Category: Blog

Tips and tools to help you make the most of your writing time

Planning for Another Great Year

I’ve had a good year this year. In fact, I’ve had a record year in terms of the money I earned from my writing alone. I’m super happy—and I’m sure I’ll be even happier when I actually receive payment for it all! 

Now comes the hard part. How can I make next year as good? What happens if I don’t even come close? What if it was just a fluke?

These questions always seem to plague me when life’s good. The answer of course is : there’s no way of knowing. 

However, there’s a few things I can do to help put luck on my side. For instance, looking over this past year, I can see that I was more outgoing. I used every conversation as an opportunity to slip in the fact that I was a writer while mentioning the books I was working on. It helped build my credibility and spread the word. When these people speak to me now, most will start the conversation by asking me how the writing is going. 

Another thing I did was not shrink back when opportunities presented themselves—even if I was scared out of my mind! This led me to appear on a podcast about writing for magazines, submit my portfolio to a school board looking for a children’s writer (and landing a five-book contract!), writing my first newspaper profile, and proofreading the English part of seven bilingual picture books for a renowned French publisher (three of them are pictured above).

So, if I simply keep doing these two things (being more vocal about my writing and saying yes to opportunities instead of running in the other direction), there’s a good chance I’ll be having another great year. 

And if I don’t? Well, it’s not the end of the world. Truly! Whether I have a good year or not, I’ll still be here doing what I love most—writing. 

Can’t beat that! 

How to Spend Your Summers Writing Instead of Weeding

Every summer I look for ways to make more time for writing. In the past that meant taking extra time off from my day job. It worked great except that it left me with less income. When I eventually got a better job with more vacation days, I didn’t think this would be an issue anymore.

The thing is, when I landed the better job, I also became a house owner. I quickly discovered that house chores and yard work can pretty much take over your life. So last summer, I did what I do best—I looked for ways to cut. 

The most difficult and drastic move came when I decided to ditch the pool. I agonized all winter about it. I had never had a pool before so over a period of five years l invested a lot of effort, energy, and money just to learn how to keep the water from turning green. Getting rid of the pool meant throwing away all that hard-earned knowledge. But keeping it meant spending valuable time on an expensive oversized tub that I got to use only two months out of the year (Quebec summers are pretty short). It took one day to dismantle the beast. I haven’t missed it since, not even during the hottest days. I simply take more cold showers now.

The vegetable garden came next. I have mixed feelings about gardening. It’s a love-hate thing. I love when I actually manage to grow something, but more often than not, my plants either don’t grow well or end up getting eaten by wildlife at some point during the night. So I skipped the garden and settled for three potted tomato trees. Much easier on my back and more restful nights.

That left the flower beds. Who doesn’t love well-tended flower beds? But who has the time to pull out all those weeds day after day? Certainly not this writer! I give the flower beds a Iot less attention now. Weeding gets done only when I need a break from writing, not because I worry what my neighbours might think. And in the process I learned that some of these weeds make pretty awesome flowers.

These three changes made a huge difference in giving me back my writing time. I sent out more pitches and finished more stories. It worked out beautifully, and is still doing so one year later.

This summer, I did restart my vegetable garden though. But I increased my odds of a better yield—and more restful nights—by putting up a chicken wire fence around the whole thing. Yes, it’s not as pretty, but I doubt my fans will make a big deal out of it. What matters is that my gardening efforts didn’t take anything away from my writing. Thankfully we had enough rain that I only had to water it a couple of times. Weeding got done when it got done, and it didn’t bother my veggies one bit. 

With summer nearly over, I’m already wondering how I can make next year even better. Who knows, I might earn enough from this summer’s writing to hire someone to do all the weeding next year!