Writing group alternatives

The other day I received a message on Facebook from a writer who lives in rural England and wants to improve her craft. She asked if I know of any online writing groups she can join. I don't know of any specific online critique groups looking for new members, but I do have several ideas for how she (and you!) might find sources of feedback, community, support, and/or encouragement. Here's what I told her:

1) Bookworks is an interesting site that offers a variety of services, including the ability to post 2,000-word excerpts of your WIP for peer review. I don't have personal experience with that feature, so I don't know about the quality of the feedback or how many people are engaged in it, but it might be worth checking out. There is a membership fee for some of the site's features, but the Work-in-Progress feature is part of the free Core membership plan.

2) The ROW80 community is active and supportive. Most people only use it to post updates on their writing goals, but I have seen people post - and get comments on - short excerpts from their WIPs. This community is more about encouragement than critique, so the feedback might not be as constructive as you need. That said, this is another free option and a great way to connect with other writers and get some support for remaining accountable to your goals.

Priorities

Sometimes you have to choose. For example, when you're trying to finish up the next-to-last draft of the novel you've been working on for two years and it's going much slower than you anticipated and you're late getting it to your copy editor...

 ...do you take time out to write another blog post, or do you let the blogging slide for the week and devote all your mental and creative energy to finishing the damn book? This past week I chose the latter.

Hence, it has been two weeks since my last ROW80 Update
"A Round of Words in 80 Days is the writing challenge that knows you have a life."

Goals for the writing life (ROW80 Round 2)

It's the start of another round of A Round of Words in 80 Days, "the writing challenge that knows you have a life." The next three months will bring about at least two major events: 1) another move, and 2) the publication of my pseudonym's next novel.

Creative Projects
Work on my creative projects this next round will involve a little bit of everything: drafting, receiving feedback, revision, editing, submitting, and publishing. Below I've broken down my project plans by month.

April

• Line & copy editing of pseudonym's WIP1
• Set up WIP1 blog tour for June
• Draft WIP1 book description
• 1st drafts of dream prose poems while WIP1 is with editors

This week's tasks: Line edit WIP1; make initial book blog tour inquiries.

May

• Self-publish WIP1
• Put together WIP1 media packet
• 1st drafts of 4 short stories
• (If time: work on dream poems)

June

• Promote WIP1
• Revise 4 short stories
• Revise & submit 2 dream poems per week

ROW80 2015 Round 1 Wrap-up

This is the final week of ROW80 Round 1. Time to reflect back on my goals and report the overall progress for the round! Below you'll find my original goals in black, changes in red, and progress in blue.

Creative projects
I have SO MANY WRITING PROJECTS I want to get done this year: two novels, a collection of short stories, and 2 books of poetry. Because I still have not figured out how to clone myself, I must work within normal human parameters - for now - which means breaking it down into manageable chunks. This round I worked on a novel under my pseudonym (codename WIP1) and a collection of short speculative fiction stories under my own name (codename SF). Goals:
1) Finish drafting and editing WIP1. Beta draft of WIP1 complete, feedback received, and I'll be done with the next draft by the end of next week, at which point it goes to my line editors. Round 2 starts April 6th, so I'll still be finishing up this book.
2) Finish writing the 1st drafts of the stories for SF & begin to revise them. I finished first drafts of 3 more stories and made progress on a couple more, though they haven't reached first-draft status yet. I plan to work on one more first draft in the next round, but I'll be focusing mainly on my book of dream poems and my pseudonym's projects for the rest of the year.

A less-than-productive week

My energy has been ZAPPED this week, not only by last weekend's festivities but also by mega-allergies and a family emergency on top of all I originally had planned (i.e. editing and coaching work, business envisioning work, pseudonym's branding process, revising a novel). The result was that I spent a lot of time just trying not to feel tired and the rest of the time - and what little energy I had - doing work for clients.

The good news is that I feel like I'm snapping out of my energy-drain and have a good plan for the coming week that involves resuming my ritual of getting out of the house for 2-3 hours every morning to go write in a coffee shop or the library. I'm not exactly sure why it helps me feel more energetic and focused to do this, I only know that it does, and I haven't done it in something like three weeks. Time to rectify.

Now for this week's...

ROW80 Update

"A Round of Words in 80 Days is the writing challenge that knows you have a life."

[Note: This update only includes the past week's tasks and the coming week's tasks. If you'd like to know how they relate to my goals for this round, you can read my 2015 Round 1 Goals post.]

Creative projects
Past week's tasks: Finish re-reading WIP1, making notes & formulating revision plan Mon-Tues; Wed-Fri begin carrying out revision plan. On Monday I decided that re-reading WIP1 would distract rather than aid me at this point in my process, so instead I formulated my revision plan and began to implement it. However, due to the aforementioned factors, I got no further on the revision for the rest of the week.
Coming week's tasks: Email line editor to see if I can have an extension; if not, rework revision plan to fit two weeks. In either case, continue WIP1 revision.

Birthday week

I am so tired. Just spent the last three days partying it up nonstop (i.e. dancing to live music, singing karaoke, floating, playing pool, eating delicious food & drinking delicious drinks) with friends and family. I danced so hard on Thursday night that I woke up the next morning with head-banger's neck and shoulders (ouch!), which continued to plague me for the next two days. One of the many perils of getting older: longer recovery time.

In related news, this year's birthday mustache was incredibly soft. It kept tickling my nose, so I eventually repurposed it as a uni-brow and then a sideburn until it lost its stick and fell off. But while it was on my upper lip it did make me look a lot like my dad did in the '70s, so...I guess that's a plus?

It's been a wonderful celebration of life, but I might need a week to recover from all the fun I had. Which of course may affect the coming week's productivity regarding my ROW80 goals.

ROW80 Update
"A Round of Words in 80 Days is the writing challenge that knows you have a life."

Readjusting expectations, writing project plan

This week I did less writing than I intended because:

• I'm a little wiped out still from pushing so hard to finish the beta draft of WIP1 earlier this month;
• I've had more administrative tasks than usual as a result of bringing on some new editing work and a new coaching client (yay!);
• I got caught up in world building and character development for the short story I worked on this week, it turned into a idea for a novel, and I got overwhelmed/slightly depressed because I'm not sure where to go from here. I still want to write this short story, but now I feel like I have to plot an entire novel in order to get to the short story, and I don't have time or energy for that right now.

I was already a little behind schedule on the collection of short speculative fiction stories, but this week make me realize that I needed a) to adjust my expectations about how long it will take to finish these stories, and b) a new writing project plan to reflect that.

To print or not to print?

One of my goals this year is to see at least one of my books in print, so I've been doing research on print-on-demand options for self-publishing.

Pretty early in my research I narrowed it down to three options based on price and packages: Xlibris, Outskirts and CreateSpace. Both Xlibris and Outskirts offer packages with features I was looking for - ISBN assignment, interior design, cover design with price-embedded barcode, and worldwide distribution - for $699. The Xlibris package also includes a set of promotional materials (bookmarks, posters, etc.), but I was leaning in the Outskirts direction because I have a client who used them and her book is beautiful, whereas I've never held an Xlibris book in my hand so I don't know what it's like.

CreateSpace, on the other hand, is free and they'll assign an ISBN, but I'd still have to hire someone to help me with the cover and interior design aspects. I was also leaning away from this option because the royalty calculator revealed that anything lower than a $9.99 list price would result in my actually losing money on sales through expanded distribution.

Draft done, what's next?

Photo by Rick Campbell

Hooray, I did it! I finished the next draft of my pseudonym's novel (codename WIP1) on deadline! It seemed kind of touch-and-go there for a few days - I got behind schedule and then needed a day and a half to recover from my time with the Weimaraner puppy - but I pulled it off. Go, me.

So what's next? The book is with a group of beta readers for a couple of weeks. When I get their feedback, I'll give myself a week to read and think about it before I spend a week re-reading the book and making revision notes to myself. Then three weeks to make revisions, then another round of developmental feedback with line editing, then copy editing and self-publishing.

During those three weeks of revising WIP1 I plan to spend the entirety of my writing time on that project, but until then I'll continue to work on the short sf stories and resume my research on self-publish print-on-demand options.

The other major thing on my mind, as a result of New Year's reflections and some conversations with another coach/editor, is some visioning work around my coaching and editing business. More on that below in this week's...

ROW80 Update
"A Round of Words in 80 Days is the writing challenge that knows you have a life." 

Writing retreat week

This past week was dedicated to a bi-annual "writing retreat." I don't usually go anywhere for these retreats; it's more a writing oasis I create for myself wherever I am by giving myself permission to let everything else go and making writing (and taking care of myself so I can write) my sole priority.

This particular writing retreat took place while house and dog sitting for relatives and, as predicted, my productivity was impacted by dog training (okay, yes, and seeing friends in the town I was visiting). I didn't accomplish my task, which was to finish the first draft of my pseudonym's latest novel. However, I got close, and I think I can still meet my Feb. 4 deadline. Yay!

What it will mean for this week, though, is giving myself a few more days of "writing retreat" - letting the blogging, social media, etc. go - and then devoting the end of the week to catching up on all the stuff I'd originally intended to do all week long.

Predicting productivity, adjusting to challenges

This week I've encountered a couple of challenges in my writing life that have led to lower productivity levels than I anticipated. But really it all boils down to two skills I want to strengthen: the first being my ability to anticipate challenges and set realistic expectations, and the second being my ability to adjust to unexpected challenges.

To get more concrete about it: I'm house-and-dog sitting for some relatives this week. Although I give myself a pat on the back for anticipating decreased productivity on the day of the drive from my current residence to theirs, I failed to anticipate the amount of work a partially trained, 6-month-old, HIGHLY energetic Weimaraner would take. She's basically a toddler on crack: constantly wanting attention and playtime, virtually impossible to exhaust. I'll spare you all the details since this isn't a dog blog. The point is that I failed to anticipate it, it's going to affect my productivity this coming week, and now I'm struggling with the second thing: adjusting my expectations.

Other things I (re)learned related to my writing process this week:

• Even in a stable environment, it's difficult to predict how much I'm going to be able to do. Work on WIP1 has been going more slowly than anticipated this month, and I've had to accept that my write-a-short-story-a-week schedule, while admirable, was overly ambitious. Maybe if my entire block of writing time for the week were dedicated to just one project I could meet the goals I'd set for myself, but sometimes my head just moves more slowly than at other times. It's not that I've been feeling sluggish, though that has definitely happened to me in the past. More that my brain is in some kind of intense mulling-things-over phase. So back to that whole adjusting-expectations thing.
• It's easier for me to hear and incorporate developmental feedback when I'm still in the shitty first draft stage. Once I get to a draft that feels more or less done to me, I don't want to make major changes.

New goal: get rejected

Several unexpected and exciting things happened this week, one of which was that my mom told me about this NPR story about a guy who, in order to get over his fear of rejection, makes it a goal to get rejected in some small way every day. Which got me thinking about the fact that I haven't done much (any?) submitting in the last six months, and hence have neither had my work accepted or rejected for a very long time. I think I'm going to make it a goal to get work rejected by 20 editors this year. The beauty of this goal? If I send out 20 submissions and 2 of them are accepted, I have to send out more submissions and get rejected at least twice more to meet my quota.

I have too many other things on my plate right now to dive into this goal immediately, but I'll start submitting poems (and stories?) this summer.

Related to that, I've also semi-decided to query at least one of the books of poetry I'm putting together this year instead of trying to self-publish absolutely everything. I'm mostly in it for the experience of querying, which I'll be able to use to both empathize with and advise my coaching and editing clients, but if someone ended up accepting the book, that'd be pretty darn cool.

As for the other exciting things that happened this week? They are mentioned in my...

ROW80 Update
"A Round of Words in 80 Days is the writing challenge that knows you have a life."
 

Addicted to reading

I'll just read a few chapters and then go to sleep so I can be rested and ready to tackle my to-do list tomorrow, I said to myself at 10:30pm on Tuesday night.

The next thing I know, it's 2am and I'm 216 pages into Abbadon's Gate. I texted my brother to let him know I was hooked on the book he'd loaned me, and then I considered putting it down for the night. But I can't stop now; he's still on the alien space station! I felt a sense of responsibility to the characters at this crucial plot point, as if Holden's success with the station was contingent on my decision to continue reading at that moment. Just one more chapter...

If I hadn't fallen asleep while reading I probably would've read all night, and then all of Wednesday would've been a wash instead of just the morning. I suppose it's good that my body overrode my mind on this one.

As it was, I spent Wednesday morning sleeping instead of writing, and then I spent the rest of the week feeling like I was trying to catch up and doing a poor job of it. Despite this, I made good progress on most of my goals this week, the exception being my creative projects. (Figures.)

ROW80 update
"A Round of Words in 80 Days is the writing challenge that knows you have a life." 

Here we go again

It's 2015! Happy New Year, ever'body!

It's also the start of a new round of A Round of Words in 80 Days (ROW80). I love the beginnings of things, don't you? There's something magical about the possibilities inherent in beginnings. New goals, a clean slate, nothing messed up yet. ;*)

A clean slate

I'm also feeling energized by my reflections on 2014 and all the amazing, life-changing things that happened this past year. I sold my house and traveled for four months; made new friends all over the world; started learning tai chi; tried sensory deprivation floating for the first time; celebrated my 2-year anniversary as a self-employed individual; self-published two books; worked with four wonderful coaching clients, some of whom achieved their coaching goals and some who are continuing the partnership into 2015; and edited seven books, at least four of which are now published. How could I not look forward to seeing what 2015 brings?!

ROW80 2015 Round 1 Goals

Battling vacationitis

When I was in high school, senioritis was the commonly acknowledged phenomenon of young men and women in their final year of high school who anticipated being done with it to the point of hardly being able to sit still, much less actually pay attention to lectures. People with senioritis might skip classes more often than they'd ever been known to do before and/or consistently fail to turn in homework, though they'd been diligent enough before.

What I have these days is a case of vacationitis. I'm going on vacation starting Saturday, but my body and mind have decided that's not quite soon enough. They lure me into reading for enjoyment when I should be working, which is exactly why I'm writing this post so late at night. I finished a 700-page book today. I'm tired. Hence, this will be short.

ROW80 Update 
"A Round of Words in 80 Days is the writing challenge that knows you have a life."

Continuing the good progress

This week has been a good mix so far of business and pleasure/social life, thanks to reconnecting with an old friend. A while ago I decided to stop working 10-12 hours a day and stick to 6-8 a day, which has left most evenings free to hang out with family, go to shows and relax. What a difference it makes to my energy levels!

On that note, it's time for my weekly check-in about my own writing process and projects...

ROW80 Update
"A Round of Words in 80 Days is the writing challenge that knows you have a life."

Show up to writing 2-3 hours/day.   
Mostly on track. Which is to say I continue to show up to writing every day and accomplish things, which feels really good. This week so far I've had a breakthrough about my pseudonym's WIP and am *this close* to being done with the short story I've been editing. I  have also written a short creative nonfiction piece about having dinner with a friend I hadn't seen in a long time (an exercise in writing a scene from daily life and something I'd like to do more often), a short poem, and some random fragments that happened to float into my head.

Be an active ROW80 sponsor.
On track.

Getting back on track

After taking a break last week for the Thanksgiving holiday and to move from Portland to Bend, I'm getting back on track this week and have big plans for this month...right up until my vacation begins on Dec. 20th.

ROW80 Update 
"A Round of Words in 80 Days is the writing challenge that knows you have a life."

Show up to writing 2-3 hours/day.  
On track-ish. Skipped Monday because I was getting settled in, but made good progress yesterday and today on a short story revision and my pseudonym's WIP. I also wrote a prose poem/short story thingy about being assaulted by a gang of ducks trying to sell used Kleenex.

Even when I don't actually write for a full 2-3 hours, I like having this goal because I end up getting more writing done than I would without it. This week I'm in a new town (again) and so am spending some time searching for my new morning writing spot. The coffee shop I'm in today is a neat place, but it's too noisy (and chilly when you're sitting next to the wall, it turns out), so I'm limping along and will try a different location tomorrow.

Guest post on the ROW80 blog

If you're a follower of this blog, you'll know that I've been doing A Round of Words in 80 Days (aka ROW80) for the past couple of years and that I'm a sponsor this round. As one of my sponsorly duties, I wrote a guest post for the ROW80 blog called "Time management for staying motivated," and it went up yesterday!

Sneak peek

I’m not one of those people who has a tried-and-true writing process, one that works every time. That said, today I want to talk about two strategies I use regularly to help me keep my writing process on track: setting deadlines and setting hourly limits. These strategies can be used independently or in conjunction with one another.

A general note about both of these strategies: I use them because I’m a perfectionist who, given free reign, would never finish any piece of writing ever because I’m constantly changing – my personality, my writing skill level, my sense of aesthetic – and could rewrite and edit anything to death several times over.

The assumption I’m currently working under is that nothing is ever done, but at some point I have to stop working on it. At least for a while. I can always go back and revise again if I really, really want to and I have nothing better to do. Even my published stories. But I’m beginning to expect that the key to becoming the writer I want to be is to write things, “finish” them, move on to the next thing and never look back....

Read the full article to learn how I use deadlines and hourly limits to stay motivated on my writing projects.

It's time once again for me to check back in on my writing goals and report progress/challenges. It's been an eventful week: I had two float sessions and, as a result, wrote two more pieces for Float On; as a result of floating and/or preparing for my upcoming reading and/or what I've been reading and/or all the fun I've been having lately, I managed to reconnect with my creative playfulness, which feels awesome and has resulted in some new poems; and last but not least, I remembered how inspiring it is to read certain writers/types of writing.

All this is reflected in this week's ROW80 Update.
  "A Round of Words in 80 Days is the writing challenge that knows you have a life."

Show up to writing 2-3 hours/day. Although I haven't necessarily been putting in a solid 2-3 hours every day, I continue to show up regularly, and I've felt particularly inspired the last few days, which makes me excited about my writing (and excited to do this reading on Saturday). This past week I've written the two aforementioned pieces for the Float On Writers' Program, a couple of new poems, the description of the upcoming reading, and a new travel blog post in addition to my posts for this blog.

Going with the flow

In a conversation last week, a friend told me about how she once spent several months in a foreign country not writing her dissertation. No longer even sure she wanted to finish her degree, she experienced a kind of mental paralysis where she spent hours staring off into space.

"I'll bet that at least to some extent you were so focused on what you thought you should be doing that you weren't open to what you could be doing."

She agreed.

I lost the motivation to work on my WIP1 back in August. For a while I wrote nothing except journal entries and the occasional blog entry. When I got back to Portland in September, I'd expected myself to jump back into the WIP, editing work and marketing ASAP and instead found that I couldn't concentrate on anything. I experienced a kind of mental paralysis and found myself staring off into space for hours.