Thursday, February 21, 2013

Cross Promotion takes TIME.

Sometimes I forget how much time cross promoting across my social networks can take. That is, until I take an entire afternoon to catch up!

Each individual thing - posting to G+, twitter, Pinterest, writing this blog, sending emails and checking dates for upcoming reviews - most of that takes less than a minute, by itself. It sure does add up, though!

I think it's a great thing to do. I think that promoting the same link on different days can be a benefit, too. I only wish that it felt more like, well, like writing. Also, I have this terrible luck with technology because I'm fairly proficient at the user friendly stuff, but not expert enough to avoid or quickly solve the normal but annoying delays and hiccups. Today Pinterest acted up in my Chrome browser and it felt like it took forever to bring up firefox, log in, and do it there. It probably only took a minute, but, yanno.

I'd probably be less frustrated if I had planned for the evening to go like this. It was more like when you start the clean the living room but then notice something amiss in the kitchen but then notice something in your bedroom... and then you complain that it took you "all day" to clean.

So, this is a complaint and a reminder to myself: sometimes you just need to schedule an hour or two for 'advertising'! It's a necessary component to being a part of the online writing community!

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Audio - "Spidersong" by Alex Shvartsman

I had the honor of voicing "Spidersong" by Alex Shvartsman for the excellent Drabblecast Podcast! If you follow my twitter and blog closely, you've seen me complaining about sicknesses in the family and, more specifically, a lingering sore throat preventing me from recording a story. This was that story! I had that cough / sore throat for a MONTH and was deluded / desparate enough to try to record too early. Then as soon as it was gone, I did the final recording and sent Norm Sherman about a thousand takes. He is my audio editing HERO. 

The story is a wonderfully creepy flash piece, and the best part about the Drabblecast is that you get several other creeptastic stories in the same episode. Listen and share! :)

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Everyone is Sick! But...

Thankfully, I'm the only one not horribly ill, so although I should be sleeping in case tomorrow starts woefully early, I just had to write today! At the beginning of this ick I pushed through several reviews that I needed to write by a deadline, and I was really excited about starting a totally new and different kind of project and then... the REAL sickness came on. Unfortunately, cleaning up puke does not provide inspiration for anything I'm working on right now, haha.

But, like I said, I'm lucky enough not to be sick myself. So I've shortened my writing time, but I'm still determined to have it. 1000 words today on this middle grade adventure story. I've always wanted an excuse to research South and Middle America more after studying it a bit for my Spanish minor in college. Such a fascinating place! And the middle grade part? Well, that's a more recent obsession of mine. A week ago a friend forwarded me a call for submissions to a kids magazine. What she didn't know is that I'd been toying with and taking notes on kids books ideas for the past two months. I thought I might make the attempt some day, but not this soon! I gotta say. It's been fun.


Friday, February 1, 2013

Days of the Week

So, having certain days slated for certain types of writing - like submitting stories on Tuesdays, fiction writing/editing on wed., etc - Yeah. Totally not working out. It is such a joke at this point that I'm abandoning the idea entirely. I thought it would help me keep track of all of my different projects, since I tend to go all out on one or two at a time and sometimes leave another by the wayside. The problem is, that's also the best way for me to finish a project. All at once, over the span of a day or three. If the project is something like a short story, then I tend to work a few days on the first draft, then shelf it for a week, then another solid block of days. And then there's new exciting projects that come up with a short deadline, or I have to wait for a magazine to be released before I can review it, etc. etc.

I tried something different and it didn't work. I'll have to go back to something that meshes with my natural way of doing things. The weekly planning calendar had worked for a while, and part of the reason it stopped working is because I rearranged small pieces of furniture and appliances and, well, made it even harder to reach. Go me! When I was doing the calendar, I was also trying to do different things just about every day, though, and the biggest difference was that being flexible didn't render it useless.

This time I'm going for something more to the point. I really do forget projects entirely. That's one of the reasons I love to do things like write and schedule out a month's worth of the Girl, That's Pinteresting blog at a time. Then I don't have to remember it for a month! So, I'm going to try keeping a Goals list. I've tried to keep goal lists before and they haven't worked because I'll put too many things on there and then get mad at myself when a seriously peripheral project doesn't get worked on at all for months. Yeah, well! Self! Get over it! I'm going to focus on what I think I can get done over the next week or so to keep my goals down to something manageable. Already started with a list of 6 and got it down to 4! Oh, geez. I just remembered something. I guess I should add that, too. Haha!