Category Archives: Thought

To-do list

12 Friday Jul 2019

Posted by in Cover design, Self-publishing, Thought

≈ 11 Comments

I created a To-Do list this morning with well over 80 items on it. Not a single one of those items was “create a to-do list”.

Also, not a single one of those items was “spend twenty minutes browsing to-do list apps on the app store, hoping to find one that’s better than plain text before giving up in frustration.” If you’ve got a recommendation for a to-do list app, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Actually, my to-do list is kind of a work of art. But it does not include “write a blog post,” so I’m going to make this quick.

Pennsylvania continues to be lovely but I am spending far too much time sitting on the guest bed banging away on my computer. I’m taking advantage of the internet to try to get lots of internet-related business tasks done — updating my mailing list software, setting up an automation sequence, working on the websites, that kind of thing. I’d rather be outside playing with my niece and the dogs, but honestly, it’s about time I took the work side of life a little more seriously.

Speaking of which… a more serious cover.

book cover for A Gift of Thought
Guys in stock photos never shave.

Dropout

03 Friday May 2013

Posted by in A Gift of Time, Personal, Thought, Writing

≈ 3 Comments

Right about now, minus one year, I dropped out of graduate school. If I’d stayed, and stayed on track, I’d be graduating soon, maybe even this weekend. I’m trying to decide if I have regrets. I sort of think the fact that I’d rather go drink a glass of wine and watch Doctor Who then sit with this feeling means that I do, at least a few.

Ostensibly, I dropped out of school to become a writer. Really, I quit because it was increasingly clear to me that I wasn’t healthy enough to be the person on the professional side of the counseling relationship. If it hadn’t been such an incredibly difficult year, filled with loss and pain, I think I would have managed, but in the long run, I don’t think it would have been good for me. The more into it I got, the more I felt like I was wearing a mask and that the mask was part of the job description.

I’m not sure being a writer is going to work out for me either, though. I know how to earn a living as a writer: write fast, write what you think people want to read, write and let go. Write to sell, basically, and produce as much as possible as quickly as possible. It’s basic math. Instead I’ve spent the past year kicking around A Gift of Time, writing and revising and thinking and revising some more and thinking some more. There is no possible way to become a successful writer if I spend a year working on one project and at the end of the year toss everything and start over. (Oh, by the way, I started Time over again this week. Ha. Back to the beginning.)

On the other hand, I felt really pleased to be starting Time over. Thought — well, I had promised to deliver Thought by June 2012 and so I did. And I love parts of it, just the way I love parts of Time. But I also think that it’s not nearly as good a book as I’m capable of. I learned a lot writing it. I worked on action scenes and pace, movement from place to place, descriptions, dramatic tension. But it was never all that clear whose story it was: Dillon’s or Sylvie’s or Lucas’s. I think Lucas is a better character in my head than he is on the page, and I wish I’d had sections in his POV to get him down better. Honestly, Lucas is probably the truly most important character — he’s the one who has the clearest goals — and he’s not nearly as good as he ought to be. The ending should have been his ending, as much as Dillon’s and Sylvie’s and it just wasn’t.

I could persevere with Time. I’ve been doing that for six months. I’m actually at 35,000 words, which is a solid chunk of book. And if I was going to earn a living as a writer, that’s probably what I ought to do: write, write, write, finish it off, accept the fact that it’s not as good as it could be, and move on. But I just can’t do it. I’d rather not earn my living as a writer, but love what I’m writing. Love and be proud of. I want to someday re-read Time and think, ‘oh, I amuse myself’ with a cheerful glow of contentment, the way I do when I re-read some of my best fanfics. That means starting over. That means being profoundly impractical about the hour-per-product investment of time.

I don’t know that dropping out of graduate school was impractical — maybe not nearly as impractical as quitting my editing job was in the first place. But a year later, I don’t seem to have figured out anything at all about my life and how I intend to make it work. Except maybe that doing work that I’m proud of and that I love is more important to me than my long-term retirement planning? Which is a nice thought, of course, but it’s not going to pay the mortgage when I run out of savings.

Meanwhile…back to Time. The nicest thing about starting over is that after a year with these characters, I really know them. I spent six months fighting Natalya’s propensity to be sarcastic and now I’ve given up. She’s the kind of sarcastic person who can usually keep her mouth shut, which is why Akira thinks she’s so serene and sweet, but Akira doesn’t know her insides the way I do.

A Gift of Thought

12 Sunday Aug 2012

Posted by in Self-publishing, Thought

≈ 2 Comments

A Gift of Thought is free today on Amazon (and for the next couple of days, too). That’s because I’m at GeekGirlCon in Seattle. I’d create a link, but I’m on my iPad and typing is too hard, plus I haven’t had any coffee yet, so the chance that the link would go sadly awry is high. But it’s been fascinating. I’ve never been to a convention before, rather than a conference, and maybe this falls somewhere in between. But there are loads of people in costumes wandering around amidst discussions of misogyny and gender and online space and community. I’ve always thought web design conferences were an improvement over code conferences and this is definitely the step up from that. I’m a little nervous that my presentation is too practical, not philosophical, but c’est la vie, it’s way too late to worry about that now. Pam says I need to go slower so people have time to write down the links, so I’m still trying to figure out how to do that. I might have to cut something. Anyway, time to find some caffeine — but download Thought if you haven’t and tell your friends, if they’re the type to enjoy quirky ghost stories!

Wishing for a marketing department

09 Saturday Jun 2012

Posted by in Self-publishing, Thought, Writing

≈ Comments Off on Wishing for a marketing department

Book’s done, proofed, ready to go — all I need to do now is write a blurb that works. It is unbelievably hard. I think I’m going to be tweaking this blurb for the next three months. Should it start with Dillon? The book does. Or Sylvie, the way my current blurb has? Including both of them in the blurb without  spoilers has so far been completely beyond me. As I yearn for a marketing department, I have to remind myself that back when I did work with a marketing department, I almost always preferred to write the sales copy myself. And in this case, I’m definitely best qualified to do the job. I’m tempted to send out emails to all the people who’ve already read it, though, and say, ‘Um, what’s the book about?’ just to see what they say.

…And I think I just published it. Wow, Amazon has made it easy. No more Mobipocket creator, meta data, building a table of contents — you upload the Word doc, they turn it into a book for you. Not that I’ve seen the book yet. It’s still publishing. But by tomorrow morning, I bet it’ll be up there.

We used to hit a big gong to celebrate sending a book to the printer. Everyone in the company stood up in their cubicles and cheered the triumphant team that had just achieved a little miracle. Somehow hitting Save just doesn’t have the same oomph. I think I’ll go set off some fireworks.