About ten years ago, someone said to me, “You write fiction because you can’t handle the real world.”

I was stunned by the accusation. For one thing, my fictional characters were very real to me! And I tackled real situations in my books–often based on actual events. From my childhood on, I’d learned a lot of truth about the human condition from reading fiction. In many cases, I learned more from fiction than from observing my real world.

Do Facts Equal Truth?

In Madeleine L’Engle {Herself}: Reflections on a Writing Life, the Newbery-award winner wrote about “the truth of art”: “Once when I suggested to a student that he go to the encyclopedia when he wanted to look up a fact, he asked me, ‘But can’t I find truth in stories too?’ My reply: ‘Who said anything about truth? I told you to look up facts in the encyclopedia. When you’re looking for truth, then look in art, in poetry, in story, in painting and music.’ Now this student was doing no more than making the mistake of many of his elders, confusing provable fact with truth, and then fearing truth enough to try to discount it. If I want to search for the truth of the human heart, I’m more apt to go to Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov than a book on anatomy.”

I think that people who discount fiction don’t really understand it–or haven’t read much of it. They don’t grasp the power of story to carry truth. They have a bit of a superior attitude, as if reading a biography or a book on unclogging your sink has more merit than a novel.

Truth Learned in Fiction

I still have most of my favorite childhood books, and I still re-read some of them. I loved sharing them with my daughters, and I now love sharing them with my grandchildren. Some truths are universal and timeless (like the lessons on friendship learned from Charlotte’s Web.)

My all-time favorite children’s book was Little Women. I learned a lot of important truths from the March family: how to love deeply, how to grieve a loss and go on, and how to feed the imagination. (I expect the writing “bug” bit me then, as I watched Jo March toiling away in the attic over her stories.) I learned that writers wrote about what they knew.

Life Lessons

If you have a minute, leave a comment and share a book or two from your own childhood that impacted you–and tell why. What truths do you remembering learning in fiction?

Boy, are you going to have fun this weekend!

I’m only providing one resource this time. You’ll soon see why. This free gift will keep all of us happily reading for many weeks!

Read below:

What’s your favorite kind of book? We’ve created a giant flowchart to help you browse the top 50 free eBooks at Project Gutenberg… Your choices range from Charles Dickens to Jane Austen, from Sherlock Holmes to needlework. We’ve linked to all 50 free eBooks so you can start downloading right now. The books are available in all major eBook formats.

How to Choose

The list includes fiction and nonfiction of all genres. To help you decide which books you’d like to download (e-book or audio), they’ve created a flow chart for you to figure out which titles match your personal interests.

It is divided into fiction and nonfiction, then helps you decide further with suggestions like “I love history” or “I love self-help books” (nonfiction) or “I love literary fiction” or “I love mystery” (fiction). Just follow the arrows to the free titles you’re most likely to enjoy.

Follow this link for a larger “flow chart” if you don’t want to read through the whole list of free books. If the type is too tiny for you to read, click on the “view” button, top left, and make the flow chart bigger.

We commonly ask other writers, “How’s the story coming along?” or “How’s the work going?”

What exactly do we mean by “work” when we ask that?

Now? Today? This Year?

It usually means one of three things:

1. We may be talking about our work right now. Right this minute, the writing is going well–or it’s dragging or we’re blocked.
2. We may be talking about our creative work on any given day. We decide the writing is going well if we meet our goals for the day. (e.g. to write 1,000 words, or to revise the story ending, or to research a character’s occuption) It doesn’t matter what the size of the goal is. But as long as we meet whatever goal we set for ourselves, it’s a successful writing day.
3. We may be talking about how our writing is going in general. It covers a length of time, like, “How has your writing gone over the summer?” Or “How is your writing career going?”

Criteria for Successful Work

“To feel as if they are measuring up,” says Eric Maisel in Fearless Creating, “artists must meet their own standards in each regard.”

So, how do we decide how the writing is going? How do we measure success in these three areas?

It’s personal. And it’s totally up to you.

1. Is your writing going well right now? That depends on what makes a successful writing experience for you. Is it flowing? Are you having fun? Are you producing at least 500 words every thirty minutes? Choose your own criteria for success.
2. Did your writing go well today? Did you meet your quota of words or pages by the end of the day? Did you have fun? Did you persevere despite interruptions? Choose your own criteria for a successful writing day.
3. How is your work going in general? Are you getting better (deeper characters, snappier dialogue, whatever) with each book? Are you getting bigger advances? Are you winning awards? Choose your own criteria for a successful writing career.

Bear in mind that you can be UNsuccessful right now, or have an UNsuccessful day, but overall have a successful career. There can be any combination. Sometimes my writing is going well right now (I’m having fun, and the words are flowing), but later I get interrupted and don’t meet my daily goal, so I don’t feel I had a successful day.

I’d be interested to know how you judge your work in these three areas. How’s YOUR writing going?

The most common question I get during the summer deals with productivity–or the lack thereof.

If that’s your struggle this summer, I found some things you might want to try!

Help is On the Way

Do you need to put the “prod” into your productivity? Then I’ve got the little tool for you! It’s called Write or Die, and there is an online version or a downloadable version. Write or Die is a web application that encourages writing by punishing the tendency to avoid writing. Start typing in the box. As long as you keep typing, you’re fine, but once you stop typing, you have a grace period of a certain number of seconds and then there are consequences.

Focus Booster is a free download that helps you focus! You can also use it online if you don’t want to download anything. “Focus booster is a simple and elegant application designed to help you eliminate the anxiety of time and enhance your focus and concentration.”

And if those don’t work for you, there are half a dozen MORE apps to help you focus on your writing in an article called “Quit Wasting Time Now”. Some are free, and some cost a small fee.

Fun? Effective?

If you try any of these focusing helps, please report back to us on the pros and cons. I’m willing to give almost anything a try, if it will help me focus on my writing better!

Because of a health issue this year (fixed recently by surgery), my energy has been at an all-time low for months.

During 2012, I slowed down–a lot. My writing time seemed to disappear daily down a black hole. I had multiple projects outlined–but little written.

Mostly because of exhaustion, I’ve picked up some bad time (mis)management habits. Now that I feel better, I know I need to get control of my writing hours back.

It Isn’t Easy!

How do you get back on a writing schedule when life has derailed you for months? The answer is simple, although not necessarily easy.

You stop making default choices just because you’re out of the habit of thinking through your actions and consequences. And you stop letting others make “time choices” for you.

In short, you budget your time.

Time is Like Money: a Limited Resource

Think of time (a resource that isn’t unlimited) like your income (which is likely not unlimited either).

Most of us learned how to budget years ago, when first leaving home. We discovered that we didn’t have nearly enough money to do or buy all the things we wished we had. If you were lucky enough to grow up before credit cards, or you had parents like mine who taught you that you didn’t buy things until you had the money saved up, then budgeting comes naturally. It might never be fun, but you can do it.

Depending on your values and priorities, you will spend your income in a certain order. At our house, our tithes and offerings come out first. This is followed immediately by those things we don’t want to forfeit: a roof over our heads (mortgage), food on the table, electricity and water, etc. (And books!)

Only after the money is budgeted for necessities do we decide what to do with the discretionary money. That includes the “wants” we have that aren’t “needs,” like eating out, going to movies, and taking trips.

Money is limited, so we budget. We understand that. But time is limited too. And if you don’t budget time along the same principles (non-negotiable spending and discretionary spending), you won’t have time to write.

The Writing Time Budget: How-To

First, you must decide what is most important in your time allotment. If you have a day job or small children to care for, those are certainly non-negotiables. Look at your calendar and a detailed day planner of some kind (even a spreadsheet will work). Mark all those hours in your week and month that are NOT spoken for by things truly outside your control.

If you have other major commitments, the time you get to budget for writing may not be huge, but that’s okay. Mark all time that would be free to write if you chose to: evenings or weekend hours available, nap times, commute times, while the family sleeps, etc. Those hours are what you get to budget.

My family comes before my writing, so some of my hours go to babysitting grandkids (some weekly, others less often). Some time goes to my husband, some to my church, some to my neighborhood. I have gone overboard a bit in the past and had to cut back some, but they still come first.

Second, even though this sounds like it will ruin your time budget, you need to set aside time IN YOUR CALENDAR for yourself. I didn’t do this for years, but no one is indestructible. No one. And recovering from severe burnout can take months–many more hours than if you had taken care of yourself in the first place. Know your own limits. No two people are alike.

Know your own personality. If you’re an introvert like me, and need lots of solitude to recoup your energy, be sure you get it. And be sure to set aside some time right after particularly stressful seasons and events.

Know your best time of the day to write. Don’t bend to everyone else’s whims, then end up having no time to write except at 10 p.m. when you’re a morning person who can’t think clearly after 3 p.m.

Third, budget what is left for your writing. Mark those hours as “commitments.” Write it in your calendar and day planner at least four weeks (preferably six weeks) ahead. That’s about how far out people call and ask you to Tupperware parties and other events you may want to skip.

Then when someone calls to invite you to do lunch or shop or needs to talk, you can check your calendar and truthfully say you have a commitment at that hour–then suggest another more convenient hour. There are very few true emergencies that require you to give up your best writing hour of the day.

Budget Today!

Remember: time is not an unlimited resource, although I have been acting like it this past year. It’s finite, and it goes by quickly.

It might not seem as serious as a money budget–I mean, you won’t end up out on the street starving if you watch TV instead of write. But you will get to the end of your writing year and be no closer to attaining your writing dreams.

I decided that’s not what I want this year–and there’s still enough of 2012 to do something about it! I hope you’ll join me.

According to an article in Writer’s Digest three summers ago (“The Must-Have Online Marketing Plan” by M.J. Rose), “Ultimately, no matter what you do, careers are made on the book, not on the marketing.”

That’s very true. Just as true is this statement from the same article: “Someone–either you or your publisher–is going to have to get the word out about the book.”

More and more often, that “someone” is the author. That article was written three years ago…but the dilemma of “how much marketing is enough?” has still not been resolved.

Today’s Publishing Reality

More and more, today’s author is expected to do his part in the marketing. Marketing plans must be part of your query or proposal now–no matter how much you’ve been published.

It can include (but not be limited to) creating a website, writing a blog, making video trailers, doing blog tours, getting your book reviewed online, writing a newsletter…AND being active on Facebook and Pinterest and Goodreads.

Why Social Networking?

Until I heard several speakers at a leadership conference a few years ago, I’d avoided most social networking because of the time it took. I was very “hit and miss” with Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn until I discovered SocialOomph.com, which let me schedule posts and tweets for a week at a time.

According to those market gurus, a high percentage of people check Facebook accounts four times more often than their email. (I’m sure it’s much, much more often now.) Social networking appears to be the new way to connect with people–including your readers (now called your “tribe,” a term I heartily dislike.)

I have a private family Facebook account, although I have my doubts anymore about just how private anything is online. And I have a writer’s Facebook account and what they used to call a “fan page.” I finally set up my LinkedIn account, my Amazon author page, and Pinterest account. I tried Goodreads three times and got kicked off each time…more rejection to deal with! Ha ha.

The Times, They Are a-Changin’…Again!

We writers feel the pressure to learn and use all the marketing and networking opportunities, but is there no limit? How much time do YOU devote to marketing (daily or weekly)? How do you decide which sites to try, and which ones to leave until later?

If you have time, leave a comment below about your own social networking and marketing experiences. Which avenues have worked best for you? Which ones do you actually enjoy? How do you keep from using more time than you intended? (I literally missed a meal the first time I got on Pinterest! My eyes were nearly bloodshot when I logged off.)

Before you begin using images off the Internet for your blog or even repinning on Pinterest, read this scary article by a blogger who was sued for using such pictures.

What are the pluses and minuses you’ve encountered? Looking forward to your ideas!

My best friend (who once lost 100 pounds) leads a successful weekly weight loss group. This week she and I discussed how much time it takes to stay on top of habits you are changing.

Sometimes I am shocked at how much time it takes to maintain your success. (Not move ahead, mind you. Just not go backwards.) I was struck by the similarities of her discovery and my own (pertaining to new writing habits.)

Be Warned!

Just as it’s easy to regain weight you’ve lost, it’s also easy to slip back into the old habits that left you with no time or energy to write. It’s oh-so-easy to slowly slide backwards. You’ve made a lot of gains—but you also must maintain. How?

Ultimately, the answer lies in how you think.

Single-Minded Focus

“There are approximately 5 percent of people in any country, in any nation, who will always raise the quality of their life above others. They so do because they choose how to think, day in, day out,” says Richard Bisiker, author of Unlock Your Personal Potential.

In other words, where the mind (or thinking) goes, the man follows. Raise the quality of your thinking, and raise the quality of your life.

It’s important to keep your mind focused daily on your new beliefs, your new boundaries, and your new time-saving policies. Why is monitoring your thinking so important? As psychologist William James said, “That which holds our attention determines our action.”

So, at least until all your new behaviors and attitudes are rock solid habits, pay attention daily to your new beliefs and goals. Each morning, plan ahead daily for interruptions and how to divert them. (“No, I can’t discuss that right now. I’ll phone you back at 5:00 p.m. and set up a time to talk.”) Or better yet, use your answering machine to avoid being pressured into snap decisions.

Review

Weekly and monthly, study your schedule of how you actually spent your time and compare it to your goals and policies. Is there slippage? Where did the writing time go?

Did you get guilted into one more volunteer job or another home decorating party? Did you rescue someone again from consequences of their own actions, using your time to fix their self-created problem? Be ruthless as you examine how you actually spent your time.

Learn from both your successes and mistakes. What things worked that you’d like to repeat? What things would you like to change? Calendars and journals remind you of how you spent your time, show you whether your activities match your priorities, and help you see whether you are making progress.

If you’re not sure you’ll do this essential checking up, find an accountability partner (writer or nonwriter) who will ask you the hard questions every week. The accountability check-in for time spent writing will prevent bad habits from sneaking back in unnoticed.

Setbacks Before Success

Sometimes interruptions occur that no one can help or avoid. You need to drop everything and attend to your sick child. Or there’s been a car accident, or in-laws have arrived for the holidays. The key to rebounding from these necessary interruptions is to view them as one-time events—not your new lifestyle. The events have a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Then you go back to your previous writing schedule.

You do not stay stuck in the familiar people-pleasing role. See unavoidable interruptions as temporary. [See the previous entry on “Achieving Writing Goals Made Simple” for a great tool to deal with this issue.)

A New Routine

In order to maintain your new writing life—and keep on gaining—certain things need to be done daily. Every day you will need to reflect on your life and chart your course. Every day you will need to renew the promise you made to yourself to make time to create. Every day you will need to seek out solitude where you can create. Every day you will need to take some action—small, medium or large—in the creation of your writing life. Every day you must plan how to spend your time that day—then follow that plan.

Be vigilant. Be diligent to put these habits into practice daily–and watch your creativity flourish. You’ll no longer dream of having a writing life. You’ll be living it.

Trying to write during the summer–or anytime, really–is such a challenge. Interruptions come in a dozen shapes and sizes.

The following article has a brilliant answer to the problem–and is brilliant in its simplicity. (I didn’t write it, but full credits are at the end.)

I wish I’d thought of this years ago!

[Thank you, Randy Ingermanson.]

“Organizing: Taming Unpredictability”

If you’ve ever tried to make a daily plan and stick to it, you’ve learned an annoying fact about plans: Life happens. Life happens in all sorts of unpredictable ways:

• You need one extra fact for the scene you’re writing, so you go browsing the web and discover that it’s way more complicated than you thought. You spend the afternoon rethinking your plot.
• You get an emergency email from your editor that you MUST deal with right away, and you burn three hours of your day putting out a fire that you didn’t even know existed when you made your daily plan.
• Your computer’s hard drive starts making horrible noises, and it turns out to need a trip to the geek shop. Even with a rush order to fix it, you lose two days.

These kinds of things happen all the time to writers. You probably had at least a couple of days with unexpected roadblocks last week. You’ll probably have at least a couple of them this week. And every week for the rest of your life. That’s just how things are.

How are you supposed to stick to a daily plan when things like these happen?

My opinion is that you can’t.

Stuff is always going to happen. Unpredictable stuff.

What’s the Answer?

Here’s what I’ve been doing lately to keep my head in the game when the game keeps going awry: I still make a daily plan of things I’d like to get done, but I write this daily plan second.

What I do first is to write a WEEKLY plan. On Monday, my first task is to write down a list of the things I think I can get done during the week.

If I get them all done by the end of the day on Friday, then the week is a success.

It’s OK if bad stuff happens two days out of the week. Matter of fact, even three bad days isn’t a tragedy. Three bad days is normal.

I’ve found that I can almost always count on having at least one or two Xtremely productive days each week. I just can’t ever know in advance which days they’ll be.

When you have a day where everything goes right, you whip through your list at light speed.

I’m having a super-productive day today, as a matter of fact. Tomorrow might be horrible, but today is going great.

In one excellent day, you can get half your week’s work done. If you get only one terrific day per week, you’ll probably get most of the things done on your weekly list. If you get lucky and have TWO great days in a week, you can almost guarantee that you’ll knock everything off your weekly list.

Try This Experiment

• For the rest of this week, make a daily list. Count the number of days you actually finish everything on that list.
• Next week on Monday morning make a list of the core things you’d like to get done for the week — the minimal set of achievements that would make the week a success. Continue making a daily list each day and continue counting the number of days that you get that list all done.

You might not have a single “successful” day (in which you get your entire daily list done). However, you will probably have at least one and possibly as many as two highly productive days in which you make huge progress on your weekly list.

At the end of next week, look to see if the week as a whole was “successful” (because you got everything done on your weekly list). You might be surprised. You might find that every day is “unsuccessful” and yet the week as a whole is a “success.”

Too Good to Be True? Not!

What’s going on here? How can five bad days add up to one good week?

The answer is that we tend to overestimate what we can do in a day but we often underestimate what we can do in a week.

Stuff happens most days. It’s a rare day when something doesn’t go wrong. But those rare days can make up for all the rest. Most weeks can be good ones.

Try it and see.

[This article is reprinted by permission of the author.

Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, “the Snowflake Guy,” publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 31,000 readers. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.

Download your free Special Report on Tiger Marketing and get a free 5-Day Course in How To Publish a Novel.]

“Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

I’ve been re-reading James Scott Bell’s excellent book The Art of War for Writers, and he says that “the biggest mental obstacle–in writing, in war, in life itself–is fear.”

I would agree 100%.

How do we fear writing?

Let me count the ways… Bell mentions several kinds of fear that plague writers. Do you find yourself in this list? Do you have additional fears?

Fear of:

• not being good enough
• not getting published
• getting published but not selling
• getting published once but never again
• getting stomped by critics
• getting stomped by family members
• wasting your time

The Quality of Fearlessness

Bell wrote about the young Teddy Roosevelt who was a sick, frail, fearful child–and what changed him into the fearless leader of history. Basically, he learned the old adage of “fake it till you make it” or “act as if.” Bell says that fearful writers become fearless writers in the same way.

Sure, you will set goals and get prepared. And (if you’re like me) you’ll pray for help. But in the end you will need to act as if you’re a successful, fearless writer until (over time) your feelings catch up with your behavior and you actually become one.

Start Today

When fear in some form hits you today, what immediate action step could you take in the face of that fear? How would a professional, successful writer deal with that fear?

What is one way you can channel that fear into energy for your writing?

Be fearless today and, as battle buddies, share one tip you’ve used successfully to win the war on the many fears of writing.

After receiving a couple of pieces of very unwelcome news early last week, it took me several days to regain my writing focus.

Most mornings were spent getting my mental, emotional and spiritual act together, which resulted in having to work till very late at night to meet some deadlines. I got the work done, but I didn’t enjoy any of it.

Today something else happened. This time I found myself very mad–at ME.

Time for a Change

None of the situations were my fault. I didn’t cause them, I couldn’t cure them, and I can’t control what certain people are still doing. So it really, really irritated me that I spent so many hours this past week thinking, reading, praying, and journaling about it.

I’ve always been this way, as far back as age four, the earliest I can remember. Obsessive thinking doesn’t help the other person, and it sure doesn’t help me. It robs us of hours and hours of productive, HAPPY times. And for writers, it steals our time to write, our relaxed ability to create, and the focus so necessary for our projects.

Enough is Enough! Focus!

Yesterday I read a quote that really got me to thinking. In The Little Book of Letting Go by Hugh Prather, it said: “We talk to children about the ‘power of the imagination.’ We attend seminars that tell us our minds have immense reserves of untapped capacity. All in all, we have done a superb job of kidding ourselves that in our roomy ‘attic’ all is useful, worth keeping, and in good repair. But if we observe our minds closely for just one hour, we see that instead of a boundless chamber of magic and wonder, our minds are more like stuffed and stodgy refrigerators that emit peculiar odors.”

It’s time to clean out my refrigerator. I’ve come to realize that all this obsessive thinking and worrying is a life-long bad habit. It’s not a mental illness that needs a pill. It’s not an emotional illness that needs counseling. It’s a bad habit–and habits can be broken.

Identify the Culprit First

I’ve broken lots of harmful habits in the past, and nearly every time it involved discovering the lie I was believing about something. We all have them. (The obese person may believe the lie that “gorging myself will bring comfort.” The procrastinator believes the lie that “I work better under pressure.” The rescuing mom believes the lie that her grown children shouldn’t/couldn’t be responsible for themselves.)

Time to dig into this stinky “mind” refrigerator and find the spoiled junk emitting the odors. Look out! Don’t stand behind me. There’s gonna be some bad stuff chucked outta here!