Happy Birthday to Me
Posted by tmycann on Jul 15th, 2013 in indie, writing | 7 comments
This weekend was another birthday for me. I’ve had enough of them that it feels a little silly to celebrate–especially when we’re facing some tough circumstances. But I decided that even though I’m back in a cycle of having papers due every Sunday night and more than enough work for several people, I would enjoy myself.
The weather conspired to support me. It was a beautiful weekend and we were able to take the girls on several lovely hikes through some lush greenery. I enjoyed an amazing lunch of Coquilles St. Jacques in crepes at a locally owned French restaurant that has an in-house bakery that supplied the sweets for the rest of our weekend. We investigated a lovely new option for my husband’s acupuncture practice. And we learned more about the effectiveness of the very strange practice of “tapping“.
In fact, my husband had sent me a link earlier this week pointing to a post with “12 Rules for Being Human” that provided the inspiration for my choice. The post is worth reading in its entirety, but the final item listed reads: “Your choices design your life.”
I’ve always known that, but in this context and with all the other points before it… it made a difference.
I even chose to post on Facebook about the best birthday present someone could give me (“BUY MY BOOKS!”) … and was more than a little shocked that someone did. (THANKS!) I’m also making choices about entering contests that might help make my name and brand a little more known. If I’m going to move seriously in the direction of a fiction-writing career, I need to make more choices to raise my visibility. I’m still pondering this, but it might become another goal for this round, once I’ve mapped out the process more clearly.
In the meantime, I did manage three walks for more than 5 miles this week, and finished this week’s school work as well. As for the actual writing… not so much. I’m up to 765 words in book 3, and started taking notes (wrote the opening elements of the first scene) on a time travel story to the tune of another 102 words, but even adding all that together, didn’t touch my goal. We’ll see whether the goal itself is possible with the high non-fiction word requirements for this session’s class, but, it’s a new week, so I’ll be choosing to look forward to trying again.
In the meantime, check out how my cohorts have done on their goals.
7 Responses to “Happy Birthday to Me”
Leave a Reply to Sabrina Garie Cancel reply
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Getting words written is the the goal of the ROW80; you decide where you want to spend those words… fiction, non-fiction, even blogging (assuming you want to become a master blogger, as some people do) all count. And if you didn’t meet your personal goal this week, there is always another week–perhaps your mind and body needed a bit of a shift in focus for a while.
Tapping… That’s a new one for me. It looks a little strange. Have you tried it? Has it helped you?
BTW, this must be the week for crepes… Had to mention that because yesterday we just discovered a wonderful creperie up at Saranac Lake, and I was thinking then of how awesome it was to have them.
Thanks for bringing up yummy reminders.
Right on. You go girl. I loved the post you shared, And when you’ve cracked the visibility nut, do share. I struggle with it myself, shy away from facebook parties and am overwhelmed by the whole street team concept. Part of me is sure doing what every one else is doing is not the way to distinguish oneself although it may sell some books. But I am at a loss as to what else to do. I am using my first two books as learning vehicles, and hope to use any learning that emerges for my subsequent works, which are better written. Only time will tell. Good luck fellow thirteener.
I strongly suspect that visibility is what we make of it. I haven’t seen much return from virtual blog tours, etc., but sharing my writing strategically seems to pick up its own support… We’ll see how it goes. 😉
What do you mean by strategic sharing of your writing? Data from my first book suggests I get the most sales from the launch from the publisher’s website and then I sell the odd book here and there. We’ll see if the blog tour makes a difference. I’ll have some evidence, not fully comparable, but something.
and that is what life is about really isn’t it starting new weeks, new days afresh and trying again. I like the philosophy you are aiming for:) as to new goals they can always be fun even if daunting, letting the ideas simmer while your workload non fiction wise is large is a good way of getting a structure into them for when you start.
The walks sounded great (high praise from a non walker such as moi!) all the best for this coming week:)
Thanks, Alberta! The real trick is to not let the simmer boil over into frustration that I’m not doing THAT kind of writing… 😉
(It feels like the lid blew off on that for me today…)
😛