Hey, it’s advent. Which as my daughter and I learned today in our home-school session, comes from the Latin adventus which means arrival. And the first day of advent saw the arrival of a new illness for me – sinusitus! Yeah! Now I have a aching face to add to my symptoms. Woo. Incidentally, if you’re planning a Christmas story set in Malta at Midnight Mass be sure to have a young boy aged between 7 and 10 doing the sermon – that’s another thing we learned today. And if your story is set in India, do note that Christmas is known as bada din (big day).

No, I’m not suddenly going to share home-school facts with you but I have decided in the mad days of Advent to pick up a little fact like that, or a face I see on the street, or a line from a song and use it as the start point of 5 – 10 mins maximum free writing. Just writing without editing for 10 mins max and seeing where it goes. Even I can fit 10 mins writing in a day and in what will soon become a more rushed and hectic advent, I know I will need those ten minutes too. Ten minutes of just me and my laptop – bliss.

Hi everyone.  You might have wondered where I’ve been as I haven’t posted in like three weeks!   You perhaps thought I’d got bored with blogging – no.  Or that I  couldn’t think of anything to say -no.  Or that I was snowed under with work or still suffering from writer’s block – no and no.  The boring truth is that I have been ill, a lot, this month.  First I got a kidney infection that took two week’s to shift.  Very painful and not exactly conducive to creative writing or any sort of writing.  But as I had a deadline to meet for my chapter submissions, when I was up to work, I worked on that.  As much as   I enjoy rambling on about things with you all,  you all know the mantra:  “Never Miss a Deadline!”  So, of course, that came first,  followed by my regular editorial work at Writing-World.  

Then, just as I get over the kidney infection (two week’s of antibiotics!) I burst my right eardrum.  I’ve had my right eardrum burst four times on me now; sometimes it just happens in my sleep.  All it means is yet more anti-biotics to prevent infection and my hearing gets just a little bit worse.

A few days later my ear is fine – I actually feel normal and healthy for five days  then wham!  I get the worse cold I’ve had in a decade. Can’t breathe , popped both my ears blowing my nose,  feel lousy.  I SOOOO, don’t feel like doing anything other than curling up under a blanket with  a nice hot drink! I have never been so ill in all my life!    Hopefully this will be the last of my ill health for a while and business can return to normal. 

Speaking of business, the December newsletter will be out on the 7th and I’ll hopefully see you in the forums before then.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to sleep.

Today my daughter is at a science experience day and I have the whole day to myself to write.  I was sooo looking forward to this!  It’s been years since I’ve had the house to myself in the day and had nothing else to do but write.  So  full of anticipation of what I was going to achieve today, namely get a great chunk of the chapter written that I need to write, I sat down at my computer, fired it up and … nothing!  Nada!  Not a word is coming out. 

I have made my outline, been ruminating on what I’m going to write for days and yet today, the one day I have free to write, nothing is happening.  I have sat and typed and deleted and typed and deleted and typed and deleted for over two hours now and this chapter is going nowhere! 

Normally, when I hit a block like this I find that by just writing something, anything, I can get the words to flow and complete my work.  Today, I feel like I’ve been hitting my head against a brick wall and all I’ve got to show for it is a sore head!

So I need a change of tactic.  Others have said that if you can’t work your way out of the block – which today I obviously can’t – then you should stop trying and do something else.  So now I’m going to switch off my pc and spend an hour on wii fit instead.  I’ll try the writing thing again later when hopefully my brain will be back in writing mode.  I’ll let you know how I get on.

But what about you?  What do you do when you hit a block?  Let me know.

You might have noticed that last week I said I would blog every day between Monday and Friday and you might also have noticed that I failed to blog on Monday and Tuesday this week.  Mea Culpa!  I was being over-optimistic about what I could realistically achieve.  You see Mondays and Tuesdays are hectic for me.  Mondays I home school in the morning, drop my daughter off at a child-minders at lunch time, then teach in a primary school until 3.30pm.  I then collect my daughter and drive across town to teach a private student French for one hour.  Home at 5.45pm it’s time to cook dinner etc.  Tuesdays are worse.  Home school to 11am, childminders, teach at school from 11.30 to 3,30, collect daughter, two half-hour French lessons, then off to Beaver Scouts where my daughter is a Beaver and I’m a Scout Leader.  Home at 7.30pm, dinner, bedtime etc.   I was hoping to squeeze a blog in first thing in the morning before home-school starts at 8.30am, but with my other editorial duties this was just impossible. 

Still, I do believe that this over-estimation of what we can achieve is yet another one of those writer’s foibles that affect us all from time to time.  We would like to achieve x, x and x and think that if we say we can do it, we will do so.  I have seen it enough times in writer’s goals and business plans to know that this is a common problem.  We want to sell more articles so we say we will do five queries a week.  But how many of us if we are not full-time freelancers have the time to research markets and come up with ideas for five queries a week?  We say we are going to finish the first draft of our novel in six months.  Unless we can spend two hours a day working on our novel how can we achieve this?  All too often as writers we set ourselves up for failure by being over-optimistic in what we can achieve.  Such over-optimism can lead to serious problems in our writing.  If we are constantly setting ourselves unrealistic targets we are constantly setting ourselves up for failure.  If we are constantly getting angry with ourselves for failing to achieve our targets we reduce our willingness to try and we reduce our effectiveness.  If this continues for long enough we can give up entirely.   A famous study found that if we set ourselves too many goals this doesn’t improve our work or our effectiveness; it reduces it.  If, however, we only set ourselves four achievable goals we are more likely to achieve them and to exceed them.   Bear in mind then, my over-optimisim when planning your goals.  Take into account your real life needs and time constraints and set yourself achievable goals.  That way you are more likely to achieve them.  As for me, my new blogging goal is three posts a week.   Let’s see if I can achieve it.

One of the most common problems that new writers have is trying to find the time to write. This isn’t an issue that only affects new writers; it affects all writers.

We all have other lives to lead and at times it can seem impossible to find the time to write. Yet no matter how hectic our days are, if we actually think about it, we could find time to write.

Some writers I know have two hour commutes to and from work. Others are busy housewives and mothers, yet they still find time to write. They are not superhuman. They just take whatever time they can and put it to good use.

They forgo watchting tv to write. They get up earlier or they do most of their planning throughout the day so that when they can finally grab fifteen minutes to write they do just that; they write.

If your life is hectic then take time to think about your writing whilst doing other things: queuing up in the bank, doing the laundry, doing the shopping, walking the dog etc, so that you already know what it is you want to write when you finally sit down to do it.

If you don’t believe me, then maybe you’ll listen to Agatha Christie who said: “The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.” If it worked for her I don’t see why it can’t work for you either. Give it a go and let me know how you get on.

Damien must wonder why on earth I asked him to install a blog on the new website. I mean, it’s not as if I’ve used it. I do feel for him, having searched around and spent ages getting the blog to work only for it to lie around being unused and neglected.

That is about to change.

The reason I’ve not been blogging is that, well, to put it simply I’d lost my writing mojo.

Sure I was working on a minimal level, doing what I had to do but couldn’t find the inspiration or energy to go beyond that.

I don’t know if this is an after-effect of the family trouble I had earlier on in the year and the depression that followed it, but I do know that recently writing has seemed harder than it should be.

So I decided that the easiest way to get back in the swing of things would be to go back to basics.

Now originally I started writing with the Writers Bureau course, but I was not going to restart that. I stopped on Assignment 4 and I STILL can’t think of any fillers to write! So I went back to a book I bought just after I started the course and which helped me to publication success much faster than the course alone would have done. I sat down and re-read “Starting Your Career As a Freelance Writer” by Moira Allen.

If you haven’t read this book then I strongly suggest you do. It is a no-nonsense guide to becoming a freelance writer. She just tells it as it is and reassures you that yes, you can be a writer. I set up NewbieWriters in a way to emulate her no-nonsense but supportive advice to writers. Moira Allen has a lot to answer for.

You see, even though I didn’t know her then, I hadn’t even written for her in those early days, she inspired me to become the best writer I ever could. And she still inspires me now. Actually, I think it would be fairer to say she gives me well-directed kicks up the butt to raise my game and stretch my writing. She sends me contest links and says “you can do this.” Or emails me to say “You should write a book on this.” In other words, she continuously urges me to improve. And we all need someone like that on our side. This was, after all, one of the reasons I set up the forum, so we can all have someone to urge us along.

Anyway, refresher course completed, mojo back in place, you can now expect regular blog posts from me. Two today and one every weekday from now on.

And it’s all thanks to Moira.

Speaking of Moira, if you want to listen to her advice on writing for the international market you can listen to a podcast of a recent interview she did here.

http://authorsaccess.com/archives/date/2009/09

Hi everyone, just a quick post here. I have recently advertised calls for writers for Demand Studios in the newsletter and in the forum. Many writers do like to write for content providers; they see it as a way to earn regular income whilst improving their skills. Personally I have not written for article sites like this but have always thought it was up to the individual to make his or her own decision as to whether to go down this route or not. I only feel it is fair, however, to draw your attention to this article on Demand Studios by Angelo Hoy at Writers Weekly. Read it before you decide to write for them or not.

http://writersweekly.com/the_latest_from_angelahoycom/005650_10142009.html

Thought I’d share with you a typical, or rather not so typical writing day with you.

Friday 8.30am. Normally this is when I start home-schooling my daughter, but today she is feeling ill so I decide to work on a submission instead. Normally my writing time is late afternoon/early evening so this is a bit of change for me.

I settle my daughter down on the sofa with CBBC (for those of you who don’t live in the UK this is an advertisement free childrens’ channel) and I get down to work.

10.30am first draft done I check for typos and grammar then go for a coffee and to get my girl a drink and snack.

Mull over the piece I’ve written; it’s missing something. Half-an hour later I’ve figured out what needs to be done and it’s back to the laptop. One hour later, 2nd draft is done. It reads better but is by no means perfect. On checking the word count I’ve written 2000 words and that’s a problem as the magazine I’m submitting too only want 1,700 max. Time to get editing. This isn’t actually too much of a problem as I usually just remove the first three or four paragraphs and find that the piece works just as well from this point on. The reason? Well, I suspect like many of you when I start to write a piece my brain is still warming up to the material and getting into writing mode; even with my outline in front of me my brain still takes at least three or four paragraphs to get warmed up. Whilst many of these are fine paragraphs they are usually on reflection surplus to requirements. So out with the carefully constructed opener, this was a hard decision as it was very good and I spent a while writing it. Then out with the following three paragraphs and suddenly the piece is a lot tighter, sharper and nearer the 1,700 words mark.

A quick break to make lunch and then it’s time to print it out and read through again, line by line, picking up typos the laptop didn’t, such as it instead of is, and removing unnecessary words.

At 12.30pm I’m down to 1690 words. Perfect! A final check through and off it goes. Job done!

What is your writing day like? Let us know in the forum.

Dawn

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