How writing is like Football

While at the Baylor pep rally last night in preparation for today's Texas Bowl I realized that football is like writing. You can't just pick up a pen one day and expect to be the next New York Times Bestseller. You have to train, practice and persevere.

The Baylor football team has trained and practiced for this day all year but really it goes further back then that. I know that they played football prior to college. The will to be a winning football team can be traced back to then and whenever they began not just physical training but the mental mentality of wanting to be a winner.

As a writer I work to make my own luck and reach my goals. I train and practice and persevere. Like any athlete, all writers must work to continue to grow in their craft and trade. So as the New Year approaches compare your writing to football or your favorite sport. Think about how you can prepare for your 2011 writing career like a football player prepares for a Bowl Game.

In other news I'm hoping that nothing big happenes today because I'll be off line as I cheer my Baylor Bears on to a Texas Bowl victory!!!

Planning out your New Year Resolution

As we welcome 2011 I'm sure many of us are stressing over our New Year's Resolutions, many of which probably include are writing ambitions. Remember to not over work the concept of the New Year's Resolution. Last year I made the resolution to complete my book while maintaining a crazy freelance schedule and I knew that I was going to pregnant while working to accomplish these things. Looking back on it my goals were probably too ambitious. The result though was not failure but knowledge. While working on my YA I learned a lot about myself as a writer. It's still not complete. I've decided to change the point of view but the book will be better for this decision. And I had my writing to keep myself sane while I was stuck on bed rest.
This year I'm setting smaller goals as a means to reach the bigger goals. Instead of saying I'll finish my YA and send it off to my dream agent list I'm committing to writing 2,000 words a day on this project. In addition to that I will maintain my freelance contracts but I'm going to learn to say "no" to knew ones so that I don't overbook myself. To make time for my writing career I'm going to also hire someone to come in several hours a week to watch my daughter. I'll still be there but this should make reaching my goals more attainable.
Decide what you want and set small goals in order to meet your big picture goal. It can be done through a little planning a lot of hard work. And of course we all have the resources of West Houston RWA. Good luck with your goal planning and Happy New Year

Change is good

Fear is the number one reason that writers don't succeed. The best way to tackle the enemy of fear is to change but this can be hard because many of us don't like to change. We're comfortable the way we are. This applies to our writing and our lives.

The past few months I've been playing around with the idea of changing the POV in my YA fantasy. For anyone who has done this to a completed manuscript you realize how hard this is. So of course I didn't want to do it. I am doing it though and after re-writing the first few chapters I can easily see how much richer and epic the story is becoming. This is a good change. Not an easy one but hopefully one that will pay off in the end and bring a better story to the popular YA genre.

So it's not easy to change but it can be for the best. Has anyone else made a major change in a completed manuscript? Share your story below and please share advice!