Samhain Publishing

The best thing about the internet is that now we have ebooks.  We can take an ebook reader with us on vacation, buy books from practically anywhere that has a wifi connection, and take a prodigious stack of reading material anywhere without needing to see the chiropractor (or, frankly, resembling that bag lady down on the corner).

Okay, so now we have ebook readers, smart phones, computers, purses with lists, and the ubiquitous sticky note.

Then how come we’re STILL not getting everything done?

Efficiency is not the same thing as effectiveness, and it’s not enough just to have the tools.  We have to actually use them if we want to build anything (like a stress-free, well-oiled life where everything has a place and, moreover, everything is IN its place).  If you, like me, have those little chaos-generation-machines otherwise known as “children,” then you know exactly what I’m talking about.  If you work outside the home and have to deal with all sorts of demands from others to do more in less time, then you, too, know exactly what I’m talking about.  If you’re a yogi and completely serene and calm, then come here, because I want to shoot you.  Or emulate you, whichever comes first.

Assuming you want to hear Aunt Noony’s 5 tips, and you’re not already a yogi living in enlightenment, then here we go:

Point the First:  Be selective about what you pay attention to.  You don’t have to read every email that comes across your inbox.  Use your filters (any good email program has them).

Point the Second:  Set aside time each day to read.  Even if it’s 15 minutes in the morning on the way to work, if you take transit, or sitting in the parking lot, if you drive, that’s 15 minutes you can relax.  If you don’t work outside the home, then try 15 minutes in the school parking lot when you drop off the kids, or when you lay them down for a nap.

Point the Third:  Only touch things once.  When you get those emails, and bills, and papers from the office, and stuff from the kids’ school, do it right away.  Don’t set it aside to do later.  “Later” is a chimera.  Just get it done.

Point the Fourth:  Use a filing system.  Doesn’t have to be fancy, it just has to hold stuff.  File important emails by some consistent method (by sender, by category, something).  File mail the same way:  put bills in a bills folder organized by date, or file them each by the company from whence they came.  

Point the Fifth:  Take time each week to just relax.  If you do yoga, great; if you journal, terrific; if you meditate, awesome.  But do it.  Find something restorative that you can do for yourself.

Above all, remember this:  the internet is a tool, not our masters.  With a little creativity and forethought, we can tame the tasks and get back to what’s really important:  reading more books!

Keeping the plot of a novel-length manuscript can be a challenge for the most organized of writers. If you, like me, aren’t naturally left-brained sequential, then it can be more of a headache because your mind doesn’t organize information in a stepwise fashion. Have you ever looked at your story and realize that everything is happening in one day? or two different things are going on in the same night?

Reading a manuscript that is disorganized is no fun, for obvious reasons; but what do you do when you don’t like or can’t write to an outline?

One tool is a timeline that simply tracks each chapter and includes a simple sentence or two as to the action that takes place. I find that I have a bad habit of putting all my action on one or two days, and using a timeline helps me straighten all that out and figure out the flow of the action.

Here’s an example from Rachel and I, the timeline from our recent Samhain release, BURNING BRIGHT:

I don’t start using a timeline until I’m about 10,000 or 30,000 words into a project.  Once I have enough material to have a clear picture of the story, then I’m able to write down what I have and see where I am trying to go.

Another tool is to build a literal calendar:

This is from an earlier draft of the book, when we first worked on sorting out when things happened.  It’s important for the flow of the story that the action ebb and flow, rather than clot and spurt.  The calendar can help you sort out who does what to whom when.

I hope whatever you use works for you.  Every writer is different.  But if you need some ideas for how to play with and reorganize your plots, I hope this generates some solutions for you.

Write on!

Many people I meet who want to write are stymied by the idea that the writer must be someone who always knows where the story is, and how to get it out onto the keyboard or paper. Maybe this is true for some writers, but not always; and sometimes, for writers for whom it is true, it’s not always true.

Which means, there is hope.

So what can a person do when they want to tell a story, but don’t quite know how to bridge the gap between the blank page and a finished story?

Read More