I argue that anything one can do in life can be elevated to art. Even the time-sucking Day Job.

Even *gasp* menial tasks.

I think back to when I started writing “seriously” in 2007. I’m pretty sure making money was the furthest thing from my mind. I know for a fact that my seedling of a story had no outline and no intended ending. Getting it all down on paper was the goal, and it was a huge one. Once you’ve achieved the goal, the next step is editing. Re-writing. Polishing. Weaving subplots and intricacies into the story. Editing and polishing some more. And then of course, querying.

I’m constantly amazed by writers who think they can make money from the writing venture. I suppose there are some who can pump out volume after volume and sell – sell big time, even. They talk about platform, social media, marketing. It’s all necessary. Even the big houses aren’t paying for publicity anymore, so the author is expected to peddle – I mean, sell – their own work.

When you add up the time creating, fold in the time and expense of editing, and cap it off with the time marketing, most writers make about 2 cents an hour. If that.

Obviously, one cannot look at writing as a money-making venture.

I liken writing to my jewelry making venture: it’s something I do, and do well. It’s something I enjoy. I love creating art, whether it is visual, wearable, or readable. My output is unusual, quirky and, well… artistic. It appeals to some, but not to the masses. I have reconciled myself as a jewelry artist with any dreams I have of being able to live off my work. I can’t.

My son has a degree in piano performance from a prestigious music conservatory. He’s a fabulous pianist, truly an artist when it comes to playing the piano. But there are hundreds, no, thousands of fabulous pianists within a twenty-mile radius of his house. He’s great, and he can barely live off his work.

I belong to writing associations and go to conferences. Some think that book sales in the 2-3 thousand range is great. It’s not enough to live on, but it’s respectable. You might break even. If enough people love it, your agent might want you to produce more of the same, therefore ensuring continued success.

But are you kidding? There are literally thousands and thousands of great writers. I have a To-Read list that threatens to crush me. Some of the books were recommended; others were given to me to read for review. Many were self-published. Not everyone can do a decent job of writing a book, but believe me, there are plenty out there that do a kick-ass job – and they don’t have contracts with big houses.

As an artist, I recommend the following: let go of the Big Money dream. It’s nice to have for the occasional foray into pleasantville, but the reality is that even with self-pubbing and e-pubbing, the best you can do is small money and some recognition.

As an artist, I thoroughly recommend honing your craft. Study. Make use of information – there’s a ton of it out there. Make a few mistakes, and don’t be afraid of trying something new. Approach writing as a learning experience. Your artistic work is and should be your primary focus, not snagging an agent or getting a contract. God forbid, not hoping for the big pay-off.

After all, you have a better chance of hitting the Lotto.

Why is this so important?

If you write like I do (right off the top of my head, and like I speak), many troublesome redundancies may appear in your writing that will cause the reader to cringe, become bored, or out-right begin to hate you and your story. I also tend to write as fast as I can, one, to get it all down before I forget – as I am pre-Alzheimery, and two, because my writing time is severely limited.

My speaking voice loves descriptors, or adverbs and adjectives. I’m afraid this was the result of my upbringing. My father tends to lean the same way. He once used the word ‘evidently’ so much, I began using it too. I was once so flowery in small claims court, that the judge admonished me to shut up. (I won, but not before putting a muzzle on my mouth.)

Some writers are completely anti-adverb and anti-adjective. The ‘-ly’ words are devils! Too many petals on your prose makes it purple! While on the subject of punctuation, too many ‘!’ are a no-n0, and italics are to be used sparingly.

For those of you who have met me in the flesh or know me because they are unfortunately related to me, I am a passionate person. When I’m angered, I can go on a tirade that withers most steely men to the consistency of wilted spinach. My peeps, I speak in exclamation points. I dream the thesaurus. I observe the world in super-Technicolor. My spoken voice is littered with italics. When I began to write, I peppered my prose with lots of ‘-ly’ words – thanks to Roget’s – and plenty of exclamation points.

Too many.

The first thing my friend and nag, the Little Fluffy Cat, did when she read my first chapter of my first novel was to tell me to get rid of the prologue. And the adverbs. And the exclamation points. And the dead words, like ‘well,’ ‘huh,’ ‘no.’ And the ‘-ing’ words. Why? If you need to get your point across, show don’t tell. Adverbs are unfortunately telling words. Writers must show. Dead words don’t add to the conversation. Many readers’ eyes won’t register the words at all. Why have them if they’re useless? Prose is stronger without them. ‘-Ing’ words are passive. You want your writing to zing. Take all of this garbage away and you are left with a meaner, cleaner piece of work.

LFC taught me to use the ‘Find’ (and ‘Replace’)  feature of Word. With just one click of a button, I can locate where a word is used, and Word also counts the number of times I’ve used it. (I’m so dumb; there is a ‘Find/Replace’ feature?) With that, I eliminated all of my ‘-ly’ words, which deflated the 170K manuscript by about 8K words.

But this was only the beginning.

I personally don’t like seeing the same descriptor in the same paragraph or on the same page. I don’t know why; it just bothers me. As a reader, it’s irritating. As a writer, I think I can do better.

Novel #1 is now down to a reasonable 113K, but in writing, re-writing, and editing, I found the same (annoying/blah/overused) words keep popping up. While in a momentary lull last week, I searched out a few of them. I found 92 instances of ‘family’ were about 72 times too many. I eliminated more ‘well’s’ and ‘mmm’s’ from my dialogue.

So if you, as a writer, are suffering from writer’s block, pull out your manuscript and try the ‘Find’ feature. (Under ‘Editing’ – ‘Find’) Play around with it a little. See if you can eliminate your garbage/fluffy words to make your writing stronger.

Certainly, Real Life can be ugly. No one wants to experience, pain, heartbreak, financial distress, loss, failing health, death and/or any other number of things that can cause the mind to go crazy and the heart to palpitate.

I’m only mentioning this because there have been a lot of trying personal setbacks I’ve had to deal with in the last month or so. It’s not just the holidays, although for some reason, Christmas seems to bring out either the best or the worst in people – usually the worst. It’s not the upcoming birthday, the date on the calendar wagging an accusatory finger at me. (F*** off, birthday.) It’s not the SAD I’m experiencing, although the revelation that the Detroit metro area only sees about 70 days of sunshine per year is enough to make me jump out of my window (where I would land on the sidewalk, broken but not dead). It’s not the recent full moon, or the feeling I have that the stars are not aligned in my favor this year. (I saw 2012. We’re doomed. Although John Cusack can save me any day. In fact, I’d prefer John Cusack over any superhero out there. Please send John Cusack.)

When I started out writing poetry, I found using my personal anguish as a creative outlet was extremely therapeutic. Plus, the best writing is sprung from disaster. I don’t know about the “real” poets out there, but my best poetry was born out of hardship and anxiety. It was the case then and is probably so now that I can’t write poetry at all when I’m happy.

Writing prose is a little different, but not much. I have to be manic to write sassy stuff. It helps if I’m majorly pissed off when I write opinion pieces. And I must always be in the throes of a near meltdown to write anything else.

There’s a fine way of incorporating your heavy heart into your writing.

First tip: get a notebook. I’m partial to small ones that can fit in my bag. These days I like pretty ones, although it doesn’t really matter what the cover looks like. Carry it and a pen with you at all times.

Second tip: at the apex of your distress, whip out the notebook and begin to jot a few things down. These don’t have to be complete sentences. They don’t even have to be pretty thoughts, just record. How does your heart feel? Can you breathe at all? Does your head hurt?

Third tip: expand on your observations. If you felt like crying, what prevented you? If you did break down and sob, what did that feel like? Try not to use the old cliches, like “it felt like I’d been punched in the stomach.” Find a new way to describe your discomfort. Play with words; your thesaurus can be a goldmine, but not until you get out the pick axe and start digging.

I’m employing this technique right now to enhance the emotional description I’d already laid down. It is more likely that you’ll take your notebook and tuck it away, like I did – until I’d unearthed it.

Make use of your angst. It’s a valuable tool.

When a person decides to write something more substantial than a blog post or article, something epic, like an actual novel (many thousands of words, many hundreds of pages, many characters and plot twists), it’s like a journey to another land.

Transcontinental. By covered wagon. Through a summer Death Valley and a winter in the Sierras. Alone. (Well, except for the one horse.)

Despite the fact that there are educational institutions, libraries full of reference books, conferences and seminars galore, critique groups, writing friends, and of course, the vast Internet, the writer is flying solo. Or in my case, walking alongside the covered wagon solo.

A few years ago, I decided to enlist in professional help. I’d completed two novels. I have plenty of online writing friends, many published authors, who have cheered me on and slapped me silly. I joined a local critique group. But something was missing.

First of all, I can only bother my online writer friends just so much. They are busy writing. Some had paired up with others for mutual in-depth critiquing. This happens best if both writers produce in a similar genre. I will BETA read other genres, sometimes for pleasure, sometimes I’m asked, but I know from the get-go that my favorite reading material is women driven, contemporary, and literary. And it’s a lot to ask someone to be your crit bud for life.

Second, writing, like many artistic endeavors including music and the visual arts, can’t be self-taught, despite all of the reference books out there. My library is a testament to writing reference. If it was printed, I bought it, from Donald Maass to Stephen King to Noah Lukeman and beyond. Sure, the creative juices are yours and yours alone, and you’re the master of your creation, but without (superior, constant, personal) guidance, one might fall back on easy and bad habits.

I’ve been in a few critique groups, some temporarily. I’m fairly intelligent, have a decent grasp of grammar, punctuation, and of course, am a stellar speller. I don’t need a line editor or proofreader. What I’m looking for in a group critique situation is similar to what I expect from my online writer friends: brutal honesty on story development. If I wanted sycophantic praise, I’d have given my material to some sympathetic BETA readers I know. I knew my writing was lacking something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

I could tell my writer friends were patiently annoyed by my requests. Books can only give so much information. The critique route wasn’t working. I had to do something else.

Going back to school was instantly nixed. I own a business (several) and I don’t have time to commit myself to college. Plus, I’m just too old. I can see myself in a class room with a bunch of teenagers…NOT!

For me, there was only one alternative, and that was to pay for professional help.

I know what you’re thinking. Pay? Money? For an editor? Was I out of my mind? Was what they say about teachers (those who can, do; those who can’t teach) directly applicable to editors?

Well, how was I to know? Unless I looked around.

I’d met several professional editors along my rutted wagon trail way, some online and some at the San Francisco Writers Conference. (Hey, there are worse things than talking to professional editors at a conference…for free.) I’d struck up a rapport with a couple. Some are outrageously expensive (albeit, these are the gurus, the top guns of the industry) and others seemed to be dirt cheap. Those on either side of the spectrum worried me. I’d used a few to help me with beginning chapters, and one to assist with all of VIRTUALLY YOURS. Some were easy to work with, some not so.

Mr. ED (of VY fame) approached me with a novel *punny* idea: That is, he suggested a tailor-made program for me. Editor for Life.

I’ll have to admit, the ED for Life thing sounded a bit off the chart. It was expensive. In case you didn’t know, I’m cheap. We all know I am a cynic. But I did enjoy working with him. He got my vision, yet wasn’t afraid to tell me when I wandered way off track. I returned his offer of lifelong help with many questions. Serious questions, including provisos in case either one of us died. (Honestly. Either one of us could get hit by a bus tomorrow and then where would we be?) I thought, and I thought some more, and I finally agreed. (In installments. I’m not fabulously wealthy.)

There is a moral to this long, twisted tale of me and my writing covered wagon, and I’m getting to it.

Once I made the commitment to ED for Life, my outlook on writing changed. I became a WRITER for Life.

That’s right. Since signing on the dotted line, I’ve been writing or editing nearly non-stop. Almost daily. No longer did I suffer writer’s block or depression over my work. I’ve been pumping out words like there’s no tomorrow. (That’s because theoretically, tomorrow might never come. Plus I want to get my money’s worth.)

The writing tables have turned. Now I have two horses hitched up to my covered wagon. The journey will be bumpy, but at least I have a navigator.

Last week, the Query Tracker blog featured a must-read post on log lines. For the new writer or others out of the loop, a log line is a one sentence explanation of your book (or movie) meant to hook the audience. Think bubble blurbs under a channel you have surfed to, or for those who remember TV Guide, a comprehensive yet pithy summary of this week’s episode. An example from one of my favorites, That ’70′s Show:

In my case, on my first effort, I found it nearly impossible to get the gist of my story down to 50 words. I had a hard time getting it under two pages. Thank goodness, with some coaching from my cheering squad, some great reference books, and years of practice, I’m doing much better now.

This isn’t the only reason why, but writers should practice crafting log lines, and pitches, even as you struggle to write to those magic words “The End”. Your novel might be the next New York Times best seller, but in order to sell it to an agent, your pitch, whether written or verbal, has to be totally outstanding. Even if you decide to self-publish, if your blurb doesn’t catch the eye of your potential reader, you might as well go home and start over. If the premise doesn’t sound massively appealing to you, how do you expect it to sound to a stranger? You might also want to practice log line writing in order to test your story. Is there something about your novel that sets it apart from the others in your genre? If the premise is the same old formula (for example, boy meets girl, they fall in love, there’s conflict, they get back together and live happily ever after) (or, for those action lovers, man goes to work just as the world is beginning to end, the government enlists him to help save the world, there’s conflict, but he saves the world and everyone lives happily ever after), how is your log line/pitch written so that it transcends stereotypes and sounds fresh?

I am musing today over log lines, because this weekend, after a marathon of cleaning, a massive consumption of food, and the requisite present opening, I had the opportunity to catch two movies. Both were released in 2011. Each starred a former actor from That ’70′s Show. Both were cute, light, romantic comedies. And both were basically the very same story. Blatantly the same.

One was No Strings Attached, the other was Friends with Benefits.

Or, boy and girl suffer from bad relationships, decide to hook up with unsuspecting friend for relationship-less sex-capades, but eventually – and despite many denials to the contrary – fall in love with the booty call, and live happily ever after.

Watching these movies made we wonder if the same writers were working on both projects. Or if Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis discussed their simultaneous projects in friendly phone conversations. (Maybe they don’t talk to each other anymore?) I then wondered if anything could be done to either one to make one movie stand out from the other. (No. The only thing that could have been done was to release one of the movies a year from now.) Maybe Kutcher and Kunis should have done one of the movies together, leaving Justin Timberlake and Natalie Portman to do the other.

As a writer, I think of my stories as completely unique. But is anything really unique? The challenge is to write the best story you possibly can, and use your log line as a tool.

How can I not complain? I’m a busy girl, with lots of interests. I love learning about new things. I consider myself an artist. Ever since I can remember, I’ve had a pen in my hand, or charcoal, or paints, or guitars, yarn, violins, hand shovels, fabric, beads, wire, jewels, or exotic food. I’m learning Japanese, in my car and via Rosetta Stone. I read like there’s no tomorrow, not only fun novels and engrossing literary fiction, but history books and biographies. The tired old adage of not having enough hours in a day doesn’t begin to describe the frustration I feel as minutes tick by and my List of Things to Do is not even approaching completion.

Let’s face it: mundane Real Life, with its responsibilities and drama, often keeps me from my Creative Life. There’s a lot of items on the “CON” side. I have kids – yes, they are grown, so what? grown up kids often have grown up problems – and a business – several, actually – and it all sucks up my time. I have a house (huge) and a yard (even huger), both of which require constant maintenance. On the flip side, the Real Life gig does pay the bills, a huge plus on the “PRO” side.

My one defense in the fight against Real Life doldrums is to approach Real Life with a different perspective. It’s really not so hard; you must be creative in order to obtain a creative Real Life.

It’s easy to find inspiration when you’re young and unattached, moody and naive, and infinitely more difficult, albeit not impossible, as you are weighed down by things like paying the rent and starting a family. When my kids were very small, I tapped into my creative side. I used to make their clothes, and of course, cooking is a wonderful way of crafting edible creations.

Soon my days became more harried and time evaporated, but I strove to make every action a creative one. I’m sure my son’s second grade teacher, Mrs. Siciliano, did not appreciate my heart-felt and inspired apologies for his abhorrent behavior, but hey, you do the best you can with what you have.

I’m flabbergasted by the number of people who sit in front of a device and play games or who are otherwise ‘entertained.’ Granted, I’m a huge offender. It’s easy to get sucked into the vortex of Facebook, TV, or video games (or a number of other mindless distractions) and spend their precious time wasting it away. I’m constantly amazed by people who see what I’m doing and declare, “I’m not creative at all!” I want to shake them silly and say, “Yes, yes, you are! Give yourself a chance.” A person doesn’t have to accomplish a task with pinpoint accuracy; the main thing is to try. The only way to get the juices stimulated is by making the attempt, or in my case, the many attempts. Learn from your mistakes; correct them, and move on.

My time is limited, but I don’t let the lack of it limit me. If the phone’s not ringing at work, I will twist up some wire while I wait for the action to begin. As much as I strive to carve out a niche of quiet for myself, I often don’t have time to pound out a chapter in one of my novels. If that’s the case, I might open one of my blogs (as I’m doing here) and write a few words, or take out my notebook and read what I’ve written in the past and jot down new ideas. I’ll use bits of time to research, update, and catalog.

Living a creative Real Life isn’t a given. It takes dogged determination and a desire to make everything and anything you might endeavor to do a work of art.

Isn’t that what life’s all about?

This year, I made it. True, the ‘finished’ product is far from a finished novel. In fact, this particular pile of slop doesn’t even have the words “The End” attached to the last page. But…the story is all there for later mucking.

After the marathon writing, squeezing in paragraphs during slow minutes at work, up early, up late while my husband was out of town, I was spent. It’s how it goes. So it’s not unusual for a certain amount of decompression to take place after all that effort.

Need I say it? The last nine days were spent in literary vacation. Oh, I read a lot, on a round trip to Colorado, especially, I just didn’t write anything.

I have pronounced the vacation officially over; it’s time to get back to work.

First off, I have a contest or two to enter, so I need to go over my intended manuscripts and make changes before the end of the month. Then I have Cadence to edit, which is now coming back to me 20 pages of edits at a time. I need to finish re-editing Virtually Yours, and also finish up Clementine.

(Note to reader: I am talking to myself. Excuse me.)

Added to my list of things to do is Christmas. Oh, the dreaded December. My daughter has decided to come home for the holiday. There’s massive cleaning (construction workers in the house, it’s terribly dusty), and other Real Life stuff, but I’m going to try my best to adhere to the wonderful schedule I managed to come up with during NaNoWriMo. Hint to other writers: it’s not so much the schedule, it’s making the most use of your time. Write as fast as you can.

That’s the entire purpose of NaNoWriMo – not to finish a novel or craft a best seller. It’s to instill a rhythm of writing.

I’m busy. How about you?

No? Then you must not be in tune with the results of this year’s NaNoWriMo, otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month.

See?

At about 10:30 a.m. Eastern, I decided to test my Word’s word count feature and try to validate my NaNo novel, the sequel to Virtually Yours – NaNo winner of 2009. (Also known as Virtually Yours, a Love Story in Thirty Days.) I call the new book VY2. (The new working title is Virtually Ours, a Wedding in Thirty Days, but I don’t know how that’s going to play out once I finish the book. Things can change.) As writers know, the word count feature can be flawed, so I wrote more than I thought was necessary. To my pleasant surprise, my official total was more than what was necessary: 50,149.

As I pointed out in the previous post, I’m most successful with NaNoWriMo when I have a plan, and this year I had a dilly of a plan. In fact, I began plotting this book back in the summer. I was also infused with a swell of ambition, not something this ordinarily lazy person has most of the time. I wrote nearly every day, and found myself feeling awful if I didn’t make time to write. I hope I can carry this work ethic beyond today.

While the book is far from finished, I’ve managed to formulate the story lines, strengthened the characters, and added the requisite twists and turns. There are several Big Reveals, none as big as the original, but I hope they’ll do. I tried something new this year; I wrote each POV separately and merged them all together this morning. I found that I could keep the separate stories more separate that way, and wasn’t as apt to repeat myself.

The next step is to print everything out, cut the scenes apart, and rearrange them in the order I want them to appear in the final book, fill in the color, correct my mistakes. And add the rest of the ending.

For a preview hint of what’s in this one, there’s the upcoming wedding of the decade between a NYC socialite and a romance novelist, their Internet friends (the Virtual Moms), an impossibly too small Vera Wang gown and an antique corset, reminiscing, a death, a runaway, a sex kitten next door who means to take one of the husbands, a sex-cort job offer, a hyper-self-conscious heavy woman who won’t say yes, a wildly popular talk show, the snowstorm of the century and displaced travelers, and the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. Oh, and a mad blogger.

Whee! I’m so happy. You really can’t hear that celebration? or are you deaf?

Yes, I am again participating in NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, even though I have been waist-deep in an edit/re-write and have a hundred other items on my list of things to do.

Why, do you ask, would I NaNo? Well, the main reason is I’m lazy the other eleven months of the year. I need November’s NaNoWriMo to kick my ass.

I know, I know, I could levy a self-imposed deadline such as NaNo’s race to complete 50K words in thirty days any other time – let’s say in February or September – but I have little willpower. Plus I am easily distracted.

In order to cross the 50K finish line this year, I’m going to take some pretty severe actions. Here they are in no particular order:

1. Get off Facebook. Should be easy, especially since the recent Facebook upgrade, which made visiting there and hanging out a major pain in the butt. Plus, it seems that every time I sign in, some bug locks up my computer. Another good reason to stay away.

2. Minimize Twitter. That used to be easy until I got an HTC EVO phone. Looking at tweets is entirely too simple these days. I know, I’ll turn off my phone!

3. Stop wasting time with meals and meal preparation. I see a lot of ramen noodles, tuna fish and take out in my immediate future.

4. Get up early. I need to do this to complete my Real Life chores, but with the extended Daylight Savings Time and my oncoming SAD, I’m finding that difficult. It’s still freaking dark at 7:30! Perhaps next Sunday when it will FINALLY be Daylight Savings Time, I will be able to report myself in better humor.

5. Suspend working on my re-write. This will be tough, but necessary. It’s good to put a little distance, particularly since I’ve been at it full bore since the end of August. I have a feeling the 30 day vacation will yield positive results.

6. Use Write or Die. This is the ultimate cattle prod for reluctant writers. If you’re a procrastinator with ADD tendencies, I would strongly recommend this program. Using it I’ve whipped up a thousand words in twenty minutes or less.

6a. Download Write or Die on every computer you use. That’s right, even the work computer. Once you pay $10 for the computer version (the online version is free), your payment entitles you to unlimited downloads of Write or Die. Two words: Do it!

7. I’m also going to join the local NaNo group. There’s nothing like a community flogging to get your butt in gear. Reach out to other writers who plan on marathoning this month.

As for the mechanics of NaNoWriMo (or the mechanics of writing any novel, period), try making it easy on yourself. Here are some things the fledgling writer can think about while dreaming of penning the next breakout novel:

1. Have a plan. For real. A novel must have three things: a beginning, a middle and an end. Without those three things, you don’t have a story, you have stream of consciousness writing. There’s nothing wrong with streaming – actually, my first NaNoWriMo effort was a unruly stream that resulted in the completion of my first novel. Streaming may give you ideas for story lines, but if the goal is writing a book, don’t forget the beginning, middle and end.

2. Outline. This is hard for me, and I never did it before, but it makes perfect sense. Most people don’t jump into the car and drive away without a road map, they have a map and money for gas to get them to their destination. Figure out before you sit down at the computer where your characters are going and how they’re going to get there.

3. Write everywhere. Give yourself the luxury of little notebooks for those times you’re not close to the computer/typewriter/notepad.  Use your iPad. Since my story includes a blog, I have set up my fictional blog online, and plan on contributing to it every day this month. Hey, what can I say? Words are words.

My goal is to get ‘er done, peeps.

This year’s effort is the sequel to VIRTUALLY YOURS, yet unnamed (so far referred to as VY2). And yes, I have a game plan, story lines, unknowns, and the requisite Big Reveal toward the end of the story.

It’s early (7:31 a.m.) but I have to get on the move. See you in December.

The next step (well, once it’s ready to launch), is getting the word out.

However, you can hear me whining from across the room. “I’m a writer, why do I have to sell? Shouldn’t I be writing?”

Yes, I should, but I’ve come to believe taking your work to the next level is really not that difficult. Even if you’re picked up by an agent, they’ll expect you to do some of the work. Anyone pitching a book (and a few other things I can think of) will need two things – a passion and a plan.

The passion part is easy. I really, really love my book. I like how I took a tiny piece of my Real Life, folded in a ridiculous premise, stirred gently with some over-the-top characters, added a few unlikely situations, and voila! VIRTUALLY YOURS  was born. I must have the passion. I’ve entered VY into contests and placed. When asked about my hobbies, I mention, “Oh, yes, I write novels in my spare time.” (!!! What spare time???) I go full bore into the story line, which isn’t hard to do. I’ve been elevator pitching anyone with ears since I wrote the last two words “The End.” The positive feedback is that I’m often asked when it will be coming out or could they read it.

But I know my passion isn’t going to see me through. It’s going to take some work, hard work, the kind of hard work I am loathe to do.  The kind that starts with an “S”.

Selling. Ugh. Do I really, really have to?

In a word, YES.

I had lunch last week with my MR ED, who is really excited about my book. No, really, almost as excited as I am, if that’s even possible. I wimped and whined about selling… There’s such a used car salesman stigma to selling your work. After all, in their heart of hearts, any artist believes that the work is so uniquely special it should sell itself.

Right.

There is also the “pushy” factor. No one wants to be known as that person. It appears gauche to pepper the Twittersphere with “Buy My Book” pleas, or to toot your horn (too loudly) on Facebook. If the recipients are anything like me, with too many blasts, they’ll drop you like a red hot tater and buy something else.

This is not to say I have never purchased a book from a friend or writing ally. The difference in the pitch is the delivery.

But let’s face it, now that you’re releasing your book to the masses (hopefully more than those dozen people who are related to you), you are now departing the world of the arts for the world of commercial enterprise. There is a fine line between tacky and thorough.

As for TIME (which is all important), Mr. ED came up with a boffo solution: The 20% solution. It’s a fabulous plan.

The best part is that it’s painfully easy. Take 80% of your time and work on the creative. Write to your heart’s content, or discontent. I would consider such items as classes or workshops in this category. Stretch your brain when you hit a writer’s block.

The remaining 20% is for the those tasks no writer wants to think about. The first thing that comes to mind is the technical aspects, like maintaining a blog, trying to convert your novel, or the dreaded selling your book.

It’s actually a pretty good solution for a common problem. Compartmentalizing your tasks might also help you stay on task, which is my biggest issue. I don’t need huge, nebulous deadlines, I need small, easy-to-reach deadlines.

I’ll give it a go and let you know.