Good News: My Career Grows

Last year saw my first short story, TO LIGHT AND GUARD, published in Bewildering Stories magazine. That was a big milestone for me: my first official publication.

This year is shaping up even better! I had a poem, THE TOWERS STOOD, published in the World Healing, World Peace 2014 Poetry Anthology, and my short story DYING BREATH sold to Youth Imagination magazine!

In even more exciting news, my middle grade sci-fi retelling of the Wizard of Oz, OZCILLATION, was picked up by Evil Jester Press, and will be released in 2015! I am so excited to work with this group of enthusiastic and creative people, and to be one of their first middle grade novels as they expand.

Right now, my novel is with the editor, so I am waiting on pins and needles to get the feedback from her. I know there will be some hard work ahead to make OZCILLATION all shiny, but I am ready to tackle it. I will be approaching the novel with fresh eyes, as I have not read the book since I started querying agents waaaay back in December of 2012. I have come a long way as a writer since then and will probably see things in the book I want to change as well.

So what am I doing while waiting for my editing notes? I am editing two short stories that I hope will find homes this year. I am doing final preparation on my genealogy book for upload to the self-publishing Print-On-Demand (POD) site, likely by the end of this week. Then I will figure out how to format the genealogy book for ebook, and upload that. I’m sending querying to agents for my YA contemporary fantasy THE ORACLE OF DELPHI, KANSAS. I am also beginning to work on my marketing strategy, as well as optimizing my website and blog and other social media. Oh, and I’m working on another novel.

So, I’m busy.

The list, of course, does not include weekly repetitive tasks like blog posts, watching the 2 TV shows I allow myself to watch, reading, taking care of the business of life, and running around after my most important Work-In-Progress, my preschooler!

As much work as the coming year will be, I am looking forward to the challenge! How about all of you? What new bragging rights do you have? Share!

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Working Vacation

I know that most people return from vacation to a crushing workload of backed up emails, housework, or other work they do. I, on the other hand, have returned from my recent week-long sojourn farther ahead than when I left.

I work from home, with a preschool-age child. So I find that tasks that require prolonged concentration are difficult for me to find time to do. I have the time after she is in bed, but by then my brain is tired and I am prone to stupid mistakes (although this is a good time for creative writing for me). But most business-related tasks require attention to fine detail and often a half an hour or more of blocked time to accomplish competently. For example, I submitted the same short story to 5 magazines recently—and I had to format the story in 3 different ways to follow their guidelines. This is not a complaint—I understand why this is so. This is just to show why I need time to really pay attention to these sorts of details.

As a result, I have had a list of business-related items that I kept saying, “If only I could have a week without distraction, I could get all this done!”

This vacation was that week.

With Preschooler being entertained by Grandma, aunts, cousins, and Daddy, I was able to grab some focused work time. In this week away, I accomplished:

  • Submitting 3 Critique manuscripts to the Philadelphia Writers Conference
  • Submitting 3 Contest manuscripts to the Philadelphia Writers Conference
  • Spending several hours on Duotrope making lists of markets for my various short stories
  • Sent 5 queries out for my short story Dying Breath
  • Sent 5 queries out for my novel The Oracle of Delphi, Kansas
  • Edited 1/3 of my short story Finale
  • Read 2 Newbery-Award-winning novels
  • Critiqued a friend’s short narrative non-fiction piece
  • Wrote a blog post for my personal blog, The Goose’s Quill
  • Wrote the Thursday blog post for our group blog, The Author Chronicles
  • Kept up with social media platforms
  • Slept

I also managed to have fun visiting with relatives and enjoying the beauty of the countryside!

Many people might not consider this much of a vacation, but for me it was ideal. I get so worn out with trying to keep up with everything, and so frustrated pushing things off to the back burner because of time constraints. Getting so much of this done was a great weight off my shoulders, which allowed me to relax.

Do you find yourself working on vacation, or do you really get away from it all?

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Overload Paralysis

A few years back, when my daughter was still an infant, we lived for a time on the island of Chincoteague, VA. Since I still had commitments back home, I would make the trek up and down the Eastern seaboard twice a month, my car filled to the brim with all the ridiculously large items a tiny baby seems to need.

Almost every time I needed to start packing up, I experienced a strange phenomenon: I couldn’t do anything. I would find myself standing in the middle of the living room, frozen. My mind whirled with the long packing list I had, as well as with all the things I needed to do other than packing—cleaning, bill paying, etc. I had so much to get done that I couldn’t do anything at all. The overload would paralyze me.

I sometimes get that way about writing, too. I end up with so many projects going on at once, that when I do get some free time to work on something, I end up doing something totally unrelated to writing. The overload of work can paralyze my creativity and my motivation. Right now, I am editing 2 novels, polishing up 2 short stories, have 2 blogs due every week, and have to maintain the constant round of social media—Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads… Not to mention reading the dozen or so blogs I follow regularly.

It can be overwhelming enough that I want to hide from it all.

There is a way to break the paralysis. The answer is both easy and hard.

Pick something.

Do it.

That’s the big secret. Do something, anything, on your list, and you can advance into productive work. But what to pick? Hardest thing first? Easiest thing first? It depends on your mood and your personality.

If I have a very long list but most of it is little stuff, I will do the easiest first and work up to the hardest. By doing the easy things first, I get the instant gratification of checking things off my list and seeing the list get shorter quickly. If I have a shorter list but the tasks are more complex and time-consuming, I will usually do the hardest one first. That way I know the most difficult (and often the most time-consuming) one is done and the rest will be easier and usually take less time than that first one. So, sometimes I inch my way up to the top of the hill, and sometimes I start at the top and coast down.

Of course, there are always things that are not on your To-Do list that crop up and need to be done. Those you just have to incorporate based on their necessity. I immediately need to take care of my daughter when she falls off the bed and hits her head, but the crayon drawn on her closet door can wait until I have more time. The phone call from my family needs to be answered, but the one from an unknown number can leave a message.

Do you experience overload paralysis? Do you have a different way of busting out of it? Or do you have a method of organization that bypasses this overwhelmed reaction altogether?

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