Monthly Archives: March 2020

Figuring Things Out

That’s pretty much what everyone is doing right now, with what’s going on in the world. I have been fortunate so far, as I still have a job, and it was already work-from-home, so that part has been figured out for a long time as well. So I’ll leave commentary on that to others. One of my commenters last week noted that she’d spent too much time reading news about the pandemic, and I got caught up in that, too. I dialed it back a little this week, which helped.

Most of my figuring-out had to do with my writing. I already have a good routine for work, and had been settling into one for taking care of the house (a.k.a. cleaning), since we moved away from the friend who cleaned for us. But I never developed a good routine for writing.

One thing I noticed recently is that I tend to put off the writing until the very end of the day, after I’ve done everything else that needed to be done (and taken necessary breaks). I suspect this mostly comes from the fact that writing is fun (or it should be), and like many, I grew up with the mindset to “do your homework first, then you can go play.” The problem was, by the time I got to the writing, I was tired and didn’t feel like it (or care enough to push through). Something needed to change.

My husband wound up going out of town for a job last week, so it was the perfect time to develop a new routine: doing my writing right after dinner, and giving it enough importance to be okay with it. Even if I spent 1/2 hour to an hour on the writing, that would still leave me with time to relax and spend with my husband afterward on most days.

Well, it WORKED! I spent at least 1/2 hour every day on my writing, right after dinner, and also wrote about 3300 words of notes. Even better, my husband was gone for three days, and I kept this up after he got back. I also enjoyed it more, I think because I wasn’t trying to pressure myself into doing “real” writing, but just made notes.

Which is where the other part of “figuring it out” comes in. The act of making notes helped me tons with figuring out what needs to be changed in what I already have, and where my story is going. I haven’t figured it all out, but at the rate I’m going, I should be good to spend another week making notes and doing some rough outlines (with the caveat that it all can change!), then I should be good to get back to the actual writing. And since I’m no longer bored with it, that should be fun as well.

What I’ve Been Reading

I didn’t finish anything this week, but I have been enjoying a novel that I will write about here next week.

What I’ve Been Writing

A lot of notes! ROW80 ended for the quarter on Thursday, so I guess it’s time for an end-of-ROW wrap-up. I changed my goals midway through when I started bogging down, but that was still not enough. I made my January writing goal, but got next to nothing in February or March. But hey, next week is a new Round, so time to start back in then. I’ll have a better idea of what I can do for Round Two, so I’ll blog about that next week. This week, I want to continue making notes to get the rest of the story figured out, and either start back on the WIP, or be ready to next week.

I am almost done with my learning goal, too. Since I set my goal for three months, and we still have a couple days left, I should be able to finish that online workshop by Tuesday, and meet my goal. I also wanted to learn something about copyright once a month, so I also need to get on that if I want to meet my goal–I sort of forgot about it last week, when it was on my to-do list. So this week for learning, I want to finish the online workshop on Secondary Plotlines, spend a little time reading about copyright, and start another online workshop–still not sure which one.

So that’s a wrap for ROW80, Round One! Tell me, how are things going for you? Have you been affected by the pandemic? I hope you’re staying healthy and employed! How are you doing on your goals, whether writing or something else? Please share in the comments–I love to hear from you!

Jennette Marie Powell writes stories about ordinary people in ordinary places, who do extraordinary things and learn that those ordinary places are anything but. In her Saturn Society novels, unwilling time travelers do what they must to make things right... and change more than they expect. You can find her books at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, iTunes, and more.

Nothing to See Here

Still haven’t made progress on the WIP this week. Part of that has been because my mind is elsewhere, as I’m sure it is for many right now. The other part is because I’m still stuck on boring. Time to change my approach–more on that below.

As it has everywhere else, things have been quiet here. Except here, that’s pretty normal. I work from home already, so no changes there (and I’m thankful I still have my job). My husband is retired, so he’s mostly been working on the property, though bored on rainy days because there’s not much for him to do inside. We’re very fortunate.

Tennessee has not shut down to the extent others have, especially Ohio, where my family lives and my coworkers work. My husband and I went out to dinner on Thursday for our anniversary (our 26th!). The place was pretty deserted, and the next day, the Mayor of Knoxville ordered restaurants to close except for carryout and delivery. All bars in our county were also ordered to close on Friday, but restaurants were allowed to remain open at reduced capacity. We’ll see what happens this week, but plan to remain hunkered down.

What I’ve Been Reading

Last week, I finished The Bastard Prince by Patty Jansen. This is one of my favorite authors, and I read all of her Ghostspeaker Chronicles, the 6-book series that takes place in the same world. I enjoyed this one every bit as much as the others, though luckily I bought the whole 3-book series, as it ended on a cliffhanger. Normally I hate those, but Jansen tends to write 3-book series that are more like one big book, so I knew to expect it.

What I’ve Been Writing

As mentioned above, not much. I have bogged down in not knowing what happens next, or even what I’m working toward. I didn’t outline my last book, and it worked–I ended up figuring out the end just fine, though I might have run into a few stops along the way. And it was better than I expected, with some cool twists I doubt I would have outlined at all. But this time, it’s time to just sit down and figure out what happens. If the characters wind up with other ideas, I can go with the flow, as I’ve done before and toss the outline–which is the main reason I stopped doing them. But this time it’s not working, so it’s time to outline. That’s what I’ll be doing this week.

I’ll be keeping on learning, too. Last week, I took a break from the Secondary Plotlines workshop and did a short one on Starting or Restarting Your Writing. It helped, and I got some good ideas there I’ll be trying as well. This week, I’ll go back in on the Secondary Plotlines workshop. I’d originally planned to finish it this week, but since I didn’t work on it last week, I’ll shoot for getting week 5 done, with week 6 (finishing) as a bonus.

We’re also coming up on the end of ROW80 Round 1. Obviously, I haven’t met my writing goals at all, though I did well on learning. So this week will also include reevaluating and figuring out what I can do for the next Round.

What’s going on in your part of the world? Are you staying in, or are places still open? If you’re off work, are you getting extra time to work on your goals, or are other things (childcare?) taking over? Please take care of yourself, and drop me a line in the comments–I love to hear from you!

Slow “Vacation” Week

You would think I could have gotten a lot done this past week, given that my husband went to Florida for Bike Week, leaving me here with the critters. This is what my mom refers to as a “vacation.” :D. But no.

He came home Friday night, which was just as well as Bike Week shut down early due to virus fears (and not a bad call either). He and his friend actually didn’t participate in Bike Week at all, as they were staying with his friend’s relative, and wound up just cruising through the center of town where the activities were supposed to be. Attendance was sparse, so they just rode through and didn’t even go into any of the bars or music venues. My husband came down with a sore throat and wasn’t feeling well for the ride home, but he made it safely and was feeling better the next day, leading us to conclude he just had a cold or mild flu. However, he’s staying home, just in case. As for supplies? We’re lucky to have made our regular monthly Costco run a week before the panic struck, so we’re good. And I already work from home, so I’m fortunate there as well.

What I’ve Been Reading

I’ve been reading a couple of nonfiction books, as well as novel that I’m really enjoying, but I didn’t finish anything this week. So this too, will have to wait until next week.

What I’ve Been Writing

Part of my slow writing week may be that I had some extra bookkeeping to do for our businesses, finishing up things for taxes and such, and updating records since we sold our old house. That was in fact the case–but not all week.

I’m still having trouble keeping going on the WIP without knowing where it’s going. I mean, I have an idea of how it will end, but no idea of how what I’m writing now will lead to that or even tie in.

I got about 700 words written before totally bogging down again. My WIP is boring to me, so what else could it be to readers?

Time to regroup–AGAIN. I need to just spend the week getting a better idea of what will happen, and maybe even do some rudimentary outlining. I never end up following the outline, which is why I quit doing them, but maybe my creative brain needs something to latch onto before it can suggest something better. We’ll see!

On another note, I did get my learning done, and completed another week of my online workshop. I want to do another week of it this week, as well as do some reading on copyright.

How has your week been? Have you been affected by the virus pandemic? I hope you and yours are staying healthy! How are you doing with whatever goals you might have, whether writing or otherwise? Please share in the comments–I’d love to hear from you!

Some Good News

This past week, we finally sold our house in Ohio! We actually got a contract on it a month ago, but we knew not to count on it until closing. That happened Wednesday, so we are now free and clear of it–and its bills!

The other good thing is that I finally made a writing goal. More on that below.

What I’ve Been Reading

This is a book I’ve been waiting to see published for a long time: Torn Between Worlds by Linda Chalk. Linda is a writing friend, and her book is pretty unique: a Native American historical romance where it’s the heroine who’s a Native American. Except in a way, she isn’t–brought up by white settlers from a very young age, she knows nothing of her heritage. She gets a chance at finding it when she joins a wagon train to California. The story is set in 1848 and covers the journey on the Oregon Trail, along with Lydia’s many discoveries, starting with the sexy trail boss Joe. I really enjoyed the historical detail that really brought this story alive–highly recommended!

What I’ve Been Writing

My goal this week was small–only 1000 words–but that did the trick. I met that goal, and also completed the next week of my online workshop on Secondary Plotlines. I also got a book about one of the time periods in my WIP, and started reading that.

This week, I’m going to keep my writing goal small, as I still don’t know where this book is going and that slows me down. So I’ll go for 250 words/day, for five days, or a total of 1250 words. I also want to read my research book, and complete another week of my online workshop.

What about you–what good things are happening in your life right now? Have you read any good books lately? How are you doing with whatever goals you might have, whether writing or otherwise? Please share in the comments–I love to hear from you!

Changing Goals, and Copyright

It’s now March 1st, and I’m nowhere near where I’d hoped to be with my WIP.

I actually had a good week, a nice, relatively-uneventful one. Even better, my migraines have backed off a bit, and I only had a headache two days this week, and just regular headaches at that. Still unpleasant, but not migraine-unpleasant. Yet I can’t seem to figure out what happens next in the WIP, and am even drawing a blank with my lists of 20 things. So I started back into learning, this time with WMG Publishing’s Secondary Plotlines online workshop. Just watching a few of the videos knocked some ideas loose, so I did start back into the WIP for 650 words, most of which were on one night, so yay! However, it’s a long way from what I set out to do this month. More on that below.

What I’ve Been Reading

The novel I’ve been reading is a long one, so I’m still not finished with it. I’m enjoying it, so I’ll definitely discuss here when I’m done. In nonfiction, I read 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam. This book was published ten years ago, but is every bit as relevant now as it was when it came out, and very well could become a time management classic. One of the basic exercises the author suggests is to track how you spend your time for a week (Dean Wesley Smith suggests this too, in his Carving Out Time for Your Writing video lecture). It’s really eye-opening to see how we really spend our time. I spend more on Facebook and playing games than I thought. I know I need a lot of downtime, so overall, it wasn’t a surprise. The rest of 168 Hours is also good, and it deals with both work and home. Recommended if you want to see how you can find more time to do the things you want to do, and less on things you have to do.

Copyright Learning

I also spent some time reading The Copyright Handbook this week, meeting my goal to learn something about copyright each month. Chapter Three deals with registering copyright. As I mentioned last month, registration is not necessary to have copyright–as soon as you commit your work to a tangible form (that includes computer data), it’s considered copyrighted. However, if someone infringes your copyright, you can’t take them to court unless the work is registered. And if you register after the infringement occurs, you can only go after actual damages, which can be hard to prove. The exception is with a newly-published work: you have up to three months after publication to register, even if the infringement occurs prior to the registration. The catch here is that some courts consider registration to happen upon submittal, others consider it to happen when you receive the certificate, and still others (including the federal court for my area) are unspecified. So bottom line, if you’re an author, register your work ASAP after publication for the most protection!

Registering a work where the same entity owns the rights to all components–the text, front matter, cover design, and back cover copy for a book, for example–is a simple matter. But when those components’ rights are owned by different people, each owner’s portion should be registered separately to get the maximum benefit in case of infringement. Same goes for an anthology, where the works within are copyrighted by different authors.

What I’ve Been Writing

As noted above, my WIP is slow-going. My goal for February was to write 12,000 words. I barely got 3,000–and that was more than I thought I’d written. So it’s time to revise those goals. For March, I’m going to shoot for 5000 words total, starting with 1,000 this week. If I hit the March goal, that will bring my quarterly total to 16,000–about half of my original goal but still something.

I did meet my learning goal this week, which was to go through the Week 2 videos and do the assignment for another online workshop on Secondary Plotlines. I’d already done the first week a while back, so I reviewed my notes for that first.

What about you–have you had any goal changes lately? Have you ever tracked how you spend your time? If so, what surprised you? If not, what do you think you’d find? And how are you doing on whatever goals you have, whether writing-related or otherwise? Please share in the comments–I’d love to hear from you!