Last Blog Post

This is farewell for now with a side of advice.

Thanks to all of you who have checked in here. I hope some of my experiences, with Dragon Naturally Speaking, etc., might have helped a few of you keep plugging away. 

Writing is Hell and don't you forget it. Yeah, it's a sit-down job, and I've been grateful to be able to get off my feet and make money too. But still, this business is damn hard work. Each separate piece is damn hard. If you're doing all the pieces yourself, you deserve a medal. Or at least some solid sales.

The basics are still the basics.

Keep writing and your craft will improve.

Keep working on your speed and it will pick up.

Keep setting goals you actually have to reach for, and you'll reach some. It doesn't matter what your odds are, or how many you reach, at least you reached. At least you stretched yourself. That makes you...stretchier, if nothing else. That makes you the mouse with his shoes draped over his shoulder, not worrying about who moved the cheese, or where it went, just prepared to find it. Prepared with shoes and attitude.

Take some time to see what works for you. But don't get addicted to analyzing it all. That's just a procrastination tactic. Try to see those for what they are.

Find a friend to lean on and hold up. A writing friend. For this to be a spouse would be rare indeed. Find someone who is at the same stage you're at, or slightly higher. Then do whatever you can to help them. You always get paid back with interest.

If your family hasn't realized you're a writer by now, start dressing all in black. Quoting Poe as you walk down the hall. Scribbling things on the furniture. If they don't create some writing space for you, and insist you use it, you're not trying hard enough.

Embrace the Cray Cray. It will increase the space around you. If you're looking for love and affection, stick to Roses are Red poems and never, ever wear black.

Read. For hellsakes, read. And write something that goes against the rules you've learned. We all need to see more of that. Take a rule. Bend it 'til it breaks. Toss it in a fire and dance around the flames.

I'm going to try for more pithy posts, like Seth Godin. So if you want to follow me, go hit my author page on Facebook. That's where I'll be setting up shop. LL Muir. I'm sure you can find it.

And that's it.

Four books down. Two more to go, in December. Not going to hit 7 like I'd hoped.

26 pounds down. The Diet Pepsi is next on the drop list. I've already started the fitness part. Wish me luck. Leaving for Scotland in T minus...4 and 1/2 months!!!! HOLY CRAP!

And as always, 

Thank you for playing.

Lesli

NaNo Friday! November 1, 2013

The lapse in posts is one of the drawbacks of having an office with no wifi.

Yes, I've actually been using my office! And being productive again has revived me. It really has. I'm a pretty ambitious person by nature, so when I'm moving and shaking, I'm happy.

Speaking of giggling, I'm still 19 lbs. down despite having pizza for Halloween along with an inch of a KitKat bar and two whoppers. Apparently the world didn't end, since I'm still here, but I don't think that's going to be a temptation again.

I have realized that all my eating--every bite I put in my mouth for the past ten+years, has been driven by emotion. Nothing about the joy of food. All about my entitlement to it.

And now, I'm working toward being entitled to go to Scotland, entitled to wear jeans, entitled to feel good. And boy, do I feel good. Percentage of body weight-wise, 19 lbs. isn't much. But it was an important benchmark. Lots of things have changed. And my energy is AT LEAST ten times what it was.

Since Tuesday, I've gotten two major projects off my to-do list. One project is off to my agent so she can send it on to some interested editors. That has been a dark cloud over my head for two months. Cloud gone.

I have another project I have to finish tonight by midnight and get sent off to an editor. That's what I'll be doing today instead of getting started on NaNo. And, speaking of NaNo, I'll be getting my 1666 words per day written on a new project on top of what I have scheduled for editing. And I'm going to use my dragon to do it. 1666 words can be done in about 45 minutes tops.

Having a NaNo write-in at my house on Saturday. So far, I've got 18 writers coming. If you're interested, let me know. We're in Utah.

I don't know if it's the New Moon coming or what, but Supe has been bitten by the ambition bug again and we're gearing up for another uber productive month like last August was. We're done talking and analyzing. It's time to shut up and get this stuff written. Great stories, buried in one's subconscious, do no one any good. After all, I don't get to read them either--not until they come out of my fingers.

So.
Let's play Michelangelo.
Let's get our chisels and hammers and get to work, setting these works of art free.  Slow does not equal beauty. Let's take advantage of the NaNo energy that's out there, whether or not you're technically participating, and move some earth.

An Experiment in Separation October 23, 2013

Good Morning Campers!

Now that my roller coaster has come to a complete stop...

I woke up this morning with a happy head cold. Happy I was not going to have any babysitting to do today and happy I could take my son to his day program then come back home for a nap. Then I happily trotted off to lunch with my closest friend, Annie Adams.

In the afternoon, I picked up my son then headed over to sign a contract and pick up the keys to my new office. Yippee! Then I went to the phone store and got a new cell. Both the office and the phone are part of my new Experiment in Separation.

I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself from any earlier posts, but there are plenty of reasons to get an away-from-home-office.

Your mileage may vary, of course, but my reasons include:

I've got offspring moving back into my basement. My youngest son and his wife are getting serious about school and until they get some traction, they'll stay here. That takes up all three bedrooms in the basement=basement is no longer an option for office space, even if I were to be able to stand to be below ground. (I hate basements.)

Secondly, my current bedroom office now has a crib in it for the granddaughter. I tried typing while she naps. It did NOT work. And I tried all week, not just one day. This leaves me no room in the house for a private office.

Another reason I want to have my working desk away from the house is Supe's fault. She got an office 20-30 minutes away from her house. She goes there almost daily, gets her writing in, then goes home. SHE LEAVES HER WORK AT THE OFFICE. When she gets home, it's like...like...she gets to RELAX! She gets to stop thinking about work, about the project, about the characters. She doesn't have to think, while cooking dinner, "I could run in there and edit one more page before the chicken is done." She doesn't have to feel guilty about sitting and watching a tv show instead of plotting out her next story. She doesn't have to look at the clock during a family dinner and try to guess how many more words she can get written depending on when her family members head for their cars.

My husband ruled out buying a small shed and finishing as an office. I ruled out getting a camping trailer. I'm a big girl now. My writing is not a hobby. I do not want to be underground OR have a low ceiling. And I don't want my work haunting me from my bedroom.
Am I asking too much?
I think not.

So I'm going for Normal.

I found an office building near my house that gave me a great deal on rent PLUS a window. I was even willing to go without a window, but I lucked out. I have a lovely view of the mountains thanks to a second floor office window facing east. The room is large enough to hold two desks and a love seat. The main desk I'll use for editing. The small one for new words only. Also, Rock Jr. thinks the second desk is for him. And it will be, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

That's right, folks.
I have a schedule. Just like a normal job. Whoohoo!
Instead of thinking about writing 16 hours a day and maybe getting three good hours in (if you add up all the little pecking I do during the day, on a good day) I'm going to spend about five hours at the office Monday through Friday. And three nights a week, I'm going to go back for more. I hope to get around 30 hours in per week. I start on Friday. I'm going to be realistic and not plan to get anything other than organization done tomorrow.

Tonight I drove past the church and got three teens and one Scout leader (friends all) to come help me load up all the furniture and take it to the office. I paid them and took them for shakes and fries when they were done. They more than earned it. I had some heavy stuff.

Tomorrow's going to be sweeeet!

Oh!
And this is why I needed a phone.
As far as cell phones go, mine was so old my kids groan when I pull it out. They're embarrassed.
But no longer. I got a smart phone. Yes. I'll be holding a small rectangular plate up to my face to speak to people, but apparently THAT's not embarrassing. The true reason I got it, however, was so I don't need yet another computer at the house. I can check email, etc., from this fancy phone. And if I want to get any writing done, I'll just have to go to the office, or break out the Alphasmart or Dragon.

So.
I'm separating my home/family life from my work life. Finally.
And starting Friday, I'll even stop talking about it here. And when I come home, I can focus on the people around me, on the household tasks I never seem to have time for because I'm always TRYING to write.

Still, I wouldn't drop by unannounced.
Hah!

Sun/Mon check in--Sept. 8&9 Finish lines!

DISCLAIMER: There may be an uncontrolled number of exclamation points in this post.

I know I wasn't going to check in until after Monday's work, but I couldn't wait.

I finished Mrs. Wiggs! The word count is only about 14k, but I expect it to end about 16k and around 70 pages after the edits. Not bad for a short episode. It will still be standing in line for edits, but I'm thrilled the first draft is done. I hate it when short projects take a freaking long time to write.

Here's the breakdown, then I'm going to share a little helpful advice about the Dragon.

Saturday, I wrote just under 400 words on my Alphasmart while sitting at a restaurant waiting for some friends. That turns out to be around 1100 words per hour. That's about my average on my Alphasmart. I can pretty much bank on it.

Sunday I had to fight tooth and nail to get in front of the computer, then I realized I wasn't going to be able to work well with Football in the background and the phone ringing, even though the Rock said he'd get it. He also cleaned and vowed to let me do nothing but write for the next four years, but it wasn't happening. So I grabbed my headset, my Alphasmart, and my digital recorder, jumped in the car, and drove out by the Great Salt Lake, to a little bend in the road midst acres of farmland, where very very few cars drive by. I like to think of it as my West office.

I opened the top on my car and sat in the cool breeze. I couldn't get comfortable with the Alphasmart and a pillow on my lap, so I pulled out the recorder and went to town. I didn't even walk. I just sat in my car and told the story. OH MY GOSH, I couldn't believe how slowly I was telling it. I was certain I could type faster. I had half sentences, long pauses, and I kept forgetting to say "New Paragraph", etc.

Then I had to pee. An hour or more of good sunlight left and I had to call it quits.

I hurried home and when I transcribed the file, I was shocked. With a file of 1 hour and 37 minutes, I had written 3256. That averages--even stumbling and bumbling around--to be over 2000 words an hour. For me, that's a lot of talking.

I thought I could settle in and do some typing, but after some frustration, which I'll address in a second, I decided I had to get out of the house again. And I still hadn't walked yet. So I took the recorder and headed to the park. It was dark, but the center of the park always has people and has good lighting. The next session wasn't very long because yes, I forgot to pee again before I left the house. This time, I had 47 minutes (which also means 47 minutes of walking!!!!) and I got 1610 words in  (my average was still over 2k per hour!) and I walked 1.12 miles!

This also got me too close to the end to stop. I wrote two sessions on Dr. Wicked for another 2593 and I typed The End at 1:01 am! Perfect timing. And I'm still on schedule with both my day books and night books!

So.
  400 Alphasmart
4866 dictating
2593 Dr. Wicked.
7859 total

Hands down, recording wins. HANDS DOWN. And you know how long it feels like I was writing? 2 1/2 hours--the time I was typing. The time I was recording didn't feel like writing at all, didn't feel like work at all. Subtracting the 400 I wrote on Saturday, I wrote 7459 today. In one day. And it felt like 2 1/2 hours. I had to go back and re-check the math too. I couldn't believe it. I spent 4.7 hours working and got 7859 total. You see how close that is to 8000?!!! Holy crap. (This most productive moon phase will last until the 12th, people! Get crackin'!)

Yeah. Don't hate me.

So this is the help I'd like to share.
After the first session on the recorder, I downloaded it, then thought I'd better do some corrections so the software could see where to improve, etc. I started editing, with my headset, not my hands, and it was like the software stopped speaking English. I was doing everything the way I'd learned before, using the same commands I'd used before, and it was like it didn't hear a word. I was so frustrated I wanted to throw it all out the window.

I called Supe, just to vent, and she suggested I shut the program down then open it again.
I tried it. It worked! It went right back to understanding my commands and editing the way I'd edited before. After coming home with so many new words, I was so glad I didn't have to scrap my Dragon! The only thing I could imagine was that my headset had gotten damaged in my purse, but no. Headset is working fine.

You all tempted to try the Dragon yet?

Tuesday, September 3, 2013--Out with the old, in with the new...

Hello Campers!

Getting to be like Groundhog Day, isn't it?
Well, let's change it up a bit. Let's move on into this fresh new month and leave August behind us. But before we go, let's take a look at how we did.

First of all, I assume you all increased your goals, or at least wanted to aim higher than usual or you wouldn't have been hanging out here, right? So? How did you do? Did you have a word count to which you could compare your August word count? Did you write down what you accomplished in August at least? After all, if you're serious about improvement, you have to pay attention. You have to write down your numbers. 

If you're keeping track of progress only in your head, it's not nearly as fun. If you really have a great day, you need to celebrate it. You need to at least be able to point to a number scrawled in the corner of a calendar and say, "You see? I AM a writer!"

So. I'm pointing at my August calendar and saying it now. "I wrote 52,878 words for the month. Yes, far fewer than the goal, but I have accomplished so much more than the month before. I kicked butt. And speaking of butts, I also lost 9 pounds. Yes. Yes, I did."

And I will keep the momentum going. I don't just intend to write every day, I will write every day. My goal for the month is...let me count here...five days a week, starting tomorrow...4k per day (not including edits of the projects I have finished...

22 days=88,000 words!
Who's with me???!!!
Come on!

That's not including weekends. We get DAYS off! And September is such a perfect-weather-for-writing month!

One thing Supe and I have been doing for the past few weeks is to keep a running journal of our word counts. We both got calendars with columns that give lines for the hours of a typical work day. They're the kind hair-stylists use for booking appointments. And what we do--or rather, what Supe does and I try to remember to do--is to write what we did with our hours. Did we have a word count? Did we watch TV? Did we veg on Facebook?

We are keeping track. 
Not planning each hour, but giving an accounting for it.
If we're serious about being full time writers, then we need to be putting in 8 productive hours a day on this job, right? And since we are also the business owners, we need to make sure the employees are earning their paychecks. We're making an accounting. We're being accountable.

Some days work better than others. Sometimes I would rather leave it blank than own up to how long my nap was, or my lunch was. But I'm pretty driven to get 8 good, writerly tasks entered each day. And we've agreed to exchange calendars once a month. Shame is a pretty fine motivator. Not guilt. Just plain old shame. I'll let you know how it goes.

As for the holiday weekend, I got nothing writerly done at all. But I had also planned, long ago, that I wouldn't push it. Had a great time with the family. Now I'm ready to get back to work. 

I've got my goal of 88k words.
I'm also going to lose ten more pounds. With the help of my dragon, I'm incredibly optimistic on both counts.

What about you? 

There is nothing in the rules that demand you fall into a deep, punishing depression if you don't reach your goals. And aiming high doesn't mean you're setting yourself up for failure. It just means you're lifting your chin. 

And who among us couldn't use a good chin lift?

Wednesday, August 28, 2013 Kites

You know those manta ray-looking kites we used to get from the cheap toy stores? They never lasted long, but they lasted a lot longer than the traditional diamond-shaped ones that always needed their tails fixed. I'm not an expert, but there was something wrong with that design, because it seemed that every time I really started enjoying myself, that thing would dive bomb, speeding almost intentionally into the ground.

I hate to sound paranoid, but that's what I thought then.
And that's what I'm thinking now.

No matter how perfect I get things lined up, no matter how far off the ground I can get my day, as soon as I have a smile on my face, the day dive bombs. Not dives. Not bombs. But dive bombs. Almost like its intentional.

Remember that lunch with the mystery writer? Ten minutes before Rock Jr. and I are about to walk out the door, the phone rings. Seriously. Ten minutes.

Five hours later, when that crisis has ended, I announced I was going to have a nap. I figured I'd be working late, I'd need more gas in the tank.

Fifteen minutes later, I got a phone call that forced me back to the computer. Seriously? A fifteen minute nap. I know that's pretty whiny of me, but I do work late. Naps can make or break me sometimes. And after emotional stress, I can't live without them.

And so I waited all day long for a chance to play with my dragon, to get some work done, finally. And I kid you not, it took until about 11 pm for me to remember that in fact I COULD sit down at the computer and type the old fashioned way.

Yes, this is how crazy I've gone. I am so wrapped up in the idea of dictating millions of words in the next year or two, that I spaced off the process I was using five days ago. Well, I've got the world worst memory sometimes. Now maybe you'll believe me.

So. I watched a little TV. Fooled around Facebook. Then got to work. I didn't do Dr. Wicked. I used no magic combination of 2 parts Pepsi to 1 part chocolate. No bells and whistles. Just typing. In 1 1/2 hours, I wrote 1321 words on the western thriller. Not what I'm supposed to be working on, but something close to done. I couldn't resist.

So.
Total for the day: 1321
Total for the week: 1772
I think I need a vacation before we leave for vacation.

Oh, and for you burglars out there, yes, we are leaving the pit bull home. In the house. And the only thing worth money, my computer, I'll have with me. Believe me, my neighbors have better stuff.

Tomorrow will be spent preparing for that vacation. If I were a bettin' man...

Tuesday, August 27, Training the Dragon

For those of you not interested in dictating your books, and just want a push to up your word counts, this blog will not be a constant commercial for the dragon software. Just a day or two more, and it will just be part of the routine. I'll be back to getting in my 4000 to 5000 words a day very soon.

I was pretty excited to get started today.
I was all ready to go to the park when I realized the wind was blowing pretty hard, which doesn't work well with microphones, so I ended up going to the basement and using the treadmill instead.

I walked for ten minutes and got a half mile in when the phone rang and my day was lost to TWO family emergencies. But! In between emergencies I worked on my Dragon profile so I it was ready to transcribe the audio file from my recorder. And hours later, I was finally able to see my word count. (Of course I won't have to do this set up again, so next time I'll be able to see my word count as soon as the file is uploaded.)

Drum-roll please...451 words.
Okay, now. Of course it's a small word count, but not for TEN MINUTES! And I was interrupted by a phone call. If I'd have been at the park and done it for 60  minutes straight, and kept up the pace (which seemed mighty slow to me) I might have written nearly 3000 words in my first try ever!

Let me add that I was winging it. I had no idea where the story was going to go, or what the scene would have in it. I was simply picking up at the end of the last scene I remember writing for this book (a sequel to a book I wrote years ago). And I wasn't just spitting gibberish. I actually had IDEAS come to me and spit from my mouth! Real, new ideas.

I mentioned yesterday that I was afraid of trying to edit vocally. Then, when I was forced to do it, I learned it easily. I was just as relieved this time. Deep down I was terrified this wasn't going to work. I was afraid it was just going to be another thing to set on my shelf and say I tried it once. And even though I'd gotten my hopes up, that I might really be able to exercise and lose all this book weight, I was really worried. Determined to give it my best, but worried. I can imagine some of you are feeling the same way too.

I am not surprised so many people give up in the learning phase. It's going to take some time before I'm going to be able to get my punctuation right without it messing up my train of thought. But I'm willing to be patient while the program learns to understand me. I'm going to stick with the headphone I have and hope the machine gets used to it. Then I'll buy a better one if it doesn't.

But if I've figured this out, anyone can. I'm expecting the transition from keyboard to speech will be about the same adjustment was it was to go from pen and paper to keyboard. I thought I'd never ever be able to compose original thoughts without having my hands on the paper, without my thoughts coming out of the end of a pen. But that changed. And I can change again. I'm not too old yet, damn it. Another year, and I might have been iffy, especially if I didn't get in shape.

So.
I expected to be able to walk about half a mile before I gave out. The truth is, if that phone hadn't rang, I probably would have walked for a mile before I was winded. THAT is amazing, since I've not been walking for a long long time. But what was even more amazing was the fact that I was unaware of the fact that I was walking at all.

It was odd. The walking distracted me from listening too closely to myself. The speaking distracted me from the walking. And I didn't feel like I'd gotten much recorded at all. I was SHOCKED there were 451 words on there. Absolutely shocked.

Tomorrow, I have a lunch planned with a mystery writer and Rock Jr. Then Rock Jr. and I will be headed to the park to walk off the lunch! He can play on the splash pad while I walk around. It's going to be great.

And while I was a chicken and used a future book for this experiment, I'm going to get back to my current works in progress. I'll be working on the Western  Thriller. I think a few hours of dictation should finish that puppy up. Then tomorrow night I'll be editing Isobelle.

Since I bore easily (just learning that about myself) I'm going to keep a day book and a night book. The day book will be whatever is still in first draft stage, and the night book will be whatever I'm editing. If that doesn't work, I'll switch them. I can't see my body clock changing any time soon, so I'll edit in the dead of night since I can't walk at the park at that time. I guess I can use the treadmill if it comes to that.

Enough of my dull life.
What are YOU doing?

Monday, August 26, 2013 I'm on a Dragon

Okay, I WAS on a dragon.
In fact, I wrote this whole blog post using the new Dragon, but I lost it. I failed to read up on how to use the little dictation box, or at least the part about having a file open, blahdy blahdy blah blah. Good thing it wasn't a chapter!

So.
What I had written before, ish:

This morning Supe decided to jump right into the dictation thing and recorded and walked, and for her very first hour ever, she got 587 words! I couldn't believe it! (For those of you who don't know who Supe is, she can talk like a semi-automatic at times, but I had no idea she might be able to compose so fast, verbally! And her first hour too! I'm so psyched!

My day has been spent editing and waiting for the teenage cavalry to come to my rescue and install my dragon. When I put the disk in, no prompts came up, and that was where technology can stop me in my tracks. I looked at the files and none of them said "set up." My son walked me through it, however, and the Dragon took off.

The tutorials were very simple. Much easier than learning Scrivener, I promise. And even I was able to learn that. This is a piece of cake.

I thought this was going to be really hard and it wasn't. I could have written a whole lot faster, but I kept finding myself waiting for the program to catch up. I guess it has to take a few seconds to figure a word or two, then it spits out whole sentences. When I looked away from the screen, it just flew.

The only advice I would offer right now is to pay close attention when they tell you to speak in phrases and not single words as much as possible. Phrases help the program figure out what words you really meant. The slower you go, the more mistakes. The more I watched the screen typing things out, the slower I went and the more mistakes were made.

On a positive note, with all those mistakes, I also learned how to edit them. And the editing was the part that intimidated me the most. Now that's all downloaded into my brain. I'm ready to rock and roll.

I have to admit that when those words disappeared I just wasn't up to dictating this post again and correcting all those mistakes again. Correcting verbally was a lot easier than I thought it would be, but I'm mentally exhausted from all this learning. My old brain needs a rest.

Tomorrow, I'm going to enunciate better. I may have to invest in one of those gamer headsets, especially if it's going to save me a lot of time. But for now, there's no pin money attached to my pin.

Oh, yeah. No word count today. Just editing and reading through finished books to keep some facts straight for sequels coming up.

Here's to a mind-blowing word count, and calorie burn, tomorrow.

Sunday, August 25, Writing Partners

All my brownie points go to Supe for today's word count.

She called and said we would be writing for the next four hours. She didn't ask. (Well, she kinda did.) But she didn't intend to let me out easily. She's even got my husband trained. When her phone number shows up on the TV screen, he resigns himself to the fact he's about to be abandoned.

Some days, you need someone to drag you, kicking and screaming, to your computer. Someone to threaten you if you get out of the chair. I wouldn't recommend handing this role to your spouse. Even the best of marriages don't weather nagging very well.

So find someone, if you haven't got one--someone who has the same writing goals as you, who has the same...intensity, for lack of a better word. Supe and I work well together because we are not good friends otherwise. When we get together, we talk writing, not shopping. We're in the same position in life, with grown kids and husbands who don't need their hands held too often. Neither of us are working traditional jobs. All I can suggest is that you find someone like you.

Today, she saved my writer-self-esteem. One of these days, I'm going to get her back--I mean pay her back--I mean do the same for her. But thanks to Supe, I was able to enjoy the rest of the days with the fam and not be consumed with guilt for watching a little TV.

Of course, the whole time I was watching that TV, I half expected her phone number to pop up, and my ring tone to turn into the shark music from Jaws.

So. Thanks to Supe, and four hours of writing on Dr. Wicked (with a few interruptions) I turned in a solid 3105 words!

Of course it's not so impressive when you look at my totals. But I think the moon phase had a little something to do with this past week, as I've mentioned before. According to some theories, this past week, (ECO week), that starts with the full moon, is the one week a month with both low focus and low energy. This coming week should bring high focus at least. I expect to get a lot of fine tuning done.

Totals:
Week: 8926 (I'm shocked it was that much)
Month to date: 51,106

What are the chances I can write 30k in the next four days while packing for a small vacation with 15 people? I don't know. The Dragon might be able to do miracles, right?

What are your totals this week, or this month, compared to the last? Are you headed in the right direction? Or do you think the moon sucked your will to do much.