Tuesday, May 22, 2012

How Do You Do It All?

We all have a million things going on in our lives that butt in on our writing time. Work, family, chores, blogging and even time we spend trying to "build a platform" as a writer. Personally, when my writing is going great it means I'm not blogging at all and my house is a mess.  


Lately, both of my blogs heave gone black for the most part. I even started thinking about letting my book review blog go. Seriously, I cannot believe I was even considering it. My book blog is something I love but the time it takes to read and review books has been taking a back seat to my writing time. 


The voice in my head is telling me I have to give my entire focus to my writing and let the blog go. Another part reminded me that there are writers just as busy or busier than me who somehow do it. So, how? 


That's when I got the bright idea to actually schedule out my days - at least 1 whole week - to see where does my time actually go and when could I reclaim time for writing and blogging. 


I put in my workout times, commuting, work hours, my Saturday trip to the Farmer's Market, etc. What I discovered is that I have more time than I thought and I'd been wasting it by not realizing how all that time could add up. 


I've now plugged in blogging and writing time during lunch and after dinner. I even scheduled time with my husband. That might sound weird, but I want to give it 2 weeks or so of following a hardcore schedule and see what I can accomplish. So, I've warned the husband that for now we have specific scheduled times for our hikes, movies, etc and that he has to work around my schedule. 


We'll see how that works. :) 


In the meantime, I've set a few goals for my book blog. If I can't hit them in the next 1-2 months then I'm going to say goodbye to it being anything other than a few times a month review post. 


Priorities. Yep. 


So, have you ever plotted out all of our "stuff" to find out where you really spend your time and where you could add in writing time? I think it was a really helpful exercise and I highly recommend it. I think you'll be surprised by what you find. 


Just sit down with a day planner or online calendar and block out EVERYTHING. Driving time, dinner, lunch, laundry. Set times for everything and then see if you can keep up with it for a week. Then look at how it might have helped your writing production. Let me know how it goes! 

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Congratulations Golden Heart Finalist Terri Osburn!


Every year Romance Writer's of America (RWA) announces the finalists in its RITA and Golden Heart contests. This year I'm insanely excited to be able to squee over my friend and writing mate Terri Osburn being nominated for a Golden Heart in the Single Title Contemporary Romance category!

If you aren't aware of these contests, check out the RWA link here.

Basically the RITA is like the Oscars of the Romance Book world for published authors and the Golden Heart is for unpublished authors. It's an amazing honor to be nominated and I'm so proud of Terri!

Please go check out Terri's blog to wish her well and check out a snippet of her Golden Heart Nominated story Meant to Be!

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

A Few Excellent Writing Blog Posts

Lately I've run across some really great blog posts I thought I'd share:

How to Return to Writing After a Long Break by Nathan Bransford (Oh yes, this one was obviously very useful to me!)

Thank you for (not) asking by Bria Quinlan (Fantastic blog post I wish every writer would read)

Math For Authors by Deryn Collier