Lilith Saintcrow

First, announcements, then the meat of the post, then Damiversary giveaways. That is the order in which things will occur this Friday. I declare it. Hey, the Muse is just sitting there filing her nails, so I’ve got to be a petty dictator where I can.

Announcements! You can find a taste of my short story Best Friends over at FlamesRising! The story is in The Girl’s Guide To Guns & Monsters anthology, available just around the corner in February. Also, you can find a short preview of my essay Ambiguous Anita for the absolutely fabulous Ardeur: 14 Writers on the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series, which will be coming out in April. It was a pleasure to be included in both.

I still have other good news that I’m having to sit on. It KILLS me. But them’s the breaks.

And now, the meat of the post…well, don’t take this the wrong way. But I don’t wanna.

Seriously. I started out yesterday with a huge honking attack of the I don’t wannas. It’s only gotten worse today.

Any disciplined activity you put serious time and energy into–dieting, writing, dance practice–goes through periods where it temporarily gets harder to do. The reasons can be manifold: stress, life changes, boredom, the urge to rest for a bit, what-have-you. It goes in cycles, especially when you hit a plateau right before a leap forward.
I write a lot here about discipline and habit. Think of them as bowling bumpers, keeping your ball in the lane. During good times, when you’re excited and happy to be writing, the discipline is easy to maintain. Your motivation’s high. But there will come times when you just don’t want to, for a variety of reasons. It will get harder to keep a consistent schedule and keep writing a priority. Just like it gets harder to stick to calorie restriction or dance practice when your motivation goes down and a stack of Netflix DVDs plus a box of Entenmann’s are calling your name. (OK, I could be projecting here. Just a touch. But you still get the idea.)

I bump up against the hard edges of the habit of spending several years writing damn near every day occasionally, when the I don’t wannas attack. Sometimes I do slow down a bit and take a rest. It’s hard to differentiate between loss of motivation, just plain laziness, and approaching burnout. I’ve evolved a few questions that I ask myself and a process to tell if it’s burnout, but I sincerely doubt my methods will work for anyone other than me. Part of the difficulty of consistent creative activity is that it is so personal, and the methods of motivation and differentiating burnout from laziness differ from person to person.

Yes, I have trouble motivating myself sometimes. The advice I give is partly because I struggle to keep that consistent discipline and practice. Maybe for some people, it’s easier. I don’t know. The important thing is to keep the habit of discipline strong, so that when the I don’t wannas attack, you have nice strong bumpers keeping your ball in the lane and a fighting chance of getting to the pins.

My motivation to write is pretty simple: I have rent to pay and kids to feed. And yet, still, some days I struggle. It might be worse for people who aren’t depending on their writing to bring home the rent. I suspect it is.

No matter how hard I don’t wanna, I’m still in the habit of doing it every day. So I suppose I’ll just poke at a few things and see what happens.

And now, the giveaway! To celebrate the Damiversary, this time I’m offering 2 T-shirts from my CafePress store. (I really need to get some more designs up…) All you have to do is comment here at the Deadline Dames by midnight Saturday (the 30th).^[1] If you can’t think of anything to say, tell me what you do to get going when your own motivation suffers. I’m always looking for more techniques to steal, ahem, I mean, good advice to follow. I’ll pick the winners from Random.org, and the Dames will announce them next week along with this week’s winners.

Speaking of which, we still haven’t heard from some of last week’s Damiversary winners! Make sure to go and see if you won something, and look for other cool prizes that were announced earlier this week as well.

Vive les Dames!

^[1]Comments are closed on this post just to make everything fair.

Wednesday. Which means link salad. Especially since I’m sunk in the book, and resenting anything that pulls me away from it.

* This song was in my head this morning. It’s uncannily apposite. (White Nights is one of my favorite movies. Baryshnikov’s ballon is just so…and he’s just so…whew. And Gregory Hines! *fans self*)

* Philip Palmer’s SF Song of the Week!

* Author Solutions wants to be seen as a Real Publisher instead of a scam. I am skeptical, to say the least.

* Jim Hines on Remedial Publishing Math.

* The Damiversary is still going on, with tons more prizes and giveaways!

* And a kind Reader linked me to the first Jill Kismet book in German. Isn’t that cover gorgeous?

I have some good news and some more covers, but I have to wait before I can share. In the meantime, enjoy the link salad. Off I go to hit the treadmill and plan out the next few critical scenes…

Writing takes emotional and physical energy. And time.

This means you have to prioritize time and energy if writing is something you want to do. One of the biggest mistakes I see novice or unpublished (not necessarily the same thing!) writers committing is trying to fit writing in the same way you fit in bathroom breaks. Or not quite, because writing doesn’t have the same biological urgency a full bladder does. (At least, not for most people.)

Plenty of novices/unpublished writers get to the end of their day job, go home, deal with Home Stuff, and find themselves staring at a blank screen. Then they panic, because the words don’t come flying out. The negative self-talk starts.

I can’t do this. I’m a loser. I’ll never get published. This is too hard.

And before you know it, they stop writing, or they get frustrated and spend their limited energy bitching, or they end up surfing the Internet. (Not that I’ve ever, um, personally…oh look! Shiny object! Look!)

Julia Cameron, in The Artist’s Way, talks about “filling the well”. Creating stuff takes energy, you need to build up a store of that energy. It’s the same principle Judith Beck talks about when she says you have to set aside priority and energy for lifestyle changes. “If you had to make time for a lifesaving medical procedure three times a day, you would.”

I often talk about making writing a priority. It needs to be important enough to you that you can arrange some bits of your life to make sure you have the energy and time to Do It.

Dr. Beck suggests making three columns on a piece of paper: necessary, highly desirable, and desirable activities. Then you list the things that you do on a daily basis–if you spend time doing it, write it down on a separate sheet. Then go through, one by one, and figure out how important each one is to you. Activities that are “necessary” get first priority, activities that are “highly desirable” need to be examined to see just how desirable they REALLY are. Activities that are merely “desirable” can be scaled back.

Then, list the hours of the day, from the time you get up from the time you go to bed, on another sheet of paper. Work out a schedule that gives you time for all the necessary things. You can add some highly desirable things too. Don’t be afraid to erase and change things around.

I know a lot of people don’t have the luxury of having writing be their Day Job. I know a lot of people hold down two jobs and raise kids. I know this isn’t really as simple as I’m making it sound. The point here is not “you’re weak for not scheduling your time right.” The point here is “YOU DESERVE TO DO THINGS THAT MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD.” If writing is one of those things, and writing for publication is your goal, then you need to shift some other things–like Internet surfing or what-have-you–to make room and energy for it. And you have the absolute right to say, “I need some time to myself to make these things happen.”

I often say that a kitchen timer is a writer’s best friend. I’ve often set mine and told everyone in my house, “When that rings, you can have my attention again. In the meantime, unless someone’s bleeding or dying, leave me be.” And I stuck to that. I successfully enforced that boundary because I had to–if I didn’t make deadline, I wouldn’t get paid, and my kids wouldn’t eat. That was a hell of a motivation.

As I’m learning to set other boundaries (it’s taken me a while, but better late than never, right?) I’m finding out that making time for writing is a skill I have to constantly practice. I get distracted by People Who Neeeeeeeed Me, or by shiny things, or by things that aren’t precisely a priority but I get wrapped around the axle about anyway. I have to constantly remind myself that sitting down for the words, making time and energy so I can do these things, is non-negotiable. So, take heart: it’s not the sort of skill you get once and then forget about. It’s a constant process, and you can start taking steps toward it at any time. You can refine it at any time, add to it, find out new and better ways to make it work for you.

All right, dear Reader, now we get to the question part of today’s post. How do you make time for writing or other Important Stuff? What works for you? I’m always on the lookout for new strategies, and this is the sort of information that makes more happiness the more it’s shared. So what do you do? Don’t be shy, tell me.

After all, I need all the help I can get.

Good morning. My plan of “something nice to do for me” this week has been shot–it turns out Legion utterly sucks. I may go see it at Cinetopia anyway–at least I can sit in a dark theater, have a glass of wine, and laugh at the utter FAIL. It kind of burns me–dude, I am so ALL OVER this concept, as anyone who’s read the Valentine series can probably guess. Unfortunately, between concept and execution there lieth a huge gap, and the more committees are involved, the more that gap runs the risk of edging over into total-failure area.

This brings up something about publishing, actually. A LOT of people are involved in bringing each book to the shelves. Some, like the cover artist and the marketing department, have very little to do with the actual book. Others, like editors, are more involved. Getting a book through the publication process involves walking a line between listening to people who know their jobs and what they’re talking about far better than you, and making it easy for people to listen when you’re the expert. I have evolved some simple rules about this process, but I think I’ll wait for a Friday post to explicate them further.

However, I want to talk about one of those short rules today.

YOUR EDITOR IS NOT THE ENEMY.

I don’t lose sight of the fact that I am the content creator. For the characters, I know what’s best. It’s my job to tell the damn story and produce enough raw material that we can trim it into reasonable shape. (Which means I am responsible for my deadlines, but we knew that.) I’m also way too close to the work to be able to see it objectively. So, 99% of the time, the editor is right.

That other 1% I feel comfortable explaining or outright fighting, when I know something has to be a certain way. I have to very seriously consider what is worth going to the mattresses for. There aren’t many things worth that kind of ruckus, or even a small ruckus. There are a big list of things that are My Responsibility as the actual damn writer. Being a jerk to the editor is not one of them.

I see a lot of new writers (and a lot of unpublished writers) operating under the unconscious assumption that the editor is an enemy at worst, a suspect ally at best, and someone to be on guard against. I’ve had one or two nasty revenge-editors, but those are the exceptions. The overwhelming rule is that editors are your friend. They believe in your book. They fight for it in acquisition meetings, they twist arms to get marketing money, they work and agonize over polishing it until it’s as good as it can be. The editor wants what you want: a successful book that earns money. Their energies are concentrated to that end. You are a fool if you don’t realize that and make it as easy as possible for them to be your advocate.

It’s like having a lawyer–they can’t fight for you effectively and do their job if you don’t give them what they need in terms of paperwork and information.

So. My lesson for today for aspiring writers: try not to be a dick to your editors, even unconsciously. Remind yourself that:

1. They are people too.
2. You’re on the same side.
3. They want your book to succeed as much as you do.
4. They know how to play publisher-office politics better than you, and they will on your behalf.
5. They talk to each other, and if you’re a jerk, it gets around.

It’s really, really hard to keep these things in mind when you get a revision letter. So much of a writer’s emotional life is wrapped up in rejection and judgment. It’s really easy to think the editor is your enemy, when they’re just trying to get the thorn out of your paw. No matter how hard it is to overlook the fact that they’re Judging Your Precious Werke, DO IT. Make the effort.

It’s not the only thing that will make your career sustainable, but it sure as hell helps.

‘Nuff said.

Before I get started, I’d like to point your attention at an HP fandom site, the Leaky Cauldron. They’re doing a Help Haiti Heal telecast tomorrow; among the prizes will be full signed sets of the Valentine and Kismet (up until Flesh Circus) series.

Also, it’s the one-year anniversary of the Deadline Dames. It’s somewhat paradoxical, because it seems like just yesterday Devon Monk asked me if I’d want to be part of a group blog; and because it feels like I’ve known the Dames forever. They’re constant strength and support, they forgive me my scatterbrain and my little foibles (including my habit of getting very freaking foulmouthed) and they are, in short, too awesome for me to tell you about all their awesomeness without renting out a skywriter or a full-page ad in some ridiculously expensive newspaper. I am proud to be a Dame. Seriously, you don’t even know.

Since I’ve just returned from my first highly unpleasant tasks of the day (everything’s gone smoothly so far) I will content myself with a giveaway and some news in lieu of a Friday writing post. Frankly, I’m tired. This has been a bushwhacking week.

So. To celebrate the anniversary of the kickass, utterly fantastic Dames, I’m doing a giveaway out of Japhrimel’s Corner. Yes, I’m giving away two coffee mugs out of the little corner of the web that honors the demon even Lucifer can’t keep down. (I really need to get some new products in there…let’s just add that to my to-do list. AUGH.)

Here’s how you win: Make a comment OVER HERE, on this Deadline Dames post ^[1], before midnight on Saturday, January 23. (If you can’t think of what to write, just tell me what you love about the Dames. Hey, we like to hear that stuff!) Random.org will help me pick two winners, each will get their choice of cups from Japhrimel’s Corner mailed to them. Next week is the BIG giveaway, with T-shirts and a Special Spoiler Prize. (I think I’ll be announcing other winners next Friday too.) So stay tuned, and thanks for reading. I appreciate each and every one of you.

Viva les Dames!

^[1] Comments are closed on THIS post, you must go to the Dames site to enter. Because I’m shifty like that.