Give me a break! And it’s good for my writing!

As a writer I can relate to that constant nagging pull to keep writing and meet that writing goal. However, sometimes the best thing for your writing is to just take a break. As I’ve said before, there is no such thing as writer’s block. When a scene proves to be a challenge, just walk away from it. Even if it is just a little while. Any break, no matter how short it may be can help the quality of your writing and manuscript.

For writing moms, this advice is very easy to follow. When I feel like I’ve hit a dead end or I’m struggling with a scene, I take a break and play with my daughter. This accomplishes two important things. First, I get to play with the most beautiful little girl in the world. Secondly, it gets my mind off that troublesome scene. There is such a thing as working too hard. It’s easy to get so focused in work but really a break can do wonders for your work and for your life.

Rewards are also a great way to celebrate reaching a goal. I love rewards! I rarely go over my writing goal because I don’t want to overwork myself. Instead, I treat myself to an hour of reading a book of my choice.

What do you do for a writing break? Do you give yourself a reward when you’ve reached a goal?

Announcements:

I will be hosting a live webinar on September 26 6:30-8 PDT with Farm Dogs USA titled ‘Caring for Special Needs Dogs.’ My lecture will be based off my book, ‘Caring for Your Special Needs Dog’ along with new research. Click here for more information.

This October I’ll be teaching ‘Writing Moms: How to do it all without losing your mind’ with Who Dares Wins Publishing’s Write It Forward Workshops. Click here to sign up or for more information.

Blog Mash-ups:

Author and social media expert Kristen Lamb’s “The WANA Theory of Book Economics: Why Traditional Marketing Doesn’t Sell Books.”

Pitch University’s Diane Holmes’ “Using Major Turning Points: Pacing Advice By Christopher Vogler” And FYI I’m currently reading his book, “The Writer’s Journey” and loving it!

Some motivation from author Candace Havens off author Anna DeStefano’s blog, How We Write Wednesdays.

Re-sparking that writer conference energy

I attended the RWA Writers Conference this year and I know authors that attended the Thriller Writers Conference. Such conferences can be overwhelming and exhausting. Hopefully you read Bob Mayer’s and Jennifer Talty’s ‘The Writer’s Conference Guide.’ The truth is, whatever conference you attended, you are EXHAUSTED! Especially, if you are a mom. I know after being away from my house for a week I was met with so many things to do including planning and running my one-year-old's birthday party.

So, how do you keep the momentum and the spark from the conferences and apply them to your writing life? I recommend that you look over your notes and get back into your writing as quickly as possible. It is so easy to get tired and caught up with real life and feel like you must devote more time to it because you were at a conference for a week.

Remember why you went to that conference. What were your goals? I'm sure you had some. Look at those goals. Did you achieve them? How can you move forward and capitalize on what you learned to achieve your goals?

Maintaining the high from a conference is especially hard for mother’s that have been away from their babies. I know, I am there right now. Be sure to discuss your goals with your family. Get them on board, set a schedule and start working.

These are some suggestions to start with. How are you maintaining your high from a writer’s conference? What advice do you have? Please share below in a comment.

Announcements:

My non-fiction, ‘Caring for Your Special Needs Dog,’ is out. Vets will always be your first resource in pet care, but as owners, we have a lot of power in giving our dog the best possible life. It is currently selling for $2.99 with a percentage going to The Texas A&M Foundation to the benefit of the Neurology Section, Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences, College of Veterinarian Medicine.

Don’t miss out on the whole writer special-- three titles for $8.99, save $4 http://t.co/xy7e0Q9 THIS IS A GREAT DEAL!

I also have a new author website, www.NatalieCMarkey.com

How being thankful makes us better writers

Lately I’ve been on work overload. I’m sure many of you know the feeling. I had a deadline while getting ready for a conference and promoting my recent release. Throughout all of this, I still had to be a mom and a wife even though I’m sure there have been moments where I haven’t been the best at any of it.

I had a wake up call. A friend of mine from college has a child just a few months younger than my daughter. We were pregnant the same time and I remember discussing baby products with her over the phone. Her child has been diagnosed with brain cancer. The baby has all ready had multiple brain surgeries and will have a combination of chemo and radiation for an entire year.

I learned this horrible news just before I left town for the RWA National Conference in New York City. It was great to see my Twitter friends, meet new people and discuss and grow with my writing. However, I couldn’t stop thinking about my friend’s baby and everything that her family is going through. It made me regret all the moments when I have looked up from my desk to see my daughter smiling at me and I didn’t say anything. Don't you think the families who lost someone on September 11th would love to have another moment with whom they lost?

The truth is that we should always be thankful for what we have before we stress out about the things that would quickly fall to the side if tragedy occurred.

As soon as I returned from NYC, I was exhausted and energized to dive into my new manuscript. I know everyone says that you must get back into the routine. You must write your normal daily writing goal beginning the day you return. That was my plan. I did something different. I did write about three pages and reviewed the outline for my new project but I put playing with my daughter first. Even though I was exhausted, seeing her smile and show me her different toys gave me a surge of energy. I was thankful for my child and the fact that have the gift to work from home so I can be with her.

Now that I’ve been writing full time from home now for over a year I have developed a flow that works for me. Some days, I even manage to go over my daily writing goal while still meeting freelance demands. But I’m doing something different and I have found that it clears my mind to be more creative because I’m happy, I’m not stressed. I play with my daughter for writing breaks. I use to use my writing breaks for bottle times, meal times and let her play on the floor of my office with her toys. I love how she can entertain herself, but now I’m much more involved in playtime. I am so lucky and when I’m stressed I am going to hang onto that feeling and know that I can accomplish anything.

Using the happy energy that I get from playing with her positively affects my writing. What do you do for writing breaks? How do you harvest your energy in order to apply it to the page?

Announcements:

I want to thank ‘Writer Wellness’ author Joy E. Held for her guest post last week. Joy is a much calmer writer than I am and I always love to learn from her. Follow her blog and learn more about Joy and her book, ‘Writer Wellness.”

I have launched my official writing website. You can visit it at www.NatalieCMarkey.com Thanks to my fabulous brother for doing such a great job. Now I'm sure I'll have some new ideas after this conference :-)

Speaking of websites, Who Dares Wins Publishing has a new one. Check is out.

My non-fiction, ‘Caring for Your Special Needs Dog,’ is out. Vets will always be your first resource in pet care, but as owners, we have a lot of power in giving our dog the best possible life. It is currently selling for $2.99 with a percentage going to The Texas A&M Foundation to the benefit of the Neurology Section, Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences, College of Veterinarian Medicine.

I’m participating, as an author in The 400 Hundred Hours to Four Hundred Days blog tour. The purpose of this is to celebrate the upcoming release of L Carroll’s second book, ‘Four Hundred Days.’ A component of this tour is a social media contest. If you are interested in winning a free book read the rules below.

The goal behind this contest is to spread the word about Four Hundred Days as far as possible to as many people as possible.

Four Hundred Days is the second book in the Lor Mandela series by L Carroll. It’s a captivating trilogy.

Win Nice Girls Does Noir by Julia Crane

To Enter:

· Tweet “Join us on the 400 Hour to @FourHundredDays blog tour (participants add your link to this contest here)

· Leave a comment with the links.

Extra entries

· Facebook about the contest. (+1 entry)

· Change your Facebook Image to the 400 Hours to Four Hundred Days blog tour button for the duration of this tour. (+3 entries)

· Change your Twitter avatar to the 400 Hours to Four Hundred Days blog tour button for the duration of this tour. (+3 entries)

· Blog about this tour. (+5 entries)

· Grab the 400 hours to Four Hundred Days button and place it your blogs sidebar. (+3 entries)

· Youtube about the 400 hours to Four Hundred Days tour. (+10 entries)

As You can find more info and the 400 Hours to Four Hundred Days blog tour button at Woven Strands

Understanding the writing mommy-mind with guest author Joy E. Held

A few months ago I read 'Writer Wellness' by author Joy E. Held. I agreed with all her advice and was thrilled to see that I was doing it all except for one thing--meditation. So, lately I've been trying to have a more peaceful mind. But it's hard to fit in meditation when I'm working to meet deadlines and I'm caring for my one-year-old daughter.

Enough of my whining, I invite you all to listen to the 'Writer Wellness' expert. Joy E. Held understands the pressure and stress of being a writing mommy because she is one. Take it away Joy with some interesting info on how the mommy-mind and monkey-mind aren't that different.

Meditation takes work. It’s the kind of work that leads to long term benefits. It looks deceivingly simplistic, but all good things are complicated at some point which makes them worth the effort. What is meditation and how can it benefit a busy parent? The simple answer is that a steady meditation practice teaches our minds to focus, and who doesn’t need more mental clarity? I have kids. They are wonderful grown women now who sucked my brains out as children with their energy, activities, desires, and education. I don’t regret a minute of mothering, but I couldn’t have survived it without a basic meditation practice.

“How is meditation difficult?” you ask. “All you do is sit there with your eyes closed. I do that every night once the wine kicks in.” Meditation is not sleeping. Snoring is a sign that our brain is bored and has fallen asleep. This is not meditation. Meditation is CONSCIOUS RELAXATION where thoughts are guided, not controlled or followed, but guided. Huh? We all have this state of thinking that is fondly referred to in meditation circles as “monkey mind.” It’s not that different from “mommy mind” where our minds are racing from responsibility to responsibility. Meditation is taming your monkey mind to keep it from jumping from thought to thought, image to image, and idea to idea. Taming monkey mind is not as easy as cracking a whip or stabbing at the air with a wooden stool (or spoon.) This may cause hungry lions to back down, but it does not scare monkey mind. Monkey mind responds better to kindness and compassion. Monkey mind ceases to chatter and screech and finds a still place to rest if it is fed a steady diet of calmness, reassurance, and love.

What helps tame monkey mind is a mantra which is a simple set of words repeated over and over in the mind to calm your brain, breath, and body. Mantra literally means “mind tool” in the ancient Sanskrit language which is the mother tongue of meditation and yoga. It is always a very simple phrase like “Breath in. Breath out,” that is repeated rhythmically with the movement of the breath and sometimes the body. A mantra is not quite a chant because chanting is a call to order, a statement of purpose, or a dedication. Mantras are always really, really simplistic and tend to feel musical as they are repeated over and over. They aim to produce a hypnotic state of stillness and peace by repeating the chosen phrase over and over until it doesn’t want to be repeated any longer. Yes, I said until the mantra decides it has been said enough. This is one point where the difficulty arises.

It reads like a simple exercise to mentally repeat a phrase until your mind is at rest, but the actual practice is challenging because monkey mind is typically very immature and difficult to appease. With time and practice, just like any normal toddler, monkey mind will learn to quiet down sooner and sooner when it hears the mantra, but it requires practice, practice, practice. One thing toddlers and monkey mind do NOT respond well to is punishment. No spanking, yelling, or time-outs in the corner for monkey mind. It will only mature and become quiet with patience, practice, and love which are exactly the same things we give our children.

So here’s the plan. Sit comfortably with your spine supported and your eyes closed. Yes, you can recline slightly as long as you PROMISE not to fall asleep. Better to sit upright. Begin by allowing monkey mind to chatter away about everything it can possibly think of. When you think the time is right, begin repeating the mantra you have chosen. (See list below.) Anytime monkey mind interrupts your mantra, kindly and gently IGNORE it and return to repeating the mantra. Set a timer so you don’t get frustrated. Start with three minutes once a day and gradually add a minute as you notice the time seems to “fly by.” That’s a signal you’re ready to increase your meditation time.

Simple? Let me know. Be kind to monkey mind and it will be kind to you.

Mantra suggestions:

Breath in…breath out

I breathe in…I breathe out

Peace in…negative out

I…am

Okay, I know we didn’t get into how to fit this into the world of being an all consumed parent. That’s for part two. Be sure to sign up and follow Natalie’s blog so you will get a notice about the next installment.

Be well, write well.

Joy E. Held is a wife, mother, teacher, and author. Her book Writer Wellness, A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity is available from Who Dares Wins Publishing http://whodareswinspublishing.com

Visit her blog for more details on journaling, fitness, relaxation, nutrition, and creativity.

http://writerwellness.wordpress.com

Announcements:

Thank you Joy for this great post!

To any of my followers on Twitter and Facebook, I'm sorry I've been MIA this week. I'm currently in NYC for the Romance Writers of America National Conference.

I have launched my official writing website. You can visit it at www.NatalieCMarkey.com Thanks to my fabulous brother for doing such a great job. Now I'm sure I'll have some new ideas after this conference :-)

My non-fiction, ‘Caring for Your Special Needs Dog,’ is out. Vets will always be your first resource in pet care, but as owners, we have a lot of power in giving our dog the best possible life. It is currently selling for $2.99 with a percentage going to The Texas A&M Foundation to the benefit of the Neurology Section, Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences, College of Veterinarian Medicine.

If you want a free book, then check out the 400 Hundred Hours to Four Hundred Days that I'm participating with. Find details in the previous post's announcements.

The Working Mommy: What to do with separation anxiety?

This week I’m in New York City, where I use to work in PR, for the Romance Writers of America National Conference. I love being back in the Big Apple, but this does create some challenges at home for my husband. Since my almost one-year-old has started saying “Mommy,” or as she says it, “Mamamama,” it has been hard to leave her. Her normally cheerful demeanor becomes fussy and irritable. And let’s not even go into Oscar, the dog’s behavior. I’ve come to accept that if I’m not in the room, he won’t eat.

So what is a Mommy to do? Many of us still work, and I consider myself very lucky to work from the comforts of my home, with my daughter and Oscar. Now, I’m not pretending to be any expert on the topic, but here is my plan. Let’s call this an experiment and I’ll let you know if it works. Here are my steps to helping child separation anxiety for the traveling mommy.

1. Make sure that your child is with someone that they know.

2. Take time to call and talk to your child. My daughter is about to turn one and it made my day today when I called and she laughed and babbled back at me!

3. Bring your child a souvenir. I got my daughter and adorable bear from FAO Swartz.

4. As a writer, I still have work when I’m at a convention. I have columns, this blog, etc. Take advantage of what free time you might get and work ahead. This way you can afford to take a day or two off when you get home for a play day. Honestly, I could use a play day after this conference!

So, what do you think? Have you followed any of these ideas? Did they work? Share your suggestions in a comment and I’ll be sure to let you know how this little experiment of mine goes.

Happy writing, working or whatever you do as a working mom :-)

Announcements:

I have launched my official writing website. You can visit it at www.NatalieCMarkey.com Thanks to my fabulous brother for doing such a great job. Now I'm sure I'll have some new ideas after this conference :-)

My non-fiction, ‘Caring for Your Special Needs Dog,’ is out. Vets will always be your first resource in pet care, but as owners, we have a lot of power in giving our dog the best possible life. It is currently selling for $2.99 with a percentage going to The Texas A&M Foundation to the benefit of the Neurology Section, Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences, College of Veterinarian Medicine.

I’m participating, as an author in The 400 Hundred Hours to Four Hundred Days blog tour. The purpose of this is to celebrate the upcoming release of L Carroll’s second book, ‘Four Hundred Days.’ A component of this tour is a social media contest. If you are interested in winning a free book read the rules below.

The goal behind this contest is to spread the word about Four Hundred Days as far as possible to as many people as possible.

Four Hundred Days is the second book in the Lor Mandela series by L Carroll. It’s a captivating trilogy.

Win Nice Girls Does Noir by Julia Crane

To Enter:

· Tweet “Join us on the 400 Hour to @FourHundredDays blog tour (participants add your link to this contest here)

· Leave a comment with the links.

Extra entries

· Facebook about the contest. (+1 entry)

· Change your Facebook Image to the 400 Hours to Four Hundred Days blog tour button for the duration of this tour. (+3 entries)

· Change your Twitter avatar to the 400 Hours to Four Hundred Days blog tour button for the duration of this tour. (+3 entries)

· Blog about this tour. (+5 entries)

· Grab the 400 hours to Four Hundred Days button and place it your blogs sidebar. (+3 entries)

· Youtube about the 400 hours to Four Hundred Days tour. (+10 entries)

As I mentioned, I'm out of town and I'm having some internet issues. You can find the 400 Hours to Four Hundred Days blog tour button at Woven Strands

Contest Ends at 11:59 July 15^th 2011

What is a happy ending?

I read a lot of craft books when I decided to turn the ideas in my head into novels and there always was so much emphasis on that first chapter. I agree that the first chapter is very important. It is what sets the tone. It is what potential agents/publishers see. But what about the end? Will we be stoned to death if we don’t write that picture perfect ending, where are hero and heroine ride off into the sunset? What about cliffhangers? Is there a cliffhanger that is too much? Right now I’m thinking about endings a lot since I’m currently polishing the ending of my YA fantasy. And I’m not the only one. Recently I saw my friends at #WeWrite discussing endings as well.

My take on endings? I believe every ending needs to accomplish some arc. For example, when I decided that I wanted to write my YA fantasy series as a trilogy I created an outline for the overall series and then outlines for each book. The series has its overall plot arc, each character has their overall arc as well. Then each book has a purpose or something that it is out to accomplish. Another example, the big question to my heroine in book one is, who is she? At the end of book one readers will know the answer to the question, as will the heroine. So book one accomplishes its goal.

But (of course there is a but here) by answer the BIG question in book one it opens up other questions giving the reader a hook, AKA cliffhanger to keep reading.

A great example of this is Cassandra Clare’s ‘The Infernal Devices’ series. In the first book, ‘Clockwork Angel’ we are introduced to Tess Gray who at one time believed who she was but is thrown into a world where she discovers that she really doesn’t know who she is, or what she is at all. Spoiler, Spoiler, Spoiler. We learn, like Tessa that she is a downworlder. That is a fact, but neither of us, the reader or Tessa know what she is. So one question is answered only to open the door to other questions.

Some people don’t like cliffhangers. I hear readers complain, talking about how much they hate them. But by hating them, you’re proving how effective they are. As The Mortal Instruments Examiner at Examiner.com, I cover news stories related to the popular YA series by Cassandra Clare, ‘The Mortal Instruments’ and ‘The Infernal Devices.’ Clare is one of the best writers at cliffhangers and her latest book, ‘City of Fallen Angels’ really leaves the reader on the edge of their seat. It was my job to report the fan reaction to the book and for every reader that complained about the ending I would ask, “Will you read the next book?” The answer was always the same, “Yes.”

We read for entertainment. As a writer I want my readers to finish a story satisfied that the spent the time reading it. I want them to feel some accomplishment of the character’s journey but still leave them wanting for more. It’s good writing and smart marketing. So do I believe in writing a picture perfect happy ending? In the end—yes. I want the girl to get the guy and for the bad guy to get his comeuppance, but they will have a rocky road getting there.

What do you think about endings? Please share your comment below.

Announcements:

My non-fiction, “Caring for Special Needs Dogs” is out by Who Dares Wins Publishing. A percentage of the profits go to The Texas A&M Foundation to the benefit of the Neurology Section, Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences, College of Veterinarian Medicine. You can get it for $2.99 on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Help special needs dogs find their happily ever after.