Where I've Been All this Time

Wow. It's been more than a YEAR since I last posted here!

Well ... I've been busy.

Let's see:

I had twins!
That was something. They are adorable. You can read more about them and the rest of the family here.

Both "Dirty Darlene" and "James Dean, My Love, My Copy Boy" became available for sale in actual words-on-paper print!
Yep -- Carve Magazine and Armchair/Shotgun published the issues in which I was included. If you wanna go buy them, you can do that by following the links in my sidebar ... Yep. I added links to my sidebar!

I finished the screenplay with Mr. Lovely and Amazing. 
He doesn't agree, but it's in his court for the moment. And has been ... for awhile now ...

I wrote and performed an essay for the Afterbirth reading series.
Have you read the book that spawned the series? You should. It's pretty awesome. Best collection of essays about parenting ever. I laughed. I cried. No, seriously, I did both those things. And I'm not even schilling for it because I'm in it -- 'cause I'm not. But I seriously dug reading for it -- and on my 36 birthday, even! (Basically a year from the last time I posted here.) There were 6 readers totally, and I think I fell somewhere around #3 in terms of entertainment value, so I was pretty jazzed about that.

I wrote a TV pilot spec ALL ON MY LONESOME.
It's a one-hour drama, I am very very proud of it -- and myself. Because, again: I wrote it ALL ON MY LONESOME. Which means I am the master of that particular domain -- which was a) the life-lesson learned with Mr. Lovely and Amazing, who is still both things but who has halfsies on the screenplay we worked on together, so I am not master of THAT particular domain (see the life-lesson?) and b) the advice given me by Ms. Fabulous TV Exec Old Friend, who said basically, I needed to prove I could do it ALL ON MY LONESOME.

Well -- I feel vaguely proven on that point now. That said, the spec I wrote, which satisfies all I love about television, is apparently, according to the production company and both agencies that have covered it, not sure whether it is a cable project or a network project. I sort of thought I was leaving the door open to whomever wanted it to develop it the way they wanted to, but apparently that's the wrong approach. So now I need to decide where to go in the next round -- network or cable. Which makes me think now I need a Guru to help me figure out WHAT COMES NEXT.

I started talking to a Preschool Parent about developing content for his very cool interactive iPad books for kids. 
He runs a very cool company -- their first book-app is based on a story his sister wrote for his 5-yo daughter called Penelope Rose. Check it out -- it's pretty fab.

I got a screenplay commission.
Generous Old Writer Friend started a production company and asked me to write the second project for their company. Working on that now -- and again: ALL ON MY LONESOME!

And I started Mommy-blogging.
No, really, I did. I figured I had a lot of kids, I might as well write what I know ... so now I do. You can find me at Checklistmommy.com, where I've actually been getting a ton of very gratifying traffic, and which has been keeping me writing very very regularly -- which is a good thing. And which has made me think that I ought to post over here more, too -- because sure, I know about kids. I know about being a Mom. And I REALLY know what it's like to try to be a WRITING MOM.

So check back here more often -- I promise to post more, because honestly, the more I've been writing-writing, the more I've gotten interesting in talking about the nuts-and-bolts processes I've been employing to DO all that writing-writing -- and the more I've gotten interested in finding out OTHER people's processes ... Anyway. More soon.

Come on back.

2009: AULD LAND SYNE

Every year, I have really high hopes for my work. Not necessarily that I’ll sell any of it – I am a realist, a pragmatist, first and foremost – but that I’ll write it. That I’ll get my butt in the chair, and the words on the page. And I try to be specific about my goals – which projects I’ll focus on, and what the true, achievable goal for each project really is. And I write all these goals down, too (a practice that isn’t just a work thing, for me, but a family thing—Husband and I make a one-page goals list for our work, our health, our family, our finances, and post it on the mirror in our bathroom).

Anyway, sitting down to make a NEW goal’s list requires reviewing the old one. Here’s the play-by-play of WHAT I WAS SUPPOSED TO DO IN 2009:

* Complete 2^nd draft of the novel by TAX DAY

Status: Absolute failure. Didn’t even LOOK at it in 2009. In the wake of Baby Gaga’s birth, the plot just started to seem totally empty and dumb. I did spend a little time completely re-imagining the entire structure, and considered turning it into 3 linked novellas … does that count as progress or procrastination?

*Complete 3^rd draft of the novel by LABOR DAY and send to friends.

Status: See above.

*Write one more script with Co-Writer / advance partnership another level.

Status: Sort-of / Yes! We didn’t write one more script. But we came up with two concepts, for two new scripts. And we got our Big Shot Manager. And we took some Big Shot Meetings—one in studio bungalow! So that was fun.

*Complete Client’s sample chapter.

Status: Done!

*Write Client’s book if offered contract.

Status: Client didn’t pursue contract, so this stalled out totally NOT on my watch ;)

*Submit “DIRTY DARLENE” to 60 venues.

Status: Sold (sort of). Went out to 57 venues. Finally bought by Carve Magazine, for the Fall 2009 issue. That said, there seems to have been no Fall 2009 issue … hmm.

*Submit “JAMES DEAN, MY LOVE, MY COPY BOY” to 60 venues.

Status: In Progress. I’ve sent it out to 23 magazines, and in December I employed a Virtual Assistant in India to come up with 40 more. So we’ll see about that …

*Re-write “ALBERT & NANCY” to completion.

Status: Abandoned. I tried, I really did. But nothing I did fixed it. And then I started to lose hope. So at the moment, this story has been abandoned, despite my sister’s liking it. Sorry, sis.

*Re-write “MAYFLOWER IS A TRUCKSTOP” to completion.

Status: Complete! It’s now called “Nothing Will Prepare You,” it’s in submission, and it’s the best thing I have ever written. Ever.

*Re-write “SEVEN” to completion.

Status: Abandoned. I tried. But there was no “there” there. There just wasn’t.

* Re-write “HONEYMOON WHERE THE SUN NEVER SETS” to completion.

Status: Back in play! Ok, so I didn’t work on this last year … but I’m already nearly done with a new draft of this story, 8 days into the new years … so that’s something …

... and it’s not a bad segue into next week’s post …

New site!

And I built it all by my lonesome! It only took one day to build, another to break, and another to rebuild. I am very proud of myself, and while I have already noticed a few items I need to clean up, I am not going to, because that's how I broke the original site in the first place ...

ANYWAY, now I have a new site.

I also have:

1) 1 pilot that is being re-developed with the help of a very smart director who has taken an interest.
2) 1 novel that is 3.5 chapters short of a complete second draft.
3) 1 sample chapter for client that is, I hope, just one more draft short of finished.

This is all none-too-shabby considering I am now the mother of 2, one of whom still eats ALL NIGHT LONG.

Five Weeks Post-Partum and Back to Work!

I seem to have figured out a new working system, even with 2 kids under 2 underfoot ... woo-hoo!

Mornings I take one child into the world, and leave one at home with our housekeeper.
Afternoons I leave them both home with our housekeeper, and go write for 2-3 hours.

It seems to be working. So far, I have FINISHED FINISHED the pilot I wrote with a friend on this schedule, and started sending it out. I have returned to the novel, AND set up a meeting to return to the book proposal.

Granted, I have to do everything in teeny, tiny increments -- baby steps, as it were. But even baby steps move things forward, and I'm pretty damn impressed with myself for having gotten it together this well despite a 5 week old new baby who eats EVERY SINGLE MOMENT of every night.

Progress report

Entering Chapter 13! Five weeks or less till Baby #2. Dream of completion of draft by then growing ever dimmer with news that baby may be coming earlier than expected ... hmm. Still, since June I've cranked through Chapters 5-12, and am hoping to finish 13 in the next two weeks, so that's not bad for a few months work.

Book proposal for client nearly complete. Still have to write the sample chapter, though, and need to really crank through it considering the "life deadline" approaching.

Spec pilot pretty much done -- have one last scene to tweak and then it's time to get some outside eyes on it.

All in all, not a bad couple of months in writer-land.

Writers as Over-Caffeinated Termites

According to Walter Kirn:

At the beginning of a novel, a writer needs confidence, but after that, what's required is persistence. The traits sound similar. They aren't. Confidence is what politicians, seducers, and currency speculators have, but persistence is a quality found in termites. it's the blind drive to keep on working that persists after confidence breaks down.

This breakdown usually happens in chapter five or so, but sometimes it comes as early as chapter two. The book's characters have been introduced by then and given a world to live in, creating atmosphere. The challenges they face have been described and made to seem monumental, creating tension. Finaly, the novelist's friends and family have been pushed away, creating loneliness. Now what? The mind is powerless to answer, leaving the nerves and glands to do the job, assisted at times by caffeine and other substances.

But such chemical helpers only help so much. The mysterious energy required to turn silence into words perpetually uphill originates deep within the soul--so deep that its sources resist analysis. Novelists who pretend to understand what keeps them scribbling are really just guessing. A profound, unmet childish need to be acknowledged? Maybe. It hardly matters, though. The termite that asks itself why it keeps chewing risks becoming sluggish and inefficient, as does the writer who grows self-conscious in the middle of chapter five. Stopping to think is fine for characters, but not for their creators.

They have to work.

Yeah. Word. Finished Chapter Nine today, just by pushing on, 500 words a day, no matter what, 5 days a week and three nights ... (Husband rocks on, btw, by giving me that third night ... slightly increasing the very long odds that I can write eight more chapters in the 9 or so weeks before Two-ie arrives.)

Once again, MOTHERHOOD as the antidote to SLOTH

Well, Baby 1 got me to finish Draft 1 of the novel before she arrived in January '07 ...

Baby 2 (who arrives Nov 08) has got me pushing hard towards (1) completing Draft 2 -- I'm in the middle of Chapter 8, which is about halfway through the narrative -- AND, SOMEHOW, got me to (2) agree to write a TV spec with a Writer Friend AND (3) take on a new client, for whom I'm writing a book proposal.

1. THE NOVEL -- I'm writing this draft while semi-con-currently showing chapter drafts to my Writing Group, who are being incredibly helpful. I'm desperately trying to complete this draft before Baby 2, with an eye towards writing Draft 3 in the first part of next year, giving THAT to a larger circle of Trusted Readers, and writing the FINAL DRAFT in the later part of next year ... and sending it out into the world early in 2010. In practical terms, this means I'm writing a minimum of 500 words per weekday, and by October will probably have to up it to a seven-day-week if I really intend to finish before Baby.

2. THE TV SPEC -- Nearly 10 years ago, I met Writer Friend at a dinner, over which we discovered a great love for all television things Bedford Falls. By the end of the meal he was suggesting we write together. For the next nearly 10 years, he continued suggesting that. I assumed he was making said suggestions the same way people say "Let's do lunch" ... but this spring, he handed me the first 18 pages of a pilot he was kicking around, I liked it, we sat down to start writing despite ALL my reservations about writing with other people (short version: I HATE DOING THAT MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE ON EARTH ON EARTH ON EARTH) and it turned out to be ... fun. And surprisingly easy. Since the end of June, meeting for a few hours one night a week, and writing a little bit on our own time, we've managed to come 11 scenes short of a Shitty First Draft. By Monday, we should be actually FINISHED with said Draft, putting us well on our way to having something sort-of-readable by Labor Day. Who knew.

3. THE BOOK PROPOSAL. Well, it had been awhile since I'd taken on clients -- before Baby 1, in fact. And I was approached by someone whom I like, with a project I find interesting, and some part of me, worrying I might never make a cent in my chosen profession again, agreed to take her on. It's been a learning experience, as I'm doing most of the writing, based on discussions and emails with her, and that's a little backwards for me, professionally -- usually, I edit more than write. And like all things of this nature, the further in we get the less simple the project is -- right now, in fact, I'm about halfway done with all the elements but have completed none. However, I'm shooting to have a First Draft of the proposal for her before we decamp for Colorado next week.

All this writing is a) great for my sense of accomplishment and therefore my scale of happiness and b) is making for a crazy-busy summer / ramp up to Baby 2. I haven't had a single moment to do any of the things I did the last time I was pregnant -- get my nails done, get massages, go to yoga, go to afternoon movies -- and I'm tired as tired can be.

All that said, I have discovered by necessity that I can accomplish an extraordinary amount of writing if I carve out 4 hours of working time a day. My basic working routine, in this four hours or so, looks like this:

-- drive to place where I can eat and sit for hours without disturbing staff
-- order a big enough meal to justify my sitting there for hours, and read while I eat
-- order a latte, write 500 words of my novel, then turn to either the TV Spec or the Proposal
-- drive home

Two nights a week, I take additional hours, which were meant to be Yoga Nights but have evolved into Writer Group meeting nights, TV Spec writing nights, or extra writing time ...

On nanny-days, I get a little more time. On no-nanny-days, it's a strict four-hour window, which I've negotiated thusly with Husband:

-- one of us gets 8am - to 12pm to ourselves, one of us gets 12pm - 4 pm.

So far, the system works great, and I'm hoping I can keep to it even after I become Mom of 2 under 2 ...

Famous Last Words

See last post, dated 2007.

This is, obviously, the first post I've made here in over a year. This is not to say I've been completely UN-productive on the writing front -- I am five chapters into the second draft of the novel.

That said, I'm also 16.5 months in mothering Child #1: 17 weeks into growing Child #2; 10 months into running new business with husband; and a couple weeks shy of moving house to prepare for 18 month renovation of original home (not to mention the fact that I spent most of last year renovating the house we're moving into). So it's been a busy year -- but that said, words need to keep hitting the page and I'm hoping, still, against all hope, to finish the second draft of the novel before Child #2 arrives in November. That'll be a push, of course, but hell, if I can deliver a baby in under three hours, I can finish 2/3 of a manuscript in five months, yeah?

(Closing eyes and moving forward with the same blind optimism that led us to think having another baby right away was such a grand idea :))

Resistance Resolved

I returned to the novel a few months ago, surprised to find that I had a lot less to accomplish in order to finish this draft than I believed. I quickly wrote Chapters 12, 13, 14, and 15 in less than a month, and assumed I'd motor write through Chapter 16 -- the final chapter -- in a similar fashion.

And then I stopped.

I finished Chapter 15 on a Thursday morning, so I took Friday off (I try to take a day off when I finish a chapter or story, a recommendation I picked up from Dorothea Brande's fabulous book Becoming a Writer). That evening, Husband and I headed off for a weekend getaway to Berkeley, our last shot at some vacation time before the two of us become three.

Monday I returned exhausted, so I took another day off. Normally I might have pushed on through, but again, "woman's work" intruded--the exhaustion attendant to the growing of Number Three won out over my work ethic, and even dulled the guilt a little bit b/c it's not just me I'm thinking about when I sleep most of the day now.

Tuesday, I forced myself back to my favorite table at my favorite cafe--and discovered another problem related to Number Three: I'm no longer comfortable for long periods of time in the cafe chairs, so after several hours of producing NOTHING I gave up and went home. I spent most of the afternoon working on transforming our office to Three's room.

Wednesday I woke up determined to work at home, in my far more supportive chairs. We all know how it ends when I try to work at home. More energy pumped into Three's room.

Thursday and Friday I decided that as long as I was resisting work, I might as well give myself REAL permission to do so--and so I poured myself into Three-related projects, with no thought to the novel at all. The only condition: Monday I would return to work.

And I did! Yesterday I made notes for what will be the last chapter of the first draft of this book, and today I wrote the first 500 words of it!

Despite the "lost week," I don't feel as badly as I usually do about walking away from my writing. Part of that has to do with listening to the David Allen podcasts at www.43folders.com. One, in particular, is about procrastination, and ways around it/through it.

Regarding working THROUGH procrastination, it was suggested that often the problem has to do with the task at hand not having been broken down to the most basic WIDGET property of itself. In the case of Chapter 16, then, I set myself the MOST BASIC WIDGET STEP of reading the notes I'd been gathering for the last several years regarding the ending of this book.

But easy as that should have been to do--the notes are very neatly collected in a binder that is tabulated into three acts, and the acts themselves are separated into chapter groupings--I still didn't wanna. Part of that, obviously, is my general weirdness about finishing things--I get a little wonky when the end is near. I know that about myself, which I why I am a hugely happy follower of the WIDGET approach--tiny little baby steps distract me from the finish line. I'm not COMPLETING THE FINAL PAGES OF MY NOVEL. I'm "preparing the chain of events" for the chapter; I'm "writing 500 words"; I'm "writing 500 words"; I'm "writing 500 words"; and somehow, 500 words from 500 words from 500 words from 500 words from now, I'll surprise myself by making it to the finish line.

Which is how, of course, I got back to work yesterday.

But last week, I resisted the WIDGET approach, and still, I got a lot done. I moved Husband's clothes in the master closet, and turned what had been his closet into Three's domain. I sorted all the baby clothes my mother had saved for 30+ years into bins by size, and laundered the clothes appropriate for Three's early months. I sorted through 6--count 'em, 6 banker's boxes of Husband's unfiled papers, and filed them. And I started selling books we don't want, to make room for Three's first library and storage system. I didn't write--but I did something important, and pressing, and this is also GTD-appropriate. Like Allen said in the podcast, if you're procrastinating one thing, then you better have a lot of other things you're doing until the resistance passes--and I did!

That said, by week's end I was near my usual "I haven't written in a week and I'm falling mentally to pieces" point--I do get crazed when I stop work. That was sort of a relief, actually--I'd been worrying that maybe I'd be okay, not writing, just doing house stuff ... and I'm pleased to report, I'm not. I can do it about three days before I start to ache for my writing. By a week, the ache is a full-blown "get thee to a word processor!" scream in my head.

I'm guessing the moodiness isn't easy on Husband. But he did get a fully organized, color-coded wall of the master closet in return for my week at home. And I got reassurance that despite the unbelievable amount of time and attention I devote to Three's impending arrival, I haven't yet completely lost myself.

So I'm happily back to regular programming.

Back From the Deep

I haven’t posted in awhile, mostly b/c I’ve been incredibly busy writing an essay I was invited to contribute to an anthology called GIRLS WHO LIKE BOYS WHO LIKE BOYS, which is due out late this summer. What a bear! Who knew writing a personal essay was so hard? As one Writer Friend put it while I was complaining about how lost and muddled I felt, “It’s not that hard … it’s like writing an email.”

Yeah, right.

I knew what I wanted to write about pretty much the instant I was approached for the collection. Then I started writing, and it started falling apart.

I began working on the essay three months before it was due. The first draft was eight pages of false starts. Seriously. Many many first paragraphs, a couple stabs at an outline—and since I don’t like to outline at the outset, you can see how desperate I felt.

The second draft was longhand—I was so freaked out by my inability to move forward in type that I chained myself to a table at Starbucks with a pen and paper and didn’t let myself get up until I had something resembling an essay, complete with beginning, middle, end.

The third draft took its shape from the second draft, but then I kept moving things around until the fifth draft. At which point I showed it to Husband, and he moved more things around and made me pull some stuff from the first draft. Husband thought this draft six he’d helped create was pretty good.

I wasn’t convinced, but I also wasn’t able to see the forest for the fucking trees at that point, so I took the sixth draft to Group. And they HATED it. Really really hated it. Which, to be perfectly honest, is why I love my Group. They tore it apart, but they asked a lot of important and interesting questions that had me scribbling tons of notes for the new version. I went home convinced I had to start from scratch, and completely freaked out that I now had only thirty days in which to bring this thing to life.

I had six drafts worth of not the most useful material, but at least I’d vomited up a lot of information—so I went through those drafts, looking to see if any of the spit-up was of use. Some was, most wasn’t—and in fact, in most cases, what was least useful was the prose I loved the best. That’s usually the way, actually—really sparkling words on the page can be a total roadblock to creation. You fall in love with those sentences, and then you start carving everything else around them—everything else has to be twisted and pulled to service those fabulous words. What generally happens is you then have six great lines and everything else is a mangled mess. Which, honestly, is what I think had happened here. I’d fallen into my own trap.

So finally, writing an outline came in handy. Drawing on the questions Group had posed, I made a list of points that added up to something new, and started drafting new stuff from scratch. Then I hit another roadblock—for a bunch of personal reasons, I stopped being able to concentrate on my work for more that forty-five minutes to an hour each day. For a woman used to writing for four or five hours at a stretch, this was very disconcerting. How on earth was I going to finish this new draft, and revise it, and get it to Group, and revise it again, and polish it, when I could only work for an hour a day?

Answer: by working an hour a day. Baby steps are better than not trying to walk at all.

In six days, I had a seventh completely brand new draft. It even had a new title! Three days later, I had draft eight. Draft nine followed two days later, and went out to Husband and Group, having been retitled yet again (I think the total number of titles chosen and discarded over the course of this project has been somewhere around eight).

And Group liked it. They liked it! They really liked it!

Because I had to be sure no one would be offended by the use of their real names, I then sent it to the people I’d been writing about—and they liked it, too.

And you know what? I like it. Three months of hard, frightening, confusing, voice and talent-questioning work later, I kind of like this essay. I hated it for awhile, I really really did, I couldn’t bear to imagine what the editors of this book were going to think of it and me and I just wanted crawl under a rock and wait for the deadlines to pass. I wanted to go back in time and un-sign that honestly pretty well-paid contract (I’m a girl whose used to taking payment in free copies, if you know what I mean). But now I kind of like it.

Here’s hoping the editors do, too.

Another one of those days & a new rule

I'm having another one of those days ... spent the morning waiting around at home for a package that UPS had refused to deliver to our empty house twice in a row. The last 2 days, they showed up at 11 or so ... so I stayed home, did laundry, sorted over 1000 (yep, 1000) Kenya & Tanzania pictures into the appropriate digital files, and waited for the truck ... which didn't show until 1.

So I didn't get work done this morning. Arrived at the office after lunch, meaning to dive right into the EdMoi essay, but of course I killed two hours surfing workarounds for Blogger categories ... for some reason, I really want categories.

I've killed a lot of time this week, working on things like that, so that the mid-week review of this week's projects looks like this:

Draft EdMoi 1.0: In process. Have the first couple of lines, and a working structure. Still, that's a hell of a long way from a complete draft 1.0.

Move sklevy.com to dreamhost: Complete. Took the better part of a week, but as of today it's all up and happy.

Integrate blog to sklevy.com: Complete. Hence the new simplified layout and color scheme.

Integrate services page to blog and sklevy.com: Complete.

Four out of five by Thursday afternoon is nothing to sneeze at. That said, the pattern here is one I struggle with a lot: using housekeeping to avoid the much harder, far more important act of creating. This is particularly annoying to me because for several months now I've been convinced that I have this issue under control ... I've been working working working like crazy at the office, at the expense of keeping things up at home, and as much as it kills me to come home to the mess each night, I've been patting myself on the back for not cleaning the mess at the expense of sitting down and doing my real work.

And it's been working. Since the last post about my progress, I've written both those letters I'd mentioned, and received replies; I've finished a workshoppable draft of "Seven" 4.0, overcoming the structure issue by working working working through it; and I've completed a workshoppable draft of "JD" 2.0, a feat I'm particularly proud of because it involved my cutting the story from 12000+ words to just over 9000 (go me). So it's not like I'm slacking on the work front.

But that's no excuse for what happened this week. When I put all those site and blog tasks on this week's project list, I told myself that was "business development." Which, I suppose, it is. But it shows a bit of priority snafu-ness that I let myself put so much time into developing a "business" that is still damned short of work I consider strong enough to sell. So let's not sugar-coat it. This week's focus on my web presence wasn't so much biz dev as it was housekeeping of the virtual variety.

So, new rule:

WEEKLY "HOUSEKEEPING" TASKS (read: any task that doesn't involve THE ACT OF WRITING) are to be COMPLETELY IGNORED until WEEKLY WRITING TASKS are complete.

And with that, I seem to have worked up enough energy to dive into EdMoi. Onward!

Last week / this week

Last week's "top 3" progress report:

1. Revise "Seven" to a workshop-able draft
Spent 9 hours getting "Seven" to draft 4.0. Not workshop-able by a longshot, but at least I got the structure wrestled out.
2. Write and send letter to Friend re. her new, wonderful book
Nope.
3. Write and send letter to Writer Whom I Admire and would like to befriend
Nope.

Which means we're at it again, this week -- with deadlines!

1. Revise "Seven" FOR workshop (Weds Mar. 1)
Biggest hurdle: fix the ending. It loses steam in the last quarter, and of course, with all stories, the last quarter is really the whole point. That gives me another hour or so this afternoon, then all day tomorrow, and the morning of Weds to fix it ... and Weds afternoon to close my eyes and xerox it for critique (for better/worse).
2. Write to Friend
A good Thursday activity, as hopefully I'll be feeling productive enough in the wake of Wednesday's deadline to reach out and chat about the biz with this Friend who hasn't heard from me in a year or so.
3. Write to Writer I Admire
A good Friday activity, since the following week I'm going to New York and can hand this letter to my good friend, who is also the wife of Writer I Admire's best friend ...

Weekly Progress Report

A very successful week -- 104 points, despite the (fabulous Valentine's day) interruption of the work week.

Status report:

Revise "Seven" to Draft 3.0 -- complete!
I finished the third draft of "Seven" yesterday. Unfortunately, it STILL doesn't work, so I launched right into draft 4.0, trying a completely different direction. Complete "Seven" Draft 4.0 is item #1 for next week ...

Draft critique of mss for friend -- complete!
I finished my notes for friend on Wednesday. Nearly 400 pp mss took me about a week to read and three more days to assemble written notes for, which is encouraging, considering I've decided to go pro.

Launch editing business with email blast -- complete!
Sent the email announcement yesterday, and created the site for my new venture today.

Anyway, I'm feeling pleased with myself, especially since next week looks fairly clear on the project-level, so I should have the entire week to try to wrestle "Seven" 4.0 into some semblance of workshoppable shape. "Seven" has been a real struggle -- I wrote a first draft over two years ago, and then last week I wrote an ENTIRELY different second draft, and this week, a COMPLETELY new third. Still, something's misising. It's ringing really empty still.

Hopefully a weekend spent away from the story will bring some sort of clarity or epiphany to my work next week -- it's rare that I have so much difficulty getting the bones of a story down the way that I want. It may be that this is just too close to the vest -- one of the things that I've found to be a failure with it is the tone (I tend to get breezy when I'm writing about things that touch me too closely).

It could be I just need to sit down with a pen and paper and write it longhand, try to get out of my head that way. Hmmph. Who knows. Frustrating to kick something around for so many years and still find myself stymied. I've tried as an exercise boiling down what I'm trying to say in a single sentence, but no matter how I frame the sentence, I'm having trouble figuring out how to dramatize it. Probably that means my focus isn't specific enough. Which means before I keep writing I probably have to go back to the brainstorming board, and boil down the question I'm attempting to answer here ...

Weekly check-in: The Power of Three

This was the first week since the start of the year that I accomplished less than I'd hoped. There were a few reasons for this -- a little bit of a horse melt-down made it tough for me to concentrate at work, plus an unexpected visit from an out-of-town friend, plus hours wasted/spent researching, buying, and playing around with my new Treo (I dropped my old phone in a puddle). It wasn't a TOTAL wash, but I only gained 72 of the 100 points I was going for this week, so I don't get the pretty Timbuk2 case for my new Treo ...

Here's what I did manage to do, despite all the silly distractions. I chose three projects for the week, and made headway on them all:

1. Revise "Seven" to a second draft -- completed!

2. Critique mss for friend -- in progress -- read his mss, but still need to write up my critique notes for him

3. Launch editing business -- in progress -- collected comments on my one-sheet, but decided to wait until I was finished with friend's mss to draft the email blast about the venture ... Dilly-dallied as I debated with myself the pluses and minuses of opening shop, worrying about whether I can spare the time from my own writing to edit others on any larger scale than I'm already doing free, for my friends. But this afternoon I decided that I can always turn away clients if I need more time for my own work -- the point of this business is I can modulate it anyway I like. So next week I get this thing off the ground.

Looking over these notes, I'm feeling encouraged by the amount I accomplished despite this being a "bad week"-- go me. Once again, the power of three proves itself -- three projects is just enough to make me feel productive without feeling overwhelmed.

Next Week's Big Three:

1. Revise "Seven" to a third draft.
2. Complete and deliver mss notes to friend.
3. Send an email blast about my new editing business.

OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH 2006

Finally back at work after a long holiday / travel hiatus. In the interim, I’ve bought a fabulous wonderful amazing new horse; packed up my childhood bedroom in preparation of pending sale of my childhood home; turned 30; and traveled all over Kenya and Tanzania for 5 weeks with Husband. All in all, not a bad way to ring out 2005.

But it’s now firmly 2006, and time to consider what I’d like the New Year to bring.

First step for setting this year’s goals is a look back at last year’s successes and failures on the same front. So, a quick re-cap of 2005:

Complete shitty start-to-finish draft of novel.

Reality check: Didn’t finish the draft. Did, however, write more than 200 pages of a draft I expect to run somewhere in the 350-400 page range. So that mitigates the disappointment of not finishing somewhat. Another consolation: I made it that far without once looking behind me and/or starting over, so that’s a big step, too.

Complete collection of stories.

Reality check: Didn’t finish the collection. Did, however, complete and submit one story from the collection, and complete a first draft of a second. Plus I brainstormed all the other stories for the collection, and have a working contents list.

Publish in three places.

Reality check: that didn’t happen at all. Which is not to say I didn’t make an effort—“Dirty Darlene” went out to forty-five venues over the course of the year. Still awaiting word from more than twenty of those publications, but my hopes for “Darlene” finding a home are not that high. It’s a pretty dark story. That said, the more high-profile magazines among my submittal list showed the most interest in “Darlene”—I had lovely personal notes about it from Agni¸ Zoetrope, and Esquire—so that’s something. Anyway, the lesson actually learned in this category is that I need more product if I want to publish, plain and simple.*

*That said, I did attempt to produce more than these goals make clear. Over the course of the year, in addition to my other work, I also wrote several drafts of a travel essay that it now seems clear is meant to be the germ of a short story, plus a novella-length story about a young acrobat struggling to fly free of her domineering dad.

Conclusions from 2005.

The failing on all counts is none of my projects progressed as quickly as I’d hoped. Mostly that’s because I let life sidetrack me over and over again at the cost of my work. At the end of the year, I had lots of good work in pieces, but no product.

Which is why I’ve decided 2006 is The Year Of Putting It All Together.

Putting the novel together.

I’ll complete that shitty first-draft.
Then I’ll complete the second draft.
Then I’ll hand out that second draft to friends and colleagues for critique.

Putting the collection together.

I’ll complete the collection, story by story.
And I’ll submit each finished story for publication.

Putting the miscellaneous pieces together.

I’ll finish the acrobat story.
I’ll finish the honeymoon story.
And I’ll submit both pieces for publication.

Obviously, to do all this, I need better work practices and strategies this year. As usual, I’ve gone looking for them in the GTD / Productivity websphere, and found a pretty cool framework I’ve decided to adapt for myself this year: David Seah’s Printable CEO.

What I like about the Printable CEO is that it’s big-picture organic to Seah’s larger career GOALS—the list of activities he deemed “Worth Doing” are all STRATEGIES that contribute to reaching his ultimate career goal. Even better, he took this list of things “Worth Doing” and assigned point values to each thing, so he could track the energy expended towards his goal—each day, he has to earn a set number of points pursuing things “Worth Doing.” And it gets even cooler than that! He’s even created a TACTICS tool, the Task Project Tracker, which breaks down those things “Worth Doing” another level. Now I can track my work by PROJECT and by WORTHY ACTIVITY! I told you this was cool.

So I got right to work brainstorming on his system. Here’s what I came up with:

MY LARGER GOAL

To answer the questions “What do you write? Have you written anything I’ve heard of?” with a confident, “Well, I’ve published here, and here, and here.”

HOW TO GET THERE

In order to publish my work, I have to write it. That means a lot of time alone at my desk. It also means a good deal of time face-to-face with friends and colleagues who can help me perfect my work. (Offering critique is also helpful in terms of honing my own work, and even better if I’m paid for it!) Ultimately, it means making sales by submitting to appropriate venues, which, of course, are made infinitely more “appropriate” by making myself known to them by previous, positively received work or social connections.

THUS, WHAT’S WORTH DOING?

[10] Words-on-the-page work
[10] Pen-in-hand editing

[5] Pen-in-hand brainstorming
[5] Submitting work for critique
[5] Submitting work for sale
[5] Reading / editing for money
[5] Posting to my blog

[2] Doing my morning pages
[2] Taking an artist’s date
[2] Reading / editing for friends
[2] Furthering social / business development

[1] Reading lit mags to find homes for my work
[1] Other market research to find homes for my work
[1] Maintaining old or making new relationships

So, as of today, I’m setting myself a minimum of 15 points daily, Monday through Friday. Any week I earn less than 75 points, I have to make up the points on the weekend. Any week I earn more, I get some sort of prize.

August Check-in

I finally found my summer groove! This month, I wrote a 13,000 word long story concerning a trapeze family and their middle daughter's struggle to fly free -- and I actually LIKE the first draft, and believe I can make something lovely from it.

Here's how I broke through the summer doldrums. As I've said earlier, my life was pretty upended by circumstances out of my control--my wonderful 5 year-old quarter horse Nelson, who came to live with me in May, became violently ill and had to be hospitalized in July. He very nearly died during his 4 1/2 week hospital stay, and I spent a lot of time on the road, traveling back and forth to see him. With Nelson in the hospital, I found myself waking up later and later, because I no longer had to rush to the barn at the dawn to ride. So between bed and the freeway, writing hours got shorter and shorter ...

With the result that I became more and more depressed.

Finally, the first week of this month, I reminded myself of what I know to be true about my writing habits, and yet so often let myself forget:

1) I write best first thing in the morning, preferably before I speak or see anyone, and much as I hate leaving our warm bed in the mornings, I work better if I get to the page while Husband is still asleep.
2) Writing 1000 words is ECSTACY. Pure and simple. Writing 1000 words is as good as anything anything anything gets. Writing 1000 words sends me off towards my other chores and responsibilities happy and care-free and high. Giddy with joy, even. Funny how, when I'm not writing, this is the thing I most quickly forget.

So I started getting up in the mornings again--up at 7, out the door by 7:15. First stop: Starbucks, where before my coffee I wrote a minimum of 5 pages in the journal, then ordered a non-fat latte and read until 9. At 9, I kept a date with my story, and wrote until 11 each morning, aiming for a minimum of 1000 words and hitting way past the mark several times.

The high that followed allowed me to cope with the stress of my horse's illness--recently, horrible as it is to say, he's taken a turn for the worse. It also helped me be sweet and kind and good to Husband, who in return did anything and everything to get me out the door mornings, even agreeing to go to sleep earlier than usual and not bitching about my alarm going off hours earlier than he likes to wake up. He even insisted I go to work in the mornings despite our having house guests (the amazing man sent me to the office every morning and took on hosting responsibilities entirely by himself).

So now, as we prepare to leave for our 10-day excursion to Maine, I'm feeling good about my work because I FINISHED SOMETHING!!!! I moved through the middle-of-the-draft problem, and shot straight through to the other side!!!

And even better, as I wrote the story, the synapses kept firing towards other projects: I figured out exactly how my story collection functions, came up with a new story for it that takes its inspiration from the Nelson tragedy (writers are vultures), and figured out how three other stories for the collection that I'd been percolating for awhile actually get from a to b to c--how I should approach and move through them, how they start and end and even, how the middle parts work.

Anyway, I can go on vacation breathing easier because of all this. But also, I can go on vacation knowing that I won't stop writing just because we're traveling--that I'll actually enjoy it MORE if I escape for a few hours every day and hit the page. So that's the plan, and that's the gauntlet I'm throwing for myself over the trip's duration:

I WILL RETURN TO LA WITH A FIRST DRAFT OF A NEW STORY.

Because only if I keep writing can I truly relax.

Monthly Check-in: June

DAILY GOALS:

Write 500 words (min) each day.

NUMBER OF DAYS I MEANT TO WRITE 500 WORDS: 18
NUMBER OF DAYS I ACTUALLY WROTE 500 WORDS: 14

ANALYSIS: Not terrible, but then again, the “meant-to” bar was lowered by traveling to Buffalo & Cleveland for 5 days, and then a totally disabling bout of PMS-induced-depression that horribly happened to coincide with my finishing Chapter 6, and so made beginning Chapter 7 a horrifying, shame-spiralling exercise in “oh-god-don’t-make-mes.” Of course, as usual, it takes Husband to point out that the depression is probably PMS, and Friend to suggest that if I can’t get through the PMS-depression wall with my usual bag of tricks than really I ought to just turn to other things for a few days. So I did, turning to home fronts, and got lots on those home fronts done (not least of which involved getting professional help, finally, for our WiFi network at home—yes, this is a plug, and well-deserved. Geek Squad rocked out). Anyway, per Friend’s advice, PMS days are now marked on the office calendar so that I don’t sit around for three days making myself feel bad, rather than taking action in other quarters. That said, I’m pretty sure that had the PMS days not coincided with the sticky-start days of Chapter 7, but rather happened mid-chapter, when I’m more sure of where I’m going, I wouldn’t have been so thrown and could probably have barreled through, murkily, but forward nonetheless. Guess this month will test that.

MONTHLY GOALS

Complete 2 novel chapters each month

PROJECTS COMPLETE: 2 chapters + new first paragraph of travel essay (I’ve learned to pat myself on the back for even the most minor of victories)

ANALYSIS: So I actually accomplished this goal – bravo to me! I do think these chapters are probably ridiculously underwritten, but hell, all I’m doing with this draft is getting the fuckers down in some semblance of “here’s what happens.” I can make it good in the next go-round, and shitloads better in the draft after that. Feeling on track for my Novel Draft 1.0 Halloween deadline (unless, of course, the projected 15 chapters balloons to 20+, but I’ll cross that bridge when I have to throw myself off it).

Workshop 1 project/month Goal Suspended Until November 1 (post-completion of Novel Draft 1.0)

UPDATE: That said, I am slowly reworking a travel essay that may make it to Group before then.

Submit current stories/essays for publication

“Darlene” went out to Another Chicago Magazine, The Missouri Review,, The Ontario Review, Chicago Review, Northwest Review, and BukAmerica.

Meanwhile, lots of other places turned “Darlene” down. Getting too depressing to list, really. That said, I am going to continue submitting to 5 venues each month through October. Come November 1, post-completion of Novel Draft 1.0, if “Darlene” remains unsold, I will spend some serious time with this version of the story and try to figure out (a) if it’s horribly flawed—and if so, try to fix it, or (b) I like it, everyone else is crazy—and if so, retire it from the submission cycle put it away for the eventual story collection, which I’m using November and December to work on, anyway.

Experiment: A Cure for the New Chapter OH-GOD-NO-DON'T-MAKE-MEs?

Finished Chapter 6 yesterday. It's not the most inspired chunk of the manuscript thus far, but it's done, and at this stage in the game, "done" is the whole point. I'm going forward at all costs, and what's most interesting, I've discovered, is that with every new chapter I put to bed I am suddenly overwhelmed with strong and interesting ideas and situations to fix chapters that are behind me ... for instance, yesterday I figured out fixes for Chapters 1, 2, and 5 while printing out Chapter 6! So I've made notes on index cards with all those thoughts, and will continue forward into Chapter 7 as if all that information has already made it into the book, and then when I start DRAFT 2 I will do the actual creating of those new scenes and bits of information.

Of course, I was very excited about all of this and was thrilled about generating forward momentum into Chapter 7 earlier today as I made notes over a cup of coffee. Then I got to the office and the usual fears and procrastinations and negotiations with myself attendant with starting new chapters set in strong. I surfed and I emailed and I surfed some more, and finally I decided one more new working rule ...

NEW RULE:

From now on, when I can't seem to make myself stop avoiding sitting down to begin a new chapter, I will turn off the email, turn of the browser, and choose the item on my GTD task list that I have been most procrastinating and most dread doing and force myself to undertake it, in hopes that this horrible thing I really don't want to do will make sitting down and writing seem a much better deal.

In this case, the things I most don't want to do are clean out the microwave and mini-fridge that were included in my lease of this space. They are FILTHY -- really really really filthy, last-call-at-the-bar-women's-bathroom-filthy--but man would it be handy to bring leftovers to work and not only cool but also nuke them ... I've been avoiding this task since I rented this space March 1st, so today I attempt cleaning the microwave. Hopefully that will send me RUNNING back to my keyboard, and the threat of undertaking similar actions with the mini-fridge--tell me, really, how the hell do you end up with moldy cigarette stubs inside a refrigerator?--will keep me from acting similarly stupid about working in the near future ...

Monthly Check-in: May

DAILY GOALS:

Write 500 words (min) each day.

NUMBER OF DAYS I MEANT TO WRITE 500 WORDS: 22
NUMBER OF DAYS I ACTUALLY WROTE 500 WORDS: 15

ANALYSIS: I lost 1 day accompanying Husband to doctor’s appointment (“Just like old people,” Mom says). I lost 5 more days to general malaise and some actual sick, though 2 of those 4 lost days I worked on the book by shoring up my notes, so that’s something. Lost 1 more day due to architect meeting, but heck, I’m counting that “research,” so there. All this said, my average daily word count for the month of May was in the 800+ range, so though I lost a lot of days, I got more words down than I could have.

MONTHLY GOALS

Complete 2 novel chapters each month

PROJECTS COMPLETE: 1+ chapter

ANALYSIS: I was supposed to finish Chapters 5 and 6 this month. However, schedule was a little bit messed up from the get-go, as I was still finishing up half of last month’s Chapter 4. So I didn’t start Chapter 5 until the second week of the month, and had my usual ARGH WHAT IS GOING ON HERE trouble with it just long enough to force Chapter 6 off the schedule entirely. Plus the loss of 7 working days just did not help at all. Ultimately, this month I was lucky to finish Chapters 4 and 5 … thankfully I managed high enough daily word counts (mostly hovering in the 1000 range) to do even that.

Workshop 1 project/month

UPDATE: Informed Wednesday Writing Group that I would not be workshopping again until the first draft of the novel is complete. Meltdowns ensued. Aftershocks still rippling through. High drama, none of it intended, all of it too much for me to want to deal with, really, but there you go. Hopefully equilibrium will quickly be restored.

Submit current stories/essays for publication

“Darlene” went out to The Journal, Frostproof, Gettysburg, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, and Hobart.

Meanwhile, Glimmer Train, Open City, and First Intensity all turned “Darlene” down.

* * *

All in all, a pretty crappy month for work—I got very distracted by life, which led to institution of NEW RULE:

EMAIL AND WEB BROWSING ARE NOT ALLOWED UNTIL AFTER WORD COUNT IS ACHIEVED.

This has actually been very successful in the few weeks since I enacted this change. I get to work unencumbered by all distractions in the early part of the morning, which means I’m more focused and also more energized, so much so that I often surpass or even double my daily word count minimums (thus my pulling May together by month's end). Most days, by the time I get to the web post-work, I’m so locked in to work-mind that I barely want to surf—I’m getting through my emails and my blog time much much more efficiently now, and have a lot more time for non-writing office work (research, office-nesting, brainstorming, reading for friends).

The Trouble with New Chapters and the Power of Routine

Starting a new chapter is always more difficult than I think it's going to be. Despite the fact that I have a good sense of where I'm heading, and even better, particular notes and thoughts and scenes and images in mind for "what happens next," I find when I start a new chapter, the events I thought "happen next" don't in fact "happen until something else happens," and I spent tons of time spinning my wheels trying to figure out what that "something else" is. This could be helped, I suppose, by just WRITING THROUGH THE PROBLEM until things fell into place, but of course, that would be way too easy.

Instead, I dither, re-reading all my notes, shoring up my outlines and research files, adding details to the big picture and moving events around.

And that's on the good days.

Consider this:

I finished Chapter 3 on 4/19. I had every intention to begin actual drafting of Chapter 4 on 4/20 -- and to be fair, I did start writing on 4/20. It wasn't good work, it was aimless casting about, but at least it was words on the page. But on 4/21, I got totally freaked out by the poor quality of 4/20's output, and rather than refocus and start again, I killed enough morning time surfing the internet that by afternoon my head cold was back with a vengeance and I went home to bed and didn't write a word. The following day, I wrote at home, and felt okay with the work -- not because it was good, but because, again, at least there were words on a page.

Then I spent 3 days, literally, cooking for Passover. Finally, I got back to the office on 4/25, but it had been so long since I actually dug deep into my work that instead of writing-writing, by which I mean, producing 500 words-on-a-page that take us forward, I made notes again. At least this time, the notes were somewhat original, new thoughts, which mapped the chapter, suggested the scenes and developments that would take me through--at least, now, I had a spine to hang my story. But actual words? No ma'am. I was still too freaked out to write-write, so I went home.

THIS IS VERY LAME, so I’ve decided to parse the causes of intertia in an effort not to repeat the same mistakes.

1. Partly, of course, there's the fear with each new chapter that I'll discover the story can't support the next step, that it's suddenly soul-less and mind-numbingly dull, not to mention a complete rehash of everything that I’ve written and worse, read, before.
2. And also, of course, there’s laziness. But laziness is not a real issue for me, in generally—as I’ve gotten older/married, I’ve found it harder and harder to sit still/be unproductive. I need to be accomplishing things, all the time.
3. Which makes me think the larger problem is lack of focus—and if that’s true, I need to take a look at my routine.

Routine is huge for me. Routine is how I stay feeling clear-headed and in control of my life. Routine is a free sort of anti-depressant, and believe me, it works.

Here’s a glance at my routine:

6:30 am – I get up early mostly because I have discovered if I don’t get out of bed with a flying start, I’ll spend the entire morning cuddling Husband, who tends to linger beneath the sheets. If I kill the morning, I enter a shame-spiral of “how could you lose so much time?” self-berating, which, of course, makes me just want to kill more time. Now, I would love to say that I get up that early because I wake every morning thinking, “I’m so excited to write today!” The fact is, I do actually wake up thinking that—really, I even say it to myself in this little whisper-voice a few times—but that ain’t enough ammunition when I’m faced with warm Husband in warm bed. What actually gets my feet on the floor is knowing I have an early morning appointment every day: a riding lesson.

7:30 am – I ride dressage every morning at a barn close to my house. I ride my own horse, in the company of my trainer, because even I am not responsible enough to make it to the barn that early in the morning if I’m not paying someone else for the time. But knowing I have to meet my trainer at 7:30 gets me up, and the act of riding itself gets me connected to the day. Plus, it’s me-time. Riding is something I do that Husband doesn’t, so it gets me up, out of the house, connected to my day, but also, connected to me as an independent being, which is halfway to me getting into writer-mind.

8:30 am – I have coffee and yogurt and biscotti at Starbucks (yes I know the coffee sucks at Starbucks and there’s something awful about buying into the chain-mentality, but it’s quick and consistent everywhere in the world, totally invariable, and for me, invariability is a pretty big plus when you’re talking routines). Over coffee, I write my morning pages, ala The Artist’s Way. I’ve been keeping notebooks since I was about seven and first read Ann Frank—thinking about how her words had granted her reprieve from the total erasure suffered by most other people in general and 6 million in particular is a large part of what made me decide to be a writer. But over the course of my life, I’ve had ups and downs in that department, and I recently discovered, to my horror, that the absolute hardest or most important moments of my own life—events that would come in handy for my work, for instance—are, for the most part, entirely unrecorded. Aargh. Clearly something kept me from the page, and that was damn silly. It would never happen today, however, because I have realized a coupla things from going through The Artist’s Way a couple of times (sometimes no matter how much someone’s touchy-feely-approach drives you crazy, they do have some interesting or useful things to say). One thing I learned was, dumping all my personal stuff into my notebook before starting work cleared my head for writer-mind and kept my personal distractions and anxieties on the back burner while I focused on the front. And even better, the more time I spent at the notebook, I realized, the more I wanted to get away from the crap there and REALLY WRITE. Which is how I get from Starbucks to my office.

9:30 am – 2:30 pm (or into the evening if I can steal the time) – I write 500 words minimum and pray for 1000 and more.

I mention all of this only because, once again, today I began a new chapter, and worse, on a Monday, after a weekend away from my desk and my notebook. This, of course, is the perfect recipe for creative stagnation and despair. Sickness and travel and Holy Days threw me off track in April, sure, but I refuse to let that derail me again in May. Today I got up, and got with the program—barn, notebook, office—and the opening for Chapter 5 followed, fitfully, to be sure, but still, I started typing, and the words were there. Good, bad, or ugly—doesn’t matter yet. I just made myself get going, 100 words, then 300, then 500, and then the scene was done. I got 520 words down on paper today, and opened Chapter 5 only 1 work day following the close of Chapter 4, and I thank my routines for that.