A Month in the Life--April 20, 2010

My day started at seven--a little late for me, but I'd been up until five am the night before.  To start off with, I spent a lot of time this morning involved with e-mails and editing. Despite my resolve not to edit until after the convention, I neglected to realize that I needed to edit the excerpts for the Aurora promotional CDs.  So that took a couple of hours, then I had to lay the documents for the CD out again. Once that was done, though, I went to work on the house. Audrey would be here at about five.

Funny, isn't it? I called Audrey for help because my back was fucked up and then proceeded to fuck it up more getting the house clean for her stay here with the baby--who promptly messed the house right back up.  I started in the guest bedroom.

I've been getting ready for Cynthia Vespia to come stay with me during the convention. So, I went ahead and decked out the guest room with new linens and things and hadn't planned on putting them out until right before she got here.  Well, naturally, that didn't work out quite as I planned.  So I put on the new bed linens (gorgeous) and dusted and scrubbed and cleaned.  When, at last, the guest bedroom was *perfect* I went into the living room, fully intending to get some promotional work done.

That lasted five minutes.  Two hours later, the living room was immaculate and I went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee.

An hour and a half later, including a lovely half-hour span on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor, I had to go to the restroom.

Well, I'd bought a new shower curtain too.  I couldn't very well hang it unless I cleaned the rest of the bathroom, right?

It was now four-thirty.  I took a broom to the hallway and was just sweeping the last of the debris into the dustpan when the door opened and here came Audrey and the baby! 

Guess what I did the rest of the day?

Yep. Exactly. Save for the one-time pristine condition of my now-wrecked house, I accomplished absolutely nothing.  I'd call it a wasted day, but hell--now my baby is here with her baby.  Overall, then, it was a great day.

Getting Your Sh*t Together

In keeping with my current thought processes on organization and maximum production, I thought today i'd write about something that really gets me steamed. 

Yesterday, I confided my struggles in staying organized. That organization is essential if I'm to get every accomplished that I need to. So today, I want to talk about the flip side of the coin--keeping your shit together.

The writing relationship is interdependent with other people; it has to be.  Writers rely on cover artists, editors, proofreaders, beta readers and promotional experts to get their books not only ready for publication but out there in the public eye.  All the people in this chain have to be able to depend upon the others to get their work done well and in a timely manner.  Waiting for someone else to hold up their end of the stick is not only annoying, it's costly. 

If, for example, I'm editing a book for an author, she is going to rely upon me to get those edits done quickly and thoroughly and get them to her.  She can't proceed with her story until I've gone through that manuscript and made the necessary corrections--spelling, grammar, telling her what works and what doesn't and generally helping her to find ways to strengthen it.  If I decide to jack around and go play in Walmart for a few days, leaving her manuscript on my desk collecting dust, I'm not just affecting me.  I'm affecting the writer--who's stuck, the cover artist--who's waiting for the author's manuscript to be done, the proofers--who can't do their work until I've done mine, the promotional people--can't publicize excerpts if they aren't ready, and the publisher--this should be obvious.  If the edits drag on, the release date of the book can be delayed or pushed back.  This will impact people that I don't ever interact with and probably don't even know--the website manager, for example, or the third party sites that have to be informed the manuscript won't be ready.  And the domino effect continues all the way to someone's living room (maybe yours) who is waiting anxiously for that book from your favorite author to come out and is horribly disappointed when it doesn't. So playing at Walmart instead of editing may not seem that important at the time, but the end result might be the loss of readers for that author.

Laid out like that, it's kind of daunting, isn't it? Sure--procrastination is a fault many people share.  I am the queen of procrastination when it comes to things like washing the dishes or making an appointment at the vet.  But with writing--whether it's mine or someone else's--I can't afford to put things off.  I have to do my work to the best of my ability and as expeditiously as possible. 

So take a minute and think about what effects your procrastination might have. Think about who you're affecting with your inability to get things done when they're supposed to be done. Then sit down and try to figure out a way to alleviate your desire to put things off and see how it affects you overall.

And above all, get your shit together.  For every moment that you delay, you're wasting someone else's time.