Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week

 According to Twitter, this week is Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week. This is how I'm celebrating. 

Any questions?

I sent my book proposal out last week (I'm a hybrid author -- traditionally published nonfiction and self-published fiction), so I'm giving the muse a break this week. I'm sure some ideas will arise and, if so, I have the appropriate notebooks in which to capture them. 

But, the longer I do this, the more I realize that nudging, berating, and otherwise harassing the muse is not the way to go. Both of us need a little R & R before I flip the calendar page to August and it's time to devote at least a little time to back-to-school prep. 

So far, that's looked like reviewing a really cool planner (still need to write the review, but I have copious notes), reading for pleasure, practicing my French (a habit started two summers ago), a tiny bit of sketchnoting, and a really easy jigsaw puzzle. Unfortunately, it also included an ER trip for my husband who is, I'm grateful to say, on the mend.

The older I get, the less I feel I need to make excuses for lazy summer days. So, as my first (and only) official act of Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week, I hereby grant you permission to enjoy as many lazy summer days as you can. If you wish, you may even bank a few for use in a future season.

Enjoy every minute. They go really fast.

So, What are you Working On?

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If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that my top (work) priority flip flops in January, May, August and December. Beginning in January and August, my class planning and teaching responsibilities get top priority. In May and December, my writing projects get top billing, at least until the semester starts again. 

This summer I'm teaching a class, so June will be a mixed bag. It's a small class and one I've taught before, so I'm optimistic that if I establish good habits in May, I'll be able to continue them into June.

So far, so good, even if I did get off to a late start.

So, what am I working on? In terms of short-to-medium length pieces, I've got blogs here, over at Organizing by STYLE and CatholicMom.com and some articles, both online and in print. 

As for novels and book-length work, last summer's list looked something like this:

• Project #1 is a novel with a new cast of characters. Over the past year, with the help of my critique group, I've been tightening and revising and I am within twelve chapters of finishing this stage of the project, which gives it front burner status.

• Project #2 is an idea I've been toying with based on my Organizing by Style blog. Because it's time sensitive, it has risen to the top of the list. Stay tuned for details, which I hope to have available at my Christmas in July Facebook party.

• Project #3 is the third Marita/Angel/Charli book, for which I just might have come up with a title when I couldn't sleep last Friday night. We'll have to see if it sounds as good in the light of day as it did at 3 am. I promise new twists and developments...which is why it's taking me so long.

This summer, Project #1 is ready for its final revision, thanks to the input of my critique book. Unfortunately, Kelsey, Jake and company will end up moving to the back burner because Project #2 has moved from idea to book contract! Writing Organizing by STYLE: The Book (which will obviously need a jazzier title) will be top priority so I can meet my deadline with Our Sunday Visitor Books and the book can come out next spring. 

As for Project #3...take heart, fans of Marita/Angel and Charli. I'm more than 60,000 words and 25 chapters in, so this book is getting written...just slowly. As I've said before, these characters keep surprising me (especially Bets), so I think it will be worth the wait. 

Project #4 is also taking shape, but it won't be ready for quite some time. I have a new character in mind and am using a cool, new (to me) character development sheet I picked up at Ramona DeFelice Long's Pennwriters workshop, "Damsels, Dames and Darlings: Writing Realistic Women." I'm using it to shape my protagonist and perhaps another female character as well. Since this is my favorite part of the process and, since I have several other time-sensitive irons in the fire, you won't be seeing Genevieve for a while. 

And now...my daughter just called to see if I'm ready to go shopping. 

It's going to be a great summer!

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Scaffolding the Summer

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My daughter is home.

All of my exams and papers are graded and final grades have been turned in.

It must be summer vacation!

Let the list-making commence!

Truth be told, I start making summer lists long before the last paper is graded. Last Saturday, I sat down with the various incarnations of notes to myself that I've been tucking into notebooks and calendars and began organizing them.

• My Big 3 for Saturday. (Okay, it was more of a Big 5 because I couldn't decide).

• My list for the weekend/week ahead, to be broken into smaller pieces as the week wears on.

• My summer lists: overall goals, books to read, movies to watch. Projects. 

These lists hold a different kind of promise than my standard to-do lists. Biased more toward what I want to do than what I have to to, they're the scaffolding for not only my summer, but the second half of my year. As such, they provide a flexible structure suited to the season, but still leave room for opportunity. A day (or weekend) trip. An evening out. Some fun event that I don't even know about yet.

Spontaneity.

So, why make lists at all?

Because they hold a combination of promises made, things I've been longing to do and opportunities to explore -- all the things I don't get the chance to do during the year while I am teaching and life is busy and scheduled. As such, they are the counterbalance to the school year, the other side of the coin, the "what I want to be when I grow up" activities.


Just writing them down is both useful and enticing. For me, making lists sets things in motion; once I've written something down, it lingers in the back of my mind, keeping me alert for opportunities that are relevant to the things I want to accomplish.

This week, there will be a lot of loose ends to tie up -- tasks that got put off, awaiting unscheduled days. I'll start chipping away at the housekeeping items on the list, trimming away the short-term to-dos and revealing the items that can't be checked off with less than an hour's work. From there, my lists will diverge, sending me into my semi-annual goals review, otherwise known as an excuse to blow the dust off my leather-bound planner.

But that's another post.

How about you? What do your summer lists look like?

Friday Feature: Why Be Bored?

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On a day when the news is anything but boring, it may seem odd for me to be posting about boredom, but, in fact, psychologists recommend a healthy dose of boredom -- at least for kids:

"Your role as a parent is to prepare children to take their place in society. Being an adult means occupying yourself and filling up your leisure time in a way that will make you happy," says Lyn Fry, a child psychologist in London with a focus on education. "If parents spend all their time filling up their child's spare time, then the child's never going to learn to do this for themselves."

Although this is the last thing un-bored parents want to hear, perhaps summer is the time to re-evaluate our own boredom -- or the lack thereof. Personally, I can't remember the last time I was bored, but that's due, in large part, to accomplishing exactly what Fry suggests -- filling up my leisure time in a way that makes me happy.

Does your leisure time make you happy? Do you even have any leisure time? One of the ideas suggested in the Quartz article is sitting down at the start of summer and making a list with your child of all the things they want to do. One summer, when my daughter was small, we created a bingo board for this purpose, filling in squares with camps and day trips and activities. Then, when she got bored, she had a resource to go to. We couldn't always manage an impromptu trip to the beach at 3pm, but that taught the value of planning ahead.

We adults might want to try something similar -- but no fair listing chores and projects. While "paint the kitchen" will certainly alleviate boredom, it belongs on a to-do list, not a summer fun list -- unless you're someone who loves such tasks. In a perfect world, our down-time dovetails with our kids' bored time, enabling us to entertain and enjoy one another.

Until that happens, you're bound to hear "I'm bored" a few (thousand) times. As you send your kids off to play outside, check the list or find a toy that inspires creative play, remind yourself you're building life skills.

Or maybe you should pull out a coloring book and join them.

Saturday Special: 5 Home Organization Projects to Tackle Before Summer is Over

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It's mid-September and today's Days to Summer countdown tells me there are 4 days left in the summer of 2015. Though I'm sorry to say good-bye to many aspects of summer, I'm not a big fan of hot weather, so I'm not entirely sad about these waning days.

Just as each of us has our favorite seasons (mine is fall), some organization projects lend themselves more to some seasons than others. Toward that end, Organized Living has come up with some seasonal suggestions, in 5 Home Organization Projects to Tackle in Really Hot Weather. Many of these would also work on rainy days...or any other day where venturing outside seems less-than-desirable.  

What will you organize today?

On the Cusp

There was one table left beside the cream and sugar station with a lone chair as its companion when I arrived at "my" Starbucks with my laptop slung over my shoulder around noon. The cushy chairs at the back, the ones I'd taken over when I did my book signing here, were all available, but today I was here to work.

The spring semester is drawing to a close, and I can feel the shift in my priorities. Class planning is still at the top of the list, but with only one class left before finals week, it doesn't feel as urgent. Writing is finding its way back in, and as much as I enjoy teaching, I am looking forward to readjusting the balance for a few months, putting my writing first instead of squeezing it into nooks and crannies.

Today is a social day, too. I met out-of-town friends for breakfast at Panera (rather than at my house which is suffering from end-of-semester paper clutter disorder) and am meeting another friend -- a retired teacher -- for lunch in less than an hour. I do some of my best work in these in-between time slots. I know I have a deadline and that increases my determination to accomplish something so I can check it off my list and enjoy my social engagement without that nagging feeling that I should be doing something else.

I was a little worried that the transition out of spring semester and into summer would be challenging -- that I'd decide I deserved a break before moving into summer writing mode and I would lose valuable writing time to the need for downtime. Fortunately, a succession of writing events -- Lancaster Christian Writers' Super Saturday in April, my writing retreat last weekend and the Pennwriters retreat in two weeks -- are creating a smooth transition for me, along with a delicious sense of anticipation. Coming home from the retreat to an article sale (an article I polished at the retreat), a guest blog post (also polished at the retreat) and the news that I'd won a free hour of author coaching in the drawing I'd entered on Super Saturday certainly didn't hurt my motivation.

Leaving a sure thing for the promise of something new two years ago is one of the scariest things I've ever done. I knew I could do the work-at-home thing -- I'd been doing it as a writer for years -- but there were so many unknowns, including the question of whether I'd maintain my momentum or fall prey to a leisurely pace that hindered my progress because the time pressures I was used to had been lifted.

The pace in the past year has been far from leisurely, and most days, I like it that way. I achieve balance most weeks, too: a combination of writing, teaching and seeing friends so I don't become a hermit or a workaholic. I am, however, looking forward to the longer stretches of time that summer affords, knowing they will allow me to think rather than just to do. I have a number of writing projects cooking, so to speak, and I need some quiet time to decide where to turn up the heat and what to let simmer.

And this time, I'm not in a hurry to get out of the kitchen.

Diamonds Among the Detritus

There's something about beginnings and endings of academic years that makes me want to take stock. This desire has outlasted my career in elementary education, and I'm not sure if that's because I still have a student in my house, or because it's a habit that's so ingrained, it just feels strange not to sort and purge and de-clutter.

This mindset has inspired a particular de-cluttering task, and in the spirit of summer vacation, I am mixing practicality with pleasure. My objective? To read a magazine a day each day this week. Hardly a lofty intellectual pursuit, I know, but I'm okay with that. I have plenty of things to keep my mind nourished; this particular goal is a means to an end -- one of the little tricks I play on myself to reduce the accumulated "stuff" that has piled up in my house.

I love to read - always have. I'm easy prey for a book or magazine with a cover that piques my interest, and if the cover (or jacket) copy is tempting as well, I'm likely to take it home with me and add it to my collection. The trouble is that reading material needs to be read, or it just becomes clutter, no matter how promising it is. And as much as I love to read, I never seem to find enough time to actually indulge in that particular pursuit.

But now it is summer. Days are longer. I've been relieved of the role of homework assistant/taskmaster for a few months, and it's the time of year where I find it just as easy to pick up a book as to pick up the remote. And while I have many to-be-read titles gracing my bookshelves and other surfaces, it's the magazines that are overrunning the place.

The magazine pile-up increased dramatically when my daughter was in middle school. Each fall, she came home with a glossy temptress in the form of a fund-raising packet featuring photos and thumbnails of hundreds of magazines. I wanted to be a supportive parent, and so I subscribed. A lot.

Consequently, although my daughter's middle school years are behind her, the detritus of the fund-raisers remains tucked away in drawers, bins and baskets, mocking me. I know I should just get rid of some of it, but the curiosity-seeking reader in me believes there's a gem lurking in each issue, and I'm certain that if I only find the time to excavate, I will be greatly rewarded.

But this week, the clutter-buster is lording it over the curiosity seeker. I want to sit down and read a book without being distracted by its glossy cousins, and so I need to reduce the magazine population. I know that as I dig through the piles in search of each day's reading adventure, I'll uncover coal among the diamonds. And, since I'm teaching a writing class in two weeks where back issues of magazines will be a valuable resource, now is the time to uncover -- and dispose of -- both varieties.

Reading one issue a day will still leave me time to write and to sample chapters in the novels and non-fiction titles that hover nearby, clamoring for my attention. It is, as I said earlier, part plan, part trick -- a means to an end that I can fit into a work schedule slimmed down by the changes in routine ushered in by summer vacation. And since I've already let many of these subscriptions lapse, I know there won't be as many issues coming into the house to fill the space I'm clearing. From an organizing perspective, that's a very rewarding payoff -- one that will help keep me on track as I mine the piles for diamonds.