January 21, 2009

Do your writing first! Leave the dishes and your exercise routine and everything else–and just write. Haven’t we all heard that advice a hundred times?

I have–and I’m still no good at it. But from this point on, I will be!

Accountability, thy name is Donna!

In the online class I’m taking this month, we were encouraged to pair up with what is called a change coach. We hold each other accountable and encourage each other to pursue our goals. And we’re supposed to confront (nicely) when our partner isn’t keeping her commitment.

My change coach is Donna McDine, the middle-grade novel reviewer at the Writing for Children Center. A graduate of the Institute’s course, she also blogs at the “Write What Inspires You!” site. We noticed this week that while we both have great written goals, put in lots of hours, and truly LOVE to write–we weren’t getting much writing done on our own projects. (We wrote for others, critiqued, reviewed, taught, and blogged–but by the time we got around to our own books, we were too tired or it was evening and others needed us.)

Ready, Set, Go!

So, we made a deal, Donna and I. We have committed to writing first thing each morning on our own projects. I’m aiming for a minimum of an hour daily. If we can do more, great. But Monday through Friday, we’ve promised to spend time on our books first. When we’re done, we’ll email each other to say how long we wrote. It won’t take us long to send that email, but since I’ll know Donna is waiting for my report, I bet I get the writing done.

It’s on our schedule first now. And we’re planning ahead for success. We’re taking time before we quit each day to set up our desks with all the materials we’ll need to get started right away in the morning. One iron-clad rule we agreed on: absolutely NO Internet until the writing is done.

Do YOU write first thing each morning, before you get caught up in the day’s demands? If so, what are the tricks YOU use to make it work? We can use all the tips you have as we try to establish this new habit!

January 16, 2009

I have a confession to make. My Christmas tree is still up, until tomorrow, at least. The Christmas season is so rushed sometimes that I don’t feel I have enough time to enjoy it before Christmas. Since I moved south a few years ago and bought my first artificial tree, I’ve been taking the tree down when I felt like Christmas was over. (I enjoyed it so much the first time that I didn’t take it down until Valentine’s Day!) I loved the looks on people’s faces when they walked into my living room. They obviously thought I was confused about what time it was.

Keeping Their Time Straight

My characters often have the same problem. They forget what day or week or month it is. (Er, I forget what time it is in their lives.) Events get out of order, as my critique group will point out. It’s an easy thing to do, especially after big revisions where you’ve moved events around. Still, you need to keep track of the events in your characters’ lives, or you’re in trouble.

On a new site called Novel Matters, they’ve noted two cool FREE web tools to help you with this problem. One is called OurTimeLines, where you can fill in your character’s birth date, and then find out what was going on in the world at that time, when he went to school, what disasters happened in the world during his lifetime, personal events, historical events, etc. For fun, put in your own birth dates and see what you find. I saw that Velcro was invented when I was four years old and pantyhose when I was nine. Who knew? (You get major historical facts too–not just fun stuff.)

Visual Time Line

Another site mentioned was Dipity where you can generate a visual time line for yourself or any character. You can put down the major events in your character’s life, complete with notes, photos, videos, etc. A fun way to organize your research. (I’d want to print out a hard copy myself as well.)

There are many ways to keep track of the times in our characters’ lives, and these tools certainly make it fun. Maybe I should generate a holiday timeline for myself. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll watch “White Christmas” just one more time before I take down the tree.