Tag Archives: writing

My Addiction: Time Management… Games!

by Jennette,

OK, it’s confession time. No, this is not why Time’s Fugitive is late, but… okay, it might have contributed to it, earlier on. It is one reason why I don’t watch TV. Or if I do, it’s looking up from my computer, where I’m writing, emailing, on HootSuite, or…

It all started with an intrepid waitress named Flo

I admit it. Playing games. I’m addicted. Ironically, to time management games.

For the uninitiated, these usually feature a character doing a job like waitressing or running a small farm, and you have to run the character through all sorts of tasks that must be done quickly, and in a specific order. In the Diner Dash series, and also Emily’s Delicious, another of my favorites, you work at different restaurants. You have to hand out menus, take orders, sometimes fix food, take it to the customers, collect money, and so on. There are different types of customers who have differing patience levels, and if they leave early, you loose points/money (in the game, not real money). If you don’t make enough money in the allotted time, you fail the level. As the levels go on, difficulty and complexity of the tasks increases.  There is a story that goes along with it, usually told in cut scenes between levels or major game segments. They’re fairly pedestrian – after all, it’s about the game play – but some of them are cute. What my husband finds most ironic about my addiction to these games is that they’re about people doing jobs I would be horrible at!

In the Farm Frenzy series, you play as Scarlet, who has farms all over the place - and in time!

It was way too easy to get caught up in this. It all started several years ago, when MSN Games offered Diner Dash 2 for free. Yes, it was online-only – as in, a tiny screen in a web browser window. And there are commercials between levels. But free! And legal! I was hooked. Eventually, I finished out the game, only to find that… it wasn’t finished. MSN only offered nine levels on the free, online game, then wanted to sell you a downloadable game. For $19.95, which I couldn’t justify.

Then I found  crack.com gamehouse.com, where they offer the full, downloadble versions of dozens of games, FREE. Like the MSN trial online version, these have commercials between levels, but they don’t bother me. (With the commercials, I know the developers are being paid, and that’s something I have a vested interest in.) Sure enough, they had Diner Dash – and if I wanted it without commercials, it’s only 6.99 on Gamehouse.  There are many to choose from. Not just time management games, but hidden objects, puzzles, arcade games. All designed to be played in short bursts (hence the name casual games, as opposed to something long-term, like Everquest or WoW).

"It's good to work toward my dream," Emily says. Ummm.... yeah. Now I need to go work on mine.

I don’t stop writing to watch TV. But I do, sometimes, stop to play a round of Farm Frenzy–gotta make that cheese! Which invariably becomes two rounds. Or three. Or… well, you get it.

So there is my big time management challenge… time management games. I’ve been good lately, but it’s involved a great deal of restraint. I don’t let myself play games until after I’ve done a set amount of work on my writing, done my workout for the day, taken care of paperwork or whatever else needs to be done around the house, checked and responded to email and so on. But sometimes I do slip up and play before the work is done. Then I get back to the work, and it’s that much longer before it’s finished. I admit, I had to get in a round of Delicious: Emily’s Tea Garden before writing this blog – and now it’s 10:30 PM. But the writing got done first!

So tell me. Do you like casual games, and if so, which ones? Or are you more into the more involved games, or… not at all – maybe your addiction is something else, like TV? Is it an effort for you to stay away from your addiction until you get things done? Please share, and tell me I’m not alone! I’ll stop back later… after I’ve served some customers!

Goals in Brief

by Jennette,

So it’s New Year’s Day, and time to jump back into ROW80: “The Writing Challenge that Knows You have a Life.” I’d planned to get this post up yesterday. See how well that went – pretty much like my whole revision of Time’s Fugitive has gone. So it’s 10:45 on Sunday night, I’m yawning, so we’ll just make this fast.

Last ROW80 I learned to be more realistic in estimating how long things really take (then forgot it again) and in how much I could realistically do in a given amount of time. Even this past week, which I took off of work, I did not get as much done as I hoped. As much as I might want to get my revision done, like, tomorrow, it’s just not happening. So it’s carrying over to the 2012, Round 1.

My primary goal is to release Time’s Fugitive. Secondary to that, I’d like to have a marketing plan for this release. Here are the main steps I need to take to meet these goals:

  • Finish revision of Time’s Fugitive
  • Send to beta readers
  • Make changes based on beta reads
  • Send to editor
  • Prepare front matter, back matter, product description, and everything else needed before release
  • Format book
  • Develop marketing plan (preferably before release, but probably after)
  • Release Time’s Fugitive

 

If you’re participating in ROW80, good luck! Whether or not you are, or even whether or not you’re a writer, you probably have goals – what’s your major one?

Goals, and Facing Facts

by Jennette,

On a positive note, I again reached my writing goals this week, although partly because they changed. I finished the type-in through Chapter 11, then marked up Chapters 18 and 19, but decided against sending the first half to the beta readers at this point.

Time's Fugitive book cover

Coming in FEBRUARY!

Because it’s time to face facts and come clean: Time’s Fugitive is going to be late. I’d wanted to release it about now; that’s not even close to happening. There were two reasons for this: 1) earlier on in this challenge, I wasn’t focused enough and tended to push the work aside when it was just too hard. The other, more insidious problem was that I grossly underestimated the amount of time this revision would take. My estimate was based on the revisions for Time’s Enemy, and while the lengths are similar, Time’s Enemy had already undergone several exhaustive revisions before I discovered Holly Listle’s How to Revise Your Novel system. So the Time’s Enemy revision was relatively painless, but Time’s Fugitive needed a lot more work, for me to make it into the book I wanted, with the quality that I’ve committed to delivering to my readers.

One thing this challenge has taught me is what is a more realistic goal, and how to set that goal while taking in mind what else I have going on that week. This week, I knew I had two holiday events to attend today, plus decorating (my tree’s still not up :facepalm:) and getting Christmas cards out. I met my goal this week, but it wasn’t a super-aggressive one. It wasn’t easy, but it was doable.

So that’s what I’ve learned through this challenge. The eighty days of ROW80 ends on December 22, so for my final writing goal, I’m going to keep it simple: one more chapter marked up. How about you? What have you learned lately about what you’re capable of, whether or not you’re a writer, or participating in ROW80?

Reducing Stress when You’re Busy Busy Busy

by Jennette,

After many weeks of not hitting my ROW80 goals, I’ve finally nailed one! Well, I nailed last week’s too, but I purposefully set the bar very low, after not hitting it for so many weeks. This week’s was a challenge, especially with all of the extra holiday stuff to do, but I did it!

One thing that helped immensely was to let go of guilt and “ought-tos” and just do what was really necessary. For example, maybe you like to wrap elaborate, beautiful gifts. I used to too, but this takes time. And it just gets torn up anyway! So several years ago, I decided to just let myself do what the rest of the family does, and wrap it, and stick a bow on. That’s it! The best thing? No one seemed to care! Oh, they used to notice the beautiful, beribboned packages and appreciated them, but it’s an extra, not an expectation. So I let it go!

Same thing with gift tags. I used to make my own, out of recycled Christmas cards. Fun to do, cheap, and boy did they look nice, but it took a good couple hours! Now, my family gets store-bought stick-on labels. And they’re OK with that!

This year, I decided not to make a food item for my RWA chapter’s holiday party. In the past, I’ve taken beef rollups, mini quiches, and other goodies – none of which were difficult to make – but all took time. The kicker was that I always seemed to have a lot of leftovers to take back home! Some things didn’t go over that well at all, even though they were tasty (IMO and my family’s). I also noticed in past years that the food was all appetizers and desserts, yet the party was held at noon – lunchtime. I figured something more “main dish” would be appreciated, so I just called in an order for footlong subs at Subway, asked them to cut them in quarters, and picked them up on the way to the party. Even though someone else also brought mini-sandwiches, my subs were a hit! I had two quarters left over, and my husband quickly took care of them. For the gift exchange, I “gifted” a book on Amazon, and chose the printout option. I chose a craft book that I personally love – Holly Lisle’s Create a Plot Clinic – that can be useful to a writer at any point in her career. It was for a Kindle book, and I don’t know if the woman who received it has a Kindle or smartphone, but an Amazon Kindle gift book can be exchanged for anything, so hopefully she’ll get something else she likes if  Create a Plot Clinic isn’t for her. A thoughtful gift, and another task made easier!

So that’s how I got the type-in done for six revised chapters this week, even though I’m learning this is a task that takes longer than I thought when the book needs a lot of work.

This week, I want to get Chapters 10 & 11 typed-in, and off to the beta readers. Then I’m going to dig back into the markup, and get through Chapter 18 & 19. This will get me through the big black moment.

How are you doing on your goals, whether or not you’re participating in ROW80? Got any tips on reducing holiday stress? I’ll share some more here on Thursday, so check back!

 

By the way, thanks to all who joined in Samantha Warren’s Blog Scavenger Hunt! I had fun participating, and hopefully a lot of readers found a lot of fun books!

A Kinder, Gentler To-do List; Blog Scavenger Hunt

by Jennette,

Last week, I was overwhelmed – and the holiday season was just beginning! My writing was suffering – there just weren’t enough hours in the day. It was stressful, and all I wanted to do was play computer games.

That was not acceptable. Something had to be done.

I looked at my to-do list, which had grown to epic proportions. Each day, there were more things on it than anyone could hope to accomplish in the time I had! I remembered an email I’d read – from the Flylady list, I think – that said we tend to put far more on our lists than we can possibly do in a day. I had a lot of things on mine that had been on there for months, and I still hadn’t gotten to them!

It was time to be ruthless. Anything that wasn’t really that important was gone.

This little button = less stress!

Other tasks – stuff to do when I had some spare time (LOL) or after New Year’s, when I planned to kick my book promo efforts up, went onto another, separate list.

Stuff I did every week, and had finally developed into enough of a habit that I didn’t really need it on the to-do list anymore, also went bye-bye.

My stress level immediately went down.

Now, the list has expanded once again, but a lot of that is one-off, holiday tasks. And a lot of those are easy, little things that don’t take a ton of time, but that I might not get to or remember if I don’t note them. And the weekly list? Down to four things at the moment, included in the above.

What’s your to-do list look like? Do you routinely put way too much on it? Or do you make one that’s more realistic – if you make one at all? Any more tips for managing that list? Please share!

Just for Fun

I am participating in a blog scavenger hunt, posted by one of my writer colleagues, Samantha Warren. Samantha writes fantasy, and is turning 30 today. To celebrate, she’s hosting a week’s worth of scavenger hunt fun and prizes. The grand prize is a new Kindle e-reader! There are a bunch of other cool prizes – one or two every day, including an e-copy of Time’s Enemy. So stop by and wish Samantha a happy birthday, and check out some of those blogs to see if you can answer a few questions and win!

ROW80 Update:

I did not post a Wednesday ROW80 update this week, as I had nothing to report. That will probably continue to be my pattern, as the Wednesday blog post update is something else I’m taking off my list.

I did meet my goal of getting Chapter 17 revised – wow, was that one a lot of work! – and I exceeded my type-in goal, and completed two chapters.

However, this pace is not satisfactory. So this week, I want to:

  • Finish type-in through Chapter 9. Type-in is something I can do while the TV’s on, and interruptions are much less of a problem, so hopefully this goal is within reason.
  • Get Christmas decorating done
  • Order Christmas cards
  • Figure out gifts
  • Begin online shopping, especially gifts that are needed sooner than Christmas for events, party exchanges, etc.

By the way, my overall goals have been shot to hell, a long time ago. I didn’t realize how badly until I just now looked up the original goal post. Stop laughing! Let’s just refine the goals right now. I just want to get this edit done, and out to the beta readers. That’s i! And I still fear it may be too ambitious, but I’m going to try, because readers are waiting for this book! If that’s not motivation, I don’t know what is.

How are your goals coming?

Set a Goal You Can’t Miss

by Jennette,

Once again for my ROW80 update, I have to report that I fell short of my goals. I’ve seen a lot of this with NaNoWriMo, too. And of course, we hear other people besides writers, having to-do lists and goals they can’t possibly accomplish in the time allotted.

I didn’t think my goals were unreasonable when I initially set them, yet I feel like I worked the past three days on this revision, and I still didn’t quite get through as much as I wanted. I got through Chapters 15 and 16, and almost got Chapter 17 revised – then I found one more scene, one that had been moved from earlier in the chapter. I also ran into a plot point that won’t work the way I wrote it, so I need to come up with something else. And the type-in? Stop laughing.

So this week, I want to set goals the Writers’ Boot Camp way. But the principle doesn’t just apply to writing, we can apply it to any big task. Writers’ Boot Camp is a workshop taught by author and former Army Ranger Todd Stone, and if you’re a writer and have the chance to take it, do it! He may even show up to teach the workshop in a camouflage kilt. 😀

Anyway, he started out the workshop talking about goals. Usually, we’re encouraged to set goals that are attainable, but not necessarily easily. Stone takes the opposite approach: he suggests setting a goal so low, you can’t help but make it! Here were the examples he gave:

Can you write a page a day? If you’re not sure, how about a paragraph? Or even a sentence???

Yes, that small. The thing is, we usually are able to go much further – so we get more done, AND we have that sense of accomplishment in saying Yes! I met my goal!

This could easily be applied to decluttering, getting your house in order, or working on a big project of another sort.

So I am going to set a small goal this week. I just can’t bring myself to say I’ll only revise one page, so I’ll go for that last remaining scene of Chapter 17, and the type-in of Chapter One.

How are you doing on your goals, whatever they may be? Have you ever tried this tactic? How did it work for you?

ROW80: But it’s Hard!

by Jennette,

I’ve noticed something with my high-school-age daughter, that she’s done for a long time. When she has a tough assignment, whether it’s homework, or a big chore (like clean up her room), she tends to goof off even more. The homework doesn’t get done, and the room never gets cleaned. She’s a super-smart kid. Homework usually comes easily to her. Keeping her room clean should be easy, but instead of picking up and putting away as she goes, she lets stuff pile up until it becomes overwhelming.

And by that point, she doesn’t want to do it. Because it’s hard!

Revisions continue to go slowly. In trying to figure out why, it’s pretty obvious: I keep running up against big plot holes that don’t have an obvious solution, and instead of just doing something about it, I go do something else, like play computer games.

Because it’s hard!

I do the same thing with a sticky revision as my daughter does with homework or a chore that’s not easy.

So that’s my reason, not excuse, for not meeting my ROW80 goals for Yet. Another. Week. I realize I probably have to just power through this stuff and I tried a couple times this week, but the powering-through doesn’t happen quickly. My muses take their good ol’ time handing me solutions to this type of problem and in the meantime, I go play another round of My Farm Life. Sigh. Or this week, I go work on a website I volunteered to do for a promo group I’m in. Either way, the revisions are not coming along as quickly as I’d like.

Sometimes I ask myself Twenty Questions, or rather, Twenty Answers, to the question, “what could happen here?” I get all the mundane, overused, and just plain stupid ones out of the way, and by the time I’ve come up with twenty things, I’ve usually come up with something good.

Other times, it’s just resistance to making a Big Change that’s going to take a lot of work. That’s where I’m at now, in Chapter 15. What’s funny is I checked my spam queue right before I started this post, and found my first, legitimate, not-spam comment in it, from a fellow Row80-er who was having this very problem! So it’s time to take her advice and just make the big change. It’s not even as big as the one she’s been dealing with.

As for my specific goals, I did get Chapter 13 and 14 revised, and there were plenty of those PITA issues in them as well.

For this week, I want to get 15-17 revised. Ideally, I’d also like to get the type-in done for the book so far, and get it out to the beta readers. I’m hosting Thanksgiving, so that’s a day I won’t get any writing done, but I’m blessed to have all my family nearby (which means no overnight houseguests or travel), and my husband also helps. I also have Wednesday and Friday off work, so that should make up for it.

Do you have any suggestions on tackling a Big, PITA Change? Or for figuring out a show-stopper plot hole? How did you do on your goals this week?

Time Management Tip: Make a big task fit your life, rather than the other way around

by Jennette,

NaNoWriMo Winner 2009We’re over halfway through this year’s NaNoWriMo, so if you’re hoping to pound out a 50,000-word novel this month, you should have over 25,000 words written. I’m not participating in NaNoWriMo this year, because I’m knee-deep in revisions for my upcoming time travel romance, Time’s Fugitive, which is due for release in late December. NaNo is for writing new pages, and requires a new project, and only once have I been at the right stage in my writing to attempt it. That was in 2009, and I won!

I have a couple of tips that greatly helped me to win NaNo in 2009. I even finished a day early! And this isn’t just for writers participating in the craziness that is writing an entire, 50,000-word novel in a month; this can apply to any big task that could take a month or more, like decluttering a room.

The thing to remember is that you should plan your NaNo writing time to fit into the rest of your life, if at all possible, rather than trying to make the rest of your life fit NaNoWriMo. This is even more important if you have a full time job and a family who is unwilling to be pushed aside for a month while you write. But with these two simple tricks, you won’t need to do that, and your family hopefully won’t grow to resent your writing by November 30. Here they are:

  1. Whoever left these probably got caught in the rain!

    Divide up the task by the time you have to accomplish it. For NaNoWriMo, dividing 50,000 words into thirty days means write 1,667 words a day. But wait! Do you really have the same amount of time to devote to writing every day of the week? I think most of us have certain commitments – kids’ sporting events, household chores, social obligations – that greatly reduce, or even eliminate, time to write at least one evening a week. On the other hand, you probably have other days where you have more time. For many of us, that’s the weekend. So set daily goals in accordance with those other obligations – a higher word count on the days where there’s more time to write, and a lower word count on the days we know will be full.

  2. I alluded to the other tip in my Not Enough Time post: Give yourself one day off per week. Even if you don’t have any days you think are crammed full, this allows for the unexpected. Our best-laid plans often fall by the wayside thanks to the Unexpectedness Monster – surprise visitors one evening, the kitchen sink develops a leak the next, the project you thought would be easy takes ten times as much time as you estimated. So reduce your stress and plan for the unexpected! If you’re lucky, this will work like taking an umbrella somewhere: if you take it, it doesn’t rain; forget the umbrella, and get caught in a downpour.

So with the above in mind, re-divvy up your daily and weekly goals. I wrote 12,000 words/week for NaNoWriMo 2009: 1,500 words a day, four days a week, and 3,000 words each on Saturday and Sunday. My day off was usually Monday, an evening I typically have a lot of household chores. Sometimes I managed to fit 500 words or so in on Monday, which made it a little easier if I had another busy day later that week. November 29th was a Sunday that year, so I wrote my last 2,000 words and put myself down for a Win a day early!

Are you doing NaNoWriMo this year? If so, how are you coming along? Either way, got any tips to get this big task – or any other – done and still be sane at the end of the month?

Umbrella photo via Wikipedia, public domain

ROW80: Need Headphones

by Jennette,

On Sunday, I got the troublesome scene that needed to be inserted, written. Monday is paperwork day, so no writing then, but that was expected. Today I got a little done on the rewrite on the following scene, but had to stop before I finished it.

It’s the husband’s TV night, and the only way I get writing done then is with headphones. Only problem is, my headphones are wireless – and they needed to be charged. They can’t be used while charging, so…. no headphones. I could have taken my netbook and gotten the writing done elsewhere; instead, I got caught up on other related activities, including one I’d put off for a long time.

I just uploaded the files for Time’s Enemy to Lightning Source for additional ebook distribution. They distribute to over two dozen outlets, including Kobo and Powell’s. So, more places to buy the book = better. I may not sell anything through those outlets. But who knows, maybe I will. And hey, it’s free, since I use Lightning Source for my print books.

So I may not be where I wanted to be with the writing, but I got other stuff done. Lesson Learned: charge the headphones before the battery runs out.

How are you doing on your goals this week?