I took an impromptu, unplanned vacation over the holidays and spent those weeks with my hubby and our son. Like most folks, my husband and I have made choices and compromises in order to raise our son the way we want him raised…and in the process, life gets hectic and busy.  I had things to do, plenty to focus on, but when my husband started his vacation — a full two weeks at home with no work and complete focus on giving himself some much-earned rest, I realized this time was too precious to do anything but be with him.

It seems like we're forever looking for that perfect balance.  Balance between children and your husband.  Balance between work and home.  Balance between dust bunnies and the ten million other chores you almost never have time for.  Friends.  Family.  And for me (and probably you), finding time to write and edit what you've written, promote what has already been published and… well, you can see how everything seems to be just another ball in the air to juggle. 

For a long time, I tried to find the magic number to create the perfect balance.  If I just organized myself enough, or planned things out better, or did this or that…It was stressful and almost more exhausting than constantly trying to keep all the balls in the air. 

And it taught me something very, very important.  There is no magic number.  There is no perfect setting for that perfect balance in which all the planets align and the stars magically appear, because what makes up the perfect balance today isn't going to be the same tomorrow.  Something else will pop up or fade away, or leap above in levels of importance. 

As writers, we constantly have to fight for the time to write, to edit, to research, submit and do it all again with the next book.  We struggle to find ways to fit it into our schedules, to work around family and job commitments.  And I believe that my success — or lack thereof– is my own responsibility.  I'm not a victim of life.  Sure, it gets in the way sometimes and doesn't leave me the time to do what I want or need to do.  But ultimately, these are choices I make.  

I made the choice to drop everything in my world for my family.  Did I have work to do? Oh yeah.  Do I have writing? You bet.  I have a To Do list that seems to feed off the dust bunnies in my house.  (And since dust bunnies aren't actually on my To Do list…yes, you can see the scary potential here.) But when I chose to set all of those things aside to focus on a priority, I was okay with that.  It was what I needed to do to bring back some balance in my life. 

Balance is about harmony.  It's about making choices, being selective and realizing that I am in control (even when I'm not.)  Sometimes that means pretending…it means finding a way to harness in that uncontrollable feeling just long enough to get past it. (The old saying, Fake it until you feel it?)

So, how do you get in control when you feel like you have none?  Here are a few things that work for me: 

Know What I'm Working With
I can't make choices until I know what I have to work with.  I'm a list person, so I start by making a list of everything I need to do, want to do and hope to do (that dust-bunny fed To Do List) - this covers ALL walks of my world, from personal to business.  This may sound stressful to some of you, so if lists aren't your thing, you can easily find another way.  For me, getting it all on paper eases my mind.  It's comforting. I know it will be there whenever I get stressed again, something that gives me a sense of control. 

Learning to Say No
It is very easy to over-extend and I'm guilty of doing that often.  I sat down one day and figured out my time limits…what I could feasibly offer any given week.  What days I would offer to which aspects of my world.  Putting it in numbers made it much more real and accessible to say no when I need to.

Choosing A Focus
When juggling so many things, it's important to place focus on the most immediate needs. As an example,  if a promotional ad isn't due until April, but I have something else due in two weeks? I need to focus on what is coming up and put aside the other items until they need to become a priority.  

Make Public Commitments
Being held accountable by someone else always helps.  It actually gives me permission to focus on what I need to focus on, because now someone else knows my goals. 

Take Time To Breathe
It's also about giving myself permission…to not always get it right, to change things as needed, to lighten up a little.  Sometimes just to take a minute, go get a cup of coffee and step away.  I'm always amazed at how much a break can help at times.

You can find the ways that get you back on track — what works for you may be different.  But know what they are.  Write them down.  And any time you feel that the balance is slipping from your life, pull that paper out and walk through it, step by step, until you feel calm again. 

Or if that fails, just go on vacation.  It worked for me.

Jeannie Ruesch
http://www.jeannieruesch.com

SOMETHING ABOUT HER
Available April 10, 2009 by The Wild Rose Press

~ "A wonderful debut!" ~NYTimes bestselling author Gaelen Foley

   
So, you’ve mastered the art of dialogue. You can recite the rules about point of view in your sleep. And the grammar gods have nothing on you. But do you have a career plan? Have you figured out where you’re going?

Writing is first and foremost a business. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that when we’re sending our “baby” and our pride and joy out into the world on submission. Yet, to agents and editors, business is the top priority. And planning will give you one more leg up. How do you write a career plan? Here are seven easy steps to guide you:

Define your goals. Take some time to write down both your larger goals and some specific objectives that can help you realize them. It’s important to dig deep and pin down your ambitions. Do you want to write in multiple genres? Publish only one book a year? What do you want to be known for? Where do you see your career in one year, five years, or ten years?

Write out your mission statement. Your mission statement should describe who you are, what your writing is about, and what your values are. Keep it simple. One or two lines should be sufficient.

Develop your vision. A vision statement differs from a mission statement because instead of defining who you are now as a writer, it proclaims what you would eventually like to become. Be as specific as you can and think of the future. 

Study your industry. It’s imperative to understand the industry and your specific genre. From determining who the publishers are that put out books that are similar to yours, to their word count requirements, to tracking which editors are moving where, knowing your market is invaluable.

Describe your strengths. Next, you will want to set up a company description defining your marketability. What makes your writing stand? Are you a New York Times best seller? Do you have work experience in the area you’re writing about? Consider how to market to your strengths. 

Do a financial review. Determine where your money is going, and where it could best be spent. List categories and projected allocations for the coming year.

Take action. Detail all the steps, one by one, you will need to take to put this plan into action. List them and their timelines. Put deadlines on your calendar and celebrate when you achieve each step. It’s one stride closer to your ultimate goals.

Most of all have fun with it! This is your plan, customize it and make it useful for you.

Happy writing! 

Renee Knowles
www.reneeknowles.com
Mama Writers Yahoo Group  

It used to be my annual thing to make New Years Resolutions.  According to USA.gov, Popular News Years Resolution are:
    •    Lose Weight
    •    Managing Dept
    •    Save Money
    •    Get a Better Job
    •    Get Fit
    •    Eat Right
    •    Get a Better Education
    •    Drink Less Alcohol
    •    Quit Smoking Now

Surveys say that 92% of Americans fail in their resolutions and 45% fail by the end of January. I fall right into the 92% of the survey as I usually last until mid February.  BUT,  what about goals?  Resolution is defined as “resolved or determined to accomplish something.”   Goals according to Webster’s dictionary is “the end toward which effort is directed.”  With this definition in mind, goals would seem to lend themselves better to management.  Looking back, I find I have never made a writing resolution only writing goals and plans.  And, I stumbled onto something that is working for me.  I set weekly goals with an accountability partner.  We account for the past week and set ones for the next week.  We do this on either Sunday or Monday.   Writing down goals and going over them with someone has helped me to stay focused and it also reinforces that I’m moving ahead.  

Like a critique partner, you need to find the right person to partner with.  I have two and both are golden.  My first partnership started with a Margie Lawson class “Defeat Self-Defeating Behaviors:  Allow Writing Productivity and Creativity To Soar”.   She asked us to team up with a ‘change-accountability partner’.   That was two years ago.  Since then we’ve taken our partnership to new levels of support, encouragement, and critiquing.  Ironically we published within months of each other.   

Taking accountability one step further we make an annual goal list.  We try to look at it quarterly to measure how the year is going.  Again, my accountability partner and I run it by each other.  However accounting for the annual list isn’t adhered to as strictly as the weekly one. Ummm, something to think about this year.

I think one thing to remember is goals and planning aren’t set in concrete. Take them out and adjust them when you need too.  It’s easy to plan so much that the plan becomes the project.

One option in setting goals is to make the Ultimate goal and a Practical one.  Shoot for the stars with the Ultimate one.  It stretches us, making us reach outside our comfort zone. I’ve found that when I do this I land somewhere in between the two.  

They say writing is a lonely profession, but it doesn’t have to be.   Partnerships become, if they don’t start out that way, friends.  Very cherished friends.

Hope your holiday was Merry and Wishing you a happy productive 2009.
Lavada

Lavada Dee
http://www.lavadadee.com
This Old House (Asylett Press- Sept 2007)
Open House On Murder (Asylett Press- Sept 2008)
For Love or Money (BookStrand – January 2009)

It’s Christmas, and what am I doing? I’m at my computer working. (In my defense, most family stuff is done around work schedules, so I’m not ignoring anyone. We are usually pretty much done by the 25th anyway.) Already I’m thinking about my writing career in 2009, and I bet you are too.

If you’re not, then you probably should be. After all, we’re coming up on the start of another year when authors start making their plans for the upcoming year. Part of this entails researching publishers. So here’s a few things that I like to look at when considering a new (to me) publisher.

Read More…

Harlequin Goes All E-Book / Borders Expands Sony Reader / E-Books Corner Niche Markets / Borders and Sony to Launch E-Bookstore 

These are just some of the headlines I’ve seen on my literary travels in the past year. Articles from Discover Magazine and Scientific American, to RWR publications and more.  Now, I’m usually pretty dense, but even I can pick up on the pattern here. E-books and e-book technology are becoming big news. BIG.  

An e-book is, of course, the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. And sure, we all already know that, but I’m not going to assume that everyone is familiar with e-books. I know I wasn’t until very recently. Oh, it’s not that I had my head stuck in a smudgy-inked parchment cloud or anything, but for the longest time, I just couldn’t quite see the appeal. I mean, how could an e-book—something so insubstantial and intangible as a digital blip in cyberspace—be of any value to me? I who thrive on the fact that my house is lined with floor to ceiling bookshelves in almost every room, who has books piled on tables, the floor and even the bathroom counter.  

I’ve always loved a good book in my hands, and when I sit back after a long day, do I reach for that special someone lying beside me for comfort and ease? Well…yes. But then I pick up my book.  I can even smell the paper right now if I think about it hard enough. It’s soothing to me, like the scent of Grandma’s home-baked apple pie at Thanksgiving. Which makes it even harder to imagine all of that changing. But books have changed, are changing as we speak. Is it for the better though, or not?  

The fact is, publishers have been trying to steer readers into e-books for over a decade, the main reason being that they’re a hell of a lot cheaper to produce and distribute. And while the original objection to electronic books revolved around the somewhat uncomfortable experience of reading text on a screen, that argument was more persuasive 10 years ago than it is today. How many of us now spend the whole day reading text on a computer screen anyway? From work related material to blogs and emails. Hell, you can even watch TV and movies on your computer. So why not read books? Especially with the advent of the E-Reader, a truly beautiful little gadget that everyone should have a chance to check out and play with, the objections are fewer and fewer.

And the stats show more and more people are looking to e-books for their literature, whether it be for educational reading, to lose themselves in a mystery, or enjoy a hot erotica. Speaking of which, romance especially has done well in e-formats. The RWA published statistics for 2006 indicating that, while the early best-selling e-books were mainly in science fiction categories and other titles favoured by men….there has been a decided shift since then towards romance and women’s fiction, and this trend has only increased in 2007 and 2008 (although I don`t have those stats to share).

So with e-literature on the rise, how do you feel about it? As a reader, have you tried it? Do you have an E-Reader and what do you think about the technology in general? If you haven’t yet had the opportunity, can you see yourself cracking open a pdf to enjoy your latest Nora release, or are you a hard-core paper lover to the bitter end?

As a writer, are you querying e-publishers? As with all publishers of course, there are good and bad ones, but RWA has a list of approved e-publishers who are trusted and respected in the industry. And if you haven’t yet, what’s holding you back? Would you feel better about it if you had the option of being published in both formats? A lot of e-publishers offer print-on-demand contracts to their successful authors to add an extra layer to their sales, which will still give you the opportunity of holding that book you’ve sweated over for so long in your own two hands. 

I guess it comes down to how much you believe the trends are changing. In these economic times and with the recent publishing news, I`d say it`s a sure thing, but do you believe that e-books are really the wave of the future? Will electronic publishing stand the test of time, and the convert readers still trapped in the past?

J.K. Coi
Immortals to Die For
www.jkcoi.com