Wednesday, January 27, 2010

What Is Writing?

"Writing can feel like writing and still not be writing."

I read this today in Walking on Alligators. I, very often, feel I am spending all this time on my writing when, in essence, I am spending so much time on all the writing related activities and very little on actual writing. Market research, blog writing and reading, email communication, etc., is all well and good (and necessary in its place), but I have nothing to submit to my researched markets and no platform to foster on my blog if I've not spent any time devoted solely to the physical writing process. This is an ongoing issue for me as I seem to tackle the easy to check off items on my list of things to do before I address the more lengthy ones. I'm thinking perhaps I need to just write each morning before I even look at my list. I'll be one step ahead of the game before I even get to work! If you have any words of wisdom to share on what works for you, I'd love to listen.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Optimistic Denial

As I was catching up on my reading this morning of some of the blogs I follow, I had a major aha moment. I've said it before, and I'll say it again...if you don't follow Kristi Holl's blog, Writers First Aid, you should. Kristi is very adept at blogging and providing good, solid advice and information. Here is what I read this morning:

“There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, ‘Oh, it’s hopeless, so don’t bother doing anything,’ and an optimist who says, ‘Don’t bother doing anything, it’s going to turn out fine anyway.’ Either way, nothing happens.” ~~Yvon Chouinard, climber

Kristi talked about optimism being realistic or a cover for denying a problem. I had never considered optimism in this light before and knew immediately that I have a lot of soul searching to do in terms of my own optimistic denial.

Thank you, Kristi, for opening my eyes yet again!

You can read more of Kristi's post as well as all of her others at: http://institutechildrenslit.net/Writers-First-Aid-blog

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Goal Setting

First and foremost, let me say Happy New Year! I am a bit slow this year in the goal setting realm which was reiterated quite clearly to me today as I was exploring the KidMagWriters.com website. Here is what jumped out at me...

Get Going with Goals
By Jan Fields

January is a great time to look over what you accomplished in 2009 and work out ways to go a bit further in 2010. Did you get as much done in 2009 as you'd hoped? Probably not since most of us have higher hopes than we have time. But sometimes the problem occurs when you set your goals based on the actions of someone else other than yourself. We can hope or wish for things that involve other people, but goals need to be completely under our control.

Jan offers wonderful words of wisdom in her article. I encourage you all to go take a look at http://www.kidmagwriters.com/workday/office.htm for great steps to goal setting, especially if you are a bit delayed as I am this year! I hope you find Jan's article as helpful as I did today.