Let’s talk about our activity levels, shall we?

Obesity, as I’m constantly being reminded every time I turn on my radio, is one of the top problems facing America’s people today. It comes largely from a sedentary lifestyle, a passive engagement in activity.

Okay, then let’s talk about the darker side of that problem: fat writing.

Fat writing, like fat people, suffers from inactivity more than anything. Just as an obese person lives on a diet of junk food, fast food, and various things you can find fried at the county fair, so chubby writing exists on a steady and corroding diet of passive tense. Tossing back any form of “to be” adds ten pounds to your sentence, making it slow and clunky.

Check out these two paragraphs. The first one is from my book, The Haunted, which at the time of this writing is in its second straight month on amazon.com’s bestselling horror:

Then, just as he felt himself about to give in, about to lose himself in the irrational fear (and what other kind of fear was there but the irrational, for rationality fled in the face of terror, the ability to be a thinking human being ran before the onslaught of horror), his fingers felt the cool links of the chain.  He grabbed it like a man about to fall off a high cliff would grab a tethering line.

Nice, huh? It moves forward, actively and resolutely. It’s a decent example of perfectly weighted writing. But add just a few junk-food “to be” words, and see what happens:

Then, just as he was about to feel like he was about to give in, about to be lost himself in the irrational fear (and what other kind of fear was there but the irrational, for to be rational was something that would flee if it was faced by terror, the ability to be a thinking human being would have run before terror which was like an onslaught of horror), his fingers were able to feel the cool links of the chain. He was going to hold it like a man who was about to fall off a cliff and was going to grab a line that would tether him.

Wow. Chubby writing. Worse, this writing is downright riddled with lard and excess weight.

Writing should involve the reader. It should activate the reader’s passions, and engage the audience’s senses. This cannot occur if the writer insists on turning verbs into adverbs or nouns by overusing various forms of the word “to be.” Passive writing is good for one thing: to avoid blame. Thus, when my mother burst in on me as a child and asked what had happened to the cookie jar, my answer was, “It was broken.” Not “I broke it.” No. “It was broken.” That way the facts were presented in the dullest manner possible, and there was no specific actor—and thus no one who could be grounded or have dessert rights taken from him.

But though good for avoiding blame for broken cookie jars and (in extreme cases if you are BP) for pumping millions of gallons of oil into otherwise clean water, overuse of passive voice absolutely wrecks prose. Particularly when you are writing a thriller or horror piece, you want your prose to be a driving force, to push the reader from page to page, to grab them and drag them mentally through the book without releasing them for so much as an instant. Your goal should be for your readers’ loved ones to find your readers’ dead bodies, dehydrated, malnourished, and with exploded bladders because they just couldn’t stop reading.

Passive tense doesn’t do that. Passive tense is more like a butler standing at your side as you read and asking in a polite and insistent voice if perhaps you might not be better suited doing something else. Something more active. More interesting. Like fixing the garbage disposal, perhaps. Or going to the bathroom.

You get the picture, right? If not, I’ll just sum it up for you here:

Passive voice = bad.

Active voice = good.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Michaelbrent Collings is a novelist and screenwriter. He has written numerous bestsellers, including The Loon, Rising Fears, and the #1 horror and sci-fi novel RUN. He also writes YA fiction, including the bestselling Billy: Messenger of Powers.

He hopes someday to develop superpowers, or, if that is out of the question, then at least to get a cool robot arm. You can follow him on Facebook at facebook.com/MichaelbrentCollings or check out his website at http://michaelbrentcollings.com

Sometimes when I go over a first draft, I run into hilarious problems like dangling modifiers, inconsistencies, and repetition.

One common repitition problem in first drafts is writers repeating themselves by trying too hard to abide by the adage of “show, not tell.”

So they do both: they tell something, then show it. Or vice versa: show it, then recap it by telling what we just saw. I’m guilty of this myself and must weed out repetition from early drafts.

An example:

Sue cried. Plump tears fells down her cheeks as racking sobs wrenched from her throat.

Do we really need to state that Sue cried? The tears and sobs sort of make that self-explanatory, no?

You might think that’s an over-the-top exaggeration, but it’s surprisingly easily for redundancies like that to slip in, even when they sound obvious and funny when they’re pointed out.

Hence our friend: revision!

The other day, I stumbled across a fun blog post that viewed redundancy in a way I hadn’t thought of before: using adjectives and nouns together that say the same thing.

The post is by Scott over at Slice of Diction. He made a list of 30 redundant adjective-noun word pairs. Check out the post link above for the full list.

Here are a couple of my favorites he came up with, each of which make me snicker and go, “As opposed to . . .?”

• amorous romance
• contentious dispute
• cryptic mystery
• insane lunacy
• rural countryside
• stupid idiot
• uniquely different

My gut reaction (after laughing) was to think of the flip side: A cool writing exercise would be to find unexpected adjectives, ones that are counter to the noun you put them next to. That could change the meaning or image in surprising and really cool ways.

(Okay, so there’s also the point that a writer shouldn’t over-use adjectives. Note to self: use adjectives only when needed. Make the most out of your writing toolbox.)

Using some of Scott’s words, instead the obvious amorous romance, what about a tempestuous romance?

Or a brilliant idiot?

A peaceful dispute?

Commonly different?
(Reminds me of the “non-conformists” I went to high school with. They refused to conform . . . by wearing black eyeliner, black duster coats, and hair that required Aqua Net to defy gravity. They all looked the same by non-conforming?)

Story and character ideas are already popping up for me simply by thinking of new, unexpected word pairs.

Just for fun, let’s see what we can come up with here!

Think of adjective-noun redundancy word pairs.

In the comments, throw out your best repetitive word pair (be sure it’s adjective + noun).

Don’t forget to go register your comment here, so you’ll be entered to win one of our sponsoring books!

Annette Lyon  is a Whitney Award winner, the recipient of Utah’s Best of State medal for fiction, and the author of eight novels, a cookbook, and a grammar guide, plus over a hundred magazine articles. She’s a senior editor at Precision Editing Group and a cum laude graduate from BYU with a degree in English. When she’s not writing, editing, knitting, or eating chocolate, she can be found mothering and avoiding the spots on the kitchen floor. Find her online at blog.annettelyon.com and on Twitter: @AnnetteLyon.

Need a little extra grammar help? Get Annette’s grammar book, There, Their, They’re: A No-Tears Guide to Grammar from the Word Nerd.

One of my least favorite things about today’s world is the prevalence of people who say, “It is what it is.”

Forget about the threat of global financial meltdown, skyrocketing teen pregnancy, and the pervasive appeal of the Kardashians—whenever I hear someone say, “It is what it is,” it makes me want to weep and run for the hills.

After punching the person who said it.

I mean, really, what the heck does that even mean?  “It is what it is.”  Huh?  You ever walk up to someone and say out of the blue, “That water sure is wet,” or “I find almost all ice to be cold.”  Those make about as much self-defining sense as “It is what it is.”

That being said, there is one area where sometimes you can legitimately say “It is what it is” and actually have it mean something.  And that area is writing.

I’ve gotten many emails and personal queries about how to keep writing when the ideas aren’t flowing.  As a novelist, I try to get out at least 5,000 words a day.  10,000 is not unusual.  I write anywhere from three to eight books a year, along with numerous screenplays, blog entries, short stories, etc. etc. blah blah blah.  And they don’t suck, either: my last book, The Haunted, spent almost two months on Amazon’s Horror Bestsellers list (and is still selling quite well), and (I was recently informed) is an official Whitney Awards nominee.  So I must be doing something right to get that many people willing to shell out a couple bucks for my work.  And when other authors and aspiring authors hear about how fast I work, they want to know my secret.

My secret is simple, and not very secret at all: sometimes you just gotta say, “It is what it is.”  By that I mean: most people who suffer from “writer’s block” don’t really suffer from any kind of block.  Rather, they suffer from what one of my old writing teachers called the “Poop Bird.”  (He didn’t actually call it that, but the word he did use was a naughty one, so I’ll leave it up to you to figure out.)

The Poop Bird is an imaginary creature that sits on many writers’ shoulders and whispers, “That’s no good,” as they type.  If it’s your typical PB, he (or she, the Poop Bird comes in many shapes, sizes, and genders) will even try to get a jump on his work by telling you, “That idea is no good,” before you even start typing.  This is what most “writer’s block” really is: a self-editing function that insists on a perfect first draft.

This is bupkis.  First drafts are supposed to be messy.  They’re supposed to need work.  That’s why God invented White Out and “delete” keys.

So what’s my secret?  What’s the method I use to make sure I get out hundreds of pages when others are still working on an opening paragraph?  I’ve killed the PB.  I have learned to say, “This isn’t perfect.  It’s a first draft.  Mistakes are okay.”

In other words, I can look at a word or a sentence or a page and know it needs work and still be okay with it.

Sometimes it’s the time that you put in that matters as much as the quality.  Sometimes being a “good writer” means being able to just get mediocre words on the page.  Sometimes…

… sometimes, it is what it is.

LDSP: Readers, have you killed your Poop Bird? How did you do it? Tell us in the comments.

Michaelbrent Collings is an internationally bestselling novelist and produced screenwriter who writes primarily horror but also dabbles in YA fantasy and hopes to develop superpowers someday.  His next novel, Apparition, will be available soon, and all his books are available at amazon or via his website at http://michaelbrentcollings.com.  You can follow him on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/MichaelbrentCollings or on Twitter @mbcollings.  Failing that, you can buy a few of his books and help put his kids through college.

Let’s do a fun quiz. See if you can fill in the blanks.

A fly on the _______
Old as _______
At the end of my _______
Nip it in the _________
Many hands make light ________
A stitch in time saves ______
Growing like a ______
Like father, like______
Spitting _____
You can say that _____
Bend over ______
The buck stops _____
Build a better _____
Burn the midnight _____
Get your foot in the _____
Keep your nose to the _____
Laugh all the way to the _____
Making money hand over ______
Swim with the _____
Time is _____
Hope springs _____
On a wing and a _____
Hope against _____

Here are the answers:

A fly on the wall.
Old as dirt.
At the end of my rope.
Nip it in the bud.
Many hands make light work.
A stitch in time saves nine.
Growing like a weed.
Like father, like son.
Spitting mad.
You can say that again.
Bend over backwards.
The buck stops here.
Build a better mousetrap.
Burn the midnight oil.
Get your foot in the door.
Keep your nose to the grindstone.
Laugh all the way to the bank.
Making money hand over fist.
Swim with the sharks.
Time is money.
Hope springs eternal.
On a wing and a prayer.
Hope against hope.

How many did you get right? All of them? Some? None? More than likely, you correctly identified the last word in the majority of the expressions.

Why? Because they’re clichés, worn-out metaphors that have become so common they are meaningless.

At one time, clichés were original ways of expressing an idea, emotion, or thought. Over time, however, people used these expressions so frequently that they became trite.

You want to purge clichés from your writing. Instead of using a well-known expression like “counting your chicks before they’re hatched,” try twisting it. Tweaking a word or two can make a difference. Test your creativity by twisting some of the above examples. Or, better yet, create your own unique expressions.

Be careful that you don’t overdo it with original expressions that distract from your story, but stay away from the “tried and true” statements that “everyone and their mother” has heard “since the dawn of time.”

Our local recreation center has a sign on the track that reads, in part, something like:

If you swam, Dry off before going on the track

A good friend e-mailed me about it after twitching all through her three times-a-week runs around that track. She asked if the sign was wrong, because it sounded awkward (especially with “swam”), but she couldn’t think of a better way to say it.

If you set aside the fact that dry shouldn’t be capitalized here, the sign is grammatically correct.

The tenses of swim go like this:

Present tense: swim (This morning, I will swim for thirty minutes.)
Past tense: swam (Last week, I swam ten laps.)
Past participle: had swum (I thought back to the time I had swum with a team.)

So swam is the right form of the word, plain old past tense.

And yet. That sign makes me twitch too.

It’s a great case of when smooth writing and clarity trump “right.” In other words, just because it’s correct doesn’t mean it’s the best way of saying something.

The other day, as I was leaving the rec center, I saw her as she came around the track. “I’ve got it!” she said. “It should say, ‘Dry off after swimming’!”

Ding!

She’s absolutely right. The sign could be rewritten in a number of ways, and that’s a great one. It would not only save room, but be clearer. Her version takes the verb swam and turns it into a noun, swimming.

As you all know, I get all twitchy when things are incorrect, but that doesn’t mean I won’t twitch when they’re correct—but goofy and awkward.

A great writer can take a twitchy (but correct) sentence and mold it, making the end result something others will read and understand without a second thought.

Or a twitch.

Annette Lyon  is a Whitney Award winner, the recipient of Utah’s Best of State medal for fiction, and the author of eight novels, a cookbook, and a grammar guide, plus over a hundred magazine articles. She’s a senior editor at Precision Editing Group and a cum laude graduate from BYU with a degree in English. When she’s not writing, editing, knitting, or eating chocolate, she can be found mothering and avoiding the spots on the kitchen floor. Find her online at blog.annettelyon.com and on Twitter: @AnnetteLyon.

Need a little extra grammar help? Get Annette’s grammar book, There, Their, They’re: A No-Tears Guide to Grammar from the Word Nerd.

Thought that maybe if I put lots of exclamation points in the title, that reflexives would sound exciting!

Did it work? 🙂

Lara from Overstuffed brought up a funky English quirk with reflexive pronouns. I tried to dig around and ferret out the reason for the quirk, to no avail. So instead of explaining the history of the quirk, we’ll just discuss it!

Before we get to the quirk:

What the heck are we talking about?

Reflexive pronouns are ones where an action is being performed on the subject by the subject. For example:

Tommy can feed himself now.
While making dinner, Alicia accidentally cut herself with a knife.
They looked at themselves in the mirror.
You can help yourself to a drink.

And so on.

It’s important to use reflexive pronouns when they’re called for. Why? Because without them, you can create sentences that are grammatically correct but totally confusing.

The following sentence is from above but without the reflexive pronoun:

While making dinner, Alicia accidentally cut her with a knife.

See the confusion?

Did Alicia accidentally cut her sister or neighbor or some other female (her) in the kitchen? Or did Alicia cut Alicia? (Did she cut herself?)

Similarly:

They looked at them in the mirror.

We potentially have two groups. The group that is looking and the group that is reflected in the mirror. Or are they the same group? If it’s the same group, a reflexive pronoun takes away the ambiguity:

They looked at themselves in the mirror.

Are we clear on the basics of reflexive pronouns?
(I hope?)

Then let’s talk about the funky quirk!

All reflexive pronouns add “self” or “selves” to the end of another pronoun.

Some tack self/selves to the possessive form:

I / my / myself
we / our / ourselves

But other reflexives take the objective form:

he / him/ himself
(possessive form would be hisself)

their / them/ themselves
(possessive form would be theirselves)

We all know that hisself and theirselves are INCORRECT.

(We all know that, right? Please tell me you aren’t saying theirselves or hisself. My twitching eye thanks you.)

But I’d really like to know the reason behind it. Why do we say myself and ourselves but himself and themselves?

It’s just one more of ten thousand or so ways that English makes no sense whatsoever.

But we love it anyway.

Annette Lyon  is a Whitney Award winner, the recipient of Utah’s Best of State medal for fiction, and the author of eight novels, a cookbook, and a grammar guide, plus over a hundred magazine articles. She’s a senior editor at Precision Editing Group and a cum laude graduate from BYU with a degree in English. When she’s not writing, editing, knitting, or eating chocolate, she can be found mothering and avoiding the spots on the kitchen floor. Find her online at blog.annettelyon.com and on Twitter: @AnnetteLyon.

Need a little extra grammar help? Get Annette’s grammar book, There, Their, They’re: A No-Tears Guide to Grammar from the Word Nerd.

The Top Ten Fears of Unpublished Writers:

10. What if my book doesn’t sell?

9. What if the stores won’t stock my book on their shelves?

8. What if no one will publish me?

7. What if no one likes what I’ve written?

6. What if I can’t get this ending/plot/scene right?

5. What if I used lay when it should have been lie?

4. What if the computer crashes and erases all my work?

3. What if I can’t write more than 40,000 words?

2. What if this is the stupidest story ever known to man?

1. What if I’m not really a writer?

I’d wager these fears sound familiar, if you’re an aspiring author. You might have put them in different order, and perhaps have thrown in some things like “finding time to write,” etc, but by and large, I think every new writer has these fears.

Now, let’s look at the other side of the coin.

The Top Ten Fears of Published Writers:

10. What if my book doesn’t sell?

9. What if the stores won’t stock my book on their shelves?

8. What if no one will publish me?

7. What if no one likes what I’ve written?

6. What if I can’t get this ending/plot/scene right?

5. What if I used lay when it should have been lie?

4. What if the computer crashes and erases all my work?

3. What if I can’t write more than 40,000 words?

2. What if this is the stupidest story ever known to man?

1. What if I’m not really a writer?

Notice anything? Yep—the published author has pretty much the same fears as the unpublished author. If you’re published, you may feel a little more confident over the whole lay/lie thing (I don’t) and you may feel that you’ve got a better handle on your scene structures, but deep down, we’re all the same. We all want people to like us, we all worry that our readers won’t like this new book as much as they did the last, and we wonder if our publisher will or will not accept our latest submission. A published author feels nervous while waiting for that acceptance/rejection letter, and it makes our day when we hear that someone liked our book.

I’m not telling you this to depress you — I’m telling you this so I can lead up to one simple, fundamental truth: getting published is not like waving a magic wand that will make all your problems go away and all your dreams come true. It will not make you more attractive, it will not make you an instant public speaker, and it will not ensure popularity. It will not boost your confidence. It will not make you a fabulous promoter.

You must work on all these things yourself.

You make yourself a better speaker. You make yourself good at promotion. You build your own confidence. And there is no reason on this great green earth why you should wait until you’re published to start working on these attributes.

Tristi Pinkston is the author of nine published books, including the Secret Sisters mystery series. In addition to being a prolific author, Tristi also provides a variety of author services, including editing and online writing instruction. You can visit her at www.tristipinkston.blogspot.com or her website at www.tristipinkston.com.

Be clear.

This is something that is both very easy sounding and extremely difficult. It is especially difficult in the realm of fantasy and science fiction, as well as other genre writing like horror or supernatural works. People read fiction to be transported to another place, to give them some experience that they would not otherwise have. The reader of a work of fiction must always and automatically “suspend disbelief” whenever reading: he must put away what he knows to be “true” in order to immerse himself in the “reality” of the story. This is why details can sink or save a book: too many things that don’t ring true, and the reader’s ability to suspend disbelief is undermined. The reader stops being an active participant in the book’s adventures, and turns instead into a critic, a scientist, an observer looking for what is wrong rather than enjoying what may be right.

And the idea of “suspension of disbelief” is nowhere more crucial than when writing fantasy, science fiction, or genre works. In addition to the first layer of suspension (the fact that the reader is not really participating in the fictional adventures of the book’s protagonists and antagonists), there is another layer of disbelief that must be dealt with: the question of magic. Of alien technologies. Of ghosts and specters. These “make believe” aspects of genre writing present a special problem, as they inherently inhibit the reader’s ability to put aside the “real” in favor of the “read.”

The best way to deal with this problem is a facet of the critical characteristic of clarity. The best genre work always takes place in fully realized “worlds” with clear, easily-understood (or at least fairly easily-understood) “rules.” The presence of such rules can mean a fantasy windfall. Their absence can mean disaster.

One example of this is the blockbuster hit The Sixth Sense, one of the top-grossing suspense/supernatural thriller movies of all time. The rules are set up very early on in the movie: the movie’s young protagonist can see ghosts. The ghosts do not know they are dead. He can help them “move on” by finding out what unfinished business it is that they are remaining to deal with. These simple rules set the scene for both an engaging ghost story and one of the greatest surprise endings in modern cinematic history. And the surprise is complete and utterly earned because it follows the rules. 

Another example of literary rule-making is in The Lord of the Rings saga. There, Tolkien draws upon a much wider palette in order to paint an epic portrait of an entire world at war. Unlike The Sixth Sense, which is an intimate, almost claustrophobic movie, The Lord of the Rings follows dozens of characters throughout the various landscapes of Middle Earth. The magic use is prolific and varied. But still, there are rules, and they are scrupulously adhered to. Elves have a natural inclination toward and protective sense over all things of nature. Dwarves prefer to be underground. Gandalf the Gray is quite a different person than Gandalf the White. Each has set characteristics, set attributes, and these are as unchanging as the DNA of any real human being.

A final example (if I may) can be found in my own work. One of my books is called Billy: Messenger of Powers. It’s a young adult fantasy about a boy who finds himself embroiled in a magical war between two groups: the Dawnwalkers, who want to protect and serve humanity; and the Darksiders, whose goal is nothing less than world domination. As with The Sixth Sense and The Lord of the Rings, clarity is key. Billy (the hero) is drawn into a world of magic and wonder. But the wizards and witches he meets can’t just run around “doing spells” willy-nilly: there are rules, and those rules must be laid out with enough clarity that the reader not only understands the world of the story, but believes in it.

Simply put, clarity is key in all fiction, but critical in sci-fi, fantasy, and other genre work.. A muddled magic system, an alien technology that is capable of some things one moment then incapable the next, these can be the genesis of confusion in the reader…and signal the death knell for an otherwise viable series.

Michaelbrent Collings is a bestselling novelist whose books RUN and Billy: Messenger of Powers have been amazon.com bestsellers. He is also a produced screenwriter and member of both the Writers Guild of America and the Horror Writers of America. His blog is at http://michaelbrentcollings.com/blog2.html, and you can follow him on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Michaelbrent-Collings/283851837365 or on twitter @mbcollings.

I’m a stay-at-home mom, a homeschooler, the owner/operator of a bath and beauty company, I write blogs for Families.com, I’m the Wolf leader in my ward, and I’m an LDS historical fiction novelist. No wonder I’m so tired – after typing all that, I think I need to go take a nap.

People ask me all the time how I manage to balance everything. Well, truth be told, I don’t always. You don’t want to drop by my house unexpectedly or you’ll never know what you’ll find. We live in organized chaos. I stay up too late at night and I admit there are days when I feel like I’m chasing my tail. But there are a few things I’ve learned that I’d like to share with you in hopes that it will help make your schedule a little more conducive to writing. Or for that matter, finding time to do any other thing you’d like.

1 – Meals and Snacks

You don’t need to prepare an all-out meal from scratch three times a day. You can do cold cereal for breakfast once in a while, you know. You can also do cheese, crackers and lunch meat for lunch. I do try to prepare “actual dinners,” as my daughter puts it, and I do make breakfast and lunch, but on days when I’m seriously writing, I let mealtimes become more casual. Some ideas:

a. Keep yogurt in your fridge for a quick snack for you or the kids. Yogurt and a banana make a great breakfast, too.

b. Take a loaf of bread and make it into a whole stack of sandwiches. Then slide the sandwiches back into the bread sack. When someone needs a sandwich, they can just grab one out of the fridge.

c. Designate one crisper in your fridge to be a “snack drawer.” Fill it up with apples, cheese sticks, yogurt, etc. When your children want a snack, tell them to go get something out of the “snack drawer.” You can do the same thing in your cupboard. Make a basket with pretzels, crackers, etc. and have that be the special “snack basket.” You can take sandwich bags and break the boxes down into serving sizes and tell them they can have one, so they don’t run off with the whole box.

d. Make meals ahead of time and stick them in the freezer.

e. When I buy a package of meat, I like to cook it all up and then freeze it, cooked. That way, when I go to use it, I just have to warm it through instead of defrosting and then cooking it.

f. Make tomorrow’s dinner while you’re making tonight’s. Especially if you’re using cooked meat, you can assemble tomorrow’s dinner, cover it and put it in the fridge. Then just throw it in the oven tomorrow night.

g. Teach your older children how to make sandwiches, warm up soup, etc. They get a sense of pride in their accomplishments when they are allowed to help make a meal.

h. If you have younger children, make some sippy cups with milk, juice and water in them. Then when the child gets thirsty, they can either grab one themselves or you can send your older child to get it for them. It’s a lot less expensive than juice boxes, that’s for sure.

These are all things you can either direct from your computer or will help you spend less time in the kitchen = more time at the computer.

2 – Entertaining the Troops

a. It’s not a sin to let your children watch TV. I don’t mean to stick them in front of it for hours on end and let them watch whatever comes on; there are definite dangers in allowing entire days in front of the TV, and with the programming that’s on, you never know what they might be subjected to. But there are some fabulous programs on that are fun and educational, as well as great DVDs. My kids have learned a lot from shows like CyberChase, Stanley, Reading Rainbow, Sesame Street, The Magic School Bus, and the like. There’s nothing wrong with turning on the TV and letting your kids watch a show while you write.

b. Get some paper and crayons and let your kids “write” a book of their own while you’re working.

c. Ask older children to read to the younger ones.

3 – Adjusting Your Sleep

This one’s hard. But consider getting up earlier than your kids or staying up late after they go to bed. It will do a number on your own sleep but you’ll have a sense of contentment that may help make up for some of that lack.

4 – Housework

a. I have to get up and walk around periodically. So while I’m doing that, I’ll change out the laundry and put in a load of dishes. Usually by the time I’m done doing that, I’ll be ready to get back to work.

b. It’s not a sin to teach your children to do chores. The happiest children are the ones who feel that they are valuable in their homes and who have a sense of purpose. When you teach your children to do chores, you are helping them to feel needed. Of course, keep the chores age-appropriate. My 10-year-old can vacuum, and my 8-year-old can wipe up the bathroom mirrors and counter top. My five-year-old can unload the dishwasher. I even have my older kids stand on chairs to get the laundry out of the washer and put it in the dryer. They all love helping me make dinner. As they get older, I’ll teach them to do other things. This not only clears up five minutes of time for me here and there, but when we work together to turn a half-hour job into a ten-minute job (freeing up twenty minutes) we’re drawing closer together.

c. Reevaluate your thinking about housework. Mold is obviously not good. It’s important to have clean towels and clothes, and feeding your family is a good thing. But if you can give up something to give yourself time to write, think about doing it. Are there ways you could simplify your routines? Can you delegate more to your husbands? Can you put up with toys scattered across the floor for a little while so you can finish your chapter? Is it necessary to have all your dishes perfectly stacked all the time? When you’re on a roll with your book, it’s okay to let some things slide until you’re done.

5 – Organizing Your Time

Yeah, this tip’s not a piece of cake either. When you’ve got other people in the house and they have needs, it’s sometimes impossible to create the chunks of time you need.

a. One thing I do is to create Days. What I mean by that is, Wednesday, for instance, is Scout Day. After lunch I sit down and review what I need to do to prepare for the Scouts to come at 4:30. I’m not writing during this time, or grocery shopping, or anything else. It’s devoted to Scouts. I get ready for them to come, they come, and then after they leave, I look at next week’s meeting. I do any ahead-of-time prep work that needs doing, and if I need to buy something, I put it on my shopping list. I record what they got passed off and make notes on what they need to do next. Then, with the exception of getting whatever I might have put on the shopping list, I don’t think about it until the next Wednesday. Monday is the day I use to make the products for my business, unless I have an emergency order. When I was a Stampin’ Up! distributor, Tuesday was my prep day for that. Look at your life – are there certain tasks you can isolate to one day a week?

b. Create an errand day. I used to have the tendency to run out and do errands several times a week, and I found I was away from home a lot. Now what I do is designate an errand day. This usually coordinates with Pay Day. I’ll sit down and pay bills, and then I’ll go out and do all my grocery shopping, trip to the post office, to the bank (if needed) library, Blockbuster, etc, all at once. It makes for about a three-hour trip, but it’s better for me to get it done at once. Now, of course, in between times I still run to the library and Blockbuster (who could go for two weeks without books and movies?) and I do mail books and products as the orders come in. But I try to do it in chunks so that I’m home more often.

c. And again, with the sleep thing I already mentioned. I’m usually up until around 2 am, the main reason for this being that my husband works the night shift and so I like to stay up to see him off. But from 9:00 when all the kids are in bed (supposedly) until I wake my husband up to get ready for work, I can be at the computer, or reading a book, or watching a movie. With the book and movie reviews I write for Families.com, I need to make time for that in my schedule as well.

I think the main thing we need to do is find a way to create balance. You can write and take care of your children at the same time. I recently moved my computer into the living room (it was in my bedroom) so I could be in the thick of things. Right now, my two-year-old is five feet to my left, watching “Blue’s Clues.” I know he’s safe, I know he’s learning, and I’m writing. If you’re totally ignoring your kids in order to write, it won’t be as satisfactory to you. But if you totally ignore yourself and your own talents and ambitions, you won’t derive the kind of satisfaction from motherhood that you should. Take care of yourself so you can take care of your kids.

Tristi Pinkston is the author of eight published books, including the Secret Sisters mystery series. In addition to being a prolific author, Tristi also provides a variety of author services, including editing, coordinating blog tours, and online writing instruction. You can visit her at www.tristipinkston.blogspot.com or her website at www.tristipinkston.com.

When writing fiction, it’s important to utilize as many of the senses as possible.

The more you can include the senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste the more your readers will “feel” your story.

As writers, we tend to use sight most frequently. We describe what our characters see more often than any other sense. We are visual and that comes out in our writing.

The next most used sense is sound. We write what our characters can hear. This adds more dimension to our stories, especially when we combine it with sight. Usually, sight and sound seem to describe enough. However, we are shortchanging our readers when we only use sight and sound.

When I was a kid, I used to go to the beach all the time. I’d stop at the snack shop and for a few pennies I’d buy green apple bubble gum and chew it while I was at the beach. To this day, whenever I smell green apple bubble gum, I think of the beach. Similarly, whenever I smell a certain perfume I always think of my mother. Coffee and burned toast remind me of spending the night at my grandmother’s house. Think about smells in your life and how they remind you of certain events. The same can be true for your writing. You can evoke a certain mood by including specific scents.

You can also pull readers further into your story by including touch. Was something rough, smooth, cold, hot, slimy, sticky, or gritty? Including touch can enhance your scene and involve your reader more fully in your writing.

The same is true for taste. Can your character taste the salt on her lips while she walks along the seashore? What about the tinny taste of blood in your character’s mouth after he’s been hit in the face? Use taste to bring your scene to life.

To develop more sensitivity to your senses try keeping a sense journal for a few days, or longer. Write down everything you see, hear, touch, smell, or taste. You’ll find that as you keep this journal, you’ll become more aware of your senses and then you’ll be able to use them more effectively in your writing.

Rebecca Talley grew up in Santa Barbara, CA. She now lives in rural CO on a small ranch with a dog, a spoiled horse, too many cats, and a herd of goats. She and her husband, Del, are the proud parents of ten multi-talented and wildly-creative children. Rebecca is the author of a children’s picture book “Grasshopper Pie” (WindRiver 2003), three novels, “Heaven Scent” (CFI 2008), “Altared Plans” (CFI 2009), and “The Upside of Down” (CFI 2011), and numerous magazine stories and articles. You can visit her blog at www.rebeccatalleywrites.blogspot.com.