Tuesday Tips: Do you have the right time?

(Repost from July 2018 because I am finding it relevant yet again for a handy tip)

Are you sure?  Because quite a number of manuscripts that cross my desk don't.

• Characters are noted as preparing for a birthday party in two weeks, but a month passes before the actual event happens.  
• A court date is set for Monday, but the characters meet to discuss it the next Thursday.
• The characters meet on Thanksgiving, kiss under the mistletoe on Christmas Eve, then sleep together a week before Christmas.  

Sure makes readers scratch their head and think, Huh?

One of the best things you can do for yourself and your manuscript is to print out a blank calendar page--weekly or monthly, even yearly depending on the time frame of your story--and keep it beside your keyboard as you write.  Jot down a quick reference note on the day the story opens and every time a day goes by or a time lapse such as "a few weeks later" are mentioned. Underlining, highlighting, or making main events bold also helps. (If you are anything like me, you'll have a cupful of colored pens beside your monitor, too 😍) 

Having a calendar to make notes on not only gives you a visual of the timeline and pacing of your story, but you will quickly find the holes that can happen, the gaps needing to be filled or validated to make the story flow appropriately.   As you revise, keep track again, maybe in a different color, to ensure new details, added scenes or pages, stay on target or show you where you need to revise again to ensure the timeline makes sense to your readers.

And if your story is to happen in a certain time frame, even better.  Jot down the start day and the end day, which now gives you a direct timeline to play with.  Fill in the main events, scratch them out, mark the days up again, and keep playing around with it until you find the natural flow of events necessary for an accurate time frame.

But what if I write by the seat of my pants, you ask?  Pansters unite--because having a calendar doesn't mean you have to know every detail right away, that's why you keep the page beside your computer, so as the creative juices flow and you twist and turn your plot and characters, you can make quick notes on the calendar page, too.  Then, when you look at it after the first draft, you have the perfect visual reference guide to assist you in making those decisions needed for revisions, those fine-tuning details that really bring your story to life...and on time.

A search on Google for free calendar pages will produce loads to choose from, or simply draw up a blank template of your own.

Whether you are a planner or a panster, it's a good idea to have blank calendar pages in your writer's toolkit to pull out before beginning each new manuscript.


©bystacydawn

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Are you ready to finally solve the mystery?

One of the biggest mysteries for writers is about to be solved in a four week blog series starting Halloween Day!  Why Halloween?  Because I am going to demystify the scariest words to writers....

I am so excited to put together this special event that I hope will help both new and established authors finally take the fear out of these obscure terms in order to create a manuscript screaming to be read!

Please feel free to tell your friends and fellow authors, critique partners and writing groups to join me on October 31st for the first installment.

The mystery will finally be solved, and I can assure you...

someone won't be getting out alive...

©bystacydawn

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☮ I'd love to have you visit me on social media and at my website! Links on the side ➹💟

Mission accepted!

Next year marks a milestone birthday for me, so I have decided to take the reins and give myself a mission...a weight loss goal equal to my age 😲.  As I just celebrated my birthday late last month, that gives me a full year to complete.

In reality, it is very manageable, I just have to find some discipline and a bit more willpower where sweets are concerned 😍.  But I have been making small changes over the last couple months, which is why I am encouraged that I can do this!

Oh, and pop back for Writing Wednesday because I will have a fun hint to the blog series I will be starting at the end of the month to help a LOT of writers.


©bystacydawn

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☮ I'd love to have you visit me on social media and at my website! Links on the side ➹💟

Wednesday Writing Tip: Is your story Timeless...or Dated?

Today's tip is to be careful of references that can date your manuscript.

Using brand names, the hottest musical artist, movie stars or movies, can come back to haunt your sales.

Just because a rock star has the biggest hit of the year doesn't mean they are going to have any more.  And five years from now it is, unfortunately, possible no one will remember their name.

That goes for social media sites, too.  In this day and age, the internet changes constantly.  Do you remember Myspace?  It was all the rage 12 or so years ago, everyone was on it and talking about it, and it was everywhere etc.  But you don’t hear about it anymore, right?  

Sure, Facebook seems strong now, but who is to say something won’t happen in the next five years to take it off the internet for the next best thing that comes along?

The issue with using specific brands, businesses, and people is not only concerns with copyright and other legalities, but more importantly, when a reader picks up your backlist ten years from now, using specific-to-the-moment references like Facebook or a one hit wonder artist whose name no one can remember, really dates your story, putting it back in time when it isn't meant to be a vintage or historical.

Readers picking up your back list in the future are not going to be the same people of today, so it is important whenever possible, and when not pertinent to your story, to keep non-important details neutral, generic, so your story can stay as contemporary as possible for any reader to pick up at any time in the future.

The less specific, year orientated details, the longer the story will last in the mind of the reader and new readers years from now.  You want them to recommend your book today, but also those readers of the future to continue to recommend your back list to their friends and coworkers so your sales can keep moving forward and not stall out on you because your story is too out of date.

Going generic when the specific details are not important won't hurt your story and will only help it to stay timeless.

©bystacydawn

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☮ I'd love to have you visit me on social media and at my website! Links on the side ➹💟

I'm trying to be...

This has been one of those weeks when life throws you a couple road blocks...like boulders tumbling down the mountain so you have to veer off the road to go around them.  

That doesn't always lead to tranquil days...BUT, I've been proud of myself because I chose to take a more positive outlook while dealing with the issues, and I really think I managed and came out better overall.  And today, I do feel more like Gertie above.

Gertie is my theme for Inktober over on my Instagram.  This is my first year participating, and though I'm keeping it simple because of my work schedule, I'm taking my own fun approach and thoroughly enjoying myself.  Feel free to pop over and see what Gertie gets up to this month! 

©bystacydawn

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☮ I'd love to have you visit me on social media and at my website! Links on the side ➹💟

Keep your goals close

I recently made this goal poster and stuck it right to the side of my computer (a couple weeks ago now I guess, as you can see I have changed the look of my blog again 😁)

Goals themselves are very important--you need something to work toward, a way to measure your progress, and hopefully inspire forward momentum.

But over the last few months, I have been trying to figure out why I always seem to circle in the not-quite-productive-as-I-could-be patterns over and over again, and it occurred to me that, though it is good to have goals and better to write them down, when too much gets in the way--family, work, health, life in general--it is easy to lose track.  Not necessarily forget, but sort of shuffle the ideas and even notebooks to the side, piled under the bills and report cards, newspapers, and grocery lists.  Know what I mean?

And that brought me to the realization that goals need to be VISIBLE, somewhere they can be seen EVERY day.

So, one of the big "ah ha" moments came when I remembered seeing this type of sheet on an Instagram feed sometime last year. (If you know where it originated or are the originator, just let me know and I will happily shout out credits and links!)  I liked the sticky-note idea so as each goal is accomplished, new ones can be added, to keep progressing and growing.  And this time, I set it front and centre.

I am at my computer more often than not six out of seven days a week as I edit at night after the day job.  Having the goal poster right in front reminds me of what I am working toward, reminds me not to overwork one area (usually editing) but instead stop and give my own goals twenty to thirty minutes a night, too.  It is not about spending gobs of hours on your goals, but simply doing something toward them every day--writing for twenty minutes while the chicken is in the oven for dinner, or for the last twenty-minutes before I shut my computer off for the night.  Getting up halfway through editing to take a walk in the lovely evening rather than "powering through" and not leaving the seat for three hours straight--my knees are NOT happy when I do that!  The goal sheet is a great reminder to put on a timer so I don't get lost in the work or in my own head, which are two of my worst habits where self-care is concerned.

And don't think you have to have something like the picture above, that's just the need of the artist part of me.  Even a simple sticky note with your goal(s) in big letters and tacked to your computer will benefit you, remind you physically of what you are working toward, and get you there sooner rather than later.

Practice makes progress, right?

Give it a try, and feel free to let me know how it works for you😉


©bystacydawn

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🙋Check out my links at the side to visit me on social media and at my website! 💟

The Changeover

Does anyone else find that the year is broken down into three basic sections....Christmas Season, End of School, and Beginning of School?

And with each one, there seems to be a changeover--sort of "spring cleaning" for the new time period to come.  This time it was the living room, kitchen, and especially my art desk that needed a major makeover...

Ugh, I still cringe at the before picture, only because it sort of denotes how crazy messy life got, too.  I think that is why I like to do the reorganizing as we flow into a changeover.  Gets my head back in place, a feel of control so to speak (delusional, I know, but we have to take what we can get, right? 😁).

At least the clean art desk helped me actually complete three pieces.  Two I will be posting soon to my Instagram account (and maybe here eventually), but the third one I am keeping under wraps as it is the first piece of an exciting special project I am doing.

For now, I will leave you with a Sunday Funday sum up of summer...

Yeah, that pretty much says it all 😊

©bystacydawn

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🙋Check out my links at the side to visit me on social media and at my website! 💟

To all my fellow Canadians...

©bystacydawn

Dream Big!

I, for one, know exactly how hard it is to juggle a busy family and two jobs, let alone try to find time to work toward your own goals and dreams that fill your head like an Idea Library where you need one of those cool wheeled ladders to reach some of the places you've stored them for years. 

It's hard...boy, is it hard! 

But, it is not impossible.  Maybe things aren't happening as fast as you want or on a timeline that you think they should, but that doesn't mean those dreams will never come off your inner library shelves.  Progress is progress no matter how fast or how slow.  The important thing is that you never stop trying, and you NEVER stop dreaming.

So, DREAM BIG because there is nothing stopping you! 😉

Practice Makes Progress

I have been slowly working in the background practicing and experimenting for a project I've had in mind for a while now.  With a busy family and working two jobs, it will still take time to put it all together, but that's okay, because I am working daily toward that goal even if just five minutes a day...and as with most of my ideas, the end result will of course be with writers in mind.😉  

For now, I thought I would share some of the fun practice pieces.  I'm thinking I might even create them into a final form some day.  

These are from my Scribbles That Matter journal that I fill with doodles and random ideas to play around with lettering and coloring.  It has thicker paper, which works great for various mediums from colored pencils to watercolors.  

Everyone needs a miscellaneous journal or notebook they can do anything in from random notes to doodling or sketching, poetry or writing, but most importantly, to mess up, make mistakes, scratch out, circle furiously what works, and make funny things out of what doesn't.  A place no one else has to see if you don't want them to and where ANYTHING goes.  Because it's the practice and progress that really count.

You learn far more from the mistakes than the finished pieces.😉