Writing

Pure Joy

February 21, 2019 by Elizabeth Drake Leave a Comment

The pure joy of free-flowing creativity is the greatest endorphin rush.

Characters so excited for you to hear them that they are screaming at you.

New worlds unrolling at your feet like a carpet, and the people and places literally sprouting up all around you like CGI magic.

I am writing storyboards as fast as I can type, the ideas are coping so quickly. Trying to capture these amazing characters, their trials and tribulations.

I am already in love with them. But of course I am! The trick is developing enough talent as a writer to help my readers fall in love with them, too.

Their backstories are coming to life as I learn more about them. As I hear their stories and their struggles.

Honor and love. Betrayal and vengeance. War, assassination, arranged weddings and secret babies.

I have been seriously blindsided by these characters. They are haunting me all day at work. They are the first thing I think about when I get up in the morning and the last thing I think about in bed at night. The have even invaded my thoughts as I brush my teeth.

I am furiously taking notes, trying to get it all down. With a full time job there is no way I can write their story this fast, and I am still trying to work editing another novel that I wanted to publish this.

But that other story, the one I was going to write this year that I haven’t started yet?

It just got shelved.

Goal Update: Month One

January 31, 2019 by Elizabeth Drake

As I review my New Years Resolutions, I thought I would give a quick update of my goals to show I am holding myself accountable.

Writing Goals

Release Two Romance Novels / Write Three First Drafts

I am still on track!! I finished my January goals, and while I waited for feedback from beta readers that I need to start my February goals, I did get to work on March goals. Not a lot, but with everything else going on, I am really proud of myself for completing January at all.

Not Wasting Food

That has been more of a work in process. There were *so* many leftovers after the holidays that we didn’t make this goal in the early part of the month. We got better as the month went on, but we were far from perfect. That’s okay. February is a new month, and I have started it by cleaning out the fridge. We’ll try again.

Moving At Least Three Days a Week

Okay, I wasn’t perfect on this. And the bar isn’t all that high.

Logging when I exercise has helped me learn a bit. With the new gym at work, I do manage to get at least two to three days of movement in. But they are all on workdays. I am terrible about exercising at home, even though we own a treadmill and elliptical machine. Time to do some thinking on how to get myself and my family into our finished basement so the opportunity to move more is at least there.

Logging Food

I have been pretty terrible about this. I am okay through lunch on workdays, but once I get home, I don’t remember. And, I have learned, I may have an after dinner sugar addiction. Hard to really see, though, as I have so little data. While I have identified the issue, I have yet to come up with a plan around it. Maybe I can set reminders or something in the app to ping me to log. Not sure. But I clearly am not remembering on my own.

How are you doing on your resolutions?

Achieving My 2019 Writing Goals

January 10, 2019 by Elizabeth Drake

This time of year, a lot of people talk about goals. It’s almost two weeks after the new year, and if my company’s gym is any indication, many have already faced the stark reality of how difficult those goals really are.

My post here outlined my five resolutions.

To help me achieve the first two goals, I have enlisted the help of Wunderlist and a coffee partner.

No, Wunderlist doesn’t pay me for saying any of this. I use them, and I thought I would share as I had never heard of them until my sister introduced to me to the site.

Wunderlist allows me to create a checklist of goals, and as I reach them, I mark them complete.

wunderlistCapture — **Part of my January list**

A little bar slides across the screen, showing me how far along I am to completing my goals.

You know my OCD loves to see that little bar move…

It also allows me to set a due date (as you can see in blue above), and it will send me a reminder a few days before the due date.

WunderlistGoalCapture — **Here is where I am so far in January.**

This allows me to break apart all of the tasks I need to do this year into smaller chunks. It’s not write a book. More, write 1,000 works per day, each day, for 30 days. As I achieve the goal, I mark it as done.

I then mapped out everything I need to accomplish in 2019 to publish two new books and write three first drafts, along with the pain of starting to edit 2018 first drafts. I then set up these tasks by month.

Wunderlist2019Goals — **Sample for the first part of the year.**

What does the coffee buddy have to do with all of this?

Well, she meets with me once a month to discuss how we are each doing with meeting each of our goals. It’s a little accountability.

No, she isn’t going to yell and scream if I don’t meet my goals, but I do have to look at someone across the table and confess that I didn’t reach them. That something was more important than my writing.

She’s going to understand when the day job that pays my bills trumps my writing, but she’s going to be a whole lot less understanding about binge watching Netflix.

I have been using Wunderlist to track monthly goals for almost two years, but this is the first year I have mapped out all of my goals for the whole year.

I mapped out the year this time for three reasons.

To mark the path I need to follow to reach my goals.
To see how close I am to being on track at a glance.
To stop beating myself up when work, family, or life in general interferes with my writing. This schedule lets me work ahead when I have time in preparation for long days at work. It gives me an objective view of how well I am doing year-to-date, rather than just the month. And, it doesn’t let me get too aggressive, then be disappointed later.

We’ll see how it works for me this year. Two published books and three fresh first drafts are aggressive goals, but I have a path to reach them.

Anyone else have a method they are using to reach their New Year’s resolutions? What is it? Have you used it before, and if so, did it help you?

New Years Resolutions 2019

December 20, 2018 by Elizabeth Drake

Another New Year’s Resolution post!

I am trying really hard to set realistic goals this year. And I am going to check in on them quarterly.

My 2019 Resolutions:

1. Release Two Books This Year

Yes, I know we’d talked about three. But as long as I have a day job, I just don’t see that being realistic. I’d rather put out two books that I’m proud of than three that I think are only okay.

2. Write Three First Drafts

I’ve admitted that I spend a lot more time editing than writing, and that’s okay. BUT I need to make sure I always have a fresh supply of material to edit. The longer I spend time editing, the harder actually writing new material becomes. So this still needs to be a focus for me.

3. Eat food before it goes bad.

Didn’t see that one coming, did you? Our refrigerator is a black hole, and too often stuff goes in and I don’t find it until it’s sporting a mold colony. By eating what we buy, it saves us money and reduces our environmental footprint. We have a new, smaller, refrigerator. While it may seem counter-intuitive, I am hoping not being able to store as much and seeing more of it will help us achieve this goal.

4. Move at Least Three Days a Week

Walking. Biking. Whatever. Three days a week. This is a lot more doable since my office put in a small but very nice gym in the basement for employees. They even put in showers! I have already been working towards this goal, but I am adding it as I want to keep it at the forefront of my thoughts.

5. Keep a Food Journal

It’s hard to know what to change in your eating habits until you truly know what you are eating. I have a Fitbit I wear daily. It comes with a tracking program on the same app. I have tried to use it with varying degrees of success. I need to develop the habit of logging food, and that’s what this resolution is all about!

How about you? What are your resolutions? Have you started on them? Do you think you’re likely to keep them?

10 Ways to Conquer Stress and Bring Back Your Creativity

December 13, 2018 by Elizabeth Drake

So, yes, I missed the deadline to have the first draft of A Love of His Own completed. I am still wrestling with it, along with significant work stress. Oh, and we still don’t have a kitchen.

We know stress kills creativity. And, given my current circumstances, it isn’t going anywhere.

Me during the height of budgeting

So, what can we do about it? How do we tame the stress so our muse will come hang out with us and bring some inspiration along with her?

Here are 10 Things “experts” Say Will Reduce Stress

1. Get enough sleep

Because it’s so easy to sleep when you’re already stressed. It’s not like stress causes insomnia or anything. Oh wait.

2. Eat Well-Balance meals

Already doing this, though this can also be a source of stress. It’s a lot easier to pick up something on my way home that to spend thirty minutes I don’t have trying to put together a healthy choice. In a non-existent kitchen.

3. Limit Alcohol and Caffeine

Gave up both when I was pregnant, and I never started back on either. Very liberating to not need that cup of coffee in the morning, though I was awful to be around for the two months it took to break the habit.

Frankly, I’m not sure if this just transfers your stress from you to your family members as they now have to deal with you without coffee…

4. Count to 10 (or 20 or 1,000)

This has helped me when dealing with my children, but not for the bigger things like when those children are ill. Or washing dishes in a bathtub while my youngest insists she must take her bath right now.

5. Take Deep Breaths

Okay… Feel like medical science might be stretching a little here.

6. Take a time-out.

No, not the kind you give your children.

Although maybe.

They recommend things like practicing yoga, listening to music, meditating, getting a massage, or learning relaxation techniques. According to the experts, stepping back from the problem helps clear your head. Because I totally have time for this! If I did, I might not be as stressed out…

7. Learn what triggers your anxiety.

What triggers mine? Not having a kitchen.

Or impossible goals like trying to balance work, children, a spouse, a household, and writing. You know, modern American life.

8. Maintain a positive attitude.

I think I actually flipped off the computer monitor when I read this. Mature, I know.

9. Get involved.

Volunteer or find another way to be active in your community, which creates a support network and gives you a break from everyday stress. Which totally works because I’m not already stressed over not having enough time meet all my current obligations.

10. Welcome humor. A good laugh goes a long way.

Clearly what some of these coping strategies are. For me, anyway.

If nothing else, I suppose it did make me smile a little. Sometimes, science can’t solve all your problems. Although a good contractor would go a long way to solving mine.

Writing Process: Writer’s Block

November 15, 2018 by Elizabeth Drake

Writer’s block sucks.

I’ve been suffering from it for well over a week. While many are participating in NaNoWriMo (yes, auto correct, that’s the word I want), I’ve been trying to plod along at my 1,000 words a day. This will result in a first draft completed by the end of November.

As is my usual M.O., I was ahead on my word count. I hate waiting until the last minute for deadlines, and it’s no different with my writing.

Then came family birthdays. Halloween. My never-ending kitchen which probably won’t be done by Christmas.

That is before you take into consideration this is the busiest time of year at work. I’m going in early and working through lunch, and I still have to bring things home at night.

I am literally writing this post as I wait outside my daughter’s dance class.

So, yeah, time is tight.

But it’s more than that.

Normally the characters are dancing in my brain. Invading my commute. Singing to me in the shower.

They’ve gone silent.

Maybe because I wasn’t listening to them. Who wants to shout at a wall?

Or maybe there is something wrong with the story. Maybe I backed my characters into a corner and I’m playing Barbies with them rather than writing a coherent novel.

Or perhaps it’s this pesky plotting business, and my characters just don’t want to do what’s supposed to happen next. Always ~~possible~~ probable.

It’s possible figuring out the underlying cause of my writer’s block will help me beat it, but it ~~might not~~ won’t.

I need to work through it. Close my eyes, give up my pre-conceived ideas of what was going to happen next, and let the characters talk to me. Let them lead me on their journey.

Looks like I’m a pantser no matter how hard I try to be otherwise.

Writing

Pure Joy