Archive for January, 2008

Checking In

Jan 31st, 08 / 2 Comments

At the beginning of January, I challenged you to make your own luck, by starting the year off with a kind gesture. How did you do with your plan?

I was going to knit mitts for the food bank and had hoped to knit an entire basket of knitting wool into warm fuzzies. By last night, I’d gotten about halfway through the basket.

I had thought about making this a post about realistic goal setting – that would be including life and work into the time demands when setting goals in the first place – but decided instead to talk about prioritizing. I always have a lot of competing goals and objectives, and never have nearly enough time. I could see this as a failure to effectively manage my time, but knitting isn’t about time management. Neither is living life as well as I can. I don’t want to be on a schedule every minute of every day – I’d rather have some things not get done. So, while my goal-setting might be overly ambitious some months, I don’t see that as a problem.

This is because I prioritize. I have goals that aren’t negotiable. My daily page counts and weekly page counts and manuscript delivery dates would be those goals. My writing really does come first and everything else has to wait until that’s done. I can list the order of priorities but you can guess how it goes – and charity knitting does come further down the list. It has to.

So, I’m looking at this month with the half-full perspective instead of the half-empty one — it’s true that I knit fewer mitts than I had hoped to, but on the other hand, the food bank will have 3 hat-and-mitt sets and 6 pairs of mittens that they didn’t have a month ago. That’s not so bad.

And here’s another half-full thing for you. Last night I cast on that dragon shawl that I’d told you about, and knit the first 50 rows. That sounds like a lot until you realize that I started with 2 stitches, at the point of the triangle, and that 50 rows is barely the tip of the iceberg (so to speak). It is literally the size of a bar napkin and looks like this:

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This is the bottom point, where the dragon’s tail turns. On the left is part of the little spade that goes at the end of his tail – the background is filled with a mesh pattern. There were several new stitches for me to learn in following this pattern, which interesting. I don’t mind knitting lace from a chart – it’s not the same as knitting something simple but the challenge is fun.

The thing is that I’m not happy with this result. I don’t like how the pattern stitch used for the dragon’s body feels – it’s too thick – and I don’t like some of the design choices made to have the mesh flow around his form. Blocking will make the design snap more, but it can’t do anything for those spots that trouble me.

It’s a wonderful pattern and the finished ones I’ve seen online are beautiful. I just know what will bug me and realize that it’s not the pattern for me.

That brings us back to our prioritization theme. If I’m going to spend two to three months (and four skeins of Malabrigo) knitting a project, I want something that I love to pieces as a result. So, I’m attributing the pattern purchase and the night of knitting to experience – I learned two new stitches, after all – and frogging the dragon today.

On the upside, I have four skeins of Malabrigo laceweight in search of a pattern! Woo HOO!

Gina? Any ideas?

Miscellaneous Musing

Multi-Tasking

Jan 30th, 08 / 1 Comment

Being a published author requires multi-tasking. First of all, an author must continue to write new stories. An author must nurture his/her creative abilities, continue to learn more about craft and continue to produce work at a sustainable pace.

This is pretty obvious, and we all assume that this is what authors do. There’s also the hidden part of author responsibilities, a facet that is becoming more important with each passing year. Selling a book opens a new range of author obligations. A published author needs to do promotion, like maintaining a website and/or a blog, making appearances online and live, booking signings, writing articles, participating in discussions, teaching workshops etc. etc. all in the name of increasing visibility.

This sounds like fun, except that the energy to do promotion and publicity – an extrovert energy, for lack of a better word – is just about as opposite to creative energy – a more introverted energy – as is possible. The two responsibilities require different ways of thinking and different approaches to challenges.

Depending upon the nature of the individual author, one will be easier than the other. Our natural tendency is to gravitate to the easier task, so extroverted authors may neglect their writing for promoting, while introverted writers may write without promoting much at all. As in most things, there’s a healthy balance to strike, somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, so that people hear about the books the author writes and the author has an upcoming publication schedule too.

This requires multi-tasking and/or time management. I find that I can juggle between the two suites of responsibility really well – almost simultaneously – at certain points in the manuscript-in-process. Right at the beginning of a book, in the first 100 pages of the ms or so, the story and conflict is so vivid to me that I can look away for an hour and pick it right back up again. Same with the last 100 pages, when I have 10,000 post-it notes flying in formation on my desk. When things are intense, I allocate time, creating in the morning, then doing promo stuff in the afternoon.

It’s the middle bit of the mip that’s tricky for me. So, here I am, right in the middle of Erik’s book and simultaneously days before the on-sale date of Quinn’s book and my multi-tasking abilities are sub-par. I’m finally finding out what happened to the Pyr when Erik took command, why he blames himself for the current state of affairs and how Eileen is going to fix all of that. I haven’t even heard Sigmund’s view of it all yet. It’s fascinating stuff and I want to know more.

I’ll bet you do, too, so I’m going to keep after it this week. Quinn has a fabulous cover and great early reviews. His Amazon ranking is about 5400 right this minute, which is quite exciting. I think he’ll do just fine over the next couple of days – and really, I expect he wants me to help Erik heal, as well.

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Writing

Around the World

Jan 29th, 08 / 2 Comments

More foreign editions on my doorstep lately, so I wanted to share.

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On the left is another German edition of THE PRINCESS, this time in trade and labelled as “a classic”. If Ullstein says it’s so, it must be true! That book has previously been published in mass market and also in a hardcover book edition in German. They do seem to love the clinch covers in Germany.

And the darling little volume on the right is another Bunko edition from Harlequin Japan. I just love these books. The paper is wonderful and the cover art is always exquisite. That’s THE SORCERESS with another lovely package, which has been published in Japan before in mass market format.

Publishing

The Super Scooper Blog Review

Jan 28th, 08 / 3 Comments

I think she liked the book.

Scooper’s Review of KISS OF FIRE.

Maybe, just maybe.

LOL!

Dragonfire, Promoting

In My Town

Jan 25th, 08 / 2 Comments

In my town, people ride bicycles a lot.

(This doesn’t seem so odd, but wait for it.)

They ride bikes all year ’round, even though we can get quite a bit of snow. During a blizzard or storm, I prefer to walk if I have errands rather than drive. It’s not uncommon to be passed on the sidewalk by someone riding a bike.

(Wait. It gets better.)

The people who ride bikes are often carrying something, like, for example an empty two-four. (“Two-four” is Canadian slang for a case of 24 beer bottles.) More often than not, in fact, the bike rider has a two-four. They typically hold the empty two-four on one hip and guide the bike with the other hand.

If the two-four is full, they balance it over the handlebars. There’s obviously a greater risk factor associated with dropping the box.

They are going to the beer store on bicycles. A two-four isn’t that light, especially when it’s full. It’s not easy to balance such a load as you ride up and down hills – not so easy as slinging grocery bags across the handlebars – but I see it all the time here. It is a regional quirk.

But that’s not all.

Many of these beer-store-bound-cyclists go for more. Many of them either hold a lit cigarette or carry a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee in their “free” hand. This bit of dexterity maybe requires the confidence that comes from emptying a two-four in the first place. It certainly isn’t a trick I’d want to try myself. (It is more typical to see this feat attempted with the empty two-four than the full one.)

Either way, the sight of someone riding a bike through the snow with a cigarette and an empty two-four always makes me laugh. I associate bike-riding with exercise and healthy living choices – clearly these people just see bicycles as transport. At any rate, it still cracks me up.

And maybe it made you smile, too. Either way, have a good weekend – wherever and however you get your beer!

Miscellaneous Musing