As the mother of two young children with limited writing time I need to make sure the time I do get is focussed. My goal is to produce six books a year. I feel like this is realistic for this stage of my life. I have one son in school and the other attends four mornings of kindy a week. Altogether, I probably get about 15 hours a week as long as no one is sick and there are no unexpected mishaps (which basically never happens). So let’s reduce this to 10 hours a week of pretty decent writing time.
In order to meet my goals I have to work hard and stay on task. It’s so easy to get distracted by Facebook and emails and sometimes finding the motivation to just sit down and write what I have planned can be really hard. (Kudos to Martin Crosbie and his 1,000 Words a Day Project!)
I have had to fit work in around two school holidays that have happened very close together thanks to Christmas and Chinese New Year (now that we are living in China). I have a family first policy, which means I try very hard NOT to write during holiday time. For my last writing project I managed to finish all my planning prior to Christmas, which meant I had three school weeks to write my first draft before the second lot of holidays began. I was determined to get it done…and you know what, I did.
One thing that really helped me achieve my goal was a new website I discovered called myWriteClub. This website is still in beta stage, but I signed up thinking it looked like fun and could really help motivate me. Continue reading “Motivate Me”
Why in the world could I possibly need to know how to resize a picture? you ask. Well, Skippy, it goes like this. A reporter or blogger or some other nice person who wants to feature your book asks you for a jpg image of your book cover – or a head shot – no larger than 500kb. But the only image you have of yourself looking all sexy and authory is 4 megabytes. So you send it anyway. BAD AUTHOR!!!! That’s a really good way to annoy someone who’s trying to help you. But…how do I make the image smaller? you say. Well, I’ll show you. Aren’t you glad you asked?