Don’t fight it.

That’s right, don’t fight the Monday blahs. I don’t. And because of that, my Mondays are much less stressful than they used to be.

See, I used to treat Monday like any other workday. I got up in the morning and tried to get as much work done as possible before I called it quits for the day. And that usually resulted in me feeling like I hadn’t gotten as much done as I should have at the end of the day. After all, if I could write two articles on the average Wednesday, why could I barely outline one on a Monday?

But the truth is, I’m just naturally less productive on Mondays than on other days. I’m usually coming off a very busy weekend and sometimes I don’t make it to bed until after midnight on Sundays. So it’s no wonder Mondays aren’t my best day.

Finally, I started just not worrying about how much work I get done on Mondays. I use it as a sort of planning day. I try to get everything in order for the rest of the week. I do some research. I catch up on email. I update my productivity system to reflect what I have to do that week. And when I get sick of work for the day (which could happen anywhere between 1:00 and 5:00), I stop working.

Occasionally, I write on Mondays. But only if the mood strikes me. Sometimes I edit on Mondays, but I’ve found that’s not always productive, and I either have a hard time focusing or I tend to nitpick and be too harsh (not good for editor-writer relations).

On some Mondays, I go visit my grandmother, who lives a little over an hour from me. If I didn’t make it to see her on the weekend, Monday afternoons seem like as good a time as any. It brightens my day and hers (she’s 90 years old and just gave up living alone this winter).

Since I started treating Mondays as a “workday lite”, I’ve found I’m actually much more productive the rest of the week. I wake up on Tuesday ready to get tons of stuff done. And I don’t dread Mondays. In fact, I look forward to them, as I love the work I do and don’t feel the pressure I used to to get everything possible done every single day. Sometimes it is better to put off till tomorrow what you could do today.

Now, I’m not one for starting resolutions right away on the first of January. I prefer to make them year-long goals. A few years ago one of my resolutions was to quit smoking. And on February 2nd of that year, I did (and haven’t touched a cigarette since). Had I tried to do that on the first of January, I probably would have failed miserably. So don’t force yourself to start your new goals on the first. Give yourself the time to ease into them, to get used to them, and to reach them successfully, in your own time.

So, without further ado, here are my ten New Years resolutions for 2010.

1. Write at Least 1,000 Words of Fiction Each Day.

This is one that I used to do almost religiously, but have become very lax about in recent months. Part of this has to do with increased work obligations. But in any case, I want to start writing at least a thousand words every day. I have two novels currently in the works, so lack of material isn’t an issue. And I can do a thousand words in less than an hour usually, so finding the time shouldn’t be too difficult. It’s just a matter of developing the habit. It’s something I know I can do once I find my motivation.

2. Do Less.

I have a tendency to commit to things without fully thinking them through. I’ve gotten better about this, but it’s still something I have to be careful of. So this year, I want to do less. I want to take the time to do whatever it is I’m doing as well as it can be done, which means devoting more time to individual projects. And since I have yet to find that elusive 25th hour in the day, the only option is to take on fewer projects. Which is tough considering I get ideas for brilliant new projects approximately every two minutes and forty seven seconds.

3. Drink More Water & Tea, Less Coffee and Soda.

This one should be easy. Theoretically. Of course, I’m saying this as I sit here drinking a double espresso…

4. Eat Healthier in General and Get More Exercise.

I’ve been struggling with my weight for a few years now. I’ve managed to lose around thirty pounds and have kept it off, but I still need to lose more. And with my ten year high school reunion looming on the horizon, now’s as good a time as any! And if anyone decides the class of 2000 needs to have their reunion in March, I’ll kill them (October fits in much better with my weight loss plans). The best way I’ve found to lose weight is to eat healthy and exercise. I know, that’s like rocket science, isn’t it?

5. Finally Set Up My Etsy Store.

I’ve been wanting to get involved with Etsy for awhile now. I lurk on their forums, read the blog, follow them on Twitter, and obsess over the products found there. And there are a few things I’d like to start selling on Etsy, I just haven’t found the time. Of course, this may contradict resolution #2…

6. Finish a Novel.

As in, finished, no more work to be done. I’ve finished first drafts of five novels, second drafts of three of those, and third drafts of one. But I have yet to get a novel into what I would consider anything close to “publishable” quality. I’m very close on one of those, so my goal is to finish it this year, to get it to the best quality I can possibly make it.

7. Apply to Bread Loaf.

I considered making this one “Get Accepted to Bread Loaf”, but considering they accept less than 20% of applicants and I still have no idea what I’m even going to apply with, I thought just managing the application would be ambitious enough. Bread Loaf is one of the oldest and most prestigious writers’ conferences in the country, and is conveniently located less than three hours from my house. If I get in, then that’ll be like icing on the cake.

8. Have More Experiences.

We all get so wrapped up in the idea of “stuff”. Our lives begin to revolve around things and possessions rather than the experiences and people who surround us. I want to have more experiences, make more memories, and stop focusing so much on the “stuff” we all accumulate. In fifty years, I won’t look back fondly on the things I owned, but rather the things I did and the people I did them with.

9. Be a Better Friend.

I’m horrible about staying in touch with people. It’s just in my nature. If it’s easy to keep in contact with someone, then I’ll do it. But if it requires a lot of effort, I’m not so good at it. Which has nothing to do with how much I care about a person or how important they are to me. I’m just easily distracted and have a hard time with following through on the whole “picking up the phone” thing or “writing a letter”. No more! This year, I’m going to make more of an effort to stay in touch with the people who matter to me.

10. Get Out of the Northeast Kingdom.

The area where I live is beautiful. It’s a nature-lovers’ paradise. It’s one of the few places left in the Northeast that’s really rural. It’s also almost entirely devoid of opportunity and cultural anything. Sure, there are bright spots within the Kingdom in terms of those things, but they’re few and far between. I love Vermont, and think I’ll always call it home, but I’m thinking it might feel more like “home” in other parts of the state. So I’m hoping to relocate this year, somewhere a bit closer to “civilization” and with a bit more to do. The house we currently live in was supposed to be temporary, something we could fix up and sell within a couple years, but it’s been our home now for more than six years. It’s definitely time for a change.

So there they are: ten resolutions for 2010. Not all of them are writing related, though some of them are. Feel free to share your resolutions in the comments below.

Photo by paveita, via Flickr

I’m going to try to write regularly about my process as I work on this novel, sharing what I’m doing, learning, and experimenting with over the next few weeks as I hammer out a first draft and then later when I start revising. So this week I’m going to talk about character development, one of my absolute favorite parts of writing fiction.

One of the first things I do before I start writing a new novel is to cast my characters. Sometimes I  know instantly who my leading man would be, who my main character should be, or who some of my secondary characters would be played by. Other times I spend hours pouring over celebrity photo sites looking for the right face. That’s right—I use actors and actresses, not just random photos I’ve found online or in magazines.

There are a couple of different reasons for this. The most important one to me is that it makes it easier to hear their voices in my head, to see the way they move, the way they talk, their facial expressions if I’ve actually seen them in movies. This makes it much easier to write believable dialogue and believable characters in general.

For my current novel, I’ve basically got four main characters. There’s Cass, who in my head is Kate Winslet; there’s Dave, Cass’ husband, who bears a striking resemblance to Matthew Fox; Tessa, who, in a perfect world, would be played by Charlize Theron (though a bit older); and Grady—the leading man in this particular work—Hugh Jackman in my mind (this might have something to do with recently watching both Australia and the new Wolverine movie). In addition to casting like this, I’ll save a handful of images of each actor or actress in a “characters” folder within the folder for my novel. The only thing I won’t do when working on a novel like this is watch any movies these actors appear in that are at all similar to my current work-in-progress. It’s too easy to end up making the character exactly like an existing character without even realizing it.

One of the other primary bits of character development I do is to fill out a Proust Questionnaire for each character. I’m partial to Vanity Fair‘s version, though I’ll sometimes add in questions from the Inside the Actors Studio version, too, which was modeled on Proust’s questions. Proust’s original questionnaire is helpful, too.

I keep the questionnaires in a Google doc, along with my outline and research. But more on outlines in my next post in this series.

Feel free to share your own character development tips in the comments below.

Dan Holloway wrote a great article on the future of books over at the Streamwriting site (which is run by Hannah Davis). It’s a great article. Dan is really on top of new technology coming out in the publishing world and is taking advantage of a lot of it himself (have you seen the interactive novel he’s writing in a Facebook group?) At some point in the future I’m supposed to have an article going up on the same site. Stay tuned for that.

I am almost finished with the website for the new book. It’s currently in the hands of it’s first beta readers and I’ll be starting some edits this weekend on the first few chapters. I’m forever greatful to those who are taking the time to read it and they’ll all be mentioned in the acknowledgements and possibly get a case of champagne if the book does really well…

Nathan Bransford has his usual excellent round up of other publishing news. My favorite of the stories he mentions is the one from the New York Times addressing piracy concerns over ebooks. Very interesting read.

Photo by AMagill, via Flickr

Now, growing up I always dreamed of being a writer. I wrote and read constantly. My teachers said I had talent. I did writing workshops and summer programs. I wrote a lot of (really bad) poetry in high school, along with some short stories. In college and immediately after I wrote screenplays. I got involved in my first-ever writers group website (Zoetrope.com, run by Francis Ford Coppola’s production company, American Zoetrope, and still a great place to go for critiques if you’re a writer). I got reasonably good reviews there, too. And I even had my screenplay requested by a production company (they’d seen it on the Zoetrope site).

Then I had the most severe case of writer’s block for about five or six years. I wrote very little in that time. I made a few attempts at starting a novel but nothing really worked.

In the summer of 2006 I started looking into blogging. It seemed like a great way to get my name out there and maybe make a little money on the side. So I started a WordPress.com blog, GreenStyle Magazine (which I still have, though it’s currently on hold until I have more time to focus on it). It went well. People visited. I decided to migrate to a self-hosted WordPress blog so I could run ads on my site. I posted like crazy, sometimes posting six or eight posts in one day. I was working full time, spent two hours a day commuting to and from work, and then came home in the evenings and wrote blog posts for another two or three hours (scheduling them to go up the following day, every couple hours).

I got more traffic. I read everything I could about blogging, including how to get more traffic, how to make money, designing blog themes, linkbait, and anything else I could get my hands on. I started looking at the ProBlogger.net job boards to see if there were other blogs out there I could write for. I applied for anything that looked like it might be a fit.

And then I got lucky (no, not that kind of lucky, get your mind out of the gutter). Mashable.com was looking for bloggers. At the time, I think they were ranked somewhere around #10 or #11 on Technorati’s 100 most popular blogs list (they’re now #5). I sent off the requested information in an email. Not long after I got an email from Mashable’s founder and CEO, Pete Cashmore. He wanted a writing sample. We bounced ideas around and finally I submitted an article to them on web design tools. That article was published on July 24th, 2007. I’ve written on a semi-regular basis for Mashable ever since.

I almost landed a great job with a startup blog after I started writing for Mashable, but sadly that fell through before it even got started. I’m still hoping it might get going again someday, and that the owner of that site will still be interested in bringing me on board.

My next paid writing gig came a little more out of the blue. I was looking to do more paid blogging last fall. Since I turned to writing full time, I had the time available. So I looked through the list of the top 20 or 30 blogs on Technorati. I brainstormed some ideas for a couple of them, and went to their sites to see if they were actively seeking writers. Smashing Magazine had instructions on their site for becoming a writer for them. I submitted what they asked for and within a couple days was working on my first blog post for them. I’m now writing regularly for them, too.

I’ve also just landed my third paid blogging gig. This one happened in a completely different manner. I was contacted through this site by someone looking for articles similar to what I’ve published. My first article for them will be done next week. I don’t want to disclose who it is yet, but I’ll add the article to my portfolio as soon as it’s up.

I’ve also played around with some other paid writing sites (like Helium.com). I’ve had very little luck making money with them and treat them more like practice sites and usually only write for fun (or to add writing credits). If someone was willing to invest more time in it than I am, I can see where you could make a nice supplemental income (and hey, it’s better than slinging burgers for a part-time job).

Here are some of my tips for making money blogging:

• Start off with your own blog. You need to build up some writing credits, prove that you can do this long term, and otherwise show you know how to write. You don’t need to build this into a huge and popular blog to land jobs with some great websites. But make sure it’s professional and regularly-updated. I was blogging for nearly a year before landing my first paid gig.
• Don’t sell yourself short. I see a lot of ads for blogs looking for writers who are only paying $5 or $10 a post. Unless that post is just a quick link and a couple of sentences, it’s not worth the time. Good blogging is hard work. It’s no different than writing an article for a magazine or newspaper. Would you write a feature article for a magazine for $5? Probably not. I’ve never blogged for so little pay (well, except on my own blog. That probably averages out to more like $.25 per post). I don’t want to disclose what I get paid per post, but I’ll put it this way: if I can write four or five posts in a week, I’m doing really well (posts take me an average of 3-6 hours to write, plus another hour or two for editing sometimes).
• Write great content! This one is really important. You have to write good content if you want to make it as a blogger. While it doesn’t need to be Shakespeare, it does need to be coherent and offer up information your readers are looking for.
• Read other blogs. You need to see what others are doing and what they’re writing about. Make sure you engage with other bloggers, too.
• Use WordPress! There are a lot of free blogging programs out there. WordPress is free (whether you choose to go with a WordPress.com blog or host it on your own server). It’s easy to use. It’s incredibly powerful. And there’s a great support community, thousands of free themes you can use, and plugins to allow you to do just about anything you could dream of.

There are plenty of other things to do as a blogger, but there are entire blogs devoted to those topics. Here are a few your should read if you’re thinking of starting a blog.

• ProBlogger.net: This blog focuses mostly on how to make money with your own blog and offers up great general blogging tips. It also has an awesome job board for finding paid blogging jobs.
• Daily Blog Tips: They offer up information on a daily basis about how to be a better blogger.
• Dosh Dosh: This blog is devoted to making money online and has a ton of resources on blogging (and marketing your blog).
• Adii Rockstar: Adii is a WordPress theme designer and entrepreneur. He’s got some great info for blogging and the Internet in general.
• John Chow dot com: John Chow makes a ton of money online. Blogging is only one part of that but he offers up plenty of information on how he does it.
• Northxeast: This blog focuses entirely on creating great blog content and becoming a great blogger.

If you have additional blogging tips or other ways to make a living writing, please share them in the comments.

Photo by zilupe, via Flickr

Over the years I’ve built up plenty of strategies for keeping my motivation level high. Here are a few:

• Set yourself reachable daily goals. Whether a reachable goal for you is 200 words or 2,000 words, set a goal and stick to it. But, if for some reason you don’t make your goal one day, it’s not the end of the world. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Just get back on track the next day.
• Celebrate small successes. When you finish a chapter, or a page, or even a paragraph, celebrate. Have some chocolate. Listen to your favorite song. Watch a movie. For the bigger successes, treat yourself to dinner or a movie. And when you finish the first draft, take a few days off!
• Keep a to do list. Listing each step to reaching your goal is a good idea. Checking things off a list is a nice little boost to your motivation and keeps you moving in the right direction. Breaking things down into the smallest steps possible might look daunting at first, but you’ll check them off much quicker.
• Take a break. Sometimes, you just need a day off to let your batteries recharge. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve found that when I get writer’s block, forcing myself to take a weekend off can do wonders for opening the creative flood gates.
• Set deadlines. With so many writing projects, there are no deadlines. No one really cares if you finish something this week or a month from now or never at all. So set deadlines for yourself and stick to them. On my current project, because I’m self publishing, there’s no editor hanging over my head telling me to have the book done by a certain date. So I’ve set up a schedule for myself. I’ve vowed to have the first draft done by the end of April, and so far I’m on track for meeting that goal.
• Converse with others who have similar goals. Finding other people who are working on the same kinds of projects makes it easier to keep working. Consider setting goals and deadlines with each other and holding each other accountable. Sometimes the idea of disappointing another person is enough to keep you going.

If you have any other tips for keeping motivation high, please share them in the comments below.

Photo by D'Arcy Norman, via Flickr

While novel-writing is often a seat-of-the-pants kind of adventure, non-fiction, especially that focused on technical topics, requires planning and research. I already have a couple years of experience writing about this topic, so that makes things a bit easier, as I’m familiar with what needs to be covered and where to find information I’m missing. But it still required a LOT of preplanning and notetaking.

I also have a very particular method I’m using for writing this. It’s something I found online a couple years ago, and I wish I could remember where so I could give proper credit (if anyone recognizes this, please let me know so I can attribute it properly). I just wrote it down in my notebook and put it away, knowing at some point I would find a use for it. Here’s the method:

1. Write down the general topics you want to cover in your book. You should have 15-25 of these for the average book. Use mind-mapping if you need to. These will become your chapters.
2. Write down a list of 20 or so sub-topics you want to cover or points you want to make in each chapter. I’ll admit that some of my chapters might have 25, and I have a couple of chapters that only have 10.
3. Those are going to become your sections and paragraphs. Some of them you may use for headings within your chapters, others might just take up a single paragraph within those sections.

That’s the basic formula I’m using for writing this book. I’ve set up a Word document for each chapter, and within each chapter I’ve listed out the points I want to make. In my case, a lot of these sections end up being a page or two long, while others might only be a paragraph or two.

Breaking things down in this manner makes it easier to stay on track and not feel overwhelmed. When I open up a chapter file to work on, I’m not overwhelmed by what lies ahead of me because I’m only seeing that one chapter. And seeing exactly what I need to cover makes my research easier.

Photo by Marco Arment, via Flickr

One thing I didn’t mention is the speed I write at. The first draft of my first novel was completed in five days. It was only 46,000 words (a break-neck pace of 9,200 words a day). The scary part about that was that I didn’t hole-up in my house for the entire time. I went out to see friends, went to the movies, and otherwise led a relatively normal life. I’m still not entirely sure how I managed it and haven’t been able to since. My second novel’s first draft was completed in 33 days (91,000 words). The third was finished in a couple of months, and was around 56,000 words. The fourth was finished in 13 days and came in at a whopping 95,000 words (that’s an average of around 7,200 words a day). The fifth was written in approximately a month and came in at 62,000 words.

Subsequent drafts are done at a similar pace. I edited my first novel, adding 13,000 words to it and changing tense from present to past in about a week. I can realistically edit about 20,000 words in a day if that’s my only project (it rarely is). I redrafted my fourth novel (95k words) twice in the scope of a week, tightening up the prose and adding in bits here and there.

I couldn’t handle these kinds of schedules if I had a full time job outside the house. I write and copyedit on a freelance basis, and pick up web and graphic design projects here and there. If I didn’t work from home, my writing time would amount to an hour or two a day, instead of 8-10 hours a day (sometimes 12-14 hours if I’m on a roll or trying to meet a deadline). I write 7 days a week, even when I’m between projects. I’m always planning for the next one or the one after that even. On weekends I do try to cut my writing time back to 3 or 4 hours a day, though it doesn’t always work, especially if I’m working on a new project.

Here’s a bit more about how I write, and more details on specific projects. This is just how I manage it, and should by no means be taken as a definitive guide on how to write or anything to strive for.

Sometimes I start with an idea, other times a character. Inspiration comes from everything around me. Sometimes I’m inspired by something else I’ve read. Sometimes it’s a movie I’ve seen or a TV show. It could be a photo, or just an idea that pops into my head while I’m driving around or trying to fall asleep. My best ideas come while I’m in the shower or the car wash. I find it funny that water is so closely linked to my creative process since I’m an Aries (fire sign). I’m considering getting one of those desk-top fountains for my office.

When I get into the groove of a new novel, my characters talk to me. That’s actually how I know it’s time to start writing. When I can picture my characters and their interactions, that’s when I know it’s time to put them to paper. I start with an outline. This is usually hashed out in a day or two and might range from a page to ten pages, depending on how much of the story has already formed in my head. I can’t begin writing until I have an ending.

At the same time I do research and planning on the setting, characters, time period, etc. (depending on the genre I’m working in). With my first novel, this involved creating a map of the world it was set in and a listing of the different races and creatures in that world. I also had to sketch out how magic worked in this world and other things that were different from out own world. For my fifth novel, the women’s fiction novel set in the present, there was a lot less research and planning to do. The setting was based on a town not too far from where I used to live.

When all of my notes are done, I start writing. My notes are mostly kept in hard copy (or sometimes Google Docs). But I write in Microsoft Word (for Mac). I could not get by without my laptop. It makes it possible for me to write from the couch (regularly), from bed (occasionally), and in the car (obviously not while I’m driving). I couldn’t write at this pace if I was tethered to a desk all day. As I mentioned before, I write for 8-10 hours a day most days. I don’t take days off unless I’m between projects. Some days I might only write a thousand words, other days I might write 15,000 (that’s my record).

In school, I always did reports and papers the night before they were due, no matter how much time we were supposed to devote to them. And, I always got As. If I had failed, I might have changed my methods, but since I didn’t, that is the way that I write most effectively – in as little time as possible. Writing until I physically can’t write anymore or until my brain just absolutely refuses to keep going is the way that works for me.

I started out writing screenplays. I wrote my first one in four days, with no revisions. I then submitted to an online peer-review site, and got pretty good reviews – only minor changes were recommended. Screenwriting is such a competitive business that I never bothered pursuing it beyond that. But screenwriting is how I learned to write dialogue. And churning out a 120-page screenplay is, to me at least, way easier than writing a 70-80k word novel.

I’m currently between novel projects, though I have at least three ideas floating around in my head. Non-fiction is taking precedence at the moment, but by summer I’ll be back onto novel-writing. I’d like to try my hand at writing short stories and flash fiction, too, though I find the abbreviated format much more challenging than novel writing.

Here are some tips for writing this way, whether you are a first-time novelist or a seasoned pro:

1. Buy a laptop. This way you can write anywhere. I wrote in the car on the way to the movies one day. My personal favorite is the MacBook, though any laptop will work. I’d actually recommend going on the smaller size if you’re only going to use it for writing, as it makes it lighter-weight and much more portable.
2. Cast your novel. This helps with characterization. Pick actors and actresses for each of your major characters. It makes it easier to write character descriptions and makes your characters more life-like. When you can picture them in your head this way, the way the speak, the way they move, it makes it that much easier to bring them to life. You can use people from real life as well, just be careful not to base a character too closely on a friend or relative.
3. Use maps. If you’re writing speculative fiction, create a map for your world. If you’re writing something based in the real world, either use a map or create a fake one to keep your locations straight. If the bakery is next to the grocery store one day and then behind the library the next, it’s going to confuse people.
4. Outline. Create a scene-by-scene outline of what is happening in your novel. I change mine throughout writing, but at least it gives me an idea of where I’m going and where I’ve been. It’s a valuable tool if you get stuck while you’re writing and as a way to get to know your characters better.
5. Consider writing your beginning and ending first. When you have an outline, you can do this. Without the outline it’s much harder. If you’ve got your ending done, you know exactly where you need to end up. It makes it easier to get somewhere if you know your destination. This is something I did on my first novel, though I haven’t done it the same way since. Mostly because I never have quite as clear-cut of an ending in mind as I did then.

Feel free to share your own writing methods below or any tips you may have!