Month: December 2014

WIP Wednesday: Prepping for the New Year Pt 2

GOALS 2015

I divide my goals into categories: writing; family; personal; and so on. This year, I added a new grouping: Promotion & Marketing. Items such as newsletters, blogs, Tweets, Facebook, Goodreads, and Tsu belong in this category. They used to be under Writing, but they multiplied too quickly. One of the things I need to do in the coming year is focus on the writing when it’s time to write, and the promotion/marketing when it’s time for those activities.

Another thing I’m trying to do this year is be specific. “Be kind to myself” is a nice sentiment, but what does it mean? So I added “Monthly date with myself.” I’m also going to set up and maintain a Happiness Jar. I meant to do this a year ago, but until I reclaimed my office, I didn’t have a place to keep the jar. It’s now all set up and ready to go.

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Speaking of my reclaimed office, once of my goals for 2015 is to maintain and refine the writing space. I actually worked on this the day after Christmas by moving books off one shelf to another where they would be more easily accessible.

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I also hung my book covers.

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And there are goals that have been successful and will stay on the list: calling my aging parents once a week; a monthly date with my husband. Because my parents are “local”, I didn’t make an effort to stay in touch, which is really self-absorbed. So for the past several years, I make a point of calling once a week. When X-Chromo was a senior in high school, I realized TV Stevie and my identities as “parents” was about to shift and we would once more be a couple instead of Y & X’s parents. So we started dating again. It’s been wonderful.

What New Years goals have been successful for you?

SoL Sunday: My Introduction to the Bogeyman.

Do you remember the first time you ever heard of the Bogeyman?

I do. My mom had asked me to run down to the cellar and make sure the door to the hatch was locked. I didn’t want to do it. The cellar was dark, dank, spooky. The hatch was even worse. And there were spiders.

My older cousin was staying with us at the time, and she said, “What’s the matter? Do you think the Bogeyman is going to get you?” I had no idea what she was talking about, so she explained.

That made my trip to the cellar and the hatch so much more . . . memorable.

WIP Wednesday: Prepping for the New Year Part 1

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but I do set goals every year. My best friends, my writing peeps (a.k.a. The Purples), and I have been doing goals together since 2005. We even gave a workshop on goal-setting to our local chapter in October of last year.

I first started seriously thinking about goals–specifically writing goals, but all goals–after attending then listening to a workshop by Barbara Samuel at the RWA National Conference in 2004. It seemed appropriate to run into her when thinking about my goals for 2015. I found this blog by her shortly before Thanksgiving.

I shared the link with the Purples. One Purple friend shared this link. And this one. Another Purple shared this. And another link showed up on our e-mail loop.

I think the recurring theme in most of these shared blogs is that we’re all feeling overwhelmed. We’re juggling too many roles. The demands on our time are increasing and any support systems seems to be vanishing. I once read a book–I thought I’d written down the quote, but I can’t seem to find it–in which the author wrote, “If one more person tells me to get up an hour earlier to do whatever they think I should do–eventually, I will never get to bed.”

We are too demanding of ourselves when we set our goals. We need to take a step back and take a deep breath.. Setting our goals needs to be rooted in reality–our reality, with our families, our homes, our day jobs, our spiritual communities, and other obligations.. We need to create realistic expectations for ourselves, and the number one goal should be, “Say No.”  Our goals need to be grounded in truth, not fantasy. One person can do only so much.

 

 

 

Reading By The Season: December

There are certain books I re-read at certain times of the year. There’s just something about the stories that suit my mood for that season.

Every December, I re-read Silver Lining by Maggie Osborne. My paperback copy is in tatters. The Kindle edition is on my wish list.

The heroine of the story is a woman alone in the 1800’s, who could have made her living on her back, as the preacher reminds the hero after their “forced” marriage, but instead worked all kinds of jobs to support herself. Her varied careers give her more insight into what makes the hero tick than he has into her. It takes his mother to point out certain home truths about his unwanted wife to the hero. There’s a perfect villain and a wonderful cast of secondary characters.

The reason I read this book in December is because of the Christmas scene. The heroine had never had a family. She’d never had a Christmas: “…she was positive that her first Christmas Eve with a real family would be the best evening of her whole life.” The hero’s family works together to give her a Christmas to remember. “Tonight was the most wonderful, the most beautiful, the absolute best evening of my life!”  It’s a turning point scene in the book. I shed a few tears every time I read it.

Do you have a favorite holiday story?

 

WIP Wednesday: My Newsletter

When I sold my first book, a friend suggested I start a Mail Chimp account right away. Mail Chimp is a popular newsletter program. It’s free. It’s easy to use. So I signed up for an account and put a “Subscribe to my Newsletter” tab on my Facebook author page. There is also a spot to sign up here on my website–far right column, scroll down a bit.

And that’s where I stalled. With the pending publication of my second book (and some other exciting prospects in the works), when I saw an on-line class for Mail Chimp, I immediately signed up. I finished the class earlier this month. If nothing else, I now have a better sense of what I want to accomplish with my newsletter. And, in my usual fashion, I know more about what I don’t want than what I do want.

So Issue One of the Comptonplations™ Newsletter is now a work in progress. I plan to issue it the first week of February. There will be exclusive newsletter subscriber content. There will be a list of places where I’m guest blogging, and the topics I’ll be covering. I will issue a newsletter only when I have something news-worthy to announce. I think this will be fun!