Tag: change of plans

Writing–Sick Days

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I came home early from work last week due to a blizzard making work in the transportation business slower than Wile E. Coyote stuck in puddle of glue. It was a good thing, too, because it was that day that a cold crushed me like a boulder from a cliff.

For the next two days, I might have gone to my day job, but writing did not get done. I could function and didn’t feel anywhere near as bad as I did the first day, but I still felt pretty yucky. And when it came to writing, I just didn’t have the strength.

Considering I have enough trouble getting any writing done on a good day because I’m such an ace procrastinator, getting sick put a major cramp in my style. The dribble of productivity I’ve experienced since getting employed dried up to a desert and then the tumble weeds of guilt started to blow in.

I’ve got a lot to do this month. I can see it written out on my Whiteboard of To Do. There’s some serious work in there. And I took three days off for illness. There’s some conflict there. On the one hand, I was well enough to go to one job, so I should have been able to go to the other, so to speak. On the other hand, it was the going to the first job that wore me out for the second job. It’s important to rest when you’re sick and with a 6:15am wake-up call, my head was hitting the pillow really early.

It doesn’t matter. I feel like a slacker. If I take a day off from writing that’s not scheduled (oh yes, I schedule my days off), then it causes me guilt and pain. Even if the excuse is a good one, like I’m so sick I can’t think, I still feel guilty. And the unscheduled break throws me off my game.

Now I’m faced with playing catch up and considering I started the month unsure of what to work on first (aside from The World (Saving) Series revisions), I’m even more lost and therefore, feel like I’m even farther behind.

I’m in desperate need of a game plan.

And some cough drops.

Writing–Writing with a Day Job

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

Last week acquired a day job. I started working on Monday.

While I’m grateful for the regular income soon to be filling my bank account (before I send it right back out to pay bills), this full-time position brings forth a possible complication, namely, time to write. It’s too early now to judge on how big of an impact this job will have on my schedule. I’m still adjusting to the idea of getting up at 6:30 every morning. Also, I’m just working on revisions for The World (Saving) Series and so far none of them have been very extensive. Doing only one chapter a night, they haven’t really been very plentiful either. But I know some big ones are coming, heavy on the rewrites.

Next month I’ll be doing short story revisions/rewrites on top of the novel revisions. The month after that, I’ll be writing a new short story.

It’s going to be interesting, and I imagine frustrating as well, to see how I will be able to manage my time and rearrange my world in order to accommodate 8 1/2, 9 hours of my day now devoted to something other than playing Facebook games, blathering on Twitter, and, oh yeah, maybe getting some actual writing done.

I know that in order for this to work, I’m going to have to treat it like having two jobs. Sure, I can cram a lot of stuff in on the weekend. I’m already doing my blog posts for two blogs then and the weekends are usually when I make my greatest strides in getting writing projects accomplished (I have no idea why that is; you’d think it’d be the other way around, not doing as much writing on the weekends, but there you go). But for five days a week, I’m going to have to really get serious about time management, take no excuses, shun the distractions, and get something done. Progress must be made every day or I’ll be getting nowhere.

I’ve come too far to have everything suddenly come grinding to a halt just because now I’m spending my day earning money in order to support this career that I really want to have and really want to make work, but now I’m too tired to do it and don’t have the time. I definitely cannot succumb to those excuses if I want to be successful.

And I really want to be successful.

It’s going to be a challenge, but I’m going to do it. I really have no other choice.

It’s a good thing I don’t have a social life. It’d suffer terribly because of this.

Plans for 31

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

On Wednesday, I’ll be turning 31 (or as I prefer to say, 30 bonus year because it sounds less dull). I don’t have big plans to celebrate my birthday. First of all, it’s on a Wednesday and Wednesdays are rarely good for rockin’ parties. Secondly, by this point after the holidays, people are tired of celebrating.

Lastly, it’s supposed to be really cold this week. Nothing kills a partying mood like the potential for sub-zero windchills and frostbite just going out for dinner.

Even though I don’t have grand plans for my birthday, I do have plans for being 31. I had plans for being 30 and I admit, most of them fell through. I had really high hopes for being 30, too. I’d been looking forward to it for years. Yet, despite all the high hopes and goals and plans and trying, being 30 wasn’t as great as it should have been. Actually, it was pretty disappointing.

But, with my birthday looming, the disappoints of being 30 fade in the light of the freshness of turning 31. I’ve got new plans, new hopes, and an unblemished optimism.

31 is going to be great like 30 wasn’t.

I plan on selling a few more stories this year. I plan on getting a novel ready to submit. I plan on fixing my finances. I plan on getting out and socializing more. I plan to continue to work on getting healthy. I plan on having a good time. I plan on improving my existence.

These plans actually don’t vary much from the ones I had for 30. They’re also not all of the plans I have for 31. As open as I’d like to be with this blog, some things are just too personal to mention. But even so, they could easily fall into the categories of either having a good time and/or improving my existence.

At the very least, I hit the high points.

Okay, so most people wouldn’t think my plans are very big. I’m not trying to run fifty marathons in fifty states or visit every baseball park in a season. Hell, I’m not even trying to skydive, rock climb, or go to Vegas. And I’m sure a few people would think there are some plans missing from my 31 To Do List. You know, like find a man or a “real” job or lose all the weight that offends other people’s delicate sensibilities.

In my defense, the plans don’t have to be big for me to be happy. So long as those plans are in line with what I really want and I make them happen, then that’s what counts. Maybe one year I’ll make an attempt to visit all of the ballparks in a single season, but this year is not the year.

This year can’t even be the year to think about it.

This year is the the year to get my house in order so next year I can think about those things.

As for the standard plans that most people make in high school and achieve in their twenties that I haven’t gotten around to yet, this year isn’t going to be the year I get around to those either. That’s not to say I’m not open to meeting someone or losing a few pounds while I work on being healthy. I plan on getting a “real” job just to help my financial situation, but I already have a real job, writing. But to be honest, I’ve just never been good at the traditional plans. If I were, then I’d already have the college degree, the career, the husband, the 2.5 kids, the house, the debt, and judging by the other people I know my age, a pending divorce, if not a finalized one.

I do better with the less-than-traditional plans and to a certain extent, I’m stellar without a plan at all.

My plans for 31 have been made and like with the plans I made for 30, I’m going to try to follow through with them.

Unlike 30, though, I’m going to put a lot more effort into 31.

Writing–A Change in Plans

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

Submitting my short stories is always a stressful activity to me. Not so much the actual submitting, but the finding of ezines, magazines, and anthologies to submit to is stressful for me. I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now and I have concluded that I’m just terrible at it.

I don’t think I’m a very good judge of my own work in terms of establishing that it’s a good fit for a publication. I typically teeter on the fence of decision for a bit before finally falling to the side of NO. Rarely do I hit on a publication that just screams PERFECT at me so loudly that I cannot deny it (we’ll just never mind the inevitable rejection). It’s when I get to the end of my futile search empty-handed that I start to wonder if the story I’ve written is just impossible to publish because it doesn’t fit anywhere. And then I feel like I’m just spinning my wheels and not getting anywhere in my writing career. This torture has made researching publications my least favorite part of being a writer.

After my latest round of torture, I decided that I needed to change my plan.

My usual tactic was to hit up Duotrope as soon as I had a story (or two or three) ready to submit, paw through the listings looking for a fit, and get incredibly discouraged if I couldn’t find something so I could submit the story that day.

My revised plan will be a little less stressful, a little more laid back, but hopefully (in the long run, at least) be more productive. I’ll keep a list of stories that are ready to go. I’ll hit up Duotrope once a week. If I find something, great. If not, there’s always next week. Meanwhile, I can continue to add to my ready list and not feel entirely like I’m failing.

This less-pressure method might work for me. It might not. But I’ve got to try something new because the old method isn’t working for me. And I’ve got to be more willing to acccept that something isn’t working and come up with a new game plan.

I’m a bit of goat when it comes to insisting on doing things the hard way.

As NaNoWriMo is done for me for yet another year, I propose to introduce a new Writing Wednesday feature to help keep me publicly accountable for my short stories. It will account for the number of stories I have done, the stories I have out, and any acceptances or rejections I get for the week, on the occasion that I get them (those are few and far between most of the time, but rejections are more likely than acceptances).

Stories by the Numbers

Ready: 3
Submitted: 3
Rejections: 3 (no response)