NaNoWriMo news!

I've neglected my blogs badly lately, much worse even than I did over the summer (although my goals for Camp NaNoWriMo did keep me pretty well on track during July).  My schedule didn't actually get easier once school let in, as you might have guessed -- a client of mine, a disabled single dad whom I've been cleaning and running errands for on and off over the past five years, has had some changes in his diagnosis that have changed his assistance needs.  As a result, I've been increasingly busy, although that should be coming to an end within the next few weeks.

I'm looking forward to finally having more time to work on my freelance work and my writing.  The timing should be good, too, as NaNoWriMo 2015 is coming up here in only a little more than a month.  Can you believe it?

Which brings me to my big news.  I found this out a few weeks ago, actually, but since I haven't been keeping up on my blog, I forgot I hadn't announced it yet.

Happy Labor Day, writers!

I hope all my writing friends have had a good Labor Day -- relaxing, if you took the day off, or productive, if you spent it working in some fashion.  I've done a little of both: I slept in and got caught up on sleep, and this afternoon I did chores at the barn.  Now I'm home, and -- having cooked and done laundry -- am getting ready to buckle down and write a little before bed.

Thanks to Facebook, lately my source of information about science and the world, I learned something new about Labor Day today.

Back to life as normal

I'm back on my fall schedule, as of yesterday.

Yesterday was lovely.  I stayed home until it was time to pick up the kids from school.  I got caught up on dishes, cleaned up my kitchen, did laundry, and -- of course -- worked on freelance work.  After a couple hours with the kids in the afternoon, I ate dinner at home, and then headed out to the barn to do chores.  It did mean a late evening, but since it was a fairly relaxing morning, that was okay.

Today will be a little different.

Another week closer

I'm almost to the point at which my schedule will become more bearable.  This week was the second of my three crazy weeks.  I have only one more left, and it won't be quite as bad as the last two.  Plus, I have today off, which will give me an opportunity to catch up on freelancing and housecleaning -- the latter being the first to be neglected when I get busy.

Seriously.  It's a minefield in here.

Plans for freelancing this fall

I got through this past week without getting sick, having a meltdown, or some other disaster, helped along somewhat by the fact that I've had a reduced freelance workload this week.  The stars aligned to help me out, I guess.

One week down.  Two to go.  Then I get my normal school-year schedule back.

See you on the other side

I had this weekend off, which was nice, but tomorrow begins the first of three weeks that will be the busiest of the summer.  I don't expect I'll be posting much during this time.  It'll probably be all I can do just to keep abreast of all my paying work.

I was glad for the weekend off, though.  I haven't had a day off in a while, let alone two in a row.  It allowed me to get some things done that I hadn't had a chance to do recently.

A contract isn't slavery

Someone I know was venting this weekend about the real estate agent who listed her house taking Sundays off.  I was appalled at the seemingly automatic expectation that the agent should be at her beck and call, no matter what she wanted or when.  (All she wanted was an update on her house's listing... and it had only just been listed this week.)

I felt a little defensive for the real estate agent's sake, and I realized it was because I've encountered that attitude in clients myself: the notion that just because they hired me to do a certain job, it means that they own all of my time.  One client, for instance, wanted me to be on chat all day long, so that I was at his beck and call any time he wanted.  And he was paying me for a fairly small contract, not anything close to a full-time job.

A contract is not slavery.  It does not give you the right to make unlimited demands on my time.

So let's talk about what you can expect from a contract.

Last day of Camp NaNoWriMo

Today is the last day of the second session of Camp NaNoWriMo 2015.

I've already "won" for July, but I still plan on joining my friends tonight (coincidentally, Fridays are writers group nights) in cramming the last few words in before midnight.

I also have resumed revision work on one of my novels in the last couple of days, so I consider that a win too, although that is less to do with Camp NaNoWriMo and more to do with another writer friend pushing me to be productive.

I would prefer not to

I'm having a Bartleby moment.  Remember Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" -- the scribe who slowly and passive-aggressively began to resist doing anything for his employer?

I currently don't feel like doing anything.  As Bartleby would say, "I would prefer not to."

Camp NaNoWriMo: Finally, a win!

I started this week off on a high note: I "won" Camp NaNoWriMo, achieving my meager goal of 10,000 words of blogging in July.

It may not sound like much, especially when compared to November's 50,000-word goal, but to me this represents a huge accomplishment.

Busier and busier

I have been counting down until the end of summer, and was so glad to have a week off coming up just before summer ends, but it turns out that's not to be: It turns out the kids' schedules changed since they gave me my schedule, and they never thought to change it with me until I asked.

I'm a bit disappointed, but I guess the extra hours can't hurt.  And I can handle another week, especially since summer is almost over.  What's one more week?

On sleeping (or not)

I've been using Sleep Cycle for about six months now (click here for a more detailed review of Sleep Cycle).  After half a year's worth of data, I'm beginning to see certain patterns.  Specifically, my average night's sleep is about six and a half hours.  What's scary about that is how many nights I must be getting considerably less than six hours, in order to balance out the nights when I get more.

There are other trends that are worrisome.

End-of-summer countdown

We're well past the middle of summer now, around the point where I generally start counting down until the kids go back to school.  Summers are already busy for me, but this summer has been a whirlwind, with much of my time occupied with just trying to stay afloat.

Somehow, I'm managing to work full-time hours at my nanny job, maintain my side babysitting jobs, and maintain my part-time freelance workload.  And this month, I'm even keeping up on Camp NaNoWriMo goals (although admittedly, I'm only aiming for 10,000 words, and I'm using Camp to motivate me to blog, which is easier than motivating me to pick up a novel with a cold trail).

Clients don't last forever

One of the most challenging things as a freelancer is understanding that your business is always changing, so you can't ever stop really looking for work.

It's easy to become complacent, especially when you have a good group of regular clients.  But this morning I was served a timely reminder that I shouldn't become too dependent on them, no matter how awesome they are.

More on working comfortably

The other day I blogged about relieving back pain while sitting and working all day.  Working from home, we have more options than most office workers, but it's still an issue.

I did promise a blog post about a related article, so here it is:

How A Bigger Lunch Table At Work Can Boost Productivity

Apparently, lots of big companies have discovered that employees are more productive when they work in nontraditional offices.

Camp Chaos

The last few days have been chaotic, so much so that I feel like I'm emerging from a long tunnel of darkness.  I thought it had been much longer since I'd had a chance to blog, but in truth it's only been since mid-week, just a few days.

I had a much busier vacation week than anticipated, for one thing -- primarily because I had an on-again, off-again client unexpectedly assign me extra work for the week, but also because I ended up with a lot of plans for the week, both social and otherwise.

Freelance writers: How do you avoid back pain from sitting?

I saw this story recently on NPR:

Lost Posture: Why Some Indigenous Cultures May Not Have Back Pain

It made me think about how writers, as well as other office workers who are stuck at a desk all day, often suffer back fatigue from sitting so much.  Ergonomic chairs and other approaches only seem to help so much.

Musings on masters degrees

Today I'm on my old college campus with a friend of mine, who just transferred here from community college to finish his degree.  It's been a couple years since I've been down here, and it's always so refreshing to visit.  I loved this campus, and I loved college.  My three and a half years here were far too short.

Being here has me thinking again about masters degrees.  I tossed around the idea of pursuing one years ago, but ultimately decided not to, partly because I'm busy and partly because I feel like it wouldn't be all that beneficial to my career.

Maybe the latter isn't necessarily true, though.

Deadline crunch time: What's not to love?

I love being a writer and I love freelancing.  Don't get me wrong.  But along with the feast-or-famine income, there are insanely busy days to offset the days where you can rearrange your schedule to, say, get your oil changed or have lunch with a friend who's in from out of town.

Today has been one of the former kind, the insanely busy variety, and it's not over yet -- I'm just here to take a brain break

I actually ended up having to rearrange my schedule in order to devote the day to meeting deadlines.  I'm just grateful that today, of all days, I could do that, since I'm off from my nanny job this week.

My different goals for Camp NaNoWriMo this month

Camp NaNoWriMo started again on Wednesday, the first day of July.  Although I was planning on participating, I still hadn't written anything -- or even decided what I was doing -- until Friday.

When my writers group met Friday night -- a NaNo write-in from 2011, actually, that has continued to meet year-round -- I started working on my blogs, and realized that I am woefully behind on blogging lately.

The birth of our nation, according to writers

Today my Facebook feed is full of images of the American flag and "Thank you for serving!" posts for our vets.  While I think it's important to remember the service of others, I also like NPR's approach of reminding us of the document that started it all: the Declaration of Independence.

Just A Few Important Words About The 'Declaration Of Independence'

It's an intelligent story, about not just the document itself, but of the significance of the wording its authors -- primarily Thomas Jefferson -- chose.

Vacation and unpacking

I was off from my nanny job last week, and I'm off again this week.  I still have had some babysitting here and there, but mostly I've just been using my time off to get fully moved and unpacked.  I wanted to resume something of a full-time freelancing schedule when I was off, but the move has made that near impossible.

Wired up!

The tech came today to set up my Internet, so I am finally online from my new place.  Hooray!  It's such a relief to be able to get online and work from my own home.  It's amazing how much you take that for granted sometimes.

Surprisingly, though, the five days without wifi went quickly.  Lots of factors helped to make that easier than I thought it would be: my iPhone, the many opportunities I had to get wifi while I was without at home, the fact that it was over the weekend, and my deadlines not being until mid-week.

The wait for wifi

I've been moving all week, but I'm nearly done now.  Unfortunately, I waited until Thursday to set up Internet access at my new place, and of course they can't set it up the same day.  So I won't have it until Tuesday around midday.

Just staying afloat

With the move (which is taking longer than intended) and some other unplanned problems (my car's brakes decided to fail quickly and spectacularly the same week as my move), I've just barely been staying afloat.  It's hard enough to keep up on my client work with moving, packing/unpacking, juggling cars, and all the other complications.

I'm hoping to get fully moved soon, perhaps as soon as today but maybe as late as Sunday.  Once that's done, I'll be able to take all of next week (which I have off from my nanny job) to finish unpacking, settle in, and get caught up (or even ahead!) on client work.  I'm also hoping to get my personal projects (my unfinished nonfiction project from NaNo 2014, my unfinished novel from NaNo 2013, and my novel series that I still want to get back to work on) better organized, and start preparing for Camp NaNoWriMo in July.

And I'm also hoping to get caught up on blogging.  The sooner I get fully moved, the sooner I can start settling in, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for tonight!

New leaves

All manner of things are changing in my life this summer.  I'm moving this month, and as part of that, I will be depending on my freelance income even more than I have been the past year.  Necessity is the mother of more than just invention -- it has made me work harder this past year, and I suspect it'll take me to new levels of productivity in the next year.

As part of my life changes, I've made some resolutions -- a little bit like New Year's resolutions, except hopefully more lasting.

NaNoWriMo, Denver Comic Con, and being sick

I lost a lot of last week because I was sick, and then over the long weekend I went to Denver Comic Con, so I've been MIA a lot lately.

My illness hit me two weekends ago, and it really hit me hard.  I canceled a lot of my obligations that weekend and slept for most of it, thinking that would help me to be fully functional once Monday rolled around.  Unfortunately, once I went back to my regular schedule on Monday, I had a major setback, and it wasn't until Thursday or so that I felt well again.  Luckily it cleared up before Comic Con!

Sick days as a freelance writer

I got sick over the weekend, and despite getting a lot of sleep, it's been hanging on this week.  I think it's probably because I went back to my usual schedule, in which I only get around seven hours of sleep a night -- not really enough if I'm fighting an illness at the same time.

When it started on Friday, I thought it was just a cold, but then on Saturday I was fairly sure I had a fever.  I didn't get my hands on a thermometer until I had already taken an ibuprofen, but I still had a low fever at that time, so I'm guessing it had been higher before.

I slept most of the weekend, but yesterday I had to go back to my usual schedule, thinking I'd be better.

The freelance writer's resume

I think freelancer writers have to think about their resume more than most people.  When someone gets a regular job, they might stay in that job for years or just months, but either way they still don't have to think about their resume for a little while.  Freelancers, on the other hand, submit a resume every time they apply for a contract job, so their resumes are constantly trading hands -- and as a result, have to be constantly evolving.

So I found this article particularly pertinent for freelancers:

For A Resume, Type Font Matters

If your professors told you in college to always use Times New Roman, it turns out they were actually wrong.  According to typography experts, Times New Roman is wearing out its welcome.  It's old news, tired and overused.

The well-rested writer

I've been fairly sleep deprived so far this year.  I used to get eight or nine hours a night, easy, but I've struggled with getting enough sleep for the last year or so.  When I freelanced full-time it wasn't an issue, or even when I just worked my nanny job in the afternoons; but I worked a lot of hours at my nanny job last summer, and I've worked a lot since the start of the year, too.  And the way it's looking, I won't see a reprieve for a few more months, since I'm working a lot more hours this summer, too.

So I was amused to see this article pop up on my Facebook feed today:

Short On Sleep? You Could Be A Disaster Waiting To Happen

Heaven knows, I certainly feel like a disaster waiting to happen some days!

A writer and her keyboard: A love story

I guess I'm hard on keyboards, which shouldn't come as a surprise, given my occupation.  My keyboard has been slowly getting more problematic over the year and nine months that I've owned the computer.  I love the feeling of typing on these modern laptop keyboards, with their flat backlit button-style keys, but they don't appear to hold up as well as the older-style laptop keyboards.  My keys have been slowly getting looser, especially keys that I use a lot, such as A, S, T, and now U as well.

And then, last summer, my A key came off for the first time.

Camp NaNoWriMo follow-up

I didn't really do Camp NaNoWriMo this year.  The irony is my goal was to get back into the habit of writing every day, and I didn't manage it once.  First taxes, and then a few other things, including my birthday, kept me from it.

Luckily, there is another session of Camp in July, and I am hoping to have a little better luck then.  In the meantime, I have a few things to get into order so that the same thing doesn't happen again.

TGIF, upcoming birthday, and other thoughts...

Today was my first week back to my regular schedule -- that is, regular since January, getting up early and taking the preschooler back and forth to school.  While it was nice to get back to that schedule, I also really did like my time off.

I had a hard time readjusting to getting up early again.  I stayed up far too late Sunday and Monday nights because I was enjoying a really good book (The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls), and being tired affected my entire week, so I'm now pretty relieved that it's Friday.

My birthday is also on Sunday, so I'm glad to be starting the weekend.  I have the weekend off to celebrate.

Six weeks left until summer...

Today I went back to my "normal" schedule -- with my morning job as well as my afternoon job, that is.  I do like my morning job, as it forces me to get up early and get some work done while the kiddo is at preschool and I'm at Starbucks waiting to pick him up.

I looked at the calendar this morning and realized that I have only six weeks left of this schedule, though.  Come summer I'll be working nearly full-time while the nanny kids are out of school.  It'll no doubt be a busy summer, the busiest I've had in a long while.

Tax Day resolutions

My habit in recent years has been to leave everything about taxes for the last minute, including the recording of income and expenses.  Last year I made an effort early on to keep on top of it, and I was successful until about May -- which made taxes a little easier this year, but next year I'm hoping to be even better about it.

I also tried to get an earlier start this year, and for the most part succeeded, although it still wasn't quite as early as it needed to be.  I intended to start on reporting the week before, but I was so busy that week that it didn't happen.  Plus, I got the sad news that my friend and trainer's six-year-old son was killed in a tractor accident and her husband severely injured, so I was distracted and not really feeling up to getting anything done for a few days.

Happy, hurried Easter!

I don't really do much for Easter, so for me it's just another Sunday... well, a Sunday that has really yummy candy associated with it.  However, this year I also managed to get all weekends off in April, so I've been off all weekend, which has made this Easter special.

Of course, with Tax Day coming up and my busy schedule last week and next week not leaving me as much time for either taxes or freelancing, I have a laundry list of things to do today.

From post-con coma to con crud

I apologize for not having posted about AnomalyCon yet as I'd promised after the con ended, but I've been down and out with a sore throat and some minor congestion.  It doesn't sound like much, but it's a pretty substantial sore throat, and the entire illness has been making me feel pretty tired.  I actually think I felt it coming on Friday morning, so it probably isn't really "con crud," but a friend of mine used that term and I liked it so much I decided to appropriate it anyway.

It's supposed to be a vacation of sorts for me, and I'm spending the first few days of it sick, which seems somehow familiar -- I think I've been through this before.

Post-con coma

AnomalyCon ended this afternoon.  After a whirlwind weekend of costumes, panels, and other exciting things, I'm usually mentally exhausted afterward, if not physically.  I'm a little less tired than usual, I think partly because I skipped a few things this year instead of trying to do EVERY SINGLE THING, but I'm still pretty beat.  Plus I think I might be getting a cold, so I've taken it easy this evening and I'm now heading to bed with the hopes of getting enough sleep to fight it off.

I will post more on the con tomorrow, including pictures of my outfits, descriptions of my adventures, and an overview of what I learned!

Off to AnomalyCon!

AnomalyCon starts today!  I spent last night packing (I babysat this morning so I knew I wouldn't have another chance until right before I left, and I didn't want to be rushed).  I have costumes planned out, too.  I had been contemplating not dressing up this year, but decided I wanted to after all.  And then I found some great stuff for costumes, so now I'm really excited about dressing up!

Weird week

This week has been weird.  The kid I usually take to preschool in the mornings has been sick, so I've had the last few mornings off.  You would think this would mean I'd get more done, but in actuality I may have gotten less done, and just slept more.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, since I've been getting less sleep since I started that morning job in January, but it has made the week feel surreal.

Also weird is that I have a lot of busyness coming up: AnomalyCon is this weekend, and then Camp NaNoWriMo starts almost immediately afterward.  I feel like I'm not prepared for any of it.

Breaking bad habits

Sometimes when you've fallen into a routine of bad habits, the best thing is to change things up so that it forces you to break out of the routine.

A good example is my workweek and related procrastination.  One of my clients assigns weekly work.  They had been assigning it on Monday and Tuesday, and making it due toward the end of the week.  I was frequently doing the work over the weekend, and from there I started rolling it over into the beginning of the following week.  A clever suggestion from my client might have fixed this problem, though.

Scrivener for bloggers

I have to admit I don't use a separate software for my blog posts -- I write them directly into the blog platform -- but if I had to use something, I would use Scrivener.  This isn't a very detailed post, but it does list some compelling reasons why you should consider using Scrivener for blogging:

 Scrivener is Your All In One Software for the Writer or Blogger

The freelance writer and the art of saying no

I have a hard time saying no, and I suspect I'm not the only writer out there with this problem.  We are stereotyped as being procrastinators and chronically late on deadlines, but often the problem is something else entirely: We find it too difficult to say no, even when we know saying yes is going to overload us.

Over the past year, since I made some changes to my life and started freelancing seriously again, I've come to realize how important it is for me to get better at saying no.  I don't say yes because I'm afraid of saying no; I just fail to be honest with myself about whether I want to say yes.

Daylight Savings Time starts Sunday

Don't forget that Daylight Savings starts this Sunday.  These are the times when I miss being a full-time freelancer, because the time change didn't affect me all that much, since I usually didn't have to get up at a certain time, and certainly didn't have to punch a clock.  Unfortunately since these days I babysit on Sundays, I don't even get the day to adjust that most people do before they have to wake up early on the new time.

Because I have the experience of not having to get up early every morning, and certainly not being sleep deprived, I more or less agree with this article:

Seriously, Stop Worrying About Daylight Saving Time

Cyclical habits

As writers, we all have habits that we wish we were better at fixing, habits that interfere with some aspect of our careers and our lives.

Mine is, lately, getting behind on the week's writing assignments.  It means that I end up playing catch up over the weekend -- or, more dangerously, on Monday -- and as a result, I end up feeling burnt out by the time I'm ready to start on the current week's work.

Let it snow!

I'm sure people in many parts of the country are sick of snow, and I certainly would normally prefer a return to our heat wave back from a few weeks ago.  Temperatures in the 60s and low 70s were definitely preferable to all this snow we're getting now.  After dumping on us over the weekend, we had one nice day (yesterday, in the 40s) and now it's starting to snow again, with snow and highs in the teens and 20s predicted through the weekend.

Keeping up with writing assignments

Who thought I'd be happy to go back to my regular schedule?  But I am, after the craziness of last week's long hours.  Suddenly my normal schedule seems easy in comparison.

I like sitting here on Monday, with the whole week stretched out before me like an untraveled road.  Inevitably I get behind on my journey and end up rushing to catch up at the end of the week, but the easy promise of Monday is well worth it to me.

When you have to be snowed in to write

Sorry for the lack of posts -- I had a crazy busy week.  Sometimes I should be better at telling people no, I think, but I'm not always very good at that, especially if it carries with it the promise of money.  This past week has been a prime example of how that can be both a good and a bad thing.

Win some, lose some

I had a client decide to stop working with me recently.  I think I'm probably better off for it, as they were difficult to work with anyway.  Their instructions were unclear, partly because they seemed not to understand the rules of grammar and punctuation, and partly because they didn't seem to know how to word complete and clear instructions.  I was still annoyed, probably because I had tried my best and spent a lot of time trying to decipher said unclear instructions, but I know it's for the best.  Some clients just aren't worth the trouble, not for a million bucks and certainly not for anything less.

The same day, though, I got a new client that made up for the lost client tenfold.

Finding time for it all

This past week, the weather has been gorgeous, with the dramatic exception of Wednesday: We went from 50 or 60 degrees on Tuesday, to 30 and several inches of snow on Wednesday morning, and back up to 60 degrees on Thursday.  I found some extra time and managed to get out to the barn Thursday, Friday, and Saturday to enjoy the weather.

Unfortunately, the end result is that this week has been busy and stressful on both ends with lots of exhausting fun sandwiched in the middle.

How NOT to get enough sleep

It seems like sleep is in the news lately.  Just a few days after the recommendations for sleep duration were updated, I saw this article, about how using over-the-counter sleep aids such as Benadryl can actually increase your risk of getting dementia.

There had been a headline on this a couple of years ago, too, I think, but this one is a more comprehensive study.

How much sleep do we need?

Sleep has been on my mind a lot lately, as you likely know from my Sleep Cycle reviews, so the timing of this article seems more than a little coincidental:

National Sleep Foundation Updates Recommendations For How Much Sleep You Really Need

The changes themselves aren't terribly significant for adults, unless you have kids.  For the most part they just widened the recommended ranges to acknowledge that some kids need slightly less sleep than was previously recommended.  (I'd err toward the middle or end of the range, though -- a chronically over-tired kid is no fun for anyone.)  But there are some interesting changes that pertain to adults, too.

Second review of Sleep Cycle

I've been using Sleep Cycle for just over two weeks now, and I think it's about time to share again how it's working for me.

I blogged about Sleep Cycle two weeks ago, shortly after I started using it.  Now that I have two weeks of records, I think it's time to revisit my review.

When I blogged about Sleep Cycle early on, I had so far found it helpful, and was optimistic that I would continue to do so.

A day in the life

Yesterday I blogged about what I both love and hate about my new schedule.  I thought I would give you an idea of what that schedule really means, so here is what a day in my life looks like right now:

Loves and hates of my new schedule

For nearly three full weeks now, I've been getting up early in the mornings to take J., the kid I babysit for occasionally, to preschool while his preemie baby brother is too young to be exposed to the germs.  It's been long enough to get somewhat used to the earlier schedule, get into a good work routine, and discover what I do and don't like about this earlier schedule.  I suppose there's more I like about it than dislike, but all the same, I'll be happy when the baby gets old enough and they don't need me for this anymore.

What I love:

Week 2 of my new schedule

I am almost through with my second week of my new schedule -- that is, getting up early nearly ever morning.  It used to be that I slept in most of the week and only got up early one day each weekend, but I recently took a babysitting job for one of my families that means getting up early, taking the kid to preschool, and working at Starbucks until he needs to be picked up.

I've been using an app called Sleep Cycle to help me get up in the mornings, and so far it's been working pretty well.  I've been a little tired due to the dramatic change in my schedule, but it's been more manageable than I'd expected.  (I'll blog more about the app again soon.)

Why freelancers aren't their own bosses

I saw a bumper sticker on a cab the other morning stating, "Be your own boss!" with the cab company's number.  While I do love the independence of being self-employed, I've always thought that "Be your own boss" was a bit untrue.

Although in some respects a freelancer has much less oversight than a full-time worker in an office, in other respects there is actually more.

Waking up with Sleep Cycle

Two weeks into 2015 and I'm finally posting for the first time this year.  Oops!

I've been busy, despite my New Year's resolution to simplify, although to be fair that's a long-term goal that is going to require changes throughout the year.

One thing I'm currently trying to simplify, however, is the act of waking up in the morning.