New Year's Resolutions

Here we are at the end of January, the month of New Year’s resolutions.  Did you make any resolutions about writing for 2012?  Plan to start a new project? Market something you’ve already written? Begin a blog? Update your website?

I use a free daily reminder tool called iDoneThisToday. I may have written about this tool before. I am a big fan.

Every day at 3:30, the site sends me an email asking me what I got done today.  I reply to the email (well, let’s say I reply if I have something to report) and the site records it on a monthly calendar.  In November, I pledged to write something five days a week.  I took December off. This month I resolved to take at least 5000 steps per day (I use a pedometer for this)—writers need to stay healthy to produce their best work, right? At the end of the month, I can look at the calendar to see how much or how little I accomplished toward my resolution.  I think I will pledge to write 1000 words a day in February.  What about you?

Procrastination

This winter I am trying to finish a book about Marie Peary, the daughter of the Arctic explorer. Fact is, I’m not making very much progress. Too many distractions. First, there is the holiday rush to contend with—present wrapping, cookie baking, and so on. The biggest distraction of all, though, is the technology I am using to finish researching and writing the damn book. Yesterday went like this:

I woke up and decided to devote the entire morning to writing chapter 4 (I told you I hadn’t got very far). I sat down at the computer, opened up a new file, and titled it Chapter 4. Hmmmm. How to begin? I reread the draft of Chapter 3 and fiddled with a few sentences there. This all took about 20 minutes and I still couldn’t think of how to begin Chapter 4.

So, I decided to check in on my email. Three messages---all from students wondering about their final grades. It only took five minutes to read the messages, but one student gave a link to website she wanted me to review as a follow up for her final project. That took another 10 minutes. Oh yes, and while I was on the internet, I decided to check my Face book posts. Oops, someone posted something controversial on my wall—I then needed to post and upload a video and link in order to make a rebuttal. First, I had to find the link. Another fifteen minutes.

I decided to knock off for lunch at 11 a.m. and after that I had to watch the news and after that, I was a little sleepy so I took a walk to wake myself up. The walk made me tired, so I decided to take a little nap, and when I woke up, I didn’t feel like writing anymore. Therefore, I decided to devote today to working on Chapter 4, and here I am writing this blog post. Now that it’s done, I think I’ll have lunch because it is 11 a.m. After that, I’ll work on Chapter 4.

Technology tools you can use

One of my favorite email subscriptions is called “Free Technology for Teachers.” This daily message outlines three or four web tools that teachers K-12 can use for teaching and learning.  Although I teach college, I can usually find an application for higher ed in using these tools. I write about some of them in this blog, giving applications for using the tools for researching and writing historical fiction.

Last week, one of the tools in the mailing was a video showing how to sit at the computer if you are doing serious work—not just browsing the internet.  Here is the link directly from the Free Technology for Teachers, so you can check out both the video and the blog.

Get it done---a day at a time!

Every evening at 6 pm I get an email from http://idonethistoday  asking, “What’d you get done today?” I make a mental list of anything I did over the course of the past 24 hours with regard to my current historical fiction project. Then I take a few moments to reply to the email, and the site makes the entry on a monthly calendar.  When I log into the site, I can check the calendar for a full list of accomplishments I’ve reported.

Checking the monthly calendar makes me feel productive, even though on some days I didn’t accomplish much (or anything at all). Over the course of the week or the month, though, I can see that I did actually make progress in my research/writing/ marketing of my historical fiction. It’s all psychological, but it works to keep me motivated.  I believe in the tool’s pitch. The website claims that, “Inch by inch, anything’s a cinch. We’ll keep a calendar for you of what you got done. Look to your streak from yesterday to motivate you today.”

Stop Wasting Time!

If you are like me, you probably waste a lot of time checking email and social media sites before (or instead of) getting down to the nitty gritty of research and writing your historical novel.  Stay Focusd in a new Google Chrome extension that will help you stay focused on your work.

According to the website, the product works “by restricting the amount of time you can spend on time-wasting websites. Once your allotted time has been used up, the sites you have blocked will be inaccessible for the rest of the day.”

I need to take all the help I can get to avoid unwanted distractions! Like all the web tools I write about in this blog, Stay Focusd is free.