Forms & Techniques: Unplug with TPR

When I first started writing I struggled with finding the time to write. It was still just a hobby at that time, and I always waited until the family was asleep so I could write in secret. Until I was introduced to The Practice Room. It was there that I became a writer and practiced it everyday with the companionship of other writers. I'm happy to share with you today my awesome friend Tina, creator of The Practice Room.

TINA LAUREL LEE 

I'm very thrilled that my good friend, critter and TPRer extraordinaire, Amy McBay, invited me to guest over here at the Dojo. I love any chance I get to talk about The Practice Room. Thanks, Amy, to you and all the folks here at the Dojo!

If you are anything like me, it’s hard to write while the bathroom floor is filthy and the kids demand cereal. To make it even harder, my family is way more invested in whether I get the laundry folded than whether I finish this manuscript. And that makes a lot of sense, because this writing thing takes a long time. Who has the attention span for it. Even for me, vacuuming provides way more immediate gratification than siting down to sweat over that awful manuscript. So what to do?

I schedule an hour in The Practice Room. TPR is a blog that serves a fantastic community of fantastic writers. It has become a place where we support each other, keep track of each other’s progress and cheer each other on. The community shares links, advice, and trials and tribulations and has become a beautiful support network. And seeing as I am saying this at the Dojo, I'm sure readers understand exactly what that means!

So even when everything else is piling up, I make myself write. It’s an hour that I will not check my email (most days). I will not look at Facebook (almost always). I let my family know that I am off-limits (unless it’s an emergency). It's a scheduled hour where the writing can come first. TPR is about productivity and community. 

This is how it works: 

First, EVERYONE IS WELCOME! Check the schedule. I set up the week’s unplugged hours on Sunday and post them in a new post and on the sidebar. At the allotted time, Post 1 appears 30 minutes in advance of the unplug (barring unusual circumstances). This gives everyone a chance to set our goals in the comments and also get the last minute emails and blog surfing out of the way. Post 2 announces that it’s time to turn everything off and just write! The rules: no procrastinations and work toward a writing goal. When the time is up, Post 3 appears with a chat box and we get a chance to compare notes.

Read about a typical first time here (Link: http://www.tinalaurellee.com/2010/10/what-to-expect-when-it-is-your-first.html). 

Please feel free to email me with questions, comments, scheduling suggestions or just to introduce yourself! tina dot laurel at gmail dot com 

Hope to write with you someday!

About Tina: I have an MFA in creative writing, an unpublished YA novel under my belt, and a second MG on the way.

Warm up for writing by reading

A while ago at my critique group, which meets in a library, on of my fellow writers sat down at the table with a book they had just checked out. I glanced the title. The book seemed totally out of character to what I had envisioned this person reading. Probably because the genre was no where in the ball park of the genre which she wrote. When I asked her if the book was just something random she decided to read, she responded, "No, I love these books. And I know it's weird that I don't read the kind of books that I write--maybe that's why I'm not published." She said that in jest, but I think there was some truth behind her observation.

We as authors should, for the most part, read in the same genre as we write. This is essential to help "warm up" and get ready for the actual process of writing. If you are not reading the same genre as you write, then you may want to evaluate your "to read" list. That's not to say you can't deviate once in awhile, especially when it comes to reading the books of your associates.(What goes around comes around).

But even more important than reading in your genre, is just reading. When I started writing, I thought I didn't have time to read. I went a whole year without reading a single novel while I worked on my first book. I look back now and see how ineffective that decision was. Now, I realize that by reading others' books, not only do I give my brain a renewing diversion, but I see what I like and don't like about their writing style or story presentation, and learn from it.


"Read! Read! Read! And then read some more. When you find something that thrills you, take it apart paragraph by paragraph, line by line, word by word, to see what made it so wonderful. Then use those tricks the next time you write."

That charge to writers happens to come from novelist W.P. Kinsella, but in fact he's echoing centuries of good advice. Numerous other authors, past and present, have stressed the importance of reading to a writer's development. I've listed just a few below.

For a man to write well, there are required three necessaries: to read the best authors, observe the best speakers, and much exercise of his own style.
(Ben Jonson, Timber, or Discoveries, 1640)

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
(Richard Steele, The Tatler, 1710)

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
(Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849)

Read everything--trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out.
(William Faulkner, interviewed by Lavon Rascoe for The Western Review, Summer 1951)

• If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you. Maybe it's not quite that easy, but if you want to learn something, go to the source. . . . Dogen, a great Zen master, said, "If you walk in the mist, you get wet." So just listen, read, and write. Little by little, you will come closer to what you need to say and express it through your voice.
  (Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, rev ed., 2005)

What genres do you like to read? Are they similar to what you like to write?

Meditation: Going Through the Motions

Sometimes you don't have time to sit in a quiet room, stop everything you're doing and systematically empty out our mind. Or maybe you do, but you're disorganized (like me) so you can never find that time.

The great thing about that? Is that life hands us mind-emptying tasks All. The. Time. Tasks where all we have to do (all we really can d0) is go through the motions.

And think about it: when we're going through the motions, we don't really need to use any cognitive part of our brains. A lot of times this is when we overthink little things or when we simply zone out all together. Ever gotten in your car, driven home, then not known how you got there? This is repetitive motion in action, my friends. Imagine if we took all that zoning-out time and put it to good work?

For example, here is my number one, all-time-favorite mind-emptying task:

Doing the dishes.

Sometimes (I can't say always, because hey, I'm human, but sometimes) I really like doing the dishes. Sometimes doing the dishes is the only time I get in a day to think without any interruptions. It's just me and The Mr. right now, but even when I was growing up, I liked to do the dishes and think.

Think all my think-y thoughts, so that I can have thunk them. Or not think. Just empty out my brain so that I can clear some space for new thoughts (read: story ideas!) to emerge.

I cannot tell you how many fresh ideas I have gotten while doing the dishes.

I don't go into this like I'm going into battle. I don't start doing the dishes thinking, "I have to figure out how _______ does _________ or ELSE." That never works. Or at least it never works for me. If I don't stop thinking about a problem, I can never see the solution because I'm too caught up on the fact that it's a problem!

What I DO is think "I have to figure out how _______ does _________." And then I stop. I let my mind blank out like it naturally would, nudging errant thoughts aside as they come.

And you know what? Often the solution presents itself to me, all nicely tied up in a bow. Sometimes it's so perfect I have to ditch the dishes and get it down on paper as fast as I can.

Dishes aren't anywhere near my only means of doing this, by the way. Any type of busy work will do. Gardening, cleaning, the possibilities are endless!

Do you have a go-to mindless task for when you need time to think? What is it?

Lisa Asanuma graduated with a Literature degree from the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara. She has worked as a freelance writer and as an editor for Drollerie Press, and she is the co-founder of Type Set, Inc, an editing and formatting service. She’s currently working on a YA fantasy novel, but in the meantime she publishes a new short story for free every other Friday at Tales From the Hollow Tree, a fiction blog she shares with author Isabelle Santiago.

Website | Blog | Hollow Tree | Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr | Etsy

Twitter: Getting Started

Oh Twitter. We love you. We fear you. Please be our friend.

Does that sound like you? Do you think "What is this Twitter of which you speak?" And secretly (or not so secretly) you're pretty sure you should know about it? That you should sprout your own little twitter wings and fly?

Well, let's see if I can demystify Twitter for you and get you flying. 

Over the next few weeks, we'll cover everything you need to know about Twitter and on toward the end of March we'll have a live chat to celebrate and to answer any lingering questions you might have.

In the meantime, please ask your questions in the comments and I'll get you the answers!

WHAT IS TWITTER AND WHY DO I NEED IT?

Twitter is a free service that lets you share tidbits of your life and interests in 140 characters or less. Your messages are read by "followers"--people who choose to subscribe to your messages. Each message is a "Tweet", and every user is identified by the "@" sign followed by their username (for instance @ali_cross).

Twitter can be of great value or a great waste of time; it's important to have a clear purpose when you use Twitter so you use it, and it doesn't use you. 

Twitter says it's purpose is to answer the question, "What are you doing?", but if that's how you use it, you'll soon find people aren't as interested in following you as you might like. I mean, how interesting is, "I'm going to the store"?

Try instead to answer the question, "What's important to me?". Now the conversation is more interesting and can generate a conversation. For instance, I might say, "Just finished WATCHED by @Watched1. Such a great mystery!". A follower who reads my tweet can respond with, "I love mysteries! Gonna go check out WATCHED! Thx!" 

So we've answered the what, but how about the why?

Do you need Twitter? No.

Can Twitter be helpful to you, as a writer? Heck yes.

On Twitter you have the opportunity to connect with editors, agents, writers and book bloggers. You need to know these people. You can forge relationships that can help your career in a very real way. 

On Twitter, you can learn about contests and calls for submissions; you can foster a friendly relationship with agents that can help you get out of the slush pile; you can connect with book bloggers who will agree to read and review your book. 

Can you still get published without Twitter? Absolutely. But Twitter can certainly be a help to you along the way.

HOW DO I SIGN UP FOR TWITTER?

1. Go to Twitter.com, and click on the "Join the Conversation" button in the middle of the page.

2. Fill out your (actual) name, your email and password. You will then be asked to choose a username--the name following the "@" sign that everyone will use when talking with you. 

Think very carefully about this. A shorter name is best so you don't use up precious real estate when people want to send a tweet to you, "Hey @AuthorWhoHasASuperLongTwitterHandle! Saw this article and ..." There's not enough room to finish the thought.

It's best if you can get a name as close to your own name as possible. For instance, my username is pretty much perfect: @ali_cross. Short (but I have it easy since my name is short, lol), and when people talk to me, they know my REAL name, which makes it easier to find me online.

3. Twitter Suggestions. Twitter will suggest some popular users to follow, or you can search for specific people or groups like, "Authors", "Publishers", "Writers". You can search for multiple types of people at once simply by putting a comma after each word. Twitter will ask you to follow five people before you move on to the next step. And then it will ask you to choose five more.

4. Find your friends on Twitter. You can follow the prompts soTwitter will access your email contact lists to see if your friends are on Twitter.

5. Set up your profile. Now you'll see a page divided into two parts. On the left, you'll see a picture of an egg, your name, and your stats--the number of people you're following, the number of people who follow you, and the number of tweets you have sent (which is zero at this point).

Click on the name, or the egg, and then click EDIT PROFILE.

Choose a photo to represent you. Remember that most of the time people will only see a very tiny image, so it's best to choose something that 1) isn't too busy, and 2) is easily identifiable as YOU; for instance your face or book cover.

Enter your name as you would like people to see it.

You can enter your physical city, state or whatever you'd like for location. Or leave it blank.

Enter the URL for your blog or website--where do you want people to go to learn more about you and to connect with you?

Include a short, snappy but meaningful, bio.

And finally, choose whether you want to automatically post your tweets to Facebook. If your Facebook friends would be as interested in your tweets as your Twitter friends, then maybe connecting the two accounts would be a good choice for you. However, if you mainly use Facebook to connect with family and friends, but you're tweeting mostly about writing-related topics, you might not want the two accounts connected.

Personally, I choose NOT to have them connected. If ever I want a tweet to post to Facebook, there are other easy ways I can do that. That way only the tweets I want to share on Facebook are posted there. I'll share more on that in another Twitter post.

A WORD OF CAUTION ...

Now you're ready to start tweeting and building your Twitter connections. But remember, Twitter is a publishing medium. Tweets can be picked up by Google, so whatever you say can be found by anyone who Googles you, or whose interests happen to cross your path. So be sure to mind your manners and assume that whatever you say can and will be held against you!

Are you ready to fly?

Got questions? Ask away!

Ali Cross is the sensei of the Writer's Dojo where she holds a black belt in awesome. She lives in Utah with her kickin' husband, two sparring sons, one ninja cat, two sumo dogs and four zen turtles. Ali's the author the young adult urban fantasy novel BECOME. 

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#narleyninja Allison Ridley

Allison Ridley is truly, a narley ninja. She hosted #ninjachat "after hours" for pretty much all of last year and she was a fabulous host! Today, we're going to hear how Allison gets herself ready for a kick-butt writing session.

♥ ♥ ♥

So I have this incessant need to make everything I write turn out perfectly. I come up with a new idea or I get an assignment and suddenly I am unable to write anything because nothing I think of is good enough. I sit for hours, sometimes days, with a blank document tauntingly minimized on my dock.

It’s just part of my process.

I’m not one for extensive prewriting; I’ve found that I do most of my brainstorming and outlining in my head. See, all those hours of being unable to write are spent thinking. But I can’t just sit there and think, right? So I (wait for it) . . . procrastinate!

“But Ms. Ridley!” you protest. “Are you really trying to tell us that your warm-up routine is just procrastinating?”

Well, hypothetical student, to be perfectly honest? Yes. Take this post, for example. I’ve known about this post for several weeks now. I knew that I should get it written and get it to the lovely Ali well before the post date. And yet, every time I thought to myself, “Hey! You should write that post today!” I just couldn’t write it. I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted to sound clever and awesome and interesting. Instead I worked on my semi-annual Buffy re-watch and caught up on episodes of Glee. I read a few books. I learned how to carve my own rubber stamps. I even wrote lesson plans. So now, at 11:00 on the night before it’s due, I am writing my post.
It’s a decent post so far. It will get a little revision, sure, but it’s never going to be Holy-Cow-Your-Writing-Is-Amazing-and-Perfect like I wanted it to be.

THIS IS OKAY.

As you might know, nothing is perfect. Even Harry Potter itself has flaws. This is a natural part of existence, so it only makes sense that it is a natural part of writing. What I write will never, ever be as perfect as I want it to be. But I can’t just not write. I love writing. So instead of letting that need for perfection keep me from my craft, I just use it to my advantage. I think and think and think some more about what I’m going to write and how I’m going to write it. Meanwhile I bake bread from scratch and read old fanfiction and studiously avoid the writing I should be doing until the absolute last minute.

And then I write like crazy.

Those days and weeks spent thinking are invaluable. So yes, about seventy percent of my writing process is not writing. What can I say? It works for me. After I’ve had time to stretch and sift and work the kinks out of my ideas, I feel much more prepared to sit down and write them.

Plus, I get all that extra thinking time to swoon over Darren Criss.

♥

Allison Ridley is the biggest Harry Potter nerd you’ll ever meet (don’t even get her started on how the “t” in Voldemort is silent). She teaches English to high schoolers in Arizona and spends her free time baking, crafting, and reading as many YA books as possible. She is 23, currently single, and certainly not hinting at anything. (How YOU doin’?)

Allison loves writing young adult fiction and usually ends up writing fantasy or sci-fi. Her most recent work in progress is a combination of Greek mythology and violent unicorns. Her earliest writing memory is from when she was four years old: she doesn’t remember the actual story, but she does remember it was printed on that accordion-style paper with the perforated holed edges.

Allison has a short story called “That Whole Being-Dead Thing” in the anthology VAMPIRES, Zombies and Ghosts, Oh My! (and Other Creatures of the Night STORIES), edited by Eve Paludan. The anthology can be found on Amazon and on Smashwords.

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♥ ♥ ♥

You know, Terry Brooks calls all that sorta-procrastinating-but-really-mentall-writing-time "book dreaming", so I think it's totally legit.

What do you think of Allison's approach? Do you warm up in a similar fashion?

And YES there is #ninjachat this afternoon, right here, at 2:00 p.m. MST!

Play Nice

So you want to be a writer, right?  I’m going to let you in on a secret that will take you further than any other advice except put your butt in your chair and write.

Are you ready?

Be nice.

Nope, be nicer than nice.  Be courteous.

What?!? That’s your amazing piece of advice?

Yes.  Here’s why.  Let’s start at the very beginning writing process.  You have the idea, the motivation, your stash of cinnamon bears and Diet Coke and are ready to go.  But if you are like me and pretty much every writer I know, we don’t live in a bubble, and many of us have kids.  We need to be courteous when the kids or spouse take on some roles of independence or help a little more so we can write.  Be kind and gracious when the time is given.  Even if it comes after dozens of reminders and your patience is just about out, always say thank you.  These are the people we need to support us the most.

Say you are in a writers group (which if you aren’t find one immediately) and they point out problems with your WIP – things that are going to have to be fixed.  I know, they are telling you that your little darling isn’t Mary Poppins – practically perfect in every way.  Say thank you because they took time away from their precious writing time to help you.  Don’t get defensive.  You may need take a moment to explain what you were trying to convey in your writing but this can be done in a professional and polite way – “I wanted the reader to feel...I wanted the character to depict…etc.”  And always, always end your commentary with thank you.  Every single time.

Bloggers are some of the most wonderful people out there, but like the writer’s group/critique partners, they are busy people who would like to be writing as well.  Always make sure you thank every single commenter.  You can either do with through email (I have all the comments on my blog come to my email and reply to every single one) or you can go through in the comments @name of commenter and continue the conversation that way.  If you want to have people like you, you have to talk back to them.  And remember, thank them for taking the time to post on your blog, for stopping by, etc.

Finally, there are the people who make the books end up in the hands of readers.  Regardless of your choice of publication, there are people who are going to make it possible to get your book out there – artists, editors, agents, publishing houses, etc.  Rule number one with agents is pay attention to their preferences with queries, their timelines in getting back to you and honor that.  If an agent says no but takes the time to tell you why, reply with a thank you.

How do you practice courtesy in your writing associations?  What suggestions do you have for when being courteous is the last thing you want to be?

Find Tasha Seegmiller! Blog | Twitter

Kicks & Tricks: Cleaning Up the Clutter

Psst. I have a neat little trick for you to try. You ready? It’s called Morning Pages.

What are Morning Pages? They are sitting down every morning and filling three notebook pages or 750 word document of a steady stream of thought. Your mind will wonder, just let your pen or keys follow. You may be upset about something someone said to you, or a critique you felt was a little too harsh, or you may just remember you need to buy cat food. Your mind might wonder over to a certain part of you novel that was giving you grief. Just let it all flow out. You can write “I don’t know what to write,” until you finally start pouring out all these things you have been holding back.

Morning Pages are a way to get the juices flowing. They are a place to pour out your thoughts, your ideas, your junk, and your treasures. It’s a great jump start to your day. We carry a lot of clutter in our heads, and as writers that can be quite a burden. It can be hard for us to sit down and get creative when we are bogged down by all the daily crud. Morning Pages helps tidy that crud.

I notice I’m normally in a much more pleasant mood when I am doing morning pages on a daily basis. It’s to the point that my family and friends know when I have done them, and when I have skipped them. I tend to whine a paragraph or two before I move on to what I want to do that day, and from there I get into what I would like to happen in my WIP. Morning Pages often have a way of telling you how you can solve your own problems.

Although MP’s are meant to be three pages long hand in a journal or notebook of your choosing, I find it easier to type. I keep a Scrivener Project called Journal where I keep a folder for MP’s and a folder for my writing journal. At the end of the week I print out my MP’s and put them in a binder that holds every MP I’ve ever done.

You could also go to 750words.com and unload yourself there. Not only do you get a nice email reminder, but when you are done you can review what your mood was, what words you used most, how long it took you to write, and words per minute. I recommend then copy and pasting into a word doc.

I owe a lot of breakthroughs to MP’s. Most of my best ideas comes from dreams, and it’s nice to get up in the morning and get them written out before they slip away from me.

Morning Pages are a very useful tool to add to your writer’s toolbox.

How do you clean the clutter of the mind so that you can concentrate on the writing?




Amy McBay is a proud military wife, a devoted mother of a beautiful daughter and adorable son, pack Alpha to two loving dog companions, and servant to an amorous cat. Her world is full of werewolves, pixies, dragons, angels, demons, ghosts, and vampires. 

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Forms & Techniques: Kicking life into your characters

This month marks the 22nd year of the Simpsons. I remember when the cartoon family first made their appearance on the Tracy Ulman Show in a cameo spot. At that time, the illustrations were even more crudely drawn and the characters vanilla. Two decades later, the illustrations are consistent and smooth. But even more refined, amazingly so, are the characters. So much so, that their personalities have become like real people, cementing themselves in pop culture. When you hear the line, "Don't have a cow, man," you associate it immediately with a mischievous, disrespectful, razor-haired renegade named, Bart Simpson.

How do we as writers, kick this kind of life into the characters in our stories? Most of us don't have 20 years to develop our characters. But we can learn from the Simpsons. Sometimes it is helpful to let your characters take on their personality naturally instead of forcing it upon them. This can be done by finishing your story/novel first, and then going back to flesh out your characters. This allows for unexpected twists and turns to unfold, often bringing out personality traits that you would have never thought of giving your characters in the outline stages of your story.

At least, this is what I have found works for me. How about you? What techniques have you found helpful in creating memorable characters?



Carolyn Frank lives in Kaysvile, Utah with her husband and teenage daughter Danielle, her other four children having fled the nest, but still live close by (thank heavens).
She has been writing seriously for the past six years and will be self-publishing her first book, Promises this year. Promises is a middle-grade historical fiction about a timid girl who learns to stand up for herself.

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How to Warm Up when You're Stucker than Stuck

Let’s face it, sometimes just sitting DOWN to write can be a challenge. When life gets crazy (and when doesn’t it?) and things like kids, school, or work seem to sap away all of your time and energy, writing can start to seem like a chore, even if it is something that we all “love.”

And then there are the other things that keep us from our writing. Doubt, worry that we won’t meet even our own expectations (much less those of others!), and that one problem (scene/plothole/whatever) in your manuscript that you just can’t figure out.

Sometimes we just don’t feel “inspired.”

Still, we know that the only way to ever get anything accomplished in the writing world is to keep going no matter what. Whatever’s halting you from getting words down on the page, we have to face the fact that we all want to be professional writers someday, and professional writers WRITE.

So how can you get in the mood to write, when you just kicking-and-screaming don’t want to? Well, ninja to ninja, here are my two biggest pieces of advice:

#1 DON’T BEAT YOURSELF UP

Ninjas have enough fighting to do without fighting ourselves. Maybe you’ve fallen off the wagon a bit. Maybe you haven’t written a single word in a couple of days. Or weeks! My number one piece of advice is DON’T GIVE IN TO GUILT. Guilt is the all-time discourager, my fellow ninjas. Don’t let what you haven’t done keep you from getting things done now!

#2 TAKE A BREATHER

As our Dojo master could tell you, sometimes the best thing to help you get writing is a little bit of meditation. Whether you do this best by shutting the door and sitting in quiet, or by taking a walk outside in the sunshine, figure out what quiets your mind and do it. Let your other distractions fall away. Clear out your brain so that it can be filled up with STORY.

IF YOU’RE STILL HAVING TROUBLE finding that spark, don’t get discouraged! There are a lot of other things that you can do to jump-start your muse, and here are some of my favorites:

☼ Music. I had a professor tell me that every writing project should have a soundtrack to it. Consider this even if you don’t like writing to music—you can always listen to your soundtrack before you get down to the writing itself.

☼ Talk to your characters. Take them out of the story for a bit and imagine interviewing them. What do they want/need/fear RIGHT NOW? This helps if you’re stuck. If you understand what’s in your characters’ heads, you’ll know where you need to go.

☼ Re-read a bit of your story. Not just any bit. You know which part. That part that made your soul sing when you wrote it. Let yourself fall in love with your characters all over again, and words won’t be so hard to find.

And again, DON’T GET DISCOURAGED. Sometimes the best thing you can do is decide to be positive about writing. Focus on what you excel at. Everything else can be fixed when you edit. Seriously. You just have to get the writing done first!

Lisa Asanuma graduated with a Literature degree from the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara. She has worked as a freelance writer and as an editor for Drollerie Press, and she is the co-founder of Type Set, Inc, an editing and formatting service. She’s currently working on a YA fantasy novel, but in the meantime she publishes a new short story for free every other Friday at Tales From the Hollow Tree, a fiction blog she shares with author Isabelle Santiago.

Website | Blog | Hollow Tree | Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr | Etsy

Meditation: Finding the ME Time

We're all little busy bees :)

Okay, I want you to think about your typical day. I'll share mine because I always share things from experience, but think about yours as we go through this post...

Wake up.

Go pee.

Brush teeth.

Change diaper.

Feed children.

Feed self (if lucky)

Dress children.

Dress self (again, if lucky)

Clean kitchen.

Clean living room.

Go pee.

Start laundry.

Sit down.

Check email.

Check blogs.

Check Facebook/Twitter

Feed children.

Change diaper.

NAP TIME!

Feed self.

Clean kitchen.

Fold laundry.

LISTEN TO MUSIC/READ/WATCH EPISODES OF THE VAMPIRE DIARIES.

Pull out WiP.

Write till kids wake up.

Change diaper.

Feed children.

Get dinner ready for hubs.

Clean kitchen.

Clean living room.

Go pee.

Feed family.

Clean kitchen.

RELAX/NETWORK/TRIP TO LIBRARY/TIME WITH HUBS AND KIDS

Bathe children.

Clothe children. (Diaper, yes)

Bed time for children.

Go pee.

TAKE A SHOWER.

Snuggle with hubs till he goes to bed.

WRITE, WRITE, WRITE.

Go pee.

Go to bed.

Everything I've done in ALL CAPS are my ME moments.

#1: NAP TIME. Yes, I am in love with nap time. Thank heavens one of my kids still naps. The other doesn't bother me too much while it's nap time. He plays quietly or takes a snoozer himself. This is my time for me to get things done on the computer. Blog posts, critiquing, returning emails, and writing.

#2: LISTEN TO MUSIC/READ/WATCH EPISODES OF THE VAMPIRE DIARIES. When the muse hasn't decided to wake up for the day and I sit and watch a blank cursor forever, I do these things to break my mind open.

#3: RELAX/NETWORK/TRIP TO LIBRARY/TIME WITH HUBS AND KIDS. Taking a drive with the family helps a lot with inspiration. Just writing in my head while we listen to the radio, or tell jokes, or just spend time with each other can really help.

#4: TAKE A SHOWER. Some of my best ideas come to me in the bathtub. And really, this is a time for me to be alone. (Unless the hubs wants to... um, ya, nevermind.) A shower can totally drown out the world and let you be in another one.

#5: WRITE, WRITE, WRITE. For me, writing comes at night. You can see why if you look at my day, but right after the shower and snuggle time with the hubs, my mind will not shut down, and this is when my best work comes out.

So, what I propose is to use the ME time to do things to help your writing. To not get too busy to recognize that inspiration happens all around us.

What are your ME times? Are you a morning writer? What gives you the best inspiration?