Practicing accountability

My last post was on my goals for the year -- things I plan on doing in 2013 anyway, though of course some of these (such as overhauling my website) have been on my to-do list for a long time, so just being on my to-do list already doesn't mean that it's any more likely to get done than any other New Year's resolution.

I'm going to implement a two-pronged strategy to keep myself accountable this year.  The first thing I'm going to do is to try out an app that seems like it might actually help with those daily tasks -- the kinds of comprehensive resolutions that they say tend not to be successful, like "eat better" (or "work on my novel," as the case may be).  The app lets you set reminders, plus you can check off every day that you meet your goal.  You can also go into each goal and look at the calendar to see what your track record is like for that particular task.  The app is called Achieve It or just Achieve, and is available on the iPhone (I don't know about any other devices, such as the iPad or Android).

The other thing I'm planning on doing is posting weekly about my progress on my different goals.  I'm not sure yet whether I'll post on Fridays about that week, or post on Mondays about the previous week.  Part of me thinks that posting on Mondays will help me refocus for the coming week.  If this app works out, I can use its tracking capabilities to help me review my progress for the previous week; I'm also starting an Excel spreadsheet to track my daily word count on my novels and similar projects.

I've felt very out of control of my own life in 2012 -- although I love my part-time nanny job and I love my pets and horses, I have also felt very overwhelmed by all the demands these things place on my time.  I think the best way to take back control of my life is to get a little better organized, and be more accountable for what I say I'm going to do.  When I have a limited amount of time in which to get things done, I can't afford to waste any of it!

New Year's resolutions for 2013

Last year I came up with a list of books I wanted to read in 2012, and I am sorry to say that I did not read a single book on the list (and there were only five!).  In light of that failure, my "New Year's resolutions" this year consist of a few things that I'm planning on doing anyway.

1. Finish and revise the first two novels I've been working on.  I've been working on a series of novels that I started in 2011.  I've done some revisions on the first book, and I started the second during the August session of Camp NaNoWriMo this past year (2012).  I don't have much left on it, so I need to finish it, and then get back to finishing the revisions on the first book.  After that, I'll have to do revisions on the second book, of course.  I'm sure it seems very jumbled how I'm working on them all together like this, instead of finishing the revisions on one before moving on to the next, but I've found that since they are a series, some decisions I've made about later books have required changes to the first book.

2. Overhaul my website and blogs.  I'm also planning on reworking several of my blogs, including this one and the corresponding website.  I want to simplify this site a little and take some of the focus off of client work, since that's only a portion of what I'm doing now.  I also need to overhaul several of my other blogs, which haven't been updated in years.

3. Work on a couple writing projects of my own.  Besides my fiction, I have a couple other ideas for writing projects I've wanted to pursue for some time.

I also still plan on reading those books from last year's list, and who knows -- I might even add a few more for this year!

2012 in review

With 2012 coming to a close, I've been thinking about how busy and challenging it has been for me.  The past year has seen a lot of changes to my life: I took an after-school nanny job at the end of 2011, which impacted my freelance work schedule, and then I worked even more hours over the summer when the kids were out of school.  The result has been more of a break from freelancing than I was counting on, as I've gradually switched my focus away from writing.

I didn't feel this way as much at first, but sometimes I really miss freelancing full time.  I miss it most when I have to decide between spending my morning at the barn riding my horses or at home working -- I used to be able to do both in a single day -- or when I get really wrapped up in a project, only to have to stop working abruptly and leave to go pick up the kids from school.

Don't get me wrong, I love the family I work for, and I don't plan on leaving them anytime soon.  They are warm, generous, and flexible -- working for them is the perfect compliment to freelancing part-time (not to mention their daughter is horse crazy too, which makes them an even more perfect match for me).

But I also am itching to pick up more writing work again, and to make more time for a few writing projects of my own.  And I know when it comes time to return to freelancing full-time, I'll be happy to have entire days for working once again.  I even miss the administrative tasks -- having the luxury of spending an hour or two at the beginning of every day checking email, combing job boards, and other such stuff.

Happy New Year to all my readers -- may 2013 be everything you are hoping for!

Happy holidays!

Believe it or not... I am still here!  And now that one of my regular clients is on hiatus -- for how long, I don't know, but let's just say I won't be surprised if I don't hear back, like, ever -- I am planning on spending some more time blogging.  My blogs -- my entire freelance identity, really -- have been rather ignored this past year, and it's starting to make me feel the least like a writer that I've felt since graduating college.

Some of you may know from reading my other blogs that we euthanized our dog Grace a couple of weeks ago.  Although we miss her terribly, it's also something of a relief, as we spent a lot of time giving her medicine, taking her to the vet and to physical therapy/acupuncture, helping her in and out the back door, coaxing her to eat, and just plain cleaning up after her.  Since I work from home in the mornings (or tried to), many of my mornings were taken up with this sort of thing -- and as sad as we have been to lose her, I am actually looking forward to having a little more uninterrupted work time in 2013.

But enough of sad stuff.  Today Michael and I are planning on doing nothing together all day -- that is to say, we will be reading, putting together a puzzle, and watching some TV, not to mention getting some Asian food later (our favorite local restaurant is open today).  My plans for the day also include straightening up my desk (particularly because our 4-month-old kitten has discovered that pushing papers off of it is lots of fun) and taking a hot bath.  We have a white Christmas this year, not to mention a very cold Christmas (right now it's only in the mid-teens), making it a perfect day to stay in and read!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season!

Chicago, NaNoWriMo, and write-ins -- oh my!

Last week, my husband and I went to Chicago.  It was a mix of both vacation and research for my novels, as I was beginning to feel that I shouldn't be writing about a city that I've never actually been to.  We were there for three nights (with an 18-hour train ride on either end, making it a week-long trip).  We did a few of the typical touristy things, such as riding the Ferris wheel on Navy Pier and going to the Field Museum, but quite a bit of what we did -- riding the el, walking around the city, taking a tour, and visiting several former speakeasies from the 20s -- were planned with my novels in mind.

The trip fueled not only my research efforts, but also my motivation, and while we were there I worked a bit on researching and outlining the second half of the second novel.  We came home Saturday, which was excellent timing, since NaNoWriMo starts tonight.  I've had a mild case of post-vacation laziness since we got back, helped along by the fact that I'm fighting off a cold and feeling somewhat under the weather as a result, but I have hope that the start of NaNoWriMo will reenergize me.

I am getting slightly more involved in NaNoWriMo this year than I have in the past.  I had actually thought of acting as an ML (municipal liaison, one of the official organizers for local events), but I didn't get my application in on time.  That's just as well, since I have been so busy, but I am still planning on being involved.  My biggest contribution is that I have organized a weekly Friday night write-in at a local Perkins restaurant.  It will be the first write-in that I've ever organized myself, so I am excited!  I'll be looking for other ways to help out, too, and if all goes well, perhaps next year I will join the ML team.

Who else is participating in NaNoWriMo this year?

Discovering Scrivener

I wasn't blogging or freelancing much over the summer, but I was working on my novels -- revising the first one in the series I'm working on, which I finished during NaNoWriMo last November, and starting the next book.

Before the August session of Camp NaNoWriMo started, while I was still working on revisions to the first novel, I decided to try Scrivener, a word processing software for writers that is supposed to be far superior to Word when it comes to outlining, keeping track of research, and other tasks that Word isn't really set up for.  Since I'd won NaNo in November, I had a coupon code for 50 percent off, which meant that it only cost me $20.

I'm sure I have yet to experience all of the features Scrivener has to offer, but so far I LOVE IT.  Every scene is a separate "documents," essentially, but you can drag and drop in order to reorganize and reorder.  Creating folders for chapters and documents for individual scenes also makes it very easy to do a rough outline.  If you like more detailed outlines, the folders and documents also allow you to include a synopsis and notes (none of which is counted in the word count).

Scrivener also allows you to keep track of all your research in the same file: You can import web pages and documents such as PDFs, and also create documents to type up your notes.  I imported a Word document full of notes into my novel, for example, and also imported a few web pages.  You can also keep virtual note cards with character and setting information.

Since you have so much in this one file, the split screen feature is very helpful.  I like to keep research on the top and whatever scene I am currently working on at the bottom.

Another nice feature: snapshots.  This allows you to take a snapshot of a document before you start making changes to it, so that you can quickly and easily go back to the way it was if you decide you don't like the changes.

And after I nearly lost a whole lot of data when my hard drive died earlier this summer, I am really pleased with Scrivener's auto save and auto backup features.  You don't have to ever hit save, for starters -- it saves your changes automatically every time you pause in your typing.  And you can set up the software to automatically back up every time you close the file.  I have Dropbox installed on my computer, so it backs up into the Dropbox folder, which then automatically syncs to my online account.  I'll never, ever have to worry about losing my work again!

When summer ended, and I went back to freelancing part-time, I decided to try the software out for client work, too.  I had a few articles to write that were fairly long and detailed, and required some research, and I found that Scrivener worked just as well for those as it does for novels.  I set it up so that the different sections of the novels were separate documents (just like the scenes in the novel), and imported all of the web pages I used for research.

I'm sure I'm missing a whole bunch of great features in this little review, so please, if you use this software, feel free to add anything I'm missing in the comments.  Perhaps I'll even learn a new feature that I wasn't aware of before!  Also, if you're interested in trying out the software, in the past NaNoWriMo participants have gotten 20 percent off just for being registered for NaNo, so it might be worth signing up this year, if only for the coupon code.

And life returns to normal (mostly)

After a busy summer taking care of the kids I nanny for, they are back in school and I am (finally) back to my pre-summer schedule.  Granted, I didn't always manage to keep up on my blogs even when the kids were in school, but during the summer, when I was working twice (sometimes more) the hours, it was totally impossible.  What little time I had left, I split between my novel, my horses, and my home life, and as a result freelancing and blogging both fell by the wayside.

Now that the kids are back in school, I feel like I've been gifted with several more hours every day (not to mention more sleep, since I can now sleep in again -- finally!).  Some of that time has already gone to the horses, and some to freelancing, which is why I'm writing this post after the kids have already been back in school for several weeks.

Just to get everyone up to speed, over the summer I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo, NaNo's summer edition.  In June I didn't actually write, just worked on revising last year's novel, the last 50k of which I wrote for NaNo.  I finished the majority of revisions a couple days into August (all I have left is the major rewriting, i.e., a couple of scenes that need to be overhauled and several that need to be written from scratch and added in), so in August I started the second novel of the series.  I got to 50k -- albeit just barely -- and emerged a winner, despite my slow start.

I've been meaning to continue working on the novel, with the intention of finishing it before November so that I can start a new one for the regular session of NaNoWriMo, but I only worked on it for the first few days after Camp NaNo ended.  Part of the problem is that I'm not entirely sure where to go next -- I know what has to happen, but I haven't figured out yet how to get there.  So I'm thinking I need to spend this time between sessions with planning and finishing revisions to the first novel, and then finish book 2 in November.

And freelancing.  I'm picking up some more freelancing work, which I had completely abandoned over the summer, and it feels good to earn at least part of my living from my keyboard again.

How was everyone else's summers?