Four more years – or why the American election matters to me
Barack Obama has just been elected for a second term as president of the United States of America. I cried when I got the text from my eldest son saying simply ‘ Obama won’. I then bought a bottle of (good) bubbly and went home to celebrate with my family. Over the past couple of hours people have asked me why the Obama win was so important to me. After all, I’m not American. I’m no longer a journalist – so can’t really claim a professional interest anymore. So, why the passion for the American presidency? (more…)
The return of …well…of me…..
Yes, folks, it’s me. I have returned. Not that I was gone long. Just long enough to do a little decorating around the place.
New layout, new header, new job, new look….. (more…)
New blog wins Beautiful Blogger nomination
Awwww – I’m so touched. My new blog for YA book reviews and author interviews – On A Far Away Bookshelf – has received a Beautiful Blogger nomination from Scarlett Rains. Pop on over to the Beautiful Blogger Nomination and check it out - hey this could be my fifteen minutes, I want as many of you over there as I can get.
(more…)
Get ready to jump
As I write this, TMoTH and Mr 13 are watching I Shouldn’t Be Alive. I was going to go upstairs to my desk but both were reluctant for me to leave; I’m not especially sure why but it had something to do with wanting to spend time with ‘their girl’, which is worryingly sweet…. That however is not the point of this post.
On the screen, a team of men on their way to rescue some sailors find themselves in the middle of a perfect storm – and their helicopter is about to crash into the middle of the ocean.
“Get ready to jump,” one of them yells and within minutes they are in freezing cold seas battling hypothermia, major injury, and massive waves. They were cold, frightened, in pain and had no idea if they would be rescued.
I was struck by what an amazing analogy the situation presented for those moments in life when we take a risk or make a determination and have nothing to cling to except our faith and will power. Not for one second do I want to compare a career situation to what those men went through; it was more a recognition that if they could survive that massive storm, I sure as hell can survive my minor one.
I decided a few weeks ago that I needed to commit to my life as a writer – in whatever form that takes, be it fiction, no-fiction, reviewing, blogging – or I needed to walk away. As a the wonderful Kate Alexander once suggested “piss or get off the pot” (those words tend to strike a note when you hear them from someone as elegant and dignified as Kate – trust me). That moment was my moment of ‘getting ready to jump’.
The jump came when I set about committing – and yes there is an obvious joke here but how about we all ignore it. For now. I joined blogging communities, I joined writers communities, I increased my social media presence, I put my hand up to host book tours, I began reading more, I began reviewing more, and yes, I got the manuscript out, blew the metaphorical dust off it ( if only all the dust in the house was metaphorical too) and began typing more.
At times it feels as though I am indeed in icy seas waiting for the next wave to come crashing down on me and that what appears to be rescue lights in the distance is nothing more than my imagination. Then something happens. A review is well received by readers or I pick up an editing client. My badge appears on someone else’s blog or a publishing firm confirms a virtual book tour. I work out the next stage of my novel – or what to do with that non-fiction project that lurking at the back of my mind. My amazing sister surprises me with a beautiful teapot and a canister of my very favorite cinnamon and plum tea – hey life rafts come in a variety of styles…..
I suspect I may have to spend a bit longer in the water and there may be a few more waves to endure yet before I’m back on dry ground but I’m not worried. Well, not too worried – my life rafts are pretty sturdy.
We’ll get back to port …sooner or later.
Innovative Online Book Tours
{EAV:1b7b8ffe500d4ad3}I am thrilled to announce that I have just been accepted, over on Just Heard, Just Read, Just Seen as a Online Book Tour Host (yes those are Winnie The Pooh capitals, no I’m not correcting them – move on) for Innovative Online Book Tours.
I’m really excited about this as I’ve been working really hard to grow my blogs over the past few weeks. I’ve overhauled how they look, I’ve updated them, I’ve tweeted them, I’ve Facebooked (oh look I know it’s not a word but it’s late so for tonight – just move along, nothing to see here) them and I have joined what feels like a million blog communities. In fact, girls and boys, I’m starting to feel like I’m something of a social media tart. But I swear I’m not a love ‘em and leave ‘em kind of community member, I’ve been logging in faithfully every night to each of them. In fact by the time I’ve visited each of them there’s no time left to write or blog. Ooooops.
So, I am very excited to see it starting to pay off in small ways. My traffic is increasing, my book review requests are increasing ( hmm those who can, write – those who can’t, review? Let’s not go there…), and of course becoming Online Book Tour Host (oh look Winnie strikes again).
For those of you who don’t know, basically publishers organise for blog owners to ‘host’ an author and/or book during its release. This can mean an interview, a review, an excerpt, a give away, or a guest blog from the author. It’s an all around win situation – the author gets exposure, the blogger gets exposure and readers get great material.
Of course, all of this means I need to order – let me think – oh another 24 hours in a day should just about do it. Reading, reviewing, editing, blogging, posting, tweeting *pant, pant* – and that’s all before I head downstairs to make breakfast for The Offspring, put on my suit and head to the day job, or kiss The Man of The House good morning.
Am I super woman? Hell, no. I’m nuts is what I am.
Seriously though – there is method in my madness. I love to write, I love to connect with people, and I love the cyber world. It seemed to make sense to start building my writing career in a way that worked with those components. While I admit it would be nice to be making more money at it - used to have a guitar teacher in France, who used to roll his eyes and mutter “Angelique, your problem is you want the moon and you want it yesterday, which should tell you something about my patience level – I have to say that I’m feeling creatively quite satisfied with myself.
In other news, we’ve had a sad couple of months here at The New Beach House. Both our darling old slobradogs have left us for the doggy playground on high – Fitzy in January and Barney just a couple of months ago. While it was very sad, having to say goodbye to them it was a comfort knowing they had good lives, were very much loved and brought much love to everyone.
The Terrible Twins and Rosie now have full run of the place. The Twins spend a lot of time curled up at my feet at my desk while I write. My writing desk is upstairs in our bedroom, looking out over the water – and as the chimney runs up through our room, it’s lovely and cosy on blustery day (sigh, NZ winter is looming, dammit).
The Offspring are all settled in school for the year and doing really well. Master 19 – and I’m sorry but no he is NOT turning 20 in September, I don’t care what he says – is doing brilliantly in his third year at music school and has a lovely girlfriend named Sammi, who we all adore. Master 13 is enjoying being a high school student (I think) and has taken up parkour – aka free running, aka driving your mother’s blood pressure through the ceiling. Miss 11 is loving being in the senior grades at primary school and to the horror of all the men in her life, turned into a teenager while they weren’t looking. The cute little girl is gone and a rather formidable (not to mention beautiful) young woman is emerging – look out world is all I can say.
Next week is my one year anniversary of my sleeve surgery – I’m trying to think of something special to do to celebrate it both in the real world and something to share here with readers. Especially as over the past year I’ve lost a little over 50kg….I am literally half the person I used to be. Stay tuned.
See you a little further on up the road guys.
Every now and then…
The first thing I discovered is that I’m extremely hard on myself and one of the side effects is a paralyzing self sabotage. At least I recognize it now and am doing something about it – namely writing.
Then tonight I came across a wee gem that really resonated with me; perhaps because it echos Liz Gilbert’s TED presentation. Or perhaps I
needed a reminder to not take myself so seriously….
I don’t have to be perfect,
All I have to do is show up
and
enjoy the messy, imperfect, and beautiful journey of my life.
It’s a trip more wonderful than I could have imagined.
- Kerry Washington
One day my office will who my imperfect and beautiful journey too...
Warning: information overload
Anyone who knows me, or has been reading this blog for a while, knows how much I love technology and gadgets. This love affair with technology may explain why a fiction writer specialising in romance and Young Adult works as editor of a corporate IT magazine by day, but that’s by the by.
Seriously it’s great that my iPhone can all but wash the dishes for me (the day it can do that, I may well declare undying love to the thing),I love that my electric pink Vaio has become the ultimate travelling accessory, and that I can carry 2,000 songs in my pocket and no, they are not all variations of Thunder Road. And yes, there may be some rumour to the truth that I am currently using three different e-readers (it’s in a good cause, trust me). The point is, in case you were unaware of it, I am an unashamed girl geek.
However, there are downsides to technology. Even I am prepared to admit that – so I thought I would take a look at some of them from the point of view of a writer. A woman writer…. who loves technology.
Big Data
Recently, I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to interview international BI analyst and consultant, Colin White, about, among other things, Big Data. If you’re not a techno person, Big Data refers to amounts of data (data sets) so big they are counted in petabytes (suffice to say that’s a lot) and are often overwhelming. The issue with this, Colin said, is not so much about volume as it is about our ability to cope with it and extract quality from the quantity.
When we take the idea of huge volumes of information out of the specific framework of IT and apply it to everyday living, it gets a little scarier. After all, at work we can at least send it all to the IT team and forget about it until they’ve performed some magic on it and extracted what we need.
At home, we are the IT team.
A lot of data
And the data coming at us is immense. From the moment we wake up each morning our mind and body are being bombarded with information or data. The alarm clock, the radio, the newspaper, email, text messages, the television, iPods, iPads, iPhones, RSS feeds, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Sky – the list is endless and that’s not including actual human interaction which also counts as data (and let’s not forget the cats, dogs, goldfish or pet rocks). What’s more, we’ve dealt with most of it before breakfast – or morning tea if you’re particularly sane – which, I have it on good authority, I am not.
All of this overload is overwhelmingly distracting. Speaking for myself, I can spend an entire day dealing with data of this variety and achieve absolutely …. zip. Ultimately I end up feeling anxious, tired, and a failure. The truth is, the only thing I’m failing at is assimilating the huge amounts of data slamming into me.
Proponents of Zen style minimalism are no doubt laughing hysterically about now. Heck, you don’t have to be Zen to find it hilarious. I’m sure the more disciplined, less techno-addicted among you are getting a good giggle. And yes my darling siblings, I am looking at you.
Touching all of us
Well, girls, boys and siblings (because we all know siblings are gender neutral in reality) I put it to you that this isn’t about discipline or technology and that we are all affected by it.
This is about the constant volume of information we are exposed to.
My eldest son was born in Paris in 1992 and back then it took around ten days for photos of the wee bundle of joy to get back to his grandmother and aunts and uncles in New Zealand. When that same bundle of joy got his latest tattoo (hey the bundle of joy is 20, he can do what he likes to his body), he took a photo and sent it to me by pxt. It took less than ten minutes; it probably took less than ten seconds.
My point here is that because information is so easily accessible and transmitted today, it is difficult to dodge it. When was the last time you wrote a letter or went to the library to look something up in a book? When was the last time you didn’t check your phone or your voicemail or inbox… just to make sure you hadn’t missed something important? When did you last walk the dog… without your cell phone in your pocket? When did you last go 24 hours without checking to make sure you hadn’t missed some vital piece of … information.
I know, I know – the kids need to be able to get in touch. That job might come through. The gorgeous hottie from Saturday might have found your number in her handbag. You’re preaching to the choir. I’m a writer – I thrive on information. Research, social media, blogs – gimme, gimme, gimme.
Conditioning
The thing is though, we have become conditioned to need this endless supply of information. We text, we pxt, we message, we skype, we facebook, we tweet, we pin, we link – all so we don’t miss out on the massive volumes of data floating around we need to know about.
Or do we?
Do we really need to know? And if we do need to know – do we need to know now? Some things yes. Most things, probably not. It won’t hurt us or anyone else if we don’t read, respond, or react for an hour… or six. Obviously this doesn’t apply to emergency situations – you know I am not alluding to those right? Right. Just checking.
So what’s the answer?
It’s hard to say. I’m not convinced there is a one size fits all solution. What will work for one person, may not work for someone else. Personally I don’t care if I never actually speak on a telephone again; plenty of my friends find that to be yet another indication of my questionable sanity.
I think the best thing we can do is be aware of the potential for being overwhelmed and have some loose frameworks that help us identify when it is happening and take even minor steps to try and combat the sensory overload.
Tips
1. Be disciplined – And sadly I am not referring to the fun kind. Only check your email at certain times of the day. Set up an auto reply telling people you do this and you will soon find they don’t start texting or phoning to find out why you didn’t instantly return their email. Most of them, I suspect, will be incredibly impressed with your efficiency.
2. Beware the email black hole – I know you know what I mean. You answer an email and move on to the next. By the time you have answered Email 2, a reply has come back from Email 1 – and you reply to that. As it whooshes off into cyber space, you follow a link in Email 3 that reminds you of something you needed to tell Email 2 so you send them another reply. Before you know it, it’s lunchtime and you’re only half way through your inbox.
As a writer, email black holes are the bane of my life. So I’ve come up with a nifty new strategy. I check my email on my iPhone and I file it instantly – if I don’t need to do anything with it I delete it immediately. If I need to act on it (reply, perform an action or whatever…) I drop it in the IMPORTANT folder. I leave it there until later when I deal with it from my laptop. Why deal with it later? Because I can then deal with it effectively and efficiently – if in fact it needs to be dealt with at all. Only if it’s time urgent do I deal with it from my phone. Hey, it works for me.
3. Unsubscribe, unlike, unfollow – anyone or any business that you are not actually active interested in subscribing to, liking, or following. If like me you are something of a social media junky this can be a bit scary – but in fact it’s incredibly helpful. Who cares if they tweet you unfollowed them or unliked them? You’re clearly not engaged enough for it to matter – your time is valuable, use it on relationships and information that add value to everyone, including yourself.
4. Turn off – Yes turn off. Turn off your phone, your computer, your iPod, your iPad, your television, your radio and your alarm clock. Ignore the newspaper. Go for a walk. Bake cookies. Walk the dog. Eat something yummy. Weed the garden. You can head down to the nearest ice cream parlour and eat hot fudge sundaes all day long if you want. I don’t even mind if you say the crazy writer on the Internet told you to. Just take some time out of the information stream for a while – even if it’s only an hour. Trust me, you’ll feel better. And you will find it so much easier to cope with information when you come back to it. Weird but true!
The bottom line is technology is here to stay and that’s a good thing. But yes Virginia even the most addicted among us can get through a day – okay maybe just an hour – without checking in, updating, tweeting, stumbling or linking. It can even be fun sometimes.
I think it’s called having a life…
Image: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-14799520/stock-photo-abstract-concept-background-for-information-overload-great-as-a-background-or-a-design-element.html
What’s in a name?
Something tells me I’m hardly the first writer to head up a blog post with that title. But hey at least I resisted the urge to use a rose as a pic….And trust me it wasn’t easy coming up with an alternative; I nearly bowed to the cliche but I digress. Yes I know, I do that a lot.
What was I talking about? Oh yes – names. I like to think of myself as being fairly smart; my family suggests that in fact this is a delusion and that I bear more than a passing resemblance to Dory from Disney’s Finding Nemo, but what would they know? I’m not even blue and I don’t sound anything like Ellen DeGeneres. Hmm? Oh right – names.
Oh zat ees not a very common name, hein?
I’m one of those rare people who actually like their name. I don’t know whether I fell in love with France and things French because of my name or if would have happened anyway, but my slightly unusual name in all its forms has never bothered me. Although when I first moved to Paris I did assume I would for the first time ever have an ordinary, garden variety name. HA! People still commented on it everywhere I went – they simply did it French. Go figure.
A name for everything…
So when I started writing, I wasn’t especially interested in pseudonyms. My name would be just fine thank you very much. Right up until I hit a whole other bunch of names – the names of genres. Romance. Horror. Erotica. Sci-fi. Chick Lit. If you think about it each of those labels or names carries with it a resonance and image of what it represents – just the same way our own name does.
Of course what often happens is if a writer begins writing to one of those genres, they become pigeon holed to that genre. Now, there is nothing wrong with that at all. If your passion is romance or sci-fi or chick lit or whatever, then get out there and write, baby, write.
What about me?
What happens though if, like yours truly, you tend to be a little hyperactive (okay maybe a lot) and you don’t know what genre you’re passionate about because you just love words and writing? Then what?
I’ll tell you what – you end up in the middle of a metaphorical snarled fishing line of massive proportions. It is scary how many story ideas I have sitting in folders in Dropbox that have stalled because I’ve woken up one morning either dying to try a different genre or I’ve been paralysed by the fear of actually writing something good, selling it, and never being able to write in a different genre again. Yes there are massive holes in this theory – not the least being that I’m assuming I’ll write something that will be picked up and published – but fear does not care about holes in theory. Fear is just fear.
Eureka
After struggling with this for several years now, two days ago I found the solution. I realised two things in that moment – the first was that the next year is going to be incredibly busy and the second was that maybe my family is right and I’m more like Dory than I thought.
The solution is pseudonyms. You see, I’m one of those people who takes on the identity of the genre they’re writing in. If I’m writing romance, I tend to become floral and romantic. If I’m working on my post-apocalypse piece I get very Sarah Connor – ish. If I’m writing erotica – well, anyway you get the idea. All I need to do is give those identities a name.
Meet the family
So I did. Lily writes romance, Georgia writes erotica, and I write general fiction and YA. And believe it or not – though by now I’m picking you’ll believe it – I have found myself dressing to the identity. Jeans and tee for me, soft pastel, feminine flowy skirt for Lily, leather and lace for Georgia.
The kids just shrugged – they’re used to their mother being weird. The Man of The House is starting to realise there could be definite advantages to this set up. The cats are not impressed. As for me, I’m just looking at the names (and their personas) as another set of tools in my writing kit. It’s all just a case of finding the right one (tool/name) for the job.
By the way…
In case you’re wondering why I chose jellyfish….it’s because although we call them jelly fish their real name is Scyphozoa. If you’re Dory, of course it’s Squishy (I shall call you Squishy and you shall be mine). What’s more, you would be amazed at how many sites exist dedicated to jelly fish – who knew? I got the pic from a funky site called Jellyfish Facts which while cool, has a vaguely disturbing tab labelled Pet Jellyfish……
And so it begins….
So what begins, I hear you ask. Sure you did, it was in between the sip of coffee, the bite of sandwich, and the turn of the page of your book. I heard it clear as a bell.
What begins, girls and boys, is the long, hard slog that is the road to turning things around. Having banished the word but ( I can say it when I’m talking about the banishment – sheesh, you guys are a tough audience) I’ve set about trying to work out exactly how to achieve my goals.
What is the issue?
You see the goals are not the issue. The issue is the strategy for achieving them. For me there are two strategies – the strategy of The Lotus Sutra and the action strategy. The strategy of The Lotus Sutra, which we’re not going to discuss tonight but will discuss later in the week, but can be summed up as faith – although there is a bit more to it than that which is why we’ll come back to it (I’d like to be clear the order is not indicative of the importance – simply of the time I have available for blogging and faith requires a lot more than I have this evening).
Action Strategy
My action strategy is going a bit like this: get up, make tea, turn on laptop, do gongyo (that’s part of the other strategy), go to work, appreciate being at work, appreciate the people I work with, leave work, come home, make dinner, spend some time being Mama,research/ blog/write/actively promote both blogs and work, do gongyo again, go to bed. Maybe, if I’m lucky, spend some quality ‘nice’ time with the man I share my bed with. Or if I’m too late for that (he doesn’t really do late nights), read.
It works
Sound boring? You might be surprised to learn that not only is it not boring – it’s not only helping, it’s actually working. Ha! I knew that would get your attention. First of all actually making the effort to do gongyo is giving my day rhythm, routine and a strong foundation. Doing all the mama stuff, is making me feel happy because I LOVE doing stuff with my kids.
I’m actually engaged in my work. At this stage I’d like to just take a moment to say my issues with my job are less to do with the job and more to do with my frustration with life in general – and in particular with my apparent inability to advance my personal writing career. I’m not sure I can say I enjoy my job – and again this is about me, not about the job or the company – but I am engaged. And that is a very good start, because when I leave at night, I feel quite comfortable dedicating my evening writing time to my own writing.
The result of that, has been surprising. Obviously my word count is increasing (hmmm, spend more time on writing project, see output increase – I could be on to something here….). More importantly I have A Plan (complete with Pooh Bear capitals). I have a clearer – thought not quite sparkly, crystal clear – idea of my work and where I want it to go.
Counting down
All of this is a good sign since I have five weeks left of my deadline – and am beginning to feel as though I may just have found my way off the dreaded merry go round of “I would if I could bu……”
Stay tuned, folks, stay tuned.
Photo: http://www.funnyphotos.net.au/images/dangerous-mountain-trek-through-china1.jpg
What’s your brand?
Daftest question you’ve heard today? Maybe it’s not as daft as you think – even given that I am the one asking the question.
From time to time, my day job actually requires me to …well…work and yesterday turned out to be one of those times. As luck would have it, I had to interview up and coming young entrepreneur Justin Scott about Christchurch Start Up Weekend. We caught up at the Fabric Room Cafe in Parnell and spend a couple of hours chatting over coffee about technology, entrepreneurship and social media. It was great. During the conversation, Justin repeatedly referred to the importance of ‘our personal brand’ – and it’s got me thinking.
What is my brand, how do I promote that and more importantly – how do I make it work for me?
My first step was to make sure I knew what I actually meant by this – so I turned to our old friend Google which in turn pointed me in the direction of Dan Schawbel. If you have not come across Mr Schawbel or his Personal Branding Blog before, stop reading, click the links and visit the sites. Do it now – I’ll wait for you, promise.
Personal branding is the way in which we present – or market if you like (I don’t but hey that’s me) – ourselves to others. According to Schawbel every one of us is a brand and as such we can leverage the same strategies corporate brands and celebrities use to have as much presence as they do.
The first step was to work out what my brand is – in other words working out what you are passionate about. Ah, now this is something that makes sense to me. I am passionate about….my family and my pets, about Springsteen and movies, Buddhism and faith, technology and creativity, writing, music…okay this is not as easy as it looks. Never fear Schwabel is there to guide:
Brand discovery is about figuring out what you want to do for the rest of your life, setting goals, writing down a mission, vision and personal brand statement (what you do and who you serve), as well as creating a development plan. Have you ever been called intelligent or humorous by your peers or coworkers? That description is part of your brand, especially if you feel those attributed pertain to you. To know if you’ve discovered your brand, you need to make this equation equal:Your self-impression = How people perceive you
Ah – that helps. Sort of. After a while I came up with my brand as being: A writer who is passionate about life (see? that covers all the family-faith-Springsteen-et al stuff), who is sometimes funny, sometimes stroppy, and always curious. It’s as good a place as any to start; let’s move on to creating this thing.
You start this with your tool kit – well alright, the techno-geeky-gadget-loving side of me rubbed her hands in glee, a tool kit. Let me at it – gimmee, gimmee, gimee…oh you meant a metaphorical tool kit. Sigh.
1. Business card
2. Resume/cover letter/references document
3. Portfolio
4. Blog/website
5. LinkedIn profile
6. Facebook profile
To my great delight, I have everything on that list. Great start. Now I just have to back track and use those tools to set some goals, write down a mission, vision and personal brand statement and create my development plan – hmnmm, maybe I have some work to do yet….stay tuned.