Tag: writers life

Asking for Help

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

Red 2015 Starbucks cupDid I show you all one of my very favorite Christmas presents? Yes, I’m easy to please. And I love, love, love my ceramic red 2015 Starbucks mug. It makes me happy every time I use it. David even suggested my coffee ritual for my discussion Sunday on Word Whores on a vice that helps my writing. 

Coffee, however, is a vital nutrient, not a vice.

The other day as I was running, a song I’ve long loved came up in the rotation. Are You Out There? by Dar Williams from her End of the Summer album. Here it is, if you care to listen.

At any rate, the lyrics struck me hard when she says:

Are you out there, can you hear this?
Jimmy Olson, Johnny Memphis,
I was out here listening all the time
And though the static walls surround me
You were out there and you found me
I was out here listening all the time

She’s referring to DJs on radio stations she listened to as a teenager. She talks about them some here, though I think the live version isn’t as strong as the studio one. I found myself wanting to reach out and talk to her about this song. I’ve often felt this way about singer/songwriters like her, that I’ve been out here listening all the time. I wonder if she ever got to meet or talk to those guys in person, to tell them that, like I’d love to talk to her. 

Maybe what we mostly do is write these things down and send them out into the world, and hope that someone’s listening. 

Speaking of hope and making contact, I’m taking a bold new step. (Well, it feels bold to me!) I’ve started a Patreon. Two of them, actually.

What is it? It’s a website interface that allows people to support creators of all types. You can look at the overall here. Basically the way it works is that we can pledge a certain amount of money – $1, $2, $3, etc – that we pay every time an artist produces a “Thing,” whatever their thing may be. In my case, I’m offering two kinds of Things – stories for readers and focused mentoring for writers.

This will be a terrific venue for us all, I hope. For me to reach out to you for help, and for me to give you, my most passionate and loyal advocates what you want most from me.

Ever since I left the Day Job – or, as a friend puts it, since the day job left me – I’ve been piecing together ways to try to make it writing full time. One of the greatest challenges is the lack of steady income. I get pulses of income, but nothing like the steady salary I once had. Also, I have new expenses like paying for my own health insurance. We’re adapting, but the more sources of reliable income, the less scary things are. 

This is where the Patreon comes in. Every time I produce a story via Patreon, I can be assured of a certain amount of income in return. Every time I produce a writing lesson or provide assistance via Patreon, I’ll know I’ll get money to pay the utility bills. In return, you all get access to exclusive stories and conversations with me that it would be difficult to get to you any other way. 

Also, I really appreciate all the offers of help and support – this is a way for me to accept that. Asking for help can be a scary thing and not something I’ve ever been particularly good at. I’m working on it.

Are you out there, can you hear this?

Indeed.

Thanks everyone – it’s so wonderful to know that you ARE out there!

New Word Count Record! (Also, Why I’ve Been Quiet)

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

weekly word count recordLook at that! Yes, that’s my weekly wordcount graph for this last week, where I blew my previous record out of the water. I’m just ever so pleased with myself.

I mentioned earlier this week that I wanted to re-jigger my writing schedule to maximize my productivity, now that I’m writing full time. I figured I should be able to up my output, but so far hadn’t done so by as much as I’d hoped. In the past, I worked pretty intensely for several hours, usually getting 2,000 to 3,000 words before switching over to the day job. (Which I did from home, so no commute or like considerations.) I thought I should be able to get up to 5,000 words and still have more day to do Other Things (like reading, house projects, etc.).

But I wasn’t getting there. Even with the Jeffe Training for a Marathon Method (TM) of increasing wordcount production, I was punking out well before 5K. As in, I got tired and couldn’t focus enough to keep going.

So I looked at ways to change things up.

First, I stopped the video watching, as I discussed before.

Then I did the major trick I always resort to when I’m not getting the focus and flow I need. I often fall into the pattern of turning on my computer, opening email and my browser, then checking all the social media and various messages. This often takes my brain in the wrong direction. Now that I’ve been waking up naturally and not setting my alarm, I’ve been indulging in my favorite waking up ritual, which is to lie there for a good half hour before getting up. I rarely sleep later than 7 and most of the time I’m out of bed by 6. But I start waking up before that and love to lie there in a lovely relaxed alpha-wave state, thinking about the book I’m writing, something I call the Dreamthink. If I pour a bunch of other information into my head in between that Dreamthink time and actually writing, I lose a lot.

So, first step was to write first. That would prime the pump and get things going. My first 500 words of the day are always the slowest. I speed up as I go. However, I didn’t want to go too long without checking for messages from overnight, so I decided I’d try for 500 words before anything else, then break to check the rest.

Then something entirely new occurred to me.

I’d been in a pattern of writing intensely for condensed periods of time, but why keep doing that if I didn’t need to? A lot of writers use the #1K1Hr hashtag and benchmark – writing 1,000 words or for 1 hour, whichever it came out to. Instead, I tried a schedule of 30 minutes and 500 words, with breaks in between.

And boy howdy, how it worked!

This is the schedule I set up:

get up/workout

6:00 AM

7:30 AM

1:30

    

write

7:30 AM

8:15 AM

0:45

     500

  

check email/facebook/twitter/blogs/chat

8:15 AM

8:45 AM

0:30

    

write

8:45 AM

9:15 AM

0:30

     500

    1,000

check email/facebook/twitter/blogs/chat

9:15 AM

9:30 AM

0:15

    

write

9:30 AM

10:00 AM

0:30

     500

    1,500

check email/facebook/twitter/blogs/chat

10:00 AM

10:15 AM

0:15

    

write

10:15 AM

10:45 AM

0:30

     500

    2,000

check email/facebook/twitter/blogs/chat

10:45 AM

11:00 AM

0:15

    

write

11:00 AM

11:30 AM

0:30

     500

    2,500

check email/facebook/twitter/blogs/chat

11:30 AM

11:45 AM

0:15

    

write

11:45 AM

12:15 PM

0:30

     500

    3,000

lunch/read

12:15 PM

1:15 PM

1:00

    

check email/facebook/twitter/blogs/chat

1:15 PM

1:30 PM

0:15

    

write

1:30 PM

2:00 PM

0:30

     500

    3,500

check email/facebook/twitter/blogs/chat

2:00 PM

2:15 PM

0:15

    

write

2:15 PM

2:45 PM

0:30

     500

    4,000

check email/facebook/twitter/blogs/chat

2:45 PM

3:00 PM

0:15

    

write

3:00 PM

3:30 PM

0:30

     500

    4,500

check email/facebook/twitter/blogs/chat

3:30 PM

3:45 PM

0:15

    

write

3:45 PM

4:15 PM

0:30

     500

    5,000

reading/gifts/decs

4:15 PM

5:30 PM

1:15

    

finances/business/blog post

5:30 PM

6:00 PM

0:30

    

yoga/weights

6:00 PM

6:30 PM

0:30

    

movie

6:30 PM

9:00 PM

2:30

    

read

9:00 PM

10:00 PM

1:00

    

I was going to post that as a jpg image, so it would be prettier and more compact, but then I heard Sassy Outwater in my head, chastising me about accessibility, so…

At any rate, the first week was a runaway success! I went from 14K on THE EDGE OF THE BLADE to 35K. I’m ever so pleased with how I felt, too. I tend to be a concentrated, focused worker, so the idea of taking regular breaks is new to me, but it worked out great for my endurance! I set up all the times as formulas, so my daily schedule hinges around when I do get up (which I wanted to keep organic) and can be adjusted if stuff comes up. If I get ahead of schedule with especially good writing runs, I finish earlier in the afternoon.

We’ll see how week two goes.

Boosting Creativity by Ditching the Video Poison

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

10_29_15I’m back from a lovely Thanksgiving holiday and buckling down to seriously crank on THE EDGE OF THE BLADE. Since I’ve been writing full-time, I haven’t consistently hit the hit word count goals I’d like to. In fact, I’ve felt like I’ve been writing more slowly since summer and I haven’t been sure why.

(Though I told writing buddy Anne Calhoun that I felt like I spent all of July sitting in the grape arbor, doing nothing, and she said, “Amen, sister,” so it might not be just me.)

Still, I’ve got a January 1 deadline for this book, so I’m out of arbor-dawdling time. Plus it’s too cold out for that. So, on the drive home yesterday, I constructed a new daily schedule and looked hard at where I could improve productivity. And I realized a Huge Thing. In midsummer, I stopped listening to music while I ran on the treadmill in the mornings, and started watching videos on my iPad mini instead.

There were good reasons for this at the time. I was doing very particular research and watching the videos killed two birds with one stone – entertained me while I ran and provided time to watch the stuff I needed to. After that, I kept going, watching various musicals, as I could find and stream them.

No harm done, right?

WELL.

A lot of you know I gave up watching TV a long time ago. Wow, like almost twenty years ago, we ditched the cable, happy to save that money. The cost savings was a side-benefit, however. My main reason was because of something I read in Stephen King’s ON WRITING. I was trying to work out how to be a writer and consumed all sorts of craft books like that one. I’m paraphrasing here because I can’t find my copy (did YOU borrow it??), but he said that it’s no accident he grew up without TV and became such a vivid creative writer. He called TV poisonous to creativity and urged all writers to give it up.

So, I did. It was a pretty easy choice for me, as the sound of the TV going in the background always irritated me. I was born to a mother who claimed the way to meet the ideal man would be in the Tattered Cover Bookstore during a Broncos game. Fortunately the man I had found (though not in Tattered Cover) fully supported the idea. My teenage stepdaughter not so much, but she was gracious about it.

And it worked!

At least, I felt like it did. Enhancing creativity in oneself is not a clear-cut enterprise that can be measured quantitatively. However, over the years, we never regretted the move, and often counted our blessings not to be subjected to the sensationalized news and pharmaceutical advertising so many complained of. As time passed, we were able to access Netflix and Internet streaming. We watch a lot of movies and sometimes TV series. No more than one movie or two episodes of a show each evening, after my writing day was over.

Until I started on my video-watching while running kick. Could that have impacted my creativity and productivity? Surely not! And yet… the timing worked out.

So, today I went back to running to music. And my productivity zoomed up. Maybe that’s a coincidence. Maybe it won’t be reproducible. Still, I believe that watching those videos before my morning writing put my creative mind in the wrong mode. Music it is, from now on.

Something to consider, if you’re struggling with ways to clear your writing mind!

Of Grapes, Blue Moons and Real Writers

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

P1012771My attempt at capturing the blue moon, the morning of August first. It’s a mark of how fast this month is flying by that it’s now August 14 and I’m just now putting it up on the blog.

What have I been doing? I’m not at all sure…

I’ve been writing and working in the grape arbor quite a bit. That means I sit too much, but I kind of hate being inside at the treadmill desk when the weather is so beautiful. The grapes are all ripening and it makes me happy to see them hanging heavy and full of sunshine around me.

I’m working on a new book – a contemporary erotic romance. Or maybe it will be just really hot. I’m not writing this one to contract or spec this time – for the first time since, wow! 2012 – and it feels different. Totally my choice to do it this way, as there is a PLAN. I’m excited about the concept but the hero and heroine both have *totally* different lives and careers than anything I know well or understand. Just to make things difficult on myself! Interestingly, my author buddy Anne Calhoun is writing a new book with similar themes. And yet our two stories are completely different. We talk out plot ideas and brainstorm, so we know what the other is doing and still the tales wend in different directions. I’m always fascinated when that happens. She texted me on Wednesday about her progress and I texted back that I was in the midst of interviewing a guy so I could learn about my hero’s career. Then yesterday she had lunch with a guy so SHE could learn about her hero’s career. I laughed and said “Look at us!” She replied, “all researchy like real writers.”

This is an ongoing thing, feeling like a “real” writer or not. The number of books out there, the publishing contracts from which houses or not, the awards, the reviews – somehow none of it ever feels like it cements the “real writer” identity. Maybe because each book feels like such an immense new challenge to write. That’s probably good, because it means I’m stretching myself. Growth is painful, right? Knowing that doesn’t abate the discomfort, however.

I’ve also been teaching an online class the last couple of weeks, on building sexual tension. That’s always fun. Teaching other people how I do something helps clarify some of it in my mind.

Next week is the traditional family Birthday Weekend. We’re spending it in Maine and New Hampshire this year! David has never seen New England so I’m really excited for this.

Also: fresh lobster!

Happy weekend everyone! 🙂