Don’t touch that dial! This is Lisa Burton Radio. Coming at you with one point twenty-one jigawatts of power. I’m your host, Lisa the robot girl, and my special guest today is Rick Meyers. “Welcome to the show, Rick.”
“Hey, Lisa. What’s up?”
“I’m great, thanks. Now Rick, my bio says you are an emancipated seventeen year old. That’s kind of unusual, how did that come to pass?”
“My folks … my dad took my mom to some fancy restaurant in Amarillo last Valentine’s Day. He’d been saving up for months so they could go. I guess he should’ve put new brakes on the car instead. They skidded off the road on their way home in the pouring rain. They were both dead in a ditch before they knew what hit ‘em. The social workers talked about foster care after that, but it ain’t easy to find a spot for…
Replace Daddy with Mommy on that picture. So, things tend to get screwy when you have kids and summer hits. Camps are so expensive that you might as well mortgage the house or sell a kidney. Not your own kidney since that only nets you one year, so you’d only prolong the inevitable mortgage. For some parents, the only option is to either work from home or bring the kid to work. This is especially true for authors, so what are some things you can do?
Maintain a list of minor projects and tasks that you can do while the kids are playing nearby. These are things you can easily stop and walk away from such as social media, scheduling blog posts, or even tinkering with other ideas. In some ways, the partial focus could help with the third idea because you’ll be running on subconscious thought to some extent.
Use your nights and, if possible, weekends to make progress on big projects. A chapter here and there might not be a bad thing. If you can get even part of one finished after the kid goes to sleep then it’s a step in the right direction. A danger here is that you don’t want to pull too many late nights. Young kids get up early and they won’t really care if you stayed up late. Not to mention this can lead to them making breakfast for themselves. Enjoy the emergency cleaning and grocery shopping.
Set your child up with an art project at a table where you can work as well. You might have to break your concentration a bit, but you’ll know where your child is. At most, you will have to look up to praise their work or get more supplies. Keep cleaning supplies nearby, especially paper towels in case they knock over a liquid that races towards your laptop or manuscript.
If your child is old enough then let them entertain themselves for part of the day. It can be indoors with toys and you sit nearby to work on your own stuff. Good weather means playing outside, which means you can set up on the patio or bring out a small table. As long as you’re watching your child, things should be fine, but at a certain age, you don’t have to hover.
Doesn’t hurt to ask grandparents, aunts, or uncles who live nearby if they want to watch your kids for a few hours. You can’t do this very often and it depends a lot on how supportive they are of your writing, but it can’t hurt to ask. Sweeten the deal with a home-cooked meal or store-bought ice cream for all.
Turn your focus more to reading and reviewing other authors instead of your own projects. While you might not make progress with your own stuff, these things can maintain your activity in the author community.
Put everything on the back burner, relax, and enjoy time with your kid. Before you know it, they won’t want to play games with you and then another blink of the eye will see them as an adult. Enjoy the fun while it lasts.
Amazon has done a service making self-publishing within reach of everyone. But Alana Semuels’s essay, starting with the subtitle (“The e-commerce giant has finally made self-publishing lucrative”), misleads readers about the true state of things. While self-publishing is a great model for some authors, for many others it is not an option. In particular, journalists, nonfiction writers, teachers, and academics need advances in order to write a book, because they have to take time off from work. Only a traditional publisher gives authors money up front to help them research and write.
Amazon self-publishing is not the panacea Semuels suggests. There are apparently more than 3 million self-published titles up at Amazon, and the majority, by my estimate, make very little money. (Amazon conceals its statistics on these points, so nobody really knows.) And Kindle Unlimited is anything but “highly lucrative” for the 99 percent…
What is a domain name? It is by far the most important choice you are going to make for your website
When you decide to build a website or blog to promote your books, the first decision you will have to make is what domain name you are going to use.
Domain name registration is quick and inexpensive.
In most cases, your web hosting service provider is connected to domain name registrars, and you can choose top level domain names for less than $10.00 a year.
But before registering a domain, or even a free domain, you should do your homework first.
So, I’m going to do one last teaser for Quest of the Brokenhearted since it’s at the new price. Picked part of one of my favorite battles. Hope everyone has enjoyed the glimpses into Kira Grasdon’s big adventure and grabbed a copy during the sale.
I recently came across an excellent resource for freelance writers by Laura Yates of blogging.com. Laura is a writer, coach, and podcaster who has been blogging and writing in the niches of fashion, beauty, relationships, and personal development since 2009.
You Won’t Get Anywhere by Standing Still – Finding Ways to Progress your Writing Career
As Tom Howard of blogging.com explains, there are many examples of where a passion for something has turned into a meaningful career. Freelance writing is a classic case of where you can start out doing something for your own enjoyment and discover you can make a decent living from it.
Image: Blogging.com
You can find a number of stories of successful bloggers who have carved out a successful career and enjoy a big following from a loyal audience, but plenty of these people have had to learn from their mistakes along the way.
The previous summers weren’t like this one. My son would have school to make sure he didn’t have any regression. He was eligible for it this summer too, but we had already signed him up for a half-day program that ran through July. Even after we found out, we thought this program would be better. Besides, I could do things with him to help prevent regression. He showed me some online games that include math and the library has a big reading program. It isn’t like I have anything else to . . . Oh yeah, I’m also a stay-at-home author.
I knew this challenge was coming, which is why I was working so hard from January to the end of June. Write 3 books, published one, edited the others a few times, and busted my butt to make sure I didn’t have anything hanging over my head for the 2 months of summer break. It wasn’t pretty, but I maintain that the experience was worth it and I was able to relax a little during the days my son had his program. Leaving myself the Raven finale and outlining wasn’t bad since those are low pressure projects. That was basically what I had to do here. Put parenthood to the forefront and maintain my social media presence as an author. Releasing Quest of the Brokenhearted was the biggest event that I had to contend with.
Honestly, I think most of the pressure of balancing working from home and a kid was coming from outside forces. Allowed to relax and focus, I could work at the table while my son played with his toys during the hotter parts of the day. Before and after that, we’d go on trips or play outside. Sure, I couldn’t take on my projects with gusto and dump an entire week into work. Things that require full concentration weren’t going to happen, but many people acted like my son was going to be a whirling dervish of destruction in terms of my schedule. Since I only have the one kid, it’s a lot easier to plan around him. This is just me though because I do know people with multiple kids who have to do a much bigger juggling act than me. My hat is off to them and I wish them many nights of blissful sleep in their future.
Because I know others who are in worse spots than me, I feel like I can’t complain about keeping one kid at bay. It does get frustrating when my email, tweet notifications, and blog comments build up. Yet, I figure many people are busy during the summer, so delayed responses are expected. I mean, we’re all trying to enjoy the weather or the break if we can. Not to mention, I can’t exactly hand my son off to someone or plop him in front of a video game. Some people would say that the second thing is an option, but I’m not a fan of that. If he’s going to play a game then I’ll be joining him and I don’t want him in front of a screen all day. Not unless the weather is really bad and even then I’d prefer we play with Legos and board games. I decided to be the stay-at-home parent, which means I have to do the job.
Battering myself earlier in the year definitely made this easier, but it’s something that I shouldn’t try again. At the very least, I need to take a week off between projects to get my head back together. Not my son’s breaks because I can’t really rest during those periods, but ones where there are fewer people around. I did it a little, but it was more because there were so many events going on during those weeks. Didn’t make any sense to force writing when my mind was elsewhere. That’s the main point of the summer too. I could tackle the next War of Nytefallfirst draft since Volumes 1-3 are done. Yet, I wouldn’t be fully invested in it. Taking on the Raven finale was fine and starting in on the next Ichabod Brooks collection is something I could easily pause. Again, we come down to priorities and that means putting my ego and own wants aside.
So, what do other people do during the summer? Is it a time of slowing down and a shift in focus?
So, my son got 10 Lego sets for his birthday and we spent last week putting them together. I went into the details with this yesterday, so I’m just going to show him with all of the completed projects. Ending on the big one. Enjoy!
The Wall of Lego!
Ant-Man and the Wasp (Ghost was his favorite)
Yoda’s House (He really only wanted R2-D2)
Superhero Dance Party (It’s already been dropped once)
Harley Quinn’s Cannon Truck (I’m probably more amused by this than him.)
Egghead and the Condiment King (This set was my favorite)
Qui Gon and Obi Wan vs Darth Maul (He is determined to protect Qui Gon)
Brother Eye (Bought for Batwoman, but the light up block in Brother Eye was his favorite part.)
So, I’m away for the weekend and will only be on the blog in the mornings and evenings. Maybe since it depends on how well I’m sleeping. I’ve found that it’s easier to handle Twitter, Facebook, and email by phone than blogging. So, I’ll get to any comments as soon as I can. All that being said this might be an oddly short post.
Last weekend was my son’s birthday, which went relatively smoothly. His actually birthday was Saturday while the party was Sunday. We made personalized water bottles for all the kids, but were two short, so I went racing around town Saturday morning to find two white water bottles to decorate. This was insanely difficult and it also resulted in my son getting two Lego sets on clearance, me randomly running into my dad at one store, and the search ending only a few blocks from the house thanks to an act of desperation. I was exhausted, but victorious!
The party itself was at the local park where we reserved a picnic area that was near a playground and sprinkler area. I was scared that the latter wouldn’t be up and running in time due to them replacing all the pipes. It was down and the kids had a great time. The pizza was delicious and the cake was awesome (Name covered by request of my wife):
He got a lot of fun toys, a CD that he wanted, some clothes that he needed, and a slew of other things that he loves. In the end, he got 10 Lego sets that we spent the week putting together and I’ll have in a post tomorrow. He got Lego Batman, Lego Star Wars, Lego Superheroes, and DC Superhero Girls, so it was a good variety. My thumbs are still hurting though. Anyway, another reason we spent most of our time doing these sets is because he hurt his leg during the party. Nothing that stopped his fun, but he was complaining that night and it seems he may have strained his calf. Just let him rest since this weekend requires a lot of walking. Thankfully, he was good about drinking water and using a heating pad.
I’d like to say that I got other things done, but that didn’t happen. All I accomplished was editing the first chapter of Derailing Bedlam and starting an initial idea page for one of the superhero books. I’m still leaning towards a short story collection for each volume, but that’s all I’ve got. Not sure about Windemere or Super Earth, how many stories, who to put where, etc. I’ve got no idea what I mean by ‘Rebirther’ in my older idea list. I’ve taken the notebook along in case I get a little time to stare at it. The laptop is coming too in case I can’t sleep since I won’t be getting my sleep apnea device adjusted until Tuesday. Plus side is that I don’t have to take all the stuff along, but that also means I won’t be sleeping well.
This coming week has no Lego sets, but a few doctor appointments. I’ll be running around a lot, so I won’t expect to get much editing done. The dream of having time during the summer has been dashed pretty thoroughly. Good to know for next year and I’ll probably have to use September for editing two books then dive into War of Nytefall: Eradication in October. Maybe I’ll get lucky and be gifted a few afternoons or days where my son wants to rest in the house or somebody wants to take him out for some fun. I’m hoping this happens on the days that I have afternoon doctor appointments since it isn’t fair to him that he gets no fun while I run around. The heat hasn’t helped matters around here, but it’s the summer, so what can you do?
So, the goals for next week?
Doctor appointments.
Entertain the kid.
Continue practicing multiplication tables with the kid.
Maybe get to a little Derailing Bedlam editing.
Maybe tinker with the superhero story.
Set up cover teaser and volunteer post for War of Nytefall: Lost
Cook dinner a few nights
Hang out with an old friend next weekend
Enjoy the trip this weekend
Figure out another manga to read since the only library with Yu Yu Hakusho is closed for renovations. Naruto or Fairy Tail? Maybe a smaller one?
Amazon has done a service making self-publishing within reach of everyone. But Alana Semuels’s essay, starting with the subtitle (“The e-commerce giant has finally made self-publishing lucrative”), misleads readers about the true state of things. While self-publishing is a great model for some authors, for many others it is not an option. In particular, journalists, nonfiction writers, teachers, and academics need advances in order to write a book, because they have to take time off from work. Only a traditional publisher gives authors money up front to help them research and write.
