Words and Concepts for the Year

~ The Morning Muse #11 ~

HEALTHIER

Some things have to change for a better state of living for me, personally, as well as for my family. That can best be achieved starting with nutrition and diet. I need a low-carb diet (and really, lowered calories as well). It’s very hard to stay on this course when the people you live with–these enablers!–refuse to either get with the program or stick with it when we embrace it. I may have to simply lone-wolf it myself. That’s so much easier said than done, of course. Hey, I’ve jogged a couple times in the last few weeks. And I didn’t die.

CONSOLIDATE

That concept has been on my mind quite a bit this past week. Given how scattered I tend to be mentally/creatively/productively, I think that has to be a condition of great concern and goal. Also:

EFFICIENCY

Yeah, that’s really important and goes along well with consolidation. You could probably add PRODUCTIVITY to that, but that’s a given (can’t achieve efficiency if you’re not even productive). And naturally, those two should lead to:

FOCUS

Yeah, that’s a biggie and the hardest to obtain, which is probably why it’s next to last on this list. Creatively I have the attention span of a squirrel on speed on a grassy knoll full of acorns. My mind never stops generating new ideas, usually ideas that have little to do with the current project on which I’m focused at a given moment. It’s madness.

Also, I tend to be a bit of a seasonal kind of person. I’m usually most creative in Spring and Autumn, so perhaps as Summer wanes into the Fall (and the kids have gone back to school and the days become cold and dark) I’ll be at point where I’ll be able to focus more on whatever the Spring and Summer months have undoubtedly inspired in me creatively.

ACHIEVEMENT

This relies on and becomes the sum total of the four preceding it. Inherent in this word is the concept of SUCCESS. If I can manage to be successful with any or all of the above, then achievement is the ribbon, the trophy, the medal.

HEALTHIER | CONSOLIDATE | EFFICIENCY | FOCUS | ACHIEVEMENT

Just five words. Just five goals. Sounds easy enough.

Why Writers Shouldn’t Blog Too Much | Vincent Mars

Blog, Guest Blog, Reblog

Blogging can take over your writing life. You may have reached a point where you have to ask yourself this question — is blogging distracting me from my more ambitious work?

Many of us have started our blogs thinking it’s good for our writing careers. We need more than good writing if we want to be writers, we know. We need the exposure that a blog can bring us. We need an online reputation. We need connections. Blogging can help bring us all of these.

But every minute you spend writing a blog post or reading comments is a minute you don’t spend working on your larger writing projects. And there will be many days when blogging will seem so much easier than revising that long manuscript you’ve been working on for years.

“How to Become a Prolific Writer” | Nicole Bianchi

Blog, Guest Blog

The powerful process that will help you write more in 2017

Have you ever looked at the bibliographies of prolific writers and wondered how on earth they write so many books?

Do they just have an incredible amount of time to devote to writing?

A motor inside their hands that keeps them typing away?

A writing refuge where they can hide to block out all distractions from the world?

Actually, the answer is much simpler.

These prolific writers usually don’t lead unconventional lives nor do they possess any superhuman powers. Rather they have developed a single habit that anyone can master: setting a daily word count goal and following through every day.

Read on to discover the daily word counts of several prolific authors (some of these may surprise you!), and the best way to set your own daily word count goal and follow through each day.

Click the link to continue “How to Become a Prolific Writer” @NicoleJBianchi https://writingcooperative.com/how-to-become-a-prolific-writer-ba23683675ba

In Full Swing in Spring (it seems)

Blog, Journals, Lifebook, Update

~ Lifebook #17 ~

Spring always brings turbulent weather and this year’s season of renewal has been no exception. A monsoon season in both April and May? C’mon, now, that’s going a bit overboard. May is usually my favorite month of the year because of a few reasons, such as it being a period of time (usually) beyond extreme weather, a time of moderate temperatures (usually), the flowers are in full bloom and the NBA Playoffs are happening. It’s arguable that May, along with October, is the most beautiful month of the year. I do like beautiful things.

This Spring brings things that seem to represent my getting back into the swing of things. To wit:

Started a new job recently, effectively returning me to the mortgage business. The new position comes with my highest salary yet. That’s kind of the idea as you progress through your working life, whether transitioning to a new industry or remaining in the same one. It’s rare that your cost of living decreases over time in this society, so continued growth in earnings is just what the accountant ordered. Now . . . if I could just get used to working 8-to-5, meaning having to go to bed no later than 1 AM . . .

Recently rekindled my burgeoning creative partnership with my old writer friend Jennifer Macaire. We’ve been kicking around the idea of co-writing a book or small series of books (likely a trilogy) the past two years and that’s still the plan. After presenting her with an idea for a different approach to a collaborative novel experiment, she has tasked me with the initial conception of our project, which, funnily, was the opposite of what I wanted to do. But I’m glad she did because I got started on it (tentative codename: Project Seven) right away that Friday and have conceived what I think could be a very interesting YA urban fantasy series. The brainstorming sessions I had last weekend also got my creative juices finally flowing on an older idea (codename: Project Arcana) that I’ve kicked around in my noggin probably since Moses reportedly parted the Red Sea. So it’s good to be back in a creative and productive state of mind and I can’t thank Jennifer “Sneezy J” Macaire enough for indulging and inspiring me to get the ball rolling.

The band has been about as active this year so far as we were in all of 2016. A month or so ago we put the finishing touches on our initial 5-song EP (although we still need to mix it, master it and release it). There are rumblings of finally returning to the stage by this summer, but as I’ve learned in the 2.5 years of this band’s existence, I need to curb my expectations, if not my goals for it altogether. We’ve only played one show (in January 2016) and written eight songs in all that time. Yes, we are men in our 40s, all four of us married, three of us with kids and jobs, so naturally a band at this point in our lives is going to be a part-time venture. One would be foolish to think that what we did in our youth and 20-something years as musicians could ever be replicated now. The dedication of time, hell, the availability of time for guys not far from middle-age just isn’t there. It can’t be. And that’s a hard, inconvenient truth I had to come to grips with in 2016. For now I’m happy to ride the wave as it comes (and goes).

Talking Trilogies with Tony Riches | Guest Blogger for Jennifer Macaire

Blog, Guest Blog, Reblog, Writing

For most writers, completing one book would seem more than enough of an achievement, so why would anyone make a commitment to writing three? I was reading Conn Iggulden’s impressive Wars of the Roses trilogy, when the answer occurred to me.

Joe Hill’s STRANGE WEATHER

Authors, Blog, Book Cover, Fiction, Novel

In Joe Hill’s most recent newsletter (subscribe here) he shared the cover and some information about his next book, a collection of four short novels called STRANGE WEATHER. There’s even generous preview over at Entertainment Weekly’s website.

From his newsletter, Joe Hill writes:

My next book, STRANGE WEATHER, a collection of four short novels, is out this October (early November in the U.K.). It opens with “Snapshot,” the story of a man known as the Phoenician, who carries a modified Polaroid camera that can steal memories. An earlier draft of that novella appeared in Cemetery Dance 74/75, although the version in the book includes a few new chapters.

“Loaded” tells the story of a mall security guard who becomes an overnight hero to the gun rights movement after he single handedly takes on a mass shooter. But as his story of bravery begins to crack, so does his sanity, and on a breathlessly hot Florida afternoon, he reaches for the gun again, and embarks on a day of reckoning.

The third novella, “Aloft,” strands a young skydiver on an unaccountably solid cloud, leaving him a desperate castaway on an island in the sky. And in the finale, “Rain,” deadly storms of nails begin to shower down all across the United States in a glittering, lethal hail.

If you’re in the market for a signed book, Water Street Books in Exeter, New Hampshire has you covered. As they did with THE FIREMAN, they’re offering signed copies of STRANGE WEATHER to those who preorder. They ship worldwide. If you are kind enough to pre-order, you have my thanks. All the information is right here.