hole.

But not partaking of the things I enjoy for the next nine months/two years in the name of writing books isn't feasible. Nor is it healthy. Living life informs an authors writing.

I've been a pretty happy and healthy person over the last couple of months and I'd like to stay that way. Which means another item on the grand to do list is to start enjoying the other things in life:

• going outside, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine (to be fair, I'm pretty good about this)
• walking the dog--I finally got a no-pull harness for my sweet Rayna, so now we can both get some exercize (more exercise more me, just any exercise at all for her)
• reading stuff I haven't already read
• working on my cross stitch again
• coloring--remember I got coloring books and markers for my anniversary :)
• adding another TV show (or two) to my repertoire--the new TV season is ramping up, so I can pick one of those shows I started last year, which only air one ep per week and start re-watching one of my other faves (I've seen that show three times already, I know what's going to happen)...so any binging tendencies are negated

Granted, this isn't world-travel/new-experiences kind of living life, but it's a start.

Small steps!