Transitioning into Full Time Writing, Pt 2

I've now been a full time writer for a little over three weeks, if you ignore my son's wedding and then going to Canada for a week.

Weird incidentals:
The indoor dog, Chase, is flipping out. She's now realizing that I'm going to be home all day (for the most part, except shopping excursions), every day, and it's turning her into a hyperactive maniac who now races back and forth wherever we go. Going to the garden? She runs the ever-shortening distance a dozen times to my one, ears laid back for extra streamlining, mouth open for more air, tongue inside mouth to reduce drag. Going back in the house? It's up and down the stairs and then back and forth across the deck and then she leaps and bangs her feet against the sliding door because it needs to be opened! Oh, and she scratches at the door not only to be let out, but to let me know that one or both of the cats need to be let in.
Because apparently that's why I'm staying home. To play with her and the cats and to let everyone in and out. It's Chase's job to make sure I stay on top of that.

I'm organizing stuff at home to make things more efficient so I can maximize my writing time. It's true! Weird example: now that I'm home I scoop the litter boxes at least once, if not twice a day. It makes the house more pleasant and makes the litter last longer. (I have decided this is true. Don't burst my bubble!) I realized it would be so much less tedious if I had one of those flip-top garbage cans, just a wee one, right next to the litter box. Then when it's full, I can take the used litter out. Found one with a little bucket inside, handle and all. Mine! Litter stays clean, and I can scoop right after I feed the chickens (and steal their eggs) without having to hunt for a garbage bag. Now I know why some housewives are so organized. It's not necessarily because they're OCD or obsessed with cleanliness. It's because having things unorganized is super, super annoying when you have a lot of things to do.

When our kids were little and I was a stay-at-home mom, I didn't have a lot of things to do except keep up on laundry and make sure that there was food, a lack of medical emergencies, and minimal squalor (was not super good about that last part.) Now that I no longer have a day job and I have no kids, my expectation is that I'll have all kinds of time to write, right? Well, except that clutter is distracting, and dealing inefficiently with the clutter is annoying, and laundry and dishes still need to happen, as does shopping and cooking, and I have to feed the farm animals and get the garden ready for spring and all at once I became aware that TIME IS LIMITED, even when, in theory and barring accidents or illness, you have lots of it. And when it comes to chores, I want to minimize them to maximize this work time thing, and you know, we all know, that if I let things pile up deeper and deeper I won't write, I'll dabble at writing and fret and putter. Which is awful and inefficient. Besides, if I ignore chores too long, suddenly I'm looking at six weeks of solid cleaning and zero writing time to get my environment to the point where I stop looking over my shoulder to see if the laundry is sneaking up on me, preparing to leap and then smother me. This versus an hour or two each day for a couple of chores, which I rotate through, and maybe I can squeeze in a little extra once a week so that you make overall headway (it can be done! I'm proving it to myself!)

When I started this journey I thought I'd be writing all day and writing all night with the occasional foray into book and cover design. Then I ran out of underwear. Which might not have mattered except that all my most comfortable jeans were also dirty. And I ran out of bowls. And suddenly taking a break to have a meal turned into a travesty, and showering in the morning and getting into real clothes turned into a chore, and so I wore pajamas until I had to feed the farm animals and I did that in sweats with a sweater over my sleeping shirt and I thought this is not what I envisioned my dream job to be, where I have to take over an hour for lunch because I have to clear the counters and wash a bowl first. People posted that image of a writing nook with the huge windows looking out at a winter scene, with the comfy chair and the floor lamp aimed just right, and a tidy bookshelf and I thought there is no reason why I have to put up with drifts of dog hair on the floor and stacks of papers that need to be filed all around my computer that I have to shove aside (guiltily, worrying that I might forget to pay that bill there) so I can take some quick notes which I'll immediately lose. No more! No more. I will take time to tidy. I will have my desk set up so I can find things. I will.

I'm getting there. Happily, more writing is getting done. And happily, my house is cleaner. Except I have no bowls again, but that's okay. I'll take care of it tomorrow before I start to write. Easy peasy.

+5 vs Scammers

I thought something smelled funny, but I kept it around anyway. Today I looked it up because it was really starting to stink, and I found this:

http://saltydroid.info/

How did I not know about Salty Droid before? This is awesome.

I love a lot of things about the internet. Probably my favorite thing (besides cute overload and instant communication with family and friends) (and art stuff) is how it can be such a great tool for education. I've been educating myself via the web for a while now, and I'm learning to get better at it.

Sadly, the internet is also a great place to get scammed and misinformed. Well-meaning friends (myself included) unknowingly spread stuff that isn't true or even actively harmful. This is why we need resources like Salty Droid, which outs scammers, and Snopes. What? You haven't heard of Snopes? Please. Please please please become acquainted with Snopes, an urban legend website. It's not perfect. No site is. But when you get one of those forwards from someone about the dangers of eating pop rocks and drinking cola at the same time, before you send it to everyone on your email list, first, go to Snopes and check out if it's true or false. There have been false positives and false negatives, of course, but they do have a mechanism for correcting those. At the very least, it's a great place to start.

Whatever you do, though, don't start reading around Snopes or Salty Dog because you'll get sucked in and before you know it, three days will have passed and you'll have no clean dishes or laundry. (But at least you'll be better informed!)

Often, the easiest way to keep your identity and your money safe on the internet is to simply use the internet itself against internet scammers. Salty Droid, just like Snopes, is one resource out of many and may not be perfect. For one thing, you have to be able to read nerdish, which can be byzantine in construction and unclear as far as what is meant as sarcasm and what's meant as an actual statement. Anyway, Salty Droid and many others out there exist purely to help you make certain that money or time (and let's face it, the time is usually more important than the money) isn't wasted on someone or something awful or potentially damaging to you. A few minutes of searching is time well-spent to defend yourself against bad things.

Of course, no Kami blog entry on scams and lies would be complete without a (re)mention of Writer Beware!®:The Blog and the Absolute Write Water Cooler. All you writers out there, if you get the least bit of opportunity, be sure to spread the word about this invaluable resource. There are still plenty of newbie (and some experienced) writers out there unaware of the horrid that is bad publisher and agent behavior, not to mention the many other pitfalls of writing.

Sometimes it feels like there are more pits than road.

The more mention there is on the internet of these kinds of resources, the harder time bad people will have stealing, and the better educated we all will be as lies and misinformation are snuffed out. Or revealed for what they are, which are stinky piles of stink. Or perhaps just laughed at. Maybe turned into silly videos we can all enjoy on YouTube. With cute kitties illustrating the main points.

Thusly armed, you can enjoy the wealth of educational materials (for free!), business opportunities (real ones with real value provided!), and of course, the ability to quickly communicate with family and friends on a scale unfathomable just twenty years ago (and look at cute animal pics and videos) and have a far smaller chance of getting ripped off or victimized by people abusing the awesome that is the internet for selfish gain w/o actually generating any value for the people they're hustling to.

It's like using the internet against the internet to better enjoy the internet. Somehow, it works.

Getting Stuff Done

As most of you know or have gathered, I work a full time day job (yay!) and then write, design books, garden, do light physical training, create cover art, and teach myself various business-related skills like web page design, tax accounting, graphic design, typography, and how to maintain my delicate facade of calm and competence when in fact I'm constantly overwhelmed by work and dreaming crazy dreams.

Lately I've been more overwhelmed than usual (!) with stuff that needs to get done by various deadlines. This is what I do when I have so much crap to accomplish that I don't want to do anything at all. It might work for you too.

I separate daylight and after dark activities. It really doesn't work to garden after dark, though I've done it. Ditto for trimming goat hooves, mowing, taking the dogs for a walk, staining the deck, carpentry, etc. So if I plan to make headway on one of those sorts of things, I prioritize my time accordingly.

I separate heat-of-day activities from cool temperature activities. I might get away with staining the deck, washing a car, giving the dogs baths, or even pulling tansy during the heat of the day, but mowing during the heat of the day, or rototilling, or digging up a huge plant and moving it to the opposite end of the garden might be best for before noon or after 6pm.

I give myself an hour or so playing dithering games. Those vary from the obvious, like playing endless rounds of Bejeweled, to weird, like deciding to reorganize my underwear drawer. I could try to not do those sorts of things at all, but I find that if I don't give in at least for a little while, I can't seem to focus and I end up puttering and not getting much done ... basically I dither by default. Once that hour (or so) is up, I have to stop and work on one of my real goals. Something about the time restriction, and allowing myself to waste time on my own terms, helps put me in a good working headspace.

Then I get to work, dividing my time between two or three things over the course of the day so that I don't get mush brain and start to make mistakes. I listed this last, but I seem to do much, much better if I decide in advance which two or three things on my long to-do list I'm going to work on on a given day.

When I start to hesitate, or realize that I don't have all the stuff I need to finish, or my eyes start to cross and I lose track of what goes where and whose eyes are green, I stop, dither a while, tank up on food and water, and do something different, whatever is next on the day's list.

This system has been working really, really well for me. And the more I practice it, the more I seem to accomplish.  Pretty soon I hope to announce the completion of a big project I've been working on for years. I'm very, very close to getting there. Because I'm a typical, self-sabotaging creative type I of course didn't want to put the finishing touches on this project as soon as I got home from the day job, and instead watered my garden, played Bejeweled, weeded around some of my roses, trimmed oregano back from a garden path, and made snide comments about a really, really bad movie playing in the background while I played Bejeweled. Well, I've had my fun now. According to my rule, I need to put some time into real work now, so it's off to copyedit a few more chapters in my book, and then bedtime. Who knows? Maybe if I get on a roll, I might even finish tonight. That would be awesome.

Publishing Company News

Today I read about two individuals who are leaving traditional publishing houses to start up literary agencies.

I sincerely wish them both well and good luck with their ventures. Having said that, a thousand questions popped into my mind. These are things that should enter any writer's mind before they shop for a literary agent, so I'll go ahead and list a couple of them here. If you don't like the answers a given literary agency gives you, don't sign up with them. In fact, if they post their terms on their page and those terms don't make sense from the writer's point of view, I wouldn't contact them at all.

What percent? Historically, agents received 10% of the writer's paycheck from the publisher (both the advance and royalties.) This has crept up to 15% and stuck. Most folks would, perhaps rightly, contend that an agent will get them a bigger advance than they would on their own. But the royalties? For all time? Where is the justification for 15% there? Not arguing, just asking. What would be the added benefit of having an agent over, say, a literary contract lawyer, who actually fully and completely understands contract law from his client's perspective, not from the publisher's perspective? A literary contract lawyer will charge a one time fee, based on how much time and trouble it is for her/him. And then s/he's gone. If s/he charges $800 to vet a contract for you, it won't matter if you're negotiating a $5000 advance or a $750,000 advance. And then you get all the royalties from your work. Forever.

I have to admit, I did cringe a bit when I heard the news. One of the reasons I cringed is that I have heard many stories about agents and editors settling on a contract with a writer that was actually worse than the worst-terms boilerplate for the publisher. With an agent on your side, you wouldn't think that it would happen, but it does. Editors mainly edit. They don't practice law. Having an editor leave the editing business and go into agenting ... well, I have my doubts.

Next question:  Will they ask for rewrites before they're willing to send your work out? In this case, if the editor was very good at their job, I'm more comfortable with that than I would be with an agent whose history and education I have no clue about. Having said that, I'm wary of anyone who would take on a writer because of that writer's compelling writing who then turns around and asks for a major rewrite. Little stuff, oh yeah. Bring it on! If I change the character's name in the middle of the story, let's go ahead and fix that and save us both some embarrassment. But I don't want to go with an agent who is trying to groom me into becoming the sort of writer s/he believes will sell better (or who will write like s/he would like to write themselves.) That says that they see potential, but won't work with me until I'm better. I'd rather get better on my own, with my own learning process, than under the direction of someone who is supposed to be selling manuscripts to publishers, not reading and critiquing almost-there manuscripts for their stable of writers. Seriously. I've heard of agents bad-mouthing their authors to publishers, calling their work commercial dreck, smut, etc. If an agent doesn't love, really love, my work, I don't want to have them represent me. And if they're asking for extensive rewrites, especially with the idea to make it more commercial, they don't love my work. End of story.

Stuff to think about before signing on with an agent. There's lots more questions. I hope that writers who see two new literary agencies on the horizon don't start setting up their submission packages before they've settled these and other questions in their minds.

We're Entering the 21st Century!

You're never going to believe this ....

We're going to get set up with high speed internet at the house.

They better buy winter jackets down below, is all I'm saying.

No, the wonderful optical cable they laid right past our front door is not live. And although we are digital call capable (whatever that means) they can't (won't?) pipe internet through there. In the end, we went with an affordable thingy through our phone company. At least, it's as or more affordable than satellite we've looked into in the past. And yes, satellite is not nearly as awesome or fast as optical cable, but it's going to be a lot faster than anything we have at home at the moment.

I'm sure I'll still hop on down to the library to use the Wifi there. I love the library, and the connection will be faster than it is at home. The big difference will be that I'll be able to post blog entries from home (yay! -- we still haven't figured out what the problem is with the sign-in from home, boo) which means I'll be posting more often. And when I finish a project at home, I won't have to wait until the library is open, or cave and go to my favorite Wifi-enabled pub and eat eat eat for four hours while I get my stuff done.

Once we're live I'll get a wifi router and ... I can hardly contain my excitement ... I won't have to relocate when I'm ready to publish a book or send out an email with a big attachment (or make the attachment so tiny it's useless.) This will modestly increase my productivity, and lower gas and eating-out expenditures. Hard to say whether we'll come out ahead yet, but we'll see.

Moving On

I'm not-so-secretly transferring my accounts out of one of the big banks to a credit union because there are new scary headlines about those big banks every day.  I know that those scary headlines won't affect my personal accounts at my branch (or so I hope) but they are constant reminders that I don't like the way the big banks have been doing business.

I like the way this credit union does business.

Hence, I move my stuff.  No one will care.  No one will be sad that I'm no longer a customer there (except maybe for the two totally awesome employees I've gotten to know over the years that work there.)  But I'll feel better about where I keep my money, and how that money is looked after.

In case you're wondering, yes, the only reason this is noteworthy is because I'm one of those sad cases that hangs onto a certain amount of loyalty when it comes to doing business.  I don't change banks often, and I usually visit the same businesses over and over.  I get to know the people that work there, and I learn what they do well, and what they stink at, and conduct my business accordingly.

So although this isn't a huge deal, it's still something that goes a little deeper than doing the paperwork and jumping through the hoops.  It's an emotional step as well.  Big bank used to mean big safety to me.  Now it feels like a big risk, not necessarily because the banks are in any real danger, but because I don't think they're dealing with their customers in a professional manner.  I don't need to be taken care of.  I do require some frickin' standards, though.  Maybe even a little pride.  Sadly, I fear that the line staff doing the jobs of four people each don't have time for pride.  They're just trying to survive.  Is it a management issue, or just more fallout from risky behavior?  I have no idea.  Knowing the answer won't change my decision.

Bye bye, big bank.  Hello local credit union.  I have a feeling we're going to get along just fine.

Work and Play

I'm trying to set up a new business and the details are crazy-making! I think I'm going to have to do a lot more research before I can figure out what it is *exactly* that I'll be doing with this.

Advice is welcome.

I had a wonderful time in Seattle. Our hosts were amazing and extremely hospitable. I had some amazing conversations over the weekend, and met a lot of fantastic people. Which reminds me: thanks to everyone there for weathering my sugar-crash on Saturday. I forgot what they felt like.

Note to self: No donut for Kami when she's hungry.

We have ongoing good weather, so I'll be out in the garden a lot. Good grief, the garden ... it either rains too much or not enough. I'm sure the seedlings are very confused, what seedlings I have. It's late, it's late, I've missed my very important garden dates, but it doesn't bother me. I'll plant anyway at this inauspicious time and see what happens.

Gardening would be boring if it turned out awesome every year. I guess that makes gardening something like gambling, and maybe that aspect is part of what makes it so addictive. The other parts? I can go on and on about how huge the peony blooms are this year, and the taste of fresh tomatoes and snow peas, the pleasure of picking fresh herbs to season our meat for dinner, etc.

Besides, I like playing in the dirt. It smells nice.

Two Writer Household Quirks

People keep giving the DH and me looks when we go to Wifi hotspots around town. We must look terribly unromantic, having a sit-down lunch or coffee, typing and not talking to each other. Ah, the state of our current technological world. Human contact will be a thing of the past if all couples go the way they're going, they must think.

It is a little weird on the one hand, but on the other, the only reason we go out anymore (besides for romantic or celebratory dinners, which are actually more fun at home) is to have a business meal, where we can connect at blinding (meaning not dial-up) speeds. We often go to the library, where it's free, but sometimes we're hungry, you know?

Perhaps it is unromantic and sterile anyway. That's not all bad. As far as the sterile part--I love our kids, but thank the gods because we don't need any more. On the romance part of things--at least we kick each other under the table, and we've even been known to send goofy love emails during a break. It's less likely to interrupt a thought than kicking each other under the table (the surest sign of love. Quarreling sibs take heed.)

Bad Agent Sydney Awards Treats to Veronica

Weather has kept me indoors and writing. I'm almost done with House of Goats! I'm especially excited about this because I have another book I desperately want to work on. I still might get the post-finished-first-draft blues, but I'll stay busy.

In other news, Veronica has made it onto Bad Agent Sydney's Blog. See the post here. Veronica got a treat, of course!

Bad Agent Sydney T. Cat revels in bad agent practices. I recommend Sydney's posts to anyone who'd like to get an idea of the kinds of things agents can do (and have done) that might not be in a writer's best interest. There certainly are great agents out there, but there are also bad agents like Sydney. Sometimes the only way to tell them apart in advance if you're hunting for an agent is to educate yourself and watch for red flags. Most people know to watch out for agents that ask for up-front money like reading fees or who refer writers to editing services, but there's lots of other iffy things agents (both scam and legitimate) do that are much harder to spot. Writer beware!

Time to Write

I'm at the Fat Straw, prepping to write.  Today I'm writing about a woman with no legs, and I'll possibly go into writing about a woman who has nasty symbols burned into the front of her body if I have time.  I'm also staring at a deadline.  I've crossed the finish line, but I let the manuscript ferment for a bit and I'll taste it today to see if it's ready to go.  If it is, I'll send it out, as I got pinged the other day reminding me that the story is due by September 1.  Piece of cake.  If I'm not done dithering by then, I can't call myself a pro.

Mixed in with all these writing tasks, I've got a field riddled with tansy ragweed that has to get cleaned up before the flowers go to seed.  Sometimes it feels like an uphill task, I mean, for metaphorical reasons, not just because the field is on a hill.  Our neighbors have a field full of tansy ragweed too.  They usually get rid of it early and we're the ones at the eleventh hour pulling things up, shoving the ones gone to seed already into big plastic bags.  Not this year.  We're a little ahead of our usual MO, they're way behind.

It's not fruitless, though, just aggravating.  Like the necessity of marketing--it'll never go away.  Even if I manage to find an agent, I'll still have to send short stories out, write query letters, synopses and proposals, make phone calls, do business.  Would I rather just write?  Heck yeah.  I'd rather just do my regular gardening too, instead of sweating out in the pasture pulling up stuff that shouldn't be there in the first place.  But it's part of owning land, and marketing is part of writing.  You just gotta do it.

On the plus side it's cooled down locally.  Very pleasant writing weather, pleasant gardening weather especially in the early evening, when it's still light outside but the birds are trying out their night songs, and the moon is like a rosy pearl, and it's too bright for stars.  That's my favorite time to be out, as long as I remembered to spray on some bug juice.

It's still bright and warm outside now, but it feels like the perfect hour.  Time to write.

Paperwork paperwork everywhere and not a page to read

I had an avalanche of work recently.  Sorry about the long and unannounced hiatus.

One of the more important things that's landed in my lap is the whole tax thing.  We have our taxes done.  For one thing, it's more than enough work just to gather the materials for our tax preparer.  For another thing, our taxes are pretty complicated.  For a third thing, having audit assistance gives me huge peace-of-mind.  And lastly, our income sources are very untidy.

We may have to defer part of our taxes this time around.  How do we do that?  I haven't a clue.  That would take research.  Why would we defer taxes?  Well, because if someone earns their income out of the USA under certain contracts for a certain amount of time, then they don't have pay taxes on a certain amount of income.   Well what if that certain amount of time out of the country within a year doesn't tidily fall within a given tax year?  If you're only in the USA 352 days out of 365, for example, but those 352 out of 365 days fall between April 2012 and May 2013, what's a tax preparer to do?  The gov'mint can't just take the tax payer's word for it that the rest of the time will in fact show up as being outside the USA the following year.  So, they do this thing.  And I'm not familiar with this thing they do.

So our already complicated taxes with two separate businesses plus two 'normal' incomes through regular hourly wage jobs has stepped up to a whole new level of weird.  I don't have to mess with it if I don't want to, so I won't.

And I get to write the prep fee off on next year's taxes, just like the prep fee from last year will come off this year's taxes.  It's sort of like that marble machine with the chutes and ramps and the arm that swings round and the little cable car and so forth.  (BTW, these are called gravitrams, and we have a beautiful one in Portland, OR at OMSI.)

Gardening sidenote:  We have daffodils!  Finally!  Just the miniature ones so far (they're about the size of crocuses) but the big ones are well on their way.  I'm hoping the first big ones will open sometime this week.