Has It Really Been a Month Already?! -- Endings and Beginnings

Time flies when you are having fun...

It looks like October will be a month of endings and beginnings here at Mocha Memoirs. First of all, if you haven't gotten your story in to Alexandra Christian for the latest Sherlock Holmes anthology call, submissions END on October 14th. Time is running out--so if you have been procrastinating...get a move on!

It will also be the BEGINNING of availability for Ghosts, Gears, and Grimoires, the Steampunk Horror anthology that debuts on October 27th. I can't wait to see the book in print. There are some wickedly awesome stories in it.

Of course, Halloween is also coming--that is the END of October (and my personal favorite holiday) and marks the BEGINNING of National Novel Writing Month. If you have never participated in NaNoWriMo, give it a shot! What have you got to lose? Even if you don't finish, you will have more words than you started with. :)

The goal is 50,000 words in a month, which is a bit daunting, I know--but that works out to only 1667 words a day to make the goal. That isn't so bad. After all, this post has over 200 words, and look how short it is... It is a lot of fun, and I've gotten at least five or six completed manuscripts from the rough first drafts of November. Who knows? You might be the next discovery for us!

Three P's of Success

People are always making tip lists...well, here is another. The three things that will best help a writer in my opinion.

1) Prioritization -- Decide on your goals. What do you want to accomplish most?

Is your writing goal to write a novel? Okay! That's not hard. (Not promising that it will be a good novel, but you can write one.) Make a daily goal. Put it on the top of your To Do list -- Write 1500 words a day (or 1667, and you can get in shape for next year's NaNoWriMo...or start in late on this one--you can catch up.)

Want to write a poetry collection? Make a daily goal. Put it on the top of your To Do list -- Write a Poem a day. Baby steps.

Whatever you want to do is possible. Prioritize it along with the rest of your must dos for the day. Make it a daily habit, and you will be surprised what you can accomplish.


2) Perseverance -- Stick to the goals. It isn't always easy, but nothing worth doing is.

Do that daily goal first thing in the morning. Or last thing at night, if you work better then. Some days, you won't feel like it. Those are the days it is most important to get it done.

If you do miss a day, don't let it get you down. But don't let it slow you down either. Make up the missed day as soon as you can. The whole is greater than the some of its parts, remember. ;)


3) Persistence -- It's similar to Perseverance, but to me, it's not the same. Remember my personal mantra from Galaxy Quest -- "Never give up. Never surrender." Where perseverance gets the work written, persistence is what gets it out there. Once your work is finished, send it to potential markets, self-publish it, whatever you want to do--but get it in front of people.

Remember that sometimes you don't get a homer on your first at bat. You will get rejected. It's part of the business. Don't let it get you down.

I highly recommend the immersion therapy of sending things out until rejection is just another email. You get to the point where you say, "Oh well." But you send it out again. Sure, there will be some rejections that sting more than others--mourn and go on. Send it out again by the end of the day if you can.


So, there are the Three P's for you. 1) Prioritize; 2) Persevere; 3) Persist.

Go forth and write!

Summer Challenge for You

You have heard a lot about my challenges. Now, I have one for you! I'll even join you.

Let's do some Spring Cleaning this summer...okay,yeah--technically, not spring. But I want to inspire you to go to those files on your computer and take a look at them. Are you a writer too? If so, there are probably at least a few WIPs somewhere on your hard drive.

Let's revisit them. Are they something that you can finish? If not, are they something you can re-purpose? If not, are they something that you really need? If not--use that little key up in the corner, and delete them. (I know...that's very hard to do--if you can't quite bring yourself to delete, move them off the computer onto a flash drive. If you still haven't looked at them in six months...revisit deleting them.)

Next, does your office look like this? (This is one of the reasons I do my work on a table in front of the bigscreen instead of in my office. Another reason is...bigscreen.)

I am going to be working on cleaning this too this summer. Let's get our offices in shape for NaNoWriMo in November. That gives us a goal, and a deadline. I'll tell you how far I get, you tell me your progress. :)

Do we have a deal? 

It's Beginning to Look Like the End of the Year...

Alright then--NaNoWriMo is over. Did you participate? It was a heck of a ride, but I made it. I even got to take most of Sunday off.

But now THAT'S over, what next? It's December, and it is time to take stock of the year. It hasn't been quite the whirlwind of activity last year was--but it has also been a bi less exhausting.

And it isn't quite done. There is still time for you to add a few credits to your resume. There are quite a few anthology calls still looking for contributors. Including ours. Have you submitted to Avast, Ye Airships yet? My friend Diane Jortner just recently made a blog post with a number of anthology calls collected together. You still have time for most of them. ;)

And even if you don't submit anything new before the end of December, take a moment to take stock of what you have managed to accomplish this year. Whether you submitted once or a thousand times, take this chance to make a list, set a goal, write a blog post--somehow chronicle your year, and look forward to what you will do next year!

Last year's goal proved impossible for me...300 rejections was a bit much for anyone...

This year's goal wound up sidetracked by a lot of things--like being burned out from trying to get 300 rejections!--and I didn't get terribly close to my 200 rejections.

Next year, I am going to shoot for 100 rejections. If I push myself, that should be possible. (Especially with my new Dragon Speaking Naturally which should be here any minute...)

What will your goals be for the new year?

December can be an end or a beginning. You get to choose which.

One, Two, Three...Write!

It's that time again -- Halloween has come and gone, Christmas is still around the corner, and in between? National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.

November is officially a time for writing, even if you never have done so before in your life. Thirty days, fifty thousand words. It comes out to 1667 a day. They don't even have to be good words. The point of the exercise is to get yourself used to the idea of everyday commitment to writing something on paper.

I have been participating since 2000 or so. No, I don't always manage to finish, but when I do, it is a feeling of amazing accomplishment. And it can also lead to something actually publishable. One of my NaNo projects was published several years ago. Another took two years of trying, but is now in edits.A third led to the start of a series--and this year's project is Book Two.

So, even though the month has started, it isn't too late to sign up and join us! It is easy to catch up this early in the game; just a few extra words every day will easily bring you back to the necessary total.

And don't forget--we are still accepting submissions for the Avast Ye, Airships anthology through the end of the year.