Another Auld Lang Syne - Goal setting

No end in sight, it's all about the journey

     I'm not sure why New Year's has such significance. After all, the calendar is an artificial construct. I'm more than a little bit jealous of the folks in the Southern Hemisphere who get to celebrate in warm summer weather instead of bone-chilling temperatures. In fact, if anyone wants to petition our government to move the calendar back six months, I'd be all over it. It's as good as an idea as many of the other ones I see floated in DC.
     Regardless of the reason, it feels right to stop and mull over my goals occasionally and this is as good a time as any. 

     So what are my goals for 2014?
     1. Do my best. (stole this one from the Cub Scouts)
     2. Try to enjoy each moment (this one is from a life with dogs)
     3. When I fail at #1 or #2---let it go. Look to the future.
   
     So, that's it. I'm not setting a number of words to be written every day. I know from experience that the stuff I grind out isn't close to as good as the words that burst forth, clamoring for my attention, refusing to let me forget them. But I know that isn't going to happen every day and I'm not going to set myself up for failure. There's enough to feel bad about in the world without adding to it.
     This doesn't mean I'm not ambitious or competitive. Just talk to my kids after board game night.
     I just recognize that my ambitions aren't fully within my control. And who wants to "lose" at something they have no control over? Not me. So I have decided to keep goals and ambitions separate. 

  I would like to thank everyone who has ever critiqued my work for me. Every criticism has helped me improve. Every word of encouragement has helped me persevere. Every comment has let me know I'm not alone. It has all been much appreciated.

     I think I might use this goal list for every year going forward. Do you have any goals to share?

Writing Priorities

I don’t think anyone can tell you how to prioritize your life. After all, we all need different things and are at different points in our lives.

There was a time when I’d gladly put in 100 hours a week at my real job. There was a time when I was Room Parent, Cub Scout Den Leader, classroom writing workshop volunteer, stray dog fosterer and community activist (Yea! We got the new library built).

I believe it's important to write down your goals, so you have some idea where you're heading. But setting rigid benchmarks, on how to prioritize goals and the time necessary to achieve those goals just doesn’t work for me.

So now I have to come clean. My introductory sentences are just my personal rationalization for a failure.

Yes, last week I failed Katia Raina's Gimme 31 challenge.

Failure is such a harsh word. But if you could see me, you’d see a big smile on my face.
It's not because I'm loopy.

A few days ago I had to prioritize, and a family member’s illness was clearly more important than anything else on my to-do list. But here’s the part that is making me smile. After I “failed” I got back on board. Okay, so I won’t get in the prize drawing. But I joined the challenge to follow my dream. That’s the real “prize.”

Whatever happens on one day, doesn’t change my determination or my dream.

And not only am I back on board, but in the next days I more than made up for the day I missed. With laser-like focus I have been writing, revising, repeating.

Julie Hedlund’s 12x12 picture book group submitted query letters for critique by the amazing author, editor, reading advocate Emma Walton Hamilton yesterday, and I was ready! In a few days, the window will open for submissions to the incredible February agent, Stephen Fraser, via the same 12x12 group. And I’m ready!

Writing is hard work. I think Malcolm Gladwell might have been wrong in his book Outliers when he said that people who become extraordinarily accomplished in their fields have to put in about 10,000 hours at their craft. For writers, it may be even more. But that doesn’t discourage me. Uphill battles are just a little extra exercise. 

And I can use a little extra exercise to burn off the amazing chicken tangine I made last night. (Thank you NY Times Diner's Journal!)

Up, down. One, two. I’m off!

Why I joined the 12 x 12 and a Giveaway!

Last year I jumped into several writing challenges with both feet. Two great ones are targeted to picture book writers.

In November, I completed Tara Lazar’s PiBoIdMo challenge. But if you write picture books and you want someone nudging and inspiring you All Year Long, that would be Julie Hedlund. Her challenge is the 12 x 12.

Coming up with picture book ideas is hard. Completing the manuscripts. HARD. Sometimes I found myself abandoning a great idea, because more great ideas came along. The competing voices in my head were a tough audience to ignore.

But to complete the 12x12, you had to stick with it. If I had the time, I could work on a hundred manuscripts at once, but I don’t think many of us have that sort of time (or energy!). I had to learn to pick and choose.

Like PiBoIdMo, the 12x12 has great posts on craft and inspiration. In fact, reading (and re-reading) the posts was often the best way to get “unstuck.” My writing problems aren’t new--they're just new to me! The “ah-ha” moments from reading about craft were priceless.

The one twist for me this year is—I’m not dead set on “winning” the challenge. I know, how can I admit that, the horror! But hear me out.
After last year’s 12x12 I have a stack of completed manuscripts, begging for time and attention. And as much as I want to keep writing more—and I certainly plan to keep writing more new manuscripts, and I’m hopeful that I will complete at least twelve—I also believe that my primary goal for 2013 is to separate the wheat from the chaff and get the wheat out to market! That means I need to focus on polishing, revising and submitting.

A completed 12x12 manuscript isn’t necessarily a polished, ready-for-submission manuscript. This became abundantly clear to me as the last year progressed and I went back and re-read the manuscripts from earlier in the year. And it wasn’t just that I am (hopefully!) becoming a better writer all the time. Nope. Manuscripts just need to sit and steep awhile. Getting a critique is great, but it's often only with time that I can really "get" what the critiquers meant. Coming back with fresh eyes is invaluable to me.

If I'm still working on revising last year's manuscripts, why did I re-join the 12x12?
This year, it's BIGGER and BETTER. In addition to the Facebook community there are manuscript critiques and special submission windows to agents who accept picture book manuscripts! Critiquing other writers and having my work critiqued is just what I need this year.

So, with the help of the writing community there, no matter how many new manuscripts I write in 2013, the year’s going to be a success. Hope to see you there!

To celebrate all the help I’ve received on my writing journey, I’m giving away a copy of one of my first publications!

For a chance to win Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul, you'll need to do two things:

 1. Be a follower of my blog
2. Leave a comment with your contact information so I can contact you to  get a "real" address if you win. Remember you can use (at) and (dot) instead of @ and . so the internet gremlin bots can't read your information.

Pretty easy, huh? Don't look back, just do it!
I'll pick a random entry one week from today, on January 18th. Good luck!

Meet Katia Raina and the Gimme 31 challenge

Today I am guest posting on Katia Raina's blog.

If you haven’t met Katia, I encourage you to click over (above) and say hi. Katia is just starting the MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She writes novels for young adults and is represented by Jessica Regel of the Jean V Naggar Literary Agency. Her first novel, “Castle of Concrete,” will be published by Namelos.

But she is writing YA and I write picture books and middle grade fiction. What do we have in common you might ask? We’re both moms with two kids, but that isn’t the important bit. We "met" online when I became aware of Katia's commitment to her craft.

The writing community is amazing. It doesn’t matter what you write. I’m sure there are outliers, but the folks I have been fortunate to meet in person, online, are generous spirits. This is a concrete example of a win-win community. Katia and I both have dreams. Writing dreams. Dreams to be the best writers we can be. And we are sharing her "Gimme 31" goal to pursue the dream EVERY DAY.

Check back with me here on Friday for my post on another amazing writing community—Julie Hedlund's picture book 12x12 'ers. It doesn’t matter what you write—the inspiration is out there!

Please leave a comment for me or Katia. We’d love to hear where you find your writing inspiration! Thanks.

Jet Pilots Don’t Need Rear-view Mirrors: Writing for 2013

When I thought of a New Year post, the title I used immediately sprang to mind. I wasn’t sure who I first heard this expression from, so I googled it and it appears that a famous motivational speaker, Joel H. Weldon may have coined the phrase. But I never heard Joel speak, so that wasn’t where I heard it, although I give Joel full credit if he is the originator.

Whoever it was that told me—I thank them, too. Because they brought it to my attention and it sums up my feelings for each new day of each new year.

Look forward.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t believe there’s a lot to be learned from experience. In fact, I would say that experience is my best teacher. Sometimes a social grace, a theory, seems vague or inapplicable to my life. Then I do something stupid. Whammo—lesson learned.

The way I look at it, learning the hard way is better than not learning the lesson at all.

But once the lesson is learned, it’s part of me today. I don’t have to look back again and again, reliving the moment. I’m moving on. Until Jules Verne or Dr. Who or someone else brings me a time machine, the past is the past and there’s no sense stewing in it. Sometimes the mistakes I’ve made were things I’d truly do differently, if I could.

But I can’t.

And I know I will continue making mistakes, hopefully just not the same ones!

What does this all mean for writing in 2013?

As a writer, I have the chance to revise my plot lines. A luxury I don’t have in the real world. But once I hit the send button to an agent or editor, the manuscript is out of my hands. At first, I found myself agonizing over plot twists and tension raising devices I thought of after the fact. I stopped submitting. I read each manuscript aloud a second, a third time, and put each away again.

But that’s just more writing time wasted.

I can be a worrier or a writer, but unless I’m going to make a career of re-writing old Seinfeld episodes, I can’t be both. And I’m a writer.

So, I’ve ripped the rear-view mirrors off my computer monitor and I’m blazing forward into 2013. This year, if I'm using a mirror it's going to be to deflect a laser beam or make sure I remembered to brush my hair before I dash out the door. The manuscripts that I’ve been holding back out of worry whether they’re good enough, timely enough, fresh enough, they’re going out on submission! I’ve got to trust my critique partners enough to think they won’t let me make a fool of myself. I’ve got to trust myself enough to believe the stories will resonate with someone. Maybe not someone at the first agency or house that reads them (although that would be nice) but with someone somewhere.

Come join me for the ride! Turbo boosters engaged…

To celebrate my New Year's resolution of blazing into the future, trying new things, next week I'm offering a book giveaway. Check back with me then. Something to look forward to already!

Musings on the SCBWI Fall Fest 2012 – Part 1-Setting & Point of View

This fall, my friend Debbie and I carpooled to the SCBWI Eastern PA's Fall Fest in Lancaster, PA. When my kids were younger, I always made time to arrange play dates for them, but my own play dates became fewer and farther between. Carpooling isn’t just a good way to save money on gas and tolls, it’s a great way to spend time with writing pals.

The event itself boasted an amazing faculty. A mix of authors, agents, and editors. But as with most things in life, we couldn’t “have it all.” We had to select workshops from a list. Because I write picture books and novels, I decided to take a smorgasbord approach, choosing workshops with different presenters and different focuses, and this turned out to be a good choice for me. For those of you who couldn’t attend, I’ll give a thumbnail sketch of the sessions I attended.

The cover of my conference folder

My first workshop was “A Look at Setting through the Eyes of Your Character” presented by novelist, Edie Hemingway. Edie reminded us that setting isn’t just the places and things that characters interact with in a physical way, although that’s part of it. Setting is also the details that set mood and reveal character. In some cases, the details may be literal, and in other cases metaphorical. She used the isolation of Katherine Paterson’s Newbery winner “Jacob Have I Loved” as one example of a metaphoric symbolic setting. Her handout has a huge flowchart that I will use as a writing checklist. Finally, we took time for a writing exercise—thinking about one of our own manuscripts and making a list of places where setting is (or could/should be!) important. I thought of four places where I wanted to insert more character observations in one of my middle grade novels. Thanks, Edie! The only negative during this session was that the room was freezing. In between making notes, I sat on my hands.

The second workshop I attended was picture book author Ann Bonwill's “Picture Book Point of View.” This workshop was in a warm room . Although the title of the workshop referenced picture books, and Ann used picture book examples to illustrate what she meant, the exercises she used would apply equally to all genres. Ann reminded us that one important part of point of view isn’t just thinking about first, second, third POV-- it’s deciding which character should be the main character to begin with. Who should tell the story? Perhaps a minor character needs a starring narrative role? She also talked about the form in which we write (prose, poetry, dialogue) and some of the advantages and disadvantages of different forms. We finished the session with exercises, rewriting familiar stories from a different point of view. During the exercise, I got excited by some of my ideas. The creative juices really started flowing! This exercise was a big help too when I got stuck at times during the PiBoIdMo challenge last month. I’ve realized that sometimes the character that comes into my mind first isn’t the best one to tell his/her/its story.

That was about half the Fall Fest day. Watch for Part 2 coming soon...

Winning - Picture Book Writer Style

December is the finale for the 12 x 12 in 2012 challenge. 

When I sat down in January with my notebook of 2011 PiBoIdMo Ideas (Thanks, Tara!), the challenge seemed like a gimme. A picture book should be no more than 1,000 words (preferably under 500) so that works out to 6,000 to 12,000 words—in a year. The NaMoWriMo folks would bust a gut thinking anyone could be stymied by word counts like this.

But it wasn’t so easy. Wholly apart from the demands of home and hearth, part of the problem for me was that I don’t just write picture books. I write middle grade novels and nonfiction. Carving out time to really focus on twelve new picture books was—a challenge.

The great thing was, amazing writers posted their own stories of success and words of encouragement on Julie’s website. These mental nudges were a gentle reminder of what I wanted to do. The dust bunnies and weedy garden could wait. Other writers revved my creative engine and brought me back to my own picture book stories. 

I love picture books and I’m glad I completed the challenge even though all twelve aren’t shiny works of art yet. I love thinking about the way words and art play off each other in good picture books. I love the sudoku-like challenge of completing a story arc in 28-30 pages.  And maybe I shouldn’t admit it, but I love the way new picture books smell.

One unexpected bonus of the 12 x 12 challenge is I finally started this blog! On the same day that Julie posted a December 12^th date for the end of year success party, a critique friend talked about choosing the perfect website moniker. What was I waiting for? I put my jets in gear. Photos are yet to come, but the process has begun. I’m way out at the beginning of the learning curve, so I’d be grateful if you’d leave your comments and suggestions about the blog/website experience. 

Thanks for visiting!