A New Year, A New Daytimer Calendar

One of my favorite things to do at the end of each year is to pick a new daytimer calendar for the coming year.  I will spend up to an hour in Office Depot, comparing Daytimers, weighing the pros and cons.  "Hmmm....leather is nice, but this one has pockets to hold scraps of paper.  But ooh, look!  A map of time zones and area codes.  Niiiice."

As you can see, I'm not an early adapter and shun all modern technology when it comes to my schedule.  Friends with Blackberries have tried to convert me to the cause but I just don't get it.  I love being able to flip open my calendar and see all my appointments and notes spread out before me. Having to press multiple screens to see my schedule would be enough to land me in a mental institution.

Which brings me to today's topic of a new daytimer. This is a scary time for me.  Since college, I have carried the "month-at-a-glance" calendar.  I like being able to see what I've got going for the entire month.  That way, if I'm swamped one week, with just a glance I can see that I might need to take it easy that following Monday and not schedule a lot. 

But I have stepped off the beaten path and for 2006 I have selected a "week-at-a-glance" daytimer.  As I start penciling in dates for January, it's freaking me out that I can't see my full month at once.  But I've decided I want to start scheduling my day hour-by-hour and this new daytimer gives me that option.  So, come January, I will know exactly how long I have to exercise, check e-mail, do fiction writing, journal, meditate, do non-fiction writing, etc. The "plan" is to spend a few moments the night before, penciling in my schedule for the following day.  I'm such a list freak that there's a good chance if I see "novel writing" from 10 am - noon, I'll do it, just so I can cross it off the list.  And since it's written down in the 10 am - noon spaces on the new daytimer, it's like a law.  It must be done.

Either this new system will be a raving success or I'll rebel on Day 3 at adhering to such a tight schedule and will spend an afternoon in a corner creating paper confetti out of the daytimer.  But I have high hopes for the new system.

And if anyone needs to talk to me in the New Year, call now.  I'll do my best to pencil you in.

Dena

Any Super-Hot Books Selling? Oh yeah, mine. ;)

I'm so happy.  I just received a phone call from the manager at our area Borders.  I've been sending people there who want to buy a copy of my book but don't want to pay shipping and handling.  A few people recently told me they were out of copies, so calling Borders was actually on my "to do" list for the day, anyway.

They want 10 more.  The manager said, "We were in staff meeting and I asked, 'So, are there any super-hot books selling?' and a few people offered, 'We've got a lot of requests for this Lessons In Stalking book.'"  So yea--I'm a red-hot book!  Many thanks to my friends who went to Borders to buy the book--keep it up! =)

What's odd is that I never saw my book on the store shelf.  I thought for sure I'd be in there Day 1 taking photos and I kept meaning to get by but never did.  But this time I'll get by and get a picture of me standing next to my title in a Borders Store--turning my book face out as all authors do, trying to up our chance for a sale.

Painted Plate - Book Signing

       

My illustrator Linda Santell and I teamed up at her booth today for the Professional Women's Forum holiday shopping event at the Painted Plate in Greensboro.  Local artists set up booths of jewelry, scarves, lotions, food, carvings, furniture, etc.  We had an excellent day, selling a dozen books as well as some of Linda's Whimsical Women creations.

The Writer's Life

This entry will be a myriad mish-mash (alliteration: the tool of the truly talented writer) of this week's events.

Let's talk about instinct.  I am a firm believer that one should always listen to your gut.  Rarely will your initial instincts lead you wrong.  My problem, however, is isolating that initial instinct before I smother it with my Vulcan-logic.  For example, I find it incredibly difficult to turn down writing assignments, even if my gut is screaming at me to do so.  I start rationalizing why my gut is wrong.  "This is a new opportunity--it's just fear talking." or "Hey, this is income.  So you don't feel like doing it. Suck it up and take the work."  However, the few times I've listened to my gut and turned down work, I'm convinced I made the right choice.

And gut instinct can work with good things too.  I had a writing opportunity presented to me today via e-mail and, on paper, the pay was so low that I thought, "I can't spend time on that."  And yet, some small part of me was whispering, "Check it out." So I called and spoke to the woman who sent the e-mail and had an overwhelmingly positive response to her the minute her voice came over the phone.  I can't explain it other than it was just that feeling of "good vibes."  So I'm going to give the low-paying work a shot.  Less for the income and more because I want to honor that little voice that's hinting, "Something more will come of this." 

Other gut instincts.  I have an assignment due the end of January for a magazine I've being writing for for years. Normally, I would just start the assignment.  But a nagging voice kept saying, "You better check and make sure they still want this piece."  So I e-mailed and yes, they still wanted the piece, but get this.  They had down that I owned them a piece from October.  I never turned it in and they assumed it was because they were behind on payments to me and so never contacted me, thinking I was done with them.

I was mortified. I've never missed a deadline in my life.  Somewhere the wires got crossed because I had the assignment listed in my assignment database (yes, I am that anal), but I had the due date as October 2006.  That's not unusual to receive an assignment that far out and, at the time, I was selecting the articles I wanted to write for them in 2006.  So I'm not sure what happened.

The end of this is that I just barely have enough time to get the article to them in time to slam it into the issue going to press.  So I'm hustling this week to get interviews and pull it off.  But thank God I listened to my gut and contacted this company.  Otherwise, I never would have known that they thought I was no longer working for them.  Aaaugh!

Another gut instinct.  I'm on a tight deadline doing work on a brochure for a company.  They want it by the end of this week, at the latest.  I e-mailed my first draft Monday and never heard anything. I found it odd my contact hadn't called to discuss but tried to dismiss it.  But my thoughts kept returning to it and I had something else to discuss anyway, so I called.

"What do you think of the draft of the brochure?" I asked at the end of the conversation.

"What draft?" she replied.

She never received my e-mail. Again, thank goodness I called so the process didn't get stalled.

I'm really not a very good gut listener, but I'm working on it.  Another goal for the New Year.