Liebster Award 2018

This week is special since the charming A.J. Reeves nominated me for the Libster Award! You’ll get to know some odd facts about me as well as discover some blogs I enjoy, yay!

1. What book had the most impact on you?
There would be three: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien triggered my first attempt to write a novel; Feeling Good by Dr David D. Burns helped me accept my own depression as an illness and not a fault of character, as well as helped me heal from it; and How To Make A Living With Your Writing by Joanna Penn empowered me to reach for my dreams.

2. What movie would be greatly improved if it was made into a musical?
I’m not a fan of musicals so… none.

3. If given the choice, which literary man or woman would you like to have a relationship with? And what relationship? (friend/co-conspirator/love interest/enemy/etc.)
I’d want to co-write a book with James Patterson! Doesn’t everybody?

4. What is the most embarrassing thing you have ever worn?
I don’t get embarrassed that easily. But the weirdest thing I’ve worn was… Zebra stripes. Like… actual, indelible sharpie zebra stripes on my skin. It was for a team challenge with my swimming team in high school. We won. I had to go to school with stripes still showing for a few days, haha.

5. What part of a kid’s movie completely scarred you?
Nothing really “scarred” me, but I was freaked out by the entire world of Wonderland… especially the Cheshire cat.

6. If you were arrested with no explanation, what would your friends and family assume you had done?
Hm… Assault and battery? Legitimate defence? The dude would have totally deserved it though.

One of my BJDs (Ball-Jointed Dolls)

7. What is your weirdest hobby?
I guess it depends on your definition of “weird”. Collecting BJD, maybe? Or playing with Lego bricks? Though I neglect those these days because I prioritize writing.

8. What secret conspiracy would you like to start?
I don’t have time to start conspiracies, I have books to write!

9. What mythical creature would improve the world most if it existed?
Fire-breathing dragons? Just kidding. I suppose that would be angels. ♥

10. What’s the most imaginative insult you can come up with?
You have as much culture as a sanitized plastic ball.

The rules of this award are as follows (cause all nice things have to have rules):

• Create a new post thanking the person who nominated you, linking to their blog. Include the award graphic.
• Answer the questions provided.
• Make a new set of 10 questions for your nominees to answer.
• Nominate 5-10 recently followed bloggers and share your post with them so they see it.
  

My questions for you are:

1. If you had to name one song summing up your life over the last few years, what song would that be?
2. If you had to describe yourself in a single word, what would it be?
3. If you could magically acquire one talent or personality trait, what would it be?
4. If you had no obligations (family, money, etc.), what would you spend your life doing?
5. If you had to use a piece of fiction (book, movie, video game, etc.) to describe your goals, what would it be?
6. If you could have anybody, real or fictional, help you reach your goals who would you choose and why?
7. If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?
8. If you could live anywhere, real or fictional, where would it be?
9. If you could change one piece of fiction’s ending, what would it be and how would you change it?
10. If you could have a device to do any one thing in your place, what would it do?

My nominees for the Liebster Award are (in no particular order):

My Stories With Music
Floatinggold
Matthew Taggart
Brenda
Charlotte Annelise
Lauren
The Ink Owl
Unsaid Words
Keith MacArthur
Crowded Mind

Argh! So many great bloggers, it was hard to choose! Eliminating those who had much over 1k followers and those I’d already nominated last year for the Blogger Recognition Award helped a little but… uuuurgh! If you don’t feel like participating, it’s alright. Just sharing your blogs make me happy.

Review: How to Make a Living with Your Writing: Books, Blogging and More

Context
I have first heard of Joanna Penn through Twitter, then found her podcast on a list of podcasts for writers. From there, it wasn’t long before her non-fiction books caught my attention. Two weeks ago, ready to take my writing career more seriously, I finally bought How to Make a Living with Your Writing: Books, Blogging and More.

Joanna Penn is an independent author claiming to make a multi-six-figure income, and considering she makes almost 20k a year just on Patreon, I have no doubt she’s telling the truth.

Review
The book is written in a tight, conversational language, which I always like in non-fiction books. In the introduction,  Joanna Penn briefly explains how she became a full-time author. I identified with her a little, despite our different personalities, and was motivated by her success story. A few years ago, getting a book published seemed next to impossible to me, let alone making any money with it; now, even making a living with it seems possible.

In part 1, she discusses traditional publishing, self-publishing and independent publishing. That changed my point of view on both traditional and independent publishing: I have stopped idealizing traditional publishing and now see indie publishing as an equally good option, depending on the book and my goals for it. There is also valuable information on what to look for when reviewing a traditional book deal.

In part 2, she talks more about her other streams of income, for you see: only 50% of her income comes from actual books sales. The rest comes from affiliate commissions, course sales, professional speaking, consulting and podcast sponsorship. There is also some information on marketing.

The last part of the book gives pointers to plan your writing career and make your first few bucks with your writing. That was my favourite part because it made me feel able to create a solid career plan – I’m getting on it as soon as this post is published. There is a separate paper-only companion workbook. I’ll tell you all about it later: I should get my own copy in about two weeks.

I wish the book had been longer and more detailed. However, all through the book, there are links to additional information (mostly free), which I’m sure will be useful. There are also multiple book recommendations.

Another thing I loooved is how this book teaches by example: it provides great value for the reader while also promoting all of the writer’s other products! It sounds like a good marketing strategy to me!

If you’d like to know what you can expect before you purchase anything, I recommend downloading a free sample through your favourite ebook retailer or signing up to her mailing list to get her free book Author 2.0 Blueprint. I am currently reading it myself and I find it very interesting. The author also has a free thriller for sale through her fiction website.

Rating: 8/10

Who would I recommend this to? Every writer who wants to make it pro, especially if they’re considering the indie path. It’s short and fairly inexpensive and offers great value.

12 Short Stories Challenge

Winter isn’t a very good season for me. I used to love it, but in recent years it’s meant exhaustion and sickness (I blame my working from home for the weakness of my immune system). I sat down yesterday to write a post while wishing I was napping with the rest of the family. I ended up writing a discouraging post about hope. Or was is a hopeful post about discouragement? It’s good for my mental health whine once in a while, so long as it allows me to move on. I’ll never post it, but it did help me regain some fortitude.

I was ready to write something better.

However, I didn’t feel like taking on the rewriting of my novel. I’m too tired and too busy for such a long project. I wanted to write short stories, but not one per week; it wouldn’t have been realistic in my current situation. That’s when somebody from my writing community brought 12 Short Stories to my attention. The goal is to write one short story per month, based on the given prompt and word count. Then you post it on the deadline and read and comment on 4 other stories.

It sounds doable.

I like that it’s not completely open: you get to share stories with a restricted audience composed of other writers and receive feedback. You get to never publish it publicly if you don’t want to, or to revise your piece using the feedback received before you do.

So I’ll try that. The January story is due on the 24th though – in two days – so I’ll start next month. Who’s with me?

One Year Blog Anniversary!

One year ago, I started this blog on an impulse. I had become more serious in my writing and was well on my way to finishing my first novel, so I got overly enthusiastic. I didn’t really think I’d last more than a few weeks. I have missed a few weeks, especially since I started working again, but I am still here, and I have no intention of giving up anytime soon.

Statistics

Don’t you looooove statistics? I do! So here are some of those I thought might interest you: I have published 43 articles this year (this post is the 44th): 17 posts on life and personal development, 14 posts on writing, 11 book reviews, 1 short story. The most popular of them were A persona of myself, Confession of a hopeless hobbyist, What’s the worst that could happen, Declutter your text: use modifiers in moderation and Declutter your text: narrow your scope. My posts were liked  1,204 times and received 620 comments (221 of which were replies from me)

My blog gained a total of 350 followers over the year and was viewed 4,090 times, by 2,251 visitors. My best month was April with 570 views and 298 visitors. Most of my audience was from the United States (1,548 views), followed by India (619 views), Canada (483 views) and the United Kingdom (384 views). My top three referrers were the WordPress Reader (1498 views), the Community Pool (477 views) and Search Engines (156 views, 129 of which originated from Google).

 

Highlights

One of the best moments this year was when an acquaintance told me something like: “I got lost on your blog instead of working. Oops.” I was happy to know I could keep someone reading my different posts to the point they forget they have things to do. I had the same feeling when complete strangers would “like” several posts in a row then “follow”. It doesn’t take away my insecurity, but it soothes it a little.

Another thing that amazed me was seeing how I reached people from all over the world. I received views originating from 85 different countries!

Next Steps

Now that I have a fair amount of posts, I want to make them more easily accessible. I’m planning to create pages of links, sorted by category and theme. I’ve also drafted a new self-introduction, which I intend to upload soon.

I’d like to find new ways to interact with my audience and my fellow bloggers, like running contests and featuring or writing guest posts. I’d also like to publish more fiction, either short stories or a series of short stories. Finally, if I can get out of my financial difficulties, I’d like to get myself a camera and take a bunch of pretty pictures to “decorate” my posts.

That’s all for today. Let me know if there are any other statistics or facts that you’d like me to share!

Back to writing!

Sometimes things look almost perfect: you make a schedule for yourself, you stick to it and get brilliant results. You’re thrilled and want that to last forever. But then… life happens and you get overwhelmed again, running in all directions like a headless chicken: precisely what I’ve been doing for the past, uh… 3 months? Unfortunately, I didn’t get to do actual running, which I usually do during the spring to shed the extra pounds gained during the winter; I only got to make money, which admittedly had become my top priority: going hungry from lack of money is not my preferred weight loss strategy.

Sigh

It’s okay; I know I’m not good with changes, and going from unemployment to working over 50 hours a week is one drastic change. But now, things are settling down, I’ve reduced my working hours to 40-50 hours maximum, and now I’m ready to rethink my schedule. It’s irregular because of my husband’s schedule… but upon the whole, here’s how my time is distributed:

Okay, so this doesn’t look too bright (aside from the colours I chose): 5.5 hours is short for me to research/write/edit/revise a blog post, but it’ll have to do. I’m not too happy with having only 7 hours a week to write fiction either, or only 3.5 hours to read, but there isn’t much I can do about it. It’s more than I have for, say, exercising.

I’ll try to steal a few hours when my daughter is playing alone (I’m encouraging her to play alone because that’s something that doesn’t come naturally to her) and the necessary house chores are taken care of to get some writing or blogging done. I might consider handwriting short stories or making detailed plans on paper during those times. I’ve been thinking about writing a series of “episodes” for Wattpad or this blog, or both. That might not even be possible considering speech is the one thing that makes it impossible for me to focus and my daughter is talking all the time, but… I’ll see.

I could also go jogging with my princess in the stroller when it doesn’t rain.

I wish I could cut my hours of sleep to 56 (8 hours/day), but with the pills I take, even sleeping 9 hours a day is a stretch: ideally, I’d sleep 10-12 hours a day. So much time lost.

I can do this!

I hope. Very honestly, I feel tired just thinking about it. But I have to do this. I want to. That’s the way forward, the one leading to my someday being able to call myself a professional writer; the one that won’t make me feel like I’m wasting my time. Not to mention that this schedule will end with the summer: this fall I’m taking a creative writing course and so I’ll free 8-10 hours/week off my work schedule for that purpose. My schedule will still be tight, but a bigger proportion of it will be devoted to writing and that’s encouraging.

Seriously, I can do this.

Declutter your text: Beware of repetitions

Repetitions can take different shapes: multiple occurrences of the same word, synonyms, pleonasms, redundancies. When used wisely, repetitions can be an interesting stylistic device. When used unwisely, they can severely harm the elegance of your text.

The easiest repetitions to spot are the multiple occurrences of the same word (or the use of a word in the same family). Of course, some words have to be repeated: “repeat” or its substantive “repetition” have been repeated 7 times by this point. However, it is wise to reduce their number as much as possible.

When trying to avoid reiterations of the same words, don’t succumb to the temptation of the thesaurus. Using a synonym won’t get you rid of the repetition of ideas, it will only camouflage it a little. Or if you use synonyms, know that you are creating a repetition.

To really get rid of the repetition of ideas, you can first see if you couldn’t just delete the phrase or the whole sentence without deleting any useful information. Otherwise, you have to reword the sentence or the two or three sentences in which the repetitions occur until you are convinced that you express your ideas in the best possible way.

A pleonasm happens when you put together two words, one of which was already included in the other’s definition. Some examples would be “false pretence” or “safe haven”. By definition, a pretence is false and a haven safe.

Close to pleonasms are redundancies. How many times a year do you see or hear the phrase “plan in advance”? My own experience is limited, but I’ve never seen anyone plan anything after it was done. Or even plan it as it was being done. The act of planning is done in advance. If you really must stress that the planning process takes time and it should be started X time before the D day, then be specific!

In the same vein, you have the tautology: the act of repeating the same idea back-to-back. “I saw it with my own eyes”, “In my opinion, I think…”, etc.

You can find lists of redundancies, tautologies and pleonasms through search engines or… start analysing each and every word, wondering whether they’re absolutely necessary. Yup, studying writing will make you paranoiac. You’ll learn to live with it.

Tired of cat photographs yet?

Redundancies can also be a repetition of ideas whether in the same sentence or paragraph or through the entire text. I’ve had started a book quite recently, but the writer’s insistence on the love interest’s beauty and sexiness got old quick. It was like a broken record. The reader is not so stupid that you have to remind them all the time of the aforementioned ideas. Besides, it’ll make you look like you have nothing new and fresh to say.

If you really *must* repeat an idea, do it with intent: introduce it early and “prove” it in your conclusion; change the outcome and make it a progression as in the Three Little Pigs; make everything the same so that one thing stands out.

When finding a repetition while editing my texts, I ask myself 3 questions: 1) Is it there for artistic purposes? 2) Does it serve the text? 3) If the repetition is clumsy, is there any way I could reword the sentence to avoid it?

I think this will be the last post in the series for a while. If the subject interests you, however, I warmly recommend you to read On Writing Well by William Zinsser.

Other posts in this series: Narrow your scope, Use modifiers in moderation, Don’t dump details.

Spring is the time of plans and projects

(The title is a quote from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoi.)
It’s finally starting to look like spring in Québec! Snow is melting fast, temperatures are forecasted to be around 6-10 °C all week, everybody and everything seem to be reviving… including me. Especially me.

The slump in which I had been stuck the first 3 months of 2017 has come to an end. The whole car accident thing is in the past: we got a brand new car, brand new car seat for our daughter which she loves, my husband is undergoing treatment for his neck… all that almost for free thanks to our insurance company.

What’s more, my former employer called to offer me a job as a freelancer. I accepted and they proceeded to send me full-time work for two weeks. That alone will be enough to keep my mind off money issues for a while, but I’m thinking I’ll get even more work in the coming weeks.

In March, I’ve also received more visitors on my blog than ever before, and that pumped me to start researching blogging. It was one of my resolutions for the year, and it’s about time I got started! I’ve bookmarked a beginner’s guide to SEO, and I’ll fight hard to make time to read it. It’ll be a first step.

I’m also thinking of moving my “personal ramblings” such as this post to a Facebook page to keep the blog more focused on writing and literature.

To tell you the truth, my energy level and mood are so high that I have about a hundred projects right now, and I know I won’t have the time to do half of them. It’s alright, they’re all aimed at the same goal anyway: to make me a kickass writer.

I’ll be busy this month.

But I’m happy.

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King.
– Emily Dickinson