Tag Archive for: juggling time

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I Don’t Want to Blog Today by Debra H. Goldstein

I don’t want to blog today.

Plain and simple – I’m tired, cranky, out of ideas, and grumpy (is that the same as cranky?). I want to be snowed in so nothing will prevent me from lighting a fire, covering myself with Joel’s Alabama afghan, and either putting on a TV show DVR’d during the past the two weeks or finishing the Janet Bolin book I’m halfway through. It isn’t to be.

The book, TV shows, blanket and electric fireplace are all there waiting for me, but I live in the South so, thank goodness, the snow idea is out of the picture. Plus, I have lunch and afternoon meetings beginning two hours from now and then we’re hosting a dinner for twelve (don’t worry, we made reservations). Today is typical of my schedule for the past two weeks. Consequently, I don’t want to blog today.

Up to now, I haven’t minded that my days have been filled with meetings, doctor appointments, house guests, exercise classes, attending two wonderful mystery conferences (Murder in the Magic City and Murder on the Menu), visiting and hanging with dear friends, submitting a proposal, laundry and other mundane things. Add in attending a funeral, moderating a charity debate on the value of latkes vs. hamentashen, and judging a children’s writing contest and you can understand why I’ve been a little short of sleep. I haven’t had time to write a single word even though I know there are short story submission deadlines I would like to meet (I understand it helps to write the short story first) and a revision idea begging me to address it in the new novel I’m almost finished drafting.

I don’t want to blog today, but I will. That’s what writers do.

Debra H. Goldstein is the author of 2012 IPPY Award winning Maze in Blue.  Her second mystery, Should Have Played Poker: a Carrie Martin and the Mah Jongg Players Mystery will be published by Five Star Publications in 2016. Her most recent short story, Power Play, appears in the new edition of The Birmingham Arts Journal (Volume 11, Issue 4 – 2015). Whether or not she wants to blog or introduce you to a guest blogger, you can find her thoughts expressed as a member of The Stiletto Gang every 2nd and 4th Friday and every other Monday on “It’s Not Always a Mystery”- http://debrahgoldstein.wordpress.com.

Juggling by Debra H. Goldstein

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I’m not a writer’s writer.  If I could claim that distinction, I would follow a schedule – perhaps coffee, exercise and writing before and after a short lunch until so many words or pages are completed.  I marvel at writers who live a pre-ordained lifestyle that produces a specified number of words or pages stopping only when “The End” is typed.  Me, I’m a juggler.

Jugglers balance balls, oranges, bowling pins, or whatever comes up in life in the air.  When we watch a juggler, we hold our breath hoping nothing breaks the cycle by falling.  Invariably, at some point, there is a miss, but the juggler grins or grimaces and tries again.

My writing is exactly like the juggler’s act.  Sometimes things go smoothly and the words flow in an easy timely manner, but more often, I add one more ball and my rhythm gets out of kilter.  This week was going to be simple:  two blogs to prepare, a rewrite of the book I am working on, a couple of contest entries if I had spare time, and the beginning of a two week online course with daily homework.  A piece of cake.  That is, until I lost a few hours to a medical appointment, an old friend called to catch up for an hour plus, my husband had the audacity to want to have dinner and conversation, all of the kids checked in, I had to spend hours on the computer and phone purchasing airline tickets for some upcoming trips and wrangling with the television, TV, and internet provider because my bill took a funny jump.  My goals for the week all came tumbling down.

Frustrated, I prioritized.  1) Get homework for class done; 2) smile…this is a guest blogger week on “It’s Not Always a Mystery” and Paula Benson sent me a great piece for Monday, April 14, explaining “What the Bar Exam Taught Me About Writing” (why didn’t I think of that?); 3) Do more class homework; 4) rewrite two pages; 5) write my Stiletto Gang blog; and take a deep breath so that easing in a few extra balls marked as the distractions of life didn’t cause me to drop anything.  Will I finish all the words and pages I hoped for this week?  No.  The contest stuff may have to wait until closer to deadline, the book rewrite may take an extra week, but I’m sure managing to successfully keep a lot of balls in the air and I’m grateful for that.

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Debra H. Goldstein is the author of 2012 IPPY Award winning Maze in Blue, a mystery set on the University of Michigan’s campus in the 1970’s.  Her most recent short stories, “Who Dat? Dat the Indian Chief!” and “Early Frost” can be found in the anthology Mardi Gras Murder (2014) and in The Birmingham Arts Journal (April 2014).  Contact Debra through her website www.DebraHGoldstein.com or through her personal blog, “It’s Not Always a Mystery,” http://debrahgoldstein.wordpress.com.

The Fine Art of Juggling Time

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by Susan McBride

Although I consider myself pretty adept at a lot of different things, balancing my time wisely is not one of them.  No matter how old I get–and how much wiser in other departments–I don’t seem to have completely grasped the concept that you cannot agree to do 200 things in a finite amount of time and get all of them done. 
I always think I can do it.  Take this year, for example.  I told myself, sure, I can do revisions on Little Black Dress in the first few months, go through the copy edit, check the page proofs, and all else that the production schedule demands of me, PLUS write the first draft of Dead Address, the young adult mystery for Random House AND promote Little Black Dress upon release in late August THEN pen my next women’s fiction book, Little White Lies, all by December 1.  Oh, yeah, and that’s not counting all the real-life hoo-ha that comes in between (take my lovely encounter with skin cancer and Moh’s surgery in May, for instance). 

Piece of cake, yes?

Well, I imagined it would be.  I mean, I kept reminding myself I’d written two books for my two different publishers while going through my boobal crisis nearly five years ago.  I know I’m not Superwoman (at least, not one who doesn’t constantly trip on her cape), but I seem to want to play one on TV.  Or at least in my writing life. 

I used to always meet deadlines.  Heck, I’d turn things in early.  I was such an overachiever that at the first lunch I ever had with my agent and then-mystery editor half a dozen years ago, they remarked on how efficient I was.  “Like a robot,” one of them actually said (though I can’t recall which). 
But back then, I was single.  I had myself, two cats, and a condo to worry about.  It was like living on another planet.  Once I’d met Ed, bought a house with him, dealt with a health crisis, got married, and took on even more responsibilities, I told myself, “You aren’t a robot.  You’re human.  You can only do what you can do.”  That’s a mantra I repeat often, so I’m not sure why it hasn’t completely sunk in. 

I still want to say, “yes, I can do that!”  Even if I worry that it’s adding yet another ball to the ones I’m juggling.  “No problem!” I chirp when asked to do things spur of the moment when I realize I should be focusing on writing books and not scattering my energy and time all over the place.

In some ways, I have gotten better about time. I don’t travel nearly as much as I used to.  I do say “no” when an event isn’t doable.  I don’t do Twitter (and never intend to), I’m not LinkedIn or GooglePlussed or anything besides Facebooked.  I’m on two group blogs with other incredible women authors who are busy balancing their real lives and writing lives, too.

And, still, I find myself in binds over and over, where I know at least one thing won’t get done on time.  Where I realize I’ll have to ask for an extension in order to finish my work and do it right.  Man, I hate that.

I’m learning.  That’s all I can say.  Every year when I do too much, I understand the things that I need to cut out the next time.  It might be years before I’m a master at the fine art of juggling time, but I will get there.  So long as no one gives me a deadline.