First up I’d just like to say a big (and very jolly) happy second anniversary to Routines for Writers. As a writer who has a very bad routine, I’m a big fan of anything that can help motivate writers to…well write!!! However, today I thought I would take my author hat off and tell you about my other job running the teen/children’s desk every weekend at my local library. I’m not a librarian by trade but I do have an English degree and a love of all things books.

However, it wasn’t until I started the job that I discovered the only thing I love more than reading books is to see other people reading books, and so working in the library is a bit like a dream come true (though, if my bosses are looking, if you really wanted to make it the perfect job, a chocolate fountain wouldn’t go astray).

Anyway, the most important thing that I’ve learnt since I’ve been at the library is that while every reader is after a different book – ‘I love vampires’, ‘I hate vampires’, ‘I want horses’, ‘don’t you dare show me a horse book’ – the one thing that they all have in common is that they have NO INTEREST AT ALL in how the book is written.

I know.

It’s horrifying. Scandalous even. But I can assure you that I have never yet met a customer who has asked me for a grammatically correct book that has nice margins and a good font. They don’t care about dangling participles or if you’ve written the book in first person or third. As for tenses, I doubt they’d know one if they fell over it, but the thing that they all agree on is that they want a GOOD STORY.

I think as writers we get so caught up in the nuts and bolts of the craft – trying to please potential editors, beta readers and contest judges – that we can lose track of the fact that we’re not writers, we’re story tellers and quite frankly, a reader won’t care if you break every rule in the book as long as you tell them a story that they want to read. To them these books are their friends. I constantly have customers explaining book plots to me – but not like an author would, where they mention GMC or character arcs or foreshadowing, but rather, they talk about the stories as if it was something that had happened to their friends. It’s personal.

Oh and here’s another completely encouraging fact. They don’t all want to read the same story. Like I said before, some want vampires, some wants horses. Some want vampire horses (okay, not really, but hmmmmm, a future trend perhaps?????). The thing is that it’s so easy to get swayed by trends or trying to write for the market. But never forget that publishing is one of those odd industries that doesn’t know what it wants until it sees it. So try and find the story that you truly want to tell and then have faith that there is someone out there who is looking for that exact story.

Don’t settle for less. Publishing can be a hard business so if you’re going to crack it, it might as well be with the sort of story that you really want to tell! So my challenge to everyone who has stalled with their writing and who is trying to get restarted: find your story and tell it the best way you can. Learn your craft, but not because it’s ‘the rules’ but because it’s going to help you tell a better yarn. You’re not writing to get published, you’re writing so that when a reader comes up to me at the library and asks me to recommend the perfect book to them, I can recommend yours!

Oh and seriously, if my bosses are looking at this, I wasn’t joking about that chocolate fountain…

Amanda Ashby was born in Australia, has spent eight years in England and currently lives in New Zealand. When she’s not moving country, she also likes to write books. (Okay, she also likes to eat chocolate, watch television and sit around doing not much, but let’s just keep that amongst ourselves, shall we?)

She has a degree in English and Journalism from the University of Queensland and is married with two children. As well as writing, she works part-time at the children/teen desk of her local library, which basically means that someone pays her to talk about books. Her debut book, You Had Me at Halo was nominated for a Romantic Times Reviewers Choice award, and her current book Zombie Queen of Newbury High was listed by the New York Public Library’s Stuff for the Teen Age 2010 as well as being nominated for the YALSA popular paperback 2011. You can also follow her blog.

I’ve always wondered if Paul in the Bible knew a lot of runners. Oh! Maybe Greek Olympians! Wouldn’t that be cool?! He used a lot of running analogies in his writing. Lately, I’ve started thinking about writing in terms of running.

Kitty's Runner's Journal

You might have heard me talk about running here. I talk about it on Facebook a lot because we (John and I) just completed a 14k race (about 8 ½ miles). The City 2 Surf race, with 80,000 entrants, is the third largest foot race in the world! Not only was it fun, but we both came in under our goal times! In 3 ½ weeks we’ll be running the Sydney Running Festival’s half marathon (21km, 13 miles), both for fun and to raise money for a charity, CHUM Therapeutic Riding.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned about running and writing over the last year or three…

• You may not finish the race if you don’t train long enough beforehand. I thought I was going to die the first time I ran a 5k race. I’d only been in training for 9 weeks. I finished, but thank goodness the race wasn’t longer.
• If you don’t train properly, you might hurt yourself and not be able to run the race at all. I bought the wrong shoes and hurt my foot so badly I had to drop out of a race two weeks before it started, no money back, months of training wasted.
• Training sucks – unless you decide it doesn’t. Attitude is at least 75% of how I keep going. John and I used to sleep in when it rained. But we got further and further behind in our training. One day we just had to decide – do we want to run that race in five months or not?
• The more you know about the course, the better prepared you can be and the more likely you’ll finish well. The City 2 Surf course is very hilly. One hill is even called “Heartbreak Hill.” When our friend Steven drove us from beginning to end, we could see and mentally prepare for what we’d need to do on race day. We also added a lot more hill training to our prep work because we could see we wouldn’t be prepared if we didn’t. We both ran, not walked, up Heartbreak Hill.
• “I’m running for distance, not for speed.” Sometimes I get up before dawn and haven’t slept well and can barely get out the door and sooo don’t want to run. I can feel I’m running slower and I have to focus on my posture because I’m slouching from being tired. Then instead of letting the negatives get me down, I repeat that mantra in my head. Amazingly, I’ve never quit before the assigned distance for the day has been run, and I often finish with a far better time than I expected (i.e., slower, but not nearly as slow as it felt! LOL!).
• A runner’s journal will help you find your strengths and weaknesses over time. I know I run better in the cold than in the heat or humidity. I’m better in the morning before breakfast than in the afternoon. I’m good at pacing, but need to work on speed. I know what sports supplements give me more energy and which ones give me a stomachache. Because I write it all in the journal.
• Even though I’ve never considered myself athletic, and have been a couch potato most of my life, I have to run 1-2 miles just to get into the groove. MILES, people!! I couldn’t run one mile when I was 18!
• I can’t compare myself to other runners, but I can compare myself today to my runs yesterday, last week, last month. I’m running significantly longer (our short runs 3x a week right now are 10k each (!) plus a “long” run on the weekend) and I’m getting faster all the time. Sure, practically everybody passes me. But maybe she’s been running since she was 10. Maybe he’s only running one lap and I’m pacing myself for three.
• I can’t run hard and fast all the time to run my best race. Neither can I let my training slide. I have to run uphill, downhill, long slow runs, short fast runs, and I have to include strength training and adequate stretching as well. I learned this by reading books and magazines on running, and by asking other runners.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have to explain the connections to writing. Whatever our chosen “training” is, we need to keep it consistent. If it’s every day, do it. But if it’s only Saturday morning, don’t compare yourself to other writers. You need to write every Saturday morning. Period.

And we need to keep track of what we’re thinking and feeling and listen to our subconscious guiding us. It’s the same way a runner listens to her body. If my knee hurts, it might be because my foot is striking the ground incorrectly. If my shoulders hurt, it’s because I’m tensing up as I get tired. When I pay attention, I can correct the problem and the symptom fades. It’s the same with writing.

Kitty's new Writer's Journal!

And yet as I write this, I think, why am I comparing my routines to other writers’ (write every day, write 100 words a day, write 10 pages a day, etc.) instead of checking my routines against my own past? Are both quality and quantity improving compared to this time last year? Two years ago? (Yes!) And why don’t I have a writer’s journal? I’m starting one today! (See the picture!)

I’ll close with some of my favorite running quotes from Paul and other Biblical writers. See if you can find a correlation between running races in the quotes and in your own writing life. Godspeed!

Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training… Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly… (1 Corinthians 9:25-26)

Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. (Hebrews 12:1)

Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. (Isaiah 40:30-31)

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. (2 Timothy 4:7)

You’ve spent weeks, months, years writing your novel. You’ve listened to your characters. Told their stories. Described their hometowns, their friends, their troubles.

Then you took a close look at your words to make sure they were the exact ones you wanted. Made sure the verbs were active and descriptive. You took out your highlighters and systematically analyzed your descriptions, emotions, and internal thoughts. You happily discovered a token of symbolism and rewrote a scene to make the meaning more poignant.

You traded critiques with your writing partners. They gave you hours of their time to help you see the good things in your work and point out the areas that needed a little something.

Now what do you do? Hide the manuscript in a drawer?

Or maybe, you make a few tentative submissions and after weeks of waiting, hoping, dreaming, you get one—or several—of those “it’s not for me” letters.

Then do you put your characters in a drawer, silencing their voices?

I know it is tempting. I have my fair share of half-written stories or first drafts that are buried somewhere in my desk. But if you’ve gone to all the trouble to take a real shot at getting published, you have to keep going.

So, how much rejection should you prepare for? Here are some numbers I saw floating around this week:

• Brodiashton: I credit my finding an agent to my sis-in-law’s challenge to me to “reach 100 rejections”. Probably wouldn’t inspire everyone. August 17th #kidlitchat

• Jake Bell’s blog entry The View from the Rejection Pile: “There is an old writers’ adage that if you haven’t gotten one hundred rejections–or maybe it’s two hundred–you haven’t tried hard enough.…If you send out only one query letter to one agent, you only have to deal with the blow of getting one rejection letter. However, while the writer who sends out 237 queries to get one acceptance may have to endure 236 rejections, the final scoreboard between the two would read 1-0.”

• And, on Monday you can join the WriteOnCon live chat (August 23 at 9 PM EDT.) and ask Elana Johnson about her 189 (!) queries.

The book is written. You think it’s pretty good. May as well follow it through until the end. And if you do, come back and tell us. We’d love to celebrate with you!

http://twitter.com/shonnaslayton

          Oops. Stephanie forgot to write a blog this week. But she finished a project. Not a writing project, but a major house project. Oh, that’s right. You don’t care about that. You are here to read about writing, getting it done and getting it read. Well, I’m sorry, but this week I dropped the writing ball.

          Recently my husband reminded a young man that it’s not if you “fall down” in life. You will fail and fall down. It’s how you get back up that determines your character. It certainly applies to me this week. I’ve fallen down, slipped up and generally failed, especially with my writing and this blog.

          But I won’t quit! I’ll get back up, refocus on my goals and restart those routines. I may not finish anything this week, but I will certainly make progress. And I will keep on picking myself up and starting over for as long as it takes. That is the only way to finish anything. And I will finish. Something. Soon.

          Keep at it! Even when you fall flat on your face and despair of ever getting the words right. Or even just getting them down. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back to the writing. That’s where you’ll find me. If you care, that is.

Before I get started with my blog this week I just have to talk about WriteOnCon! Were you one of the 11,000 attendees of this grassroots conference?!?

WriteOnCon was the first annual online kidlit conference held Aug 10-12, hosted by a group of authors who met online. Even if you don’t write kidlit or YA you will find some great advice in the archives. Warning! You may spend HOURS at the site. There is so much—articles, vlogs, live chat transcripts, and even critique forums.

Check it out—this may be a game changer in the conference circuit. Search for Nightly Recap for easy links to each session. There are too many good ones, for example:

Give Yourself Permission by editor Molly O’Neill

Writing Realistic, Captivating Dialog by author Tom Leveen

The First Five Pages by Kathleen Ortiz (3 part series, part 2, part 3)

How to Make a Character Collage by author Tera Lynn Childs

Sigh. Okay, gotta clear my head—suffering from information overload. But so good.

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Our topic this month is revision and finishing. Last week, I talked about the Mindset of Finishing. How the mental drive to finish your work comes from these four areas: concentration, confidence, control, and commitment. Very similar to the mindset of an athlete.

Now that we’ve got our brains straight, it’s on to the physicality of writing. The Method of Finishing. Maybe more than anything else, the routine of finishing is the most important writer’s routine. ‘cause if you don’t finish….

How many ways can you finish a novel? I thought up two categories: deadline and plan.

1. Deadline: Determine your end date. Once you are on contract, your publisher will do this for you. So, for us aspiring folks, we’ve got to set our own deadlines. If necessary, use a critique or accountability partner to hold your hands to the keyboard. And, of course, expect to do more work in the final days leading up to the deadline. You’ll procrastinate—you know you will.

• Seasonal—This summer I set a goal of editing a shorter middle-grade novel I had written a few years ago. My deadline was the start of school—met it! I’m kind of liking this school schedule (just makes it easier to be on same schedule as my kids), so my next project is set to end before Christmas break.

• Set a date—Practice for when you do get that contract. Throw down your own gauntlet and challenge yourself to a due date. Work backwards from that date to mark when you want to hit certain milestones.

• Aim for a conference/contest—Determine to have your book ready for a critique or contest entry. This method gives you a little extra purpose because you can then “turn it in.”

2. Plan. I should call this the plug-along plan. Step by step? Day by day?

• Chapter a day. No pressure way: Keep track on your calendar when you complete a chapter. More pressure way: Write the chapters on the calendar first.

• Number of pages per day. (See above, but with pages instead of chapters)

• Checklist (plot line, character arc, descriptions, tension…). Sometimes when you are editing you just need to focus on one skill at a time. Break out the topics you want to hit and systematically work your way through. Write the list on paper so you can cross it off!

What did I miss? Any other good tips on finishing?

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Part 1 of the Writer’s Routine: Finishing

Sitting down to write my blog this week, I thought about the saying that performance in any sport is 80 percent mental. So, I surfed around trying to find out from where the quote originated, and stumbled across something even more interesting: the 4 C’s of sports psychology, as described on Brian Mac’s Sports Coach website.

The 4 C’s are:  concentration, confidence, control, and commitment.

They are summed up on the website like this:

• Concentration – ability to maintain focus
• Confidence – believe in one’s abilities
• Control – ability to maintain emotional control regardless of distraction
• Commitment – ability to continue working to agreed goals

What would these 4 C’s look like for a writer?

• Concentration—the ability to stay with your story until the end; to not get distracted by the shiny new story; to not get distracted by Twitter or writer blogs. The ability to keep writing until the story is finished.

• Confidence—the ability to not take critiques personally; to keep believing in your project and your growing skills; to not compare yourself to other writers. The ability to trust your training and your voice to tell the story you want to tell.

• Control—the ability to establish writer’s routines to maximize the way you work best; to minimize distractions; to create workable goals. The ability to manage the parts of a writer’s career that can be managed.

• Commitment—the ability to consistently get the words down, whether it’s a daily word count or an annual NaNoWriMo challenge; to routinely improve your craft; to be a part of the writing community. To put your everything into writing your best story and seeing it through to the submission process.

If you notice, I did change the third C “control” to be less about controlling emotions—important for an athlete in the moment—and more about controlling work habits. (Writers don’t control emotions, we explore them and try to write about them in a fresh way.) I highly recommend reading the sports psychology article if you struggle in any one of these areas. You might learn some creative ways to boost any of these C’s in your own writer’s routines.

          Finishing. I’m supposed to start us off on the topic of finishing? Is this a joke? I’m the poster child for procrastinating and NOT finishing things.

          Even when I think I’m done, I’m not. A couple of years ago I “finished” a draft (not the first by a long shot) of a novel I’d been working on for years. Weeks later, when I went back to it to edit and polish it before submitting, I ended up changing so much that it became a different story. It never did get submitted. I’m still working on it! In the shorthand I use to refer to it, it’s called E&M, the initials of the hero and heroine. (Or maybe it’s really an anagram for an Everlasting & Mutating mess!)

          More recently, I thought the first drafts of my two non-fiction projects were done. Not so! My cookbook is missing several must-have recipes and a LOT of narrative and anecdotes. The manual for the software application my husband wrote needs almost as much work, too. At least according to my husband.

          My propensity to start and never finish projects is ever-present in all areas of my life. There’s the baby quilt for my firstborn (he’s 22), a whole slew of waiting-to-be-framed inspirational tidbits tacked on my walls or languishing in a drawer, mending or alterations waiting in a basket (for 3 years!), piles of books to read and who knows what else.

          This in the person scheduled to talk today? About finishing projects?

          Yes! It is. The perfect person.

          I do have a slew of unfinished projects littering my life. I’m good with that. That means I haven’t quit. I’m still working on them. I print out those inspirational quotes and tack them to the wall without frames. I store craft projects with accompanying instructions and notes so I can easily begin again. I write almost every day. Perseverance is the ONLY way to make it to The End. One word, one sentence, one page at a time. From first draft to second to tenth. Even if all I’m doing is procrastinating the decision to quit, it is still perseverance. And perseverance is the one character quality every successful writer must have.

          While I may wait until my firstborn is married and expecting a child to go back to working on it, that Mother Goose quilt with its 8 hand appliqued and embroidered squares will get finished. As will all the other projects, including the Everlasting & Mutating mess. But first, this cookbook and the manual.

          Time to get to work!

Looking back over the past 100 weeks of my blogs, I discovered a pattern. Even though we set the topics as a group, I can still manage to swing my focus over to:

Getting serious about writing.

Finding time to write / Writer moms.

Giving Pep talks.

Yeah, it is all about me and my hang-ups! So here are some of my favorite blogs, grouped according to my writing struggles. Hope some of you can relate and be encouraged.

Getting Serious About Writing.

1. NaNoWriMo Meets Flylady. The blog that started it all. The philosophy behind Routines for Writers is establishing writing routines to make writing an automatic part of your life. What Flylady did for cleaning, we wanted to do for writing.

2. A Writer’s Business Plan. This blog talks about when I started getting serious about writing—not as a hobby but as a career. If you don’t have a business plan or goals, this blog will help get you started.

3. Making Writing a Priority. Time to walk the talk. All the dreaming in the world won’t get your book written. You’ve got to make it happen. It takes Passion and Discipline.

Finding Time to Write/Writer Moms

4. A Writer’s Shiny Sink or 10 Ways to Write Every Day. I think of this blog as my sleeper blog. When it first came out, it received normal hits/responses. But then, someone sent a tweet and it got retweeted and passed around for a few days. I’m guessing this is a small taste of what it is like to have your novel debut. If you were one of the RT’ers, thanks—it was fun!

5. Summer Survival Guide for Writer Moms. I like this blog because it is a stealth-way to include two other favorites that are linked inside it (25 Ways to Write While Distracted and 30 Ways to Keep Kids Busy so You Can Write.) Also, it’s the blog where I share my discovery of the “Interrupt Cards” which has completely changed how I write with kids in the house. These cards alone are worth the effort of 100 weeks of blogging!

6. Focus, Focus, Focus. What happens when I have unlimited time to write? Uh oh, better find my focus and fast.

Pep Talks

7. One Big Mountain. Oh, boy is it ever! This blog compares the writer’s journey to hiking up a mountain.

8. Takes Longer Than You Think. Enough said?

9. Author Crush Month: Lois Lowry. Author Crush month in Feb is one of my favorite features that makes our blog unique. While it is somewhat scary and intimidating to approach an author I admire to ask for a piece of his or her time and expertise, I have found the month to be a great encouragement to me and a big hit with our readers. All of our guest blogs are just excellent, but this one in particular found me right where I am in my writing life. Lois starts out writing about her first writing table, tucked in a little corner of her husband’s den and ends with:

And I have a comfortable chair, now. It swivels and tilts and twirls. So different from the stiff ladderback that I placed in front of the little table in the corner once!  But it wasn’t the chair, or the corner, that mattered then, or that matters now, really. It’s the feeling of the space, and the sanctity of what can happen here.

10. Avoiding Discouragement—A Melodrama. Totally different from my other blogs. I had fun with this one, making up characters named Optimist, Discouragement, and Edi (for Edification). Can Optimist survive the writer’s life?

Thank you readers for returning every week to be a part of our blog. We are thrilled you are here. It’s been fun to get to know some of you through the comments and visiting your blogs and websites. We’ll spread some more reader love in Sept when we have our second anniversary.

I can hardly believe this is our 100th week for Routines for Writers! It’s been fun going back over old posts and trying to decide what my favorites are – and fun to see a pattern in my faves! Here are my Top Ten favorite posts over the last 100 weeks.

I like reminding myself how to keep my spirits up like in An Antidote to Discouragement. I got a lot out of writing through my thoughts and feelings on expectations versus reality in Satisfaction Guaranteed. And after a great Author Crush Month, I spent some time trying to figure out if I had A Routine That Doesn’t Fit.

In Time Wasters and How to Avoid Them, I shared my thoughts on how to get more writing done in the 24 hours we each have. I also like to think about planning my writing and my future as best I can like in Planning For Success and Sowing For Success. We’ve also talked a lot about software and Internet tools that can help us, but my favorite post along those lines was Software to Keep Me Organized.

I’m a big believer in getting away from your normal routine at least once a year to get more writing done, often with other writers. Read Plan Your Own Writing Retreat if you want some ideas on how to do the same.

Like a lot of writers, I’m always revising how I do things – including how I revise my drafts like in Back Away From Your Computer. And particularly since starting my master degree in creative writing, I’ve been thinking a lot more about why I write, like in Meet Their Needs with Excellence and Generosity.

It’s funny how sharing these with you has inspired me to re-read some of my old posts, my thoughts on writing, why I do it and how to do it better. School starts again next week – I’m sure these will help me get inspired and motivated for another semester of working hard at my craft!

          We’ve been blogging for 100 weeks! Can you believe it? We have some fun stuff planned for September, our two year anniversary month, but we thought we’d celebrate our 100th week by giving you a Top Ten List. It’s certainly been a trip down Memory Lane for me as I’ve perused my posts from the past 100 weeks.

          It seemed almost arrogant to go through what I’ve posted and bring it back to your attention. Sort of like a pompous, self-centered little girl jumping up and down shouting, “Look at me! Look at me!” As I’ve reread my posts, though, I’ve been encouraged, inspired and reminded of several important truths. I hope you get as much out of rereading them as I did.

          I had to include my first post, Stephanie’s Intro. This is where it all started.

          My second blog was Routines and jumped right into the heart of our purpose, that routines are the way to productivity.

          Changing times discusses the importance of knowing when to change that routine.

          Wasting Time talks of the importance of establishing a a set writing time.

          Since NaNoWriMo has been such a big part of my life for several years, there are several posts relating to preparing or writing during NaNoWriMo: Writing Fast vs Writing Slow, How To Prepare Your Life For NaNo, Goals for NaNoWriMo?

          My Rewarding Routine reminded me of the importance of rewarding myself as well as a writing routine that needs to be implemented.

          I have several posts on goals, Goals-How and When to Evaluate Them and Anatomy of a Good Goal are just two of my favorites.

          What were the posts that helped you them most?