Time

I've mentioned before about how I keep track of the day in my books by using a calendar and writing down the chapter number on a particular day. This is the cleanest, easiest way I've found not to mess up.

Well, guess who didn't do this for a quick, side project? Not until the midway point.

Then I started reading through what I'd written and marking all the chapters in on the calendar. And discovered that I messed up the timeline.

For real.

So I'm whiting out all the chapter numbers I wrote in based on where I thought I was and putting in the correct numbers.

Plus side? I guess at least I didn't mess up the entire book. Just half of it.

Another plus? At least I've only had to make one correction to the quick project. So far. I have a few more chapters to read before I get through what I've written.

I seriously need to not do this again. I lose track of book time as easily as I lose track of time in real life.

Lesson (hopefully) learned. 

Time Tracking

In 2024, I was diagnosed with ADHD and suddenly my entire struggle made a lot more sense. I didn't suck at being an adult, I was operating in hard mode without realizing it. I watched a number of videos with experts giving life hacks for ADHD and discovered I already did all those things.

An example was create a station, a one-stop shop, so to speak. One of my stations is for coffee. Everything I need to brew a pot is right there. Everything I need to create my actual cup of coffee is right there.

I needed more tips and tricks. After doing some thinking on the matter, I came up with a multi-pronged solution I wanted to test out. It's likely pieces of it won't work and I'll have to go back to the drawing board, but I'm hoping at least some of it sticks.

Now that we're in 2025, I'm going to share some pieces of my new system for keeping myself on track.

Item one: Time tracking.

A very real problem I have is what I call time drift. I think only a few minutes has gone by, but it's much, much longer than that. I thought what if I kept myself accountable by recording what I'm doing in half an hour increments?

I bought a set of two booklets for 2025. One is January through June and the other is July through December. (Volume one is pictured above.) This is Traveler's Notebook size, but I don't have them in any kind of cover. Each volume has a vertical column with time blocks.

I hope that by making myself write down what I'm doing, that this will nip time drift in the bud. There's nothing worse than thinking ten minutes have gone by and realizing I've wasted two hours.

I'll post an update on how this is working, maybe when I finish the first booklet.

Calendar Boo Boo

I have a system for keeping track of story time while I'm writing. It's tried and true. I print out calendar pages and mark them up as I write, recording chapter and scene on the day/date that it takes place.

But with Wicked Intention I tried something new. I had an iPad with the Apple pencil and an app where I could import PDFs and make notes. This seemed much more efficient and neater than paper.

It started out okay. I would record the information when I finished writing for the day. Only this didn't last.

I don't have my iPad in my office when I'm working, so there was no way to record a scene while I was writing. I had to rely on my memory later. I'd frequently forget all about taking the time to open the app and make my calendar notes. When I did think of it, my iPad was usually not around and I'd forget again by the time I saw it.

And this happened often enough that the backlog became too great. I couldn't remember what chapter happened when. I'd have to read through the entire manuscript and record everything as I went and I didn't have time to do it, not when I was so close to the end.

I decided to finish writing the first draft and catch up later. Well, it's time to pay the piper. Gah! This time, though, I printed out the calendar pages and will record on hard copy.

Timeline Trouble

An odd thing happened to me while writing Wicked Intention--I lost track of my timeline.

Losing track is pretty easy to do and it used to happen to me all the time, which is why I'd developed a system to prevent it from occurring in the future. And with every story I've written for years, I've used this method. The odd part is that, for some unknown reason, I didn't follow my own process with this book.

I've been trying to figure out why? What was I thinking? But I haven't reached any conclusions.

Anyway, it took a lightning bolt for me to figure out the extent of my problem. The first parameter is that the story opens in the six months between the last chapter in Wicked Obsession and the epilogue, so I'm locked in. That I knew, but on Sunday, it suddenly dawned on me that this meant a good portion of the story was taking place in December.

It started seeping into my consciousness that I didn't really know how much time had passed from Finn's prologue to the point where I was writing now. That, though, was a problem for later. For right then, I needed to research South American Christmas traditions. Frantic online searching commences.

One of the sites I found mentioned the months of the rainy season. Without looking it up, I believe it was Mid December through April. (I have the information in my notes.) That meant that I needed this information too because what isn't happening in December is happening in the rainy season. More frantic online searching, but I need to do a lot more reading to grasp this. I picked up a couple of ebooks to read on the topic.

Then began the part where I began to chart the timeline for Wicked Intention. This meant printing out a calendar and marking which chapter happens on which day. Because I lost track, there was a number of inconsistencies that I'll need to go in and fix. I'm also fiddling a little on where--exactly--to start the prologue. I have some slight wiggle room there, but I think I have it worked out.

I'm feeling comfortable with WI right now. The timeline isn't perfect, but I have my arms basically wrapped around it now. Tonight or tomorrow, I need to find my timeline for Obsession and verify that it matches up with Intention. Once I have that finished, I'll breathe a sigh of relief.

Making Time

Last week I blogged about the piano my parents are donating to charity. One of the things that came up as we discussed it was the fact that no one has played it in a very long time. That immediately (unfortunately) made my mom feel defensive. She would have played it if not for _____. Fill in the blank. She listed a few reasons.

I didn't say anything because there was no point in it, but the truth is that no one ever finds time for anything. Since I sold my first book in 2002, I can't count the number of times someone has said to me that they're going to write a book, too, as soon as they find some time.

At first, I tried to explain to them that they had to take the time, but no one wanted to hear that. All that generated was more excuses. I learned to just nod and say something encouraging.

Let me use myself as an example. I'd love to be able to pick up a sketchpad and a pencil and make beautiful drawings. I'd love to do that, but I don't. Why not? Number one, I'm not willing to block out the hours of time I would need to practice and improve. I want to be as good as an artist who did put in that effort without actually doing that myself. When I do try to draw and end up with a bad to mediocre sketch, I give up and put everything away for months or years.

On the other hand, I did put in my hours and hours of time honing my writing. No matter how bad my early writing was or how discouraged I became, I continued to write. I made the effort, and once I truly committed myself to writing, I didn't just make the time to write, I took the time to write.

I turned down invitations to do things during my writing time. Not only did I make that time sacrosanct, but I looked for ways to add more writing time, like taking a computer to work and writing on my lunch hour.

You make times for the things that are important to you. Writing was (and is) important to me. Drawing obviously isn't. Or the piano. :-)

ETA: My mom surprised me and donated her organ along with the piano to the same charity. I thought for sure that organ was coming to Atlanta. Yea, Mom!

The Space-Time Continuum

One of my really good writing buddies writes out of order and then weaves it all together at the end. She's an excellent writer and storyteller and I enjoy her stories very much, but I admit to being baffled on how she does it. I write in order because doing anything else wastes too much time for me.

When I was writing Ravyn's Flight, I knew scenes that were coming long before I got there. Sometimes when I got stuck, I'd jump ahead and write when of those scenes and every single time the scene was unusable as it was. I either ended up deleting it entirely or I would rewrite it so drastically that it bore little resemblance to the original version. It was frustrating, but it had to be done.

I know why it doesn't work for me. Notice the for me in that sentence. Write whatever way works for you, and if it's out of order, that's what you do. Like I said, one of my writing buddies is pure awesome and this is what works for her.

With that caveat, I know why it doesn't work for me. Each scene is a building block, linking to the scene in front of it. My characters are on an arc of change throughout their stories and when I jumped ahead to write a later scene, I was writing it with who the hero and heroine were at that moment. Only six chapters later or whatever, they weren't the same people. The scene didn't fit anymore because my characters would make different decisions after going through what had happened in the intervening chapters.

The scenes that didn't fit at all anymore? To me, that means the character changed so much that they wouldn't make the choice any longer that put them in that situation. It's a good thing. It means they really are evolving as the story progresses, and while it left me frustrated, I didn't waste much time forcing it.

But it taught me one thing. I need to write in order no matter what. Even a book with a lot of flashbacks--like Eternal Nights--had to be written in order because Kendall, my heroine, needed different information depending on how far along she was in her growth arc. 

There are times I kind of wish skipping around wasn't such a waste of effort for me. A lot of times I know an upcoming scene, but have no idea how I'm getting there. I'd love to be able to write that scene while it's fresh in my mind and not let it stew there, jettisoning details I'll have to struggle to remember later. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way for me.

I'll close out with one of my mantras: Writer whichever way works for you.

Throwing My Hat In the Ring

I've decided to run for congress. I have only one plank in my platform and only one goal: Repeal the time change legislation.

Yes, my friends, I'm talking about Daylight Savings Time. While a time-honored tradition, it's past it's useful shelf life. With mechanized farming and electricity, DST is a relic. The argument that it saves energy because people don't have to turn their lights on as early is easily offset by the increase use of air conditioning.

That's right. Instead of saving energy, DST is costing more use of electricity during the warm summer months.

Just think. No more zombie days until your body adjusts to the time change. No more stumbling around bleary-eyed. Improved health. Yes, indeed, medical research has shown that more people have heart attacks after the time change and that there are more car accidents in the week after DST goes into effect. Repealing DST saves lives!

That my friends, is my platform. Repeal DST:  Save Lives, Save Energy. Please help me make my dream come true.

PS I apologize for any typos, misused words. I had difficulty writing this post thanks to Daylight Zombie Time.

Saying No

Someone tweeted a link to an article on Sunday that I thought was really interesting: Creative People Say No.

The one thing I've learned is how important it is to guard writing time. It's hard to come by and easily sacrificed by others. I can't tell you how many times people have argued with me saying, it's just one evening or it's just a few hours.

But it's not that simple. First of all, there are a lot of people who only want "just a few hours." Without the word no, there'd be zero writing time left. They discount the days when the words all have to be cut because none of them are the right ones. They discard the way life has a way of throwing little emergencies at people.

Right now I'm on deadline and panicking because I have to close on my house in Minnesota--it's sold--and find a house in Georgia. Um, there is no extra time in my schedule. I'm like hyperventilating on this deadline, so just an evening? No, sorry. I can't do it.

Lost Time

One of the things I'm struggling with the most in Atlanta is the two hours I've lost on workdays. When I lived in MN, I used to be home by 3pm, which gave me time to take a walk, get some stuff done around the house, and write. I miss those hours and need them.

The problem is that even though I'm starting work an hour later, I still have to get up at the same time because my commute has doubled. Another half hour gets tacked on because of van pool, but I'm not giving that up. Van pool has made my quality of life increase greatly because I don't have to drive with the lunatics and maniacs. I've never seen drivers like this.

But I digress. Anyway, those two hours meant a lot to me and I'm trying to come up with some way to still squeeze walks and writing and life. My alarm already goes off at 4am, so I don't plan to wake up any earlier. I'm just not sure where else to find time.

Somehow, I need to work this out. If only there was some way to make days 26 hours long.

What's Time?

I've actually been thinking about time a lot lately and not in relation to writing a time travel book. I lived my entire life in Minnesota (the central time zone) until January when I moved to Atlanta (in the eastern time zone). To my surprise, this hour difference has impacted everything for me.

For one thing, I can't get anything done. In Minnesota, I would get home from work, do an online check-in to make sure nothing important was going on, I'd walk for 4 miles, go over to my parents' house to check on them (and cadge dinner since my dad is an awesome cook and I am not), and then get home in time to write before it was too late for me to think straight.

That doesn't happen here in Atlanta. I get home get through item 1 and 2 from my MN list and then it's like bedtime. Seriously. I don't know where the time goes. Then, when I do get to bed, I can't sleep because my body thinks it's too early. It thinks the same thing when the alarm goes off in the morning. I'm perpetually exhausted here and perpetually not getting anything done. At all. It's so frustrating.

To make it all worse, Daylight Savings Time hit and made it all worse.

I keep thinking I'll get used to it. After all, it's just an hour. But I'm still having trouble with it and it's been months. How much longer can it take? Will I ever get used to it?

My Time

Just for fun--or because I'm a masochist and don't realize it--I took my day and broke down where the hours go. Wow, talk about scary. Or maybe eye opening. Eek.

I started with 24 hours and subtracting sleeping time first. Usually, I only get about 6 hours of sleep a night, but every week I get exhausted enough to do catch 8 hours. I decided to use 7 hours as my average amount of sleep. Next I subtracted the number of hours I'm at the Evil Day Job (EDJ), the time I spend commuting to and from the EDJ, and the time spent getting ready for the EDJ. I subtracted time for all the things that are on the required to do every day list.

The grand total of hours left for writing was small. Very small. And that's on a day where I don't have to run any errands or deal with something unexpected, and we all know how often the unexpected arrives--like several times a week. And if I have to get something together for my publisher or my agent, that erodes what little time there is.

What was the grand total? On a good day, I have 2-3 hours "free" to write. That's it. No wonder I'm always stressed and drinking coffee to stay awake long enough to get things done. This seriously isn't much time, especially since I'm a slower writer.

It's only slightly better on the weekends because I need to catch up on the sleep, clean house, do laundry, do yard work, run errands that I didn't do during the week, if the car needs to be serviced or my hair needs to be cut, that's a weekend thing. My RWA chapter meets once a month on Saturday. This fall I have to stain my deck and I have boxes in my garage that need to be broken down to be recycled--they've been there 18 months now, but it's either been winter (and too cold to spend time in the garage) or I've been busy.

After doing the math, I'm actually shocked I get as much written as I do because there is very little time for it once the "must do's" are subtracted from the day. Ouch!

Because of this lack of time, I've gotten to the point where I guard what time I do have. It's precious. Learning to say no was really hard for me and I still hate doing it, but as tight as I'm scheduled every day, I had to learn. I seriously want some clones. One to send to the EDJ, one to do housework, one to... Well, you get the idea.

Fun With Computers

I bought a new laptop this week--the price was just too good to resist--but I forgot how much work it is setting up a computer. When I bought my iMac desktop replacement (the old laptop was like a fossil it was so old), all I did was plug it in and load a little software and it was good to go. It's not so easy with a Windows-based system and to make it even more challenging, this laptop has Vista on it.

The first "fun" task was burning the restore disks. You only get one crack at it. I'm not sure why. Are they afraid someone will pass the disks out to friends? Sell them on eBay? My challenges started immediately. First, the system took forever--and I do mean forever--to prepare itself to write the disks. Second, each disk took forever to burn--more than an hour apiece. Say what? I've never had restore disks take that long before. Third, the first disk didn't verify. The laptop told me to put in another disk. I thought it was going to reburn it, but instead it verified the blank disk! So I have no clue if I have this emergency backup or not. I've never needed to use them on my other laptops, so I guess I have to hope my luck holds out on this new one.

Now it was time to update Windows. Oh, the joy of 35 critical and important updates. Even with high speed, this took a long time to download. I also registered my new product and hooked into my wireless network.

Then there was Vista. Every time I tried to do anything that damn pop up window would appear asking me if I was sure I wanted to do it. Yes! A million times, yes! The one nice thing about Vista is that the search function was actually pretty decent and I found the instructions on how to turn that annoying thing off immediately. Then I started getting the red security warning on the task bar because the damn alerts were off. ::head banging on desk:: I found instructions on how to turn the security alerts off as well.

That's all I managed to accomplish last night. Amazing. Tonight, I finally managed to get rid of the trial software I don't want, turn off the Welcome Center, and load software I do want--like Firefox and iTunes and a word processing program so I can actually write on the laptop. I wanted to do more setup, but I had another project that needed my attention tonight, so I stopped with the critical stuff. But as I did my other project, I connected the new laptop to my desktop's iTunes collection and I've been playing music. Saves me from having to dig the iPod out of my tote bag. :-)

Anyway, to sum up, it's been 4 years since my last new Windows-based computer and I forgot what a hassle it is to get everything the way I like it. Why do the darn Mac Books have to be so expensive? As I wasted hours setting this thing up, I kept thinking about how simple Apple makes everything. I ♥ Mac.

Reading, Oh How I Miss It

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago I used to read a book a day. I'd start the book at lunch time at the Evil Day Job (EDJ) and then pick it up again when I arrived home. If I stayed up too late and went to work tired the next day, it was because I had a longer book that I couldn't finish before it was time to go to bed and I couldn't put it down.

Way back in this time frame, I used to take week-long vacations to a cabin in Wisconsin and I would bring an enormous bag of books with me and spend all day reading. On these vacations, there'd be days where I'd read four, even five books from the time I woke up until I went to sleep. It was nirvana.

I used to be able to answer all kinds of questions about books that any romance reader on any board had. After all, I'd probably already read the story. (Unless it was historical. I gave up reading historicals when month after month they sat in my To Be Read (TBR) pile while I finished all the contemporary romances and paranormals.) If anyone was trying to come up with the title of a book that they'd read and couldn't remember, I probably knew it.

You might have guessed that while I was reading like this, I wasn't exactly spending a lot of time writing. You'd be correct. I wrote on Sundays. Sometimes. And for the 2.5 years before I started Ravyn's Flight, I hadn't written at all. (I think of this as preparation time, BTW, and not wasted years. I spent a lot of it working on becoming a better balanced, more grounded human being, something that's helped enormously in the roller coaster world of publishing.)

And then a friend of mine got me interested in writing again. It came back slowly--a poem here, a short story there, but then one day I was driving home from the EDJ and I saw Ravyn huddled on the floor and I knew something bad had happened. I just didn't know what and I had to write to find out. Then I had to write to learn the rest of the story and get to the end. I was dying of curiosity. Despite this, though, I still spent a lot of time reading. I devoured books--and I like to think, learned from each book I read.

Then I sold Ravyn's Flight and things changed. I couldn't take 18 months to write a book any longer. I learned to write during my lunch hour instead of read and I wrote when I got home. With a four-month deadline for my second contracted book, if I came into work exhausted the next day, it was because I'd stayed up too late getting my page count in.

The time between deadlines was spent on proposals for other books or on gardening or my website or promotion or a dozen other things that piled up. Reading became a luxury.

For the month of November, I finished one book and that was because I'd listened to it on my iPod while I worked on a project at the EDJ. I have a lot of books I want to read. Books by friends of mine. Books by acquaintances who bought one of my books and took the time to tell me they enjoyed it. Books that I've heard good things about from other people that I trust. And they all sit, waiting for me to find time to read them. I'm trying to think of the last book I actually read and not listened to, and it's been so long, I can't even come up with a title. That's sad.

And don't even get me started about the pile of magazines that I don't have time to read. Maybe after the current WIP is finished. :-)

Happy Indepenece Day, America!

Happy 4th to everyone who celebrates!

My own personal independence day was July 1, but I haven't known what to do with myself since I turned in the book. I watched a little baseball with the sound turned on; found some short, but very interesting documentaries on iTunes U; answered a couple of emails, although the bulk remain; and played around online a little. But I really feel kind of lost right now. Lost enough that I pulled out a project I was playing with before I sold the untitled story I just turned in and reread it. I decided the prologue is good, but the rest of it needs to go, so now I have no story for the book--just a hero and heroine.

Anyway, the title search is on for the book. My editor wants me to use a time word so that it fits with In the Midnight Hour and In Twilight's Shadow. The working title I used contained the word Dawn, so we're on the same wavelength. :-) So far, I've tried Dawn and Dusk and haven't come up with anything I like. Now I'm trying to find more time of day words to try. Let's see, there's:

Morning
Noon
Night
Day
Evening
Dusk
Dawn
Sunrise
Sunset
Sundown

But what else? I've done an online search and come up with a lot of very unhelpful hits. You'd think there would be some kind of helpful website with this kind of information, wouldn't you?

Oooh, what do y'all think of When the Sun Goes Down? Stupid? I'm terrible at titles. Really, really, really terrible.

DST Blues

I have a love/hate relationship with Daylight Savings Time. On the one hand, I love having that extra sunlight in the evening. It's especially nice in Minnesota when it's cold and snow is on the ground because it makes if feel as if summer is right around the corner.

On the other hand, my body is not adjusted and that hour makes a big difference. 9:30 the clock says, time to go to bed. 8:30 my body says, we're not sleepy yet. And then there's the morning. 4:30 the alarm clocks says. 3:30 my body disagrees, and tries to go back to sleep. It will take me a good two weeks to acclimate to this change and my body will be protesting every single day until it does.

My wish is that we pick one time--either DST or regular time--and stick with it year round. This bouncing back and forth is what's hard. Not to mention adjusting all the darn clocks. I only have two that set themselves, and the older DVD player is still insisting that it's regular time.
It doesn't help that I have an insanely huge number of things to do right now for the June release of In Twilight's Shadow. I seriously need a clone. Now. :-)

During a Woot-off a couple of weeks ago, I ordered a set of speakers that can be used with MP3 players, computers, cell phones, and other things with headset plugs. I received two for less than half the cost of one out on the web. The sound is a little tinny on the MP3 player, but it's really helping me on the laptop. I wanted to watch a You Tube preview for the Dead Like Me movie, but the sound was so soft, I couldn't hear it on the laptop's speakers. I could hear it, though, with the new speakers plugged in. It's still low, but audible.

And speaking of computers, the desktop is nearly unusable. This is a huge problem since my printer is hooked up to it, so after putting it off for several years, I'm left with no choice. The problem is that I still can't decide between Mac and PC.

Normally, I'm good at making decisions, but I keep waffling on this one. I spent some time this weekend going through the customization screens for PC and by the time I got finished, the price was in Mac territory. I also saw that PC is going to all in one like the Mac. That's all that was available at Sony and HP and Dell both had them as well. I also do not want to deal with the issues I'm hearing about Vista. The logical course of action seems to be to switch back to the Mac (This was my first computer).

What has me hesitating is all the peripherals I own. Will I have issues with them? Mac claims I shouldn't, even if they're labeled PC Only, but I'm still concerned. I know I'll have to get Parallels software to run WordPerfect--which I will never give up--but can I still buy XP to go with Parallels? Or am I stuck with Vista even here?

Upgrading isn't an issue because I've never upgraded my desktop PCs. I just keep buying new ones. ;-) And the big question: Will Mac play nice with my PC laptop? Even networking?

I think my problem might be an inability to make a commitment. LOL! This is a 6-8 year deal here (that's how often I buy new desktops). What if I make the wrong choice?

Time Change Woes

I still feel as if it's the middle of the night, and because I wasn't tired when the clock said I should be, I stayed up later. You'd think that would be a good thing, except that I figured out what's wrong with the scene I'm working on and I have to cut everything I wrote yesterday. I might have to cut more stuff that I wrote this weekend too. I'd cry, but I'm too tired.

A look at the calendar is panic inducing. I need to finish my read through of the galleys for Midnight Hour by tomorrow. That will give me time to type up my spreadsheet and mail them back. The only way, though, that I'm going to finish a second read-through of the galleys is to not write today and probably tomorrow. Then there's all the stuff that needs to be done now for promoing Midnight Hour and that all takes time, too. It's all little nibbles.

Oh, before this whole post becomes a whine-fest, one of my friends told me I had a mention in the RWR. For the non-romance writers, that's the monthly magazine from the Romance Writers of America for its members. I immediately dug out my issue and started scanning it. My agent was interviewed for the article on paranormal romance and mentioned me! That was pretty darn cool. :-)

It was 60 degrees here yesterday and all the snow melted off my deck. Finally! It was a little sloppy, but I can live with that.

CRW Award of Excellence

I received a call yesterday; Eternal Nights is a Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence finalist for Best Paranormal! This is the book where Kendall and Wyatt are trapped in an ancient temple and pursued by smugglers. :-) If you haven't had a chance to check out my book video yet, head over to the EN page on my website and scroll down toward the bottom. It's really cool and worth watching.

Yesterday, I made some progress on the WIP, but as I was getting ready for bed last night, I decided I went off in a direction that I didn't want to go--at least not yet. So I need to cut that section and restart. The good news is that it only involves a handful of paragraphs.

My mom has been reading through the galleys for In the Midnight Hour for me and she knows that Ryne's sister is the heroine in the WIP. She actually asked me last night what kind of story I could have with Maia. Gee, thanks Mom. The vote of confidence is awe-inspiring. Especially since this book continually makes me want to bang my head against the wall in the hopes of shaking some words loose. :-/

Both my XP computers made the switch to Daylight Savings Time without a hitch, I set all the clocks that require the personal touch, and one of the two DVD players with automatic time-set have made it to the new time. I can't figure out why one didn't since they're both hooked into the same cable system, but whatever. I figure it'll eventually be right again--even if it is this fall. :-)

I'm not a big fan of these time changes. I wish we'd just pick one time and stick with it year round. I don't care which one--real time or DST--but this switching around messes me up for weeks! Oh, heck, I just remembered I have to change the clock in my car. Sigh. I never remember how to fix that one.