Found: Motivation

Saw this in a headline the other day and thought of writing:

Hard Work Trumps Talent

Remember that. I'll try to remember it, too.

The article's pretty interesting if you have time to read a few words about a best-selling author who failed high school English.

Found: Nothing Worth Earning Comes Easy

"I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them."

Boris Pasternak

Thanks for the lead, DailyLiteraryQuote.com.

Few Things Get Me to Stand Up These Days

Do I break my moratorium on buying new books to get Mockingjay? I can't decide. But I could use a good Hunger Games reading-coma.

I'm not dead, by the way, just very, very pregnant.

It's available on Kindle, which may make all the difference.

I need a sign. Today, I'm looking for a boy named Gale, a bird singing a familiar tune, or a muttation.

Reunited: It should feel good.

"Don't edit your soul according to fashion."

Franz Kafka

I recently taught one of my friends a secret trick I learned a long time ago from a magazine. When you feel like a giant failure (my friend is particularly vulnerable to people who make her feel this way), imagine yourself when you were 10 years old. Envision 10-year-old you meeting now-you. What does she think of you? Would she want to grow up to be like you?

That's how you measure success.

And Now You May Commence

"Pinocchio went out into the world filled with good intentions, with vision, he went ready to do all the things he dreamed, but Pinocchio was pulled this way and that, he was distracted, he faltered, he made mistakes, but he kept on.... Pinocchio, in the end, became himself, because the little flame inside him, no matter what crap he went through, would not be extinguished."

Patti Smith by way of UnBeige

Booknapping Ain't Easy

I've been wondering how I'm going to do this.

Um, let's see. I've been working on this brand new project, and it takes A LOT of time.

It's not like my usual stuff. For one thing, if this project gets published, it won't be for 20 or so years. But I love it anyway, more than anything else I've ever attempted.

It zaps my energy, though, and leaves me capable of not much else.

Here's a picture of how far I've gotten:

So there you go.

Lately, I've been in that proverbial room where artists go to be flogged by their muse, where they can be alone with their project to create.

I've missed you bloggees, so I'm getting back on my blogging wagon. I've seen so many words that I've wanted to share. Like these ones:

"No man is ever rich enough to buy back his past."
Oscar Wilde

(Thanks for that, Liz. I never responded but it obviously meant a lot to me.)

Have you been sidetracked by Life lately? It happens. You're forgiven. Now write.

A Thought for Friday

"I really would like to stop working forever--never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I'm doing now--and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure.... Just a literary and quiet city-hermit existence."

-Allen Ginsberg

(Thanks, yet again, Mode Room Press for today's Daily Literary Quote.)

A Booknapping from the Depths of Despair

Hey bloggees, I didn't die, but I thought I might. I've been really sick--sicker than I've been in a long time. I thought I might never write again. Have you ever been so busy, so sick, so something, that you started to become blind to the light at the end of the tunnel? (I just typoed "The Light at the End of the Title." Children's book idea!)

I know I'm dramatic, but that's how my mind works, peeps. For a few days, I could not foresee a time in my life when I would ever have the strength or time to work, write, have a social life, or blog. I felt like I was so behind, I would never catch up. Then, I bit the bullet and called the doctor.

Long story short: I'm feeling better, more than better. Feeling like you may never write again does wonders for your motivation. I have washed the accumulated dirty laundry, both literal and figurative, and my betas have nudged me with a gentle but firm request for new pages. I am truly blessed, yo.

While I was gone, I hardly even read. That's how sick I was! But I did manage to catch a lovely turn of phrase here and there, and one in particular kept me going:

"Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings."

Victor Hugo

I am back bloggees, with a vengeance, and I feel the need to look back on my time in the trenches and offer a hand to the peeps who might be there right now, wondering if they will ever write again. So help a bloggee out, peeps. Have you been there? How did you escape the doldrums of your life and get back to being a doer?

A Rare Saturday Post

I loved the Daily Literary Quote so much, I had to immediately Web-nap it:

"You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."

Mary Oliver

Enjoy your weekends, bloggees!

From: Real Life

"Winners forget they're in a race, they just love to run."

This was in my fortune cookie last night. I think this sentiment applies to writing too. What's the best fortune you ever got?

Houston, I Have a Problem.

So, I don't know if you pay attention to the Just Reading list over there, but I've been reading Jellicoe Road since 2009. I am in a reading slump, y'all. It's not Jellicoe Road's fault. The book is great, but it got lost in the Christmas shuffle and never managed to regain my attention. I keep meaning to finish it, but now every time I see the orange spine on my coffee table, it feels like work. I'm so sorry Melina Marchetta. It's not you. It's me.

Something won't let me give up on Jellicoe Road. There's a mystery that I'd still like to solve.

Bloggees, do you get into reading slumps? How do you handle them? Start something new? Read an old favorite? Got any recommendations of titles that will get my finger hovering above the next page button?

Now Showing: My Indecisive Side

I poster-napped this one from a library supply company. Sometimes I contemplate going back to school for an MLS so I can live the crazy life of a librarian. I've also considered enrolling in med school (after I finished editing a book on Emergency Medical Services), or just being boring and getting a PhD in literature. Just wondering--if money and time were no issue, what crazy direction would you take your life in?

This only seems like a digression. Really it's about writing.

Quit complaining. It used to be way harder.

According to research, interval training helps you burn three times the calories you burn during regular workouts. Those of us who are time-challenged and a tad bit rotund know interval training is the shiznit.

Interval training is short bursts of manic working out (speeding up the heart rate) combined with longer periods of regular working out (bringing the heart rate back to normal). Apparently we burn a lot of calories getting our heart rates back to normal. We burn tons getting our rate back to normal a bunch of times instead of just once.

Another reason interval training works: When you only have to give your all for short bursts of time (think 15 seconds!), you actually give your all for the whole 15 seconds.

You know what I mean. I've done some long stretches on the old treadmill--and honestly much of it is just going through the motions--not trying as much as being carried along on the relentless drone of the conveyor belt. If I can burn just as many calories through 20 minutes on the elliptical (with 15 15-second bursts that get my heart going like a Grateful Dead drum solo), I'm all for it.

In my quest for more time, I'm considering if interval writing might produce three times as much good writing. I tend to aim for large blocks of writing time. Here's what happens in large blocks of time: I think I have so much time that an email check here and there doesn't matter. I read a blog for inspiration, which links to another blog, and perhaps a stop at Go Fug Yourself and next thing I know, I've read the entire cache of Cheezburger sites and written under a page.

Large blocks of time are harder to find the older I get, but I can usually create a half hour out of thin air. With interval writing, I get in a couple 30-minute blocks of nose-to-the-grindstone writing per day interspersed throughout so I can get my writing heart rate back to normal in between. Absolutely no breaks during the interval writing block! A single break can take over the entire block if you're not careful.

If you're having a hard time getting anything written lately, try interval writing. You gotta have 30 minutes lying around somewhere--while the chops are in the oven, while you're waiting for Idol to start, while you're supposed to be paying attention in class. Write at a pace that raises your creative heart rate--no editing, no reading through, no emailing your writing group about whether your main character should be 17 or 18. Commit to straight-up cardiovascular writing. Let me know how it goes.

Looking for: Time

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears... and your time-management secrets.

Is it just me, or is 2010 moving in fast forward? Hopefully, it's just January. Although, I have been contemplating the possibility that the speed of life moves in direct correlation with one's age, so that every year the speed of time increases. At the end it just seems like your life is flashing by. In reality, you've reached your personal mach 4.

Anyway...

Got any nifty time-management tips to share? I've already given up sleep, but in my real-time life, someone suggested more sleep would boost productivity in my waking hours. I can't wait to test this theory tonight. So seriously, be creative. How do you fit it all in?

Found: A Reminder

"The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for."

Maureen Dowd
Thanks yet again, Writer's Almanac

Let's Confer.

I went to an SCBWI conference last year, which resulted in the following:

• I made a writer friend
• I made a few more writer friends
• I decided to never pay for a 15-minute critique again
• I rewrote my first chapter based on a 15-minute critique
• I embarrassed myself in front of an entire table of children's book editors and agents
• I decided I probably wouldn't be going to any more writers' conferences.

So anyway, I'm going to the SCBWI conference in NYC this month. For the first time in the history of ever, I'll be meeting my beta girls in person. If I stop posting around the end of January, you can assume that one of them has been lying about her identity for more than a year and that she has killed me and stolen my writings.

Anyone else going to the SCBWI Conference in NYC? Got any conference plans this year? Experienced attendees, tell me which is better: the down home SCBWI conference in Middle-of-Nowhere, PA, or the big fancy SCWBI conference in NYC?

How to Read 20 Books for Free

I hope you've been surfing through January, keeping those resolutions in check, reading some books, writing some words.

January is a busy time for the booknapper. It's when she puts her haus in order--not her actual house, which seems orderless, but actually runs on an irregular routine that only she understands. I am paying bills (and organizing the post-Christmas evidence of a pre-Christmas spending spree). I'm revising my goals, my budget, and all of my ideas regarding the universe.

Next: that dastardly TBR pile--my, how we've grown in 2009.

My 2010 goals are based on the work/life blend principle, or "worlindiple" (wer-lyn-dipple), my made-up philosophy in which I attempt to feed two birds with one worm.

Goal #1: No buying books, movies, or CDs until I demolish the TBR pile.

I know. I know. It's going to be tough, but it's also going to be cheap and rewarding. You know what helps when you're doing something tough?

Having someone do it with you.

So who's in? Anyone else want to put a moratorium on pop culture spending until his or her TBR pile is no more? Make it public in the comments.

Lines from Our Old Comrade, Shakespeare

Wake, Bloggees!

Wipe the sugar plum dust out of your eyes and let's get back to producing stuff.

I'm talking to myself, you know. I've spent these holidays contemplating and plotting, strategic planning, and now I'm putting all the whosits and whatsits into place. 2010 is going to blow our minds.

"When thou wakest,
Thou takest
True delight
In the sight
Of thy former lady's eye:
And the country proverb known,
That every man should take his own,
In your waking shall be shown:
Jack shall have Jill;
Nought shall go ill;
The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well."

So said Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream

I am feeling optimistic. Tell me, what is your great big goal for 2010?

Narrator, will you please read to me?

I love audiobooks. I am a username-carrying member of Audible.com. I have two mp3 players, peeps: one's just for books.

I don't agree with the assertion that audiobooks are not real books. The knowledge or story represented by the words is in my brain when I'm finished. How is that not reading a book?

5 Great Things about Audiobooks:

• Pronunciation of difficult names: not a problem.
• I clean when I listen/read. I can tell how good a book is by how clean my house is.
• My dog's walks are longer when I'm listening to a good audiobook.
• I read WAY more books per year since I embraced audiobooks.
• I get read to sleep every night.

Of course, they're not perfect.

3 Sucky Things about Audiobooks:

• Sometimes I want to press stop on an audiobook and open a text version--like when the house is clean, the dog is walked, and my finger is poised over the pause button, waiting for a good break.
• I rarely booknap from audiobooks because I forget to bookmark good parts, and I can't flip through an audiobook to find what I want.
• Sometimes when I listen/read, I wish I could see how something looks on a page--like when the narrator in Juliet, Naked reads Wikipedia pages, I want to know how they look.

And then there's my Kindle.

Best thing about the Kindle? It's easy to read while eating. I put a piece of tape over the page-turn button so I don't even get it dirty. Kindles have the option (on most books) to turn text to speech--this was a selling point for me--but I hate robot voices that have no inflection, so I hardly ever use that option.

Some books are so good I have them in audio and print form. I've read a Kindle book and then bought the hard copy too--just because seeing certain titles on my bookshelf makes me happy.

And now I introduce my point.

Want to know why I'm always reading more than one book? Because I keep a traditional book, an audiobook, and a Kindle book going simultaneously. It's not a perfect method, but it's a way for me be able to read in the easiest way whenever I get a chance. Publishing industry peeps who are looking for ways to increase profits, take note: I would pay extra to get a Kindle, text, and audio version of a book in a bundle--not every book, mind you--but just like I shell out extra cash for a hardcover on occasion, I'd have no problem paying extra to get some books in all three forms, and if they were available as a package price instead of $25 for audio, $15 for print, and $10 for kindle, I'd feel like I was getting a deal.

What's your take on audiobooks? Like 'em? Hate 'em? Don't consider 'em real books? Never tried 'em? Got any recommendations? Want mine? Lolitaread by Jeremy Irons rocked my world.

From: "Black Boys on Mopeds"

"These are dangerous days--
To say how you feel is to dig your own grave."

Sinead O'Connor