Heart Pounding Romance

Inspiration

Authors: How do You Measure Success?

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Authors: how do you measure success? If you believe that your success is directly correlated to the size of your social media following or your monthly sales and downloads, I challenge you to change your perspective and when you do, I believe you will achieve true life success.

Let’s talk about sales and downloads. Whether you use Amazon or Smashwords or any others, your personal dashboard is like a beacon, beckoning you to check it. I see that dashboard in a similar light to a bathroom scale. I always seem to have five stubborn pounds that I’d like to lose, but even if I diet and increase my exercise, stepping onto that bathroom scale every day is counter productive. Pounds go up; pounds go down. It’s much better to check once a week and reevaluate your course.

The same is true for book sales. If you go onto your dashboard every day, chances are the results aren’t as phenomenal as you had hoped for a 24-hour period. You don’t want that knowledge to affect your desire to write because that’s the only thing that will ever increase your sales. More books means readers have more choices. You’re more likely to find a new audience and then, the sales will follow.

The same is true for social media. Do you feel happy or sad with every follower gained or lost? Just like those pounds, people come and people go. What you have to focus on is developing your core message so that when you blog or post, you will connect with like-minded people. Once you do that, you’re more likely to increase your following. There’s truly no point in getting upset when looking at a fellow author’s page who has triple the following. It could mean that they’ve been pursuing this effort longer, in which case, you’ll one day catch up.

As authors, we have a tendency to segment our writing life into followers and sales. But that is not our entire life and it shouldn’t be a measure of our success. Authors are also parents. We are friends. We are even the children to our own parents. So when you go to evaluate your life. Look at the people around you. That is the measure of your success.

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Magical Morphing Words

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What I love most about being a writer is that ideas can come from anywhere. Innocent phrases or even titles of magazine articles can bloom into story ideas and what was once one idea suddenly is another — magical morphing words are discovered.

Recently, I caught a magazine title, “Chasing Sleep,” and it was like being a racehorse and hearing that bell…I was off! The title created such a visual impression that I imagined a story far from what the article intended.

Because I love young adult and paranormal romance I thought of scenarios in which a damsel in distress is locked away in her dreams, running either to or from some unseen hero…chasing sleep and the beauty of the dream that she sought. In reality, the article was about a wellness retreat called Kamalaya on the Thai island of Koh Samui.

Of course, the knowledge of what the article was really about only sparked more ideas. It was written by an insomniac who traveled to this wellness facility to seek the advice of a naturopath. This article in the hands of a writer, sparked my imagination and now the insomniac was a heroine taking an exhaustive trek through wilderness and perils. She wasn’t trying to find answers for sleepless nights, she was there to seek out a prophet who would tell her that she is destined for greatness and along the way will be tempted by a sexy, but potentially dangerous man.

In reality, the article’s author was told his sleepless nights would be solved if he stopped eating and drinking late at night. Not nearly as intriguing as the scenario painted by my imagination, but then again, I would never have come up with the idea if it wasn’t for the original article.

Imagination is like the air we breathe. It’s always there, but we take it for granted. Inhale it regularly and fill yourself with it.

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Solutions for the Crazy

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If I didn’t get writing accomplished during the summer I told myself it was because the kids were home. But school has started, the kids are out of the house, and I’m still a manic, disorganized mess. I broke it down and found solutions for the crazy. (Note: Crazy is a noun when referring to myself and an adjective when referring to my lifestyle.)

3 kids, 3 schools

Is it any wonder I feel overwhelmed? One in high school, one in middle school, and my youngest is in elementary school. Oh my! I might as well start chanting lines from the “Wizard of Oz.” Attempting to get everyone where they needed (preferably with breakfast in their stomach and shoes on their feet) was a daily challenge.

Meet my two new best friends: granola bars and the oven timer. We save time in the morning by planning for tomorrow. When the kids come home from school, they immediately pack up their snack for the next day. We also compile non-perishables for the next day’s sack lunch. It may sound minor, but every chore done ahead of time, saves time in the morning. We also set the oven timer as soon as we awake. It’s a constant reminder of time ticking down, but it doesn’t nag! Now we know when to get a move on and jump in the car.

Get on ‘lil doggy

I used to take one child to one school, come home, get the next, go to that school, come back for the last one and so on. Oh, and the dogs wanted a walk too. That was crazy.

The solution: The boys get in the car together. Even though my younger one has to ride along with his brother before being dropped at his own school, the time to chat helps him relax before his day. I come home only once to hustle my daughter to school and I bring the dogs along. She gets a kick out of it and they like the ride. After she jumps out, the dogs and I take our walk around the school neighborhood rather than our home. Two car trips instead of four…mission accomplished.

What’s cookin’ good lookin’?

Figuring out what to make for dinner would take as much time as making the darn thing. I turned to my Facebook friends and asked for 20 meal ideas — basically four weeks of weekday dinners. With a menu already compiled, now I take one weekend afternoon to plan the ingredients needed for that week’s meals. I’ve cut down weekday grocery shopping and discovered the added bonus of saving money since there’s less impulse buying.

But my surefire way to banish the crazy has been in keeping a schedule. After dropping off the kids, I either do yoga if I need to find a creative flow or jump into my writing. When the kids do their homework, that’s when I cook dinner. When the kids take their down time, that’s when I spend a few more minutes with my writing until it’s bed time, story time, and then husband and me time!

My day is filled with crazy, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Do you have any time-saving solutions? I’d love to hear them.

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Change It Up

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This post originally appeared on the blog, “Writing on the Sunny Side,” when I was asked to guest post. I’m a regular blogger, but writing for someone else’s site…that was new to me. I realized that it’s good to change it up every once in awhile. As writers, we are always in danger of taking the comfortable route, following a format that we know, even letting our characters mirror each other from one book to the next.

It’s easy for me to create a blog for my own site. I can talk about my characters, upcoming projects, or include a recipe in my regular, “What’s Mia Making” column. But when I guest posted, I had to put extra thought into how to write for an entirely different audience. It felt scary and liberating all at once as I realized that I’m quite a creature of habit.

My writing place is my office with my dogs lying under my desk. Today, I ditched my computer and my office for an old-fashioned pen and writing pad. I said goodbye to my wi-fi and left to get my car brakes fixed. (I know, I lead an exciting life!)

I could’ve returned home, but I decided to hang out and try to write in their waiting room. Let me tell you something, in the forty-five minutes that I was there, I got more accomplished than I have in a long time. There was no incoming email to distract me, no temptation from Facebook or Twitter. Just me and a writing pad.

Was it comfortable there? Not at all. The coffee was warm at best and bland. The chairs were worn with suspicious stains. But, this waiting room also came with a new perspective and new faces. Seeing the people come and go, hearing tidbits of conversation…it sparked my imagination and I wrote in a way that I hadn’t in long time. I let the writing flow from me. I gave myself permission to break away from my outline as well as my habits.

You may relish your routine, but dare yourself to try something different. Changing it up is work and often scary, but it makes us better.

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Why are You a Writer?

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Why are you a writer? One time, my daughter asked that question and it didn’t take me but a second to come up with the answer…because I love it!

I knew what she was getting at. She has seen me suffer for my art. With no particular order or value, here are some of the less glamorous things that she notices about my writing life:

* Sometimes a good writing roll takes the place of a shower.
* I admit to worrying about bad reviews.
* I occasionally pound my hands against the desk when my characters decide to say the stupidest thing ever.
* Even more often, I pound my head against the desk when my characters refuse to talk to me.
* I’ve come to accept that some of my books have found a loyal and devoted audience of three.

I don’t write for the money because let’s face it, I’m not Nora Roberts. I don’t write because it’s an easy job. In addition to writing, there are countless hours spent on social media, promotions, editing, and proofreading.

I write because I love to read and I love taking my readers (and myself) away to another world. I love planning my next book. I’ve even taken to becoming a location scout. When I have an idea for a book, I’ll visit some place close to my home where my characters might hang out and snap some photos for inspiration. This and planning the covers is what I call mind candy. It’s fun and it makes me say, “I’ve got the best job ever!”

That’s why I write.

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