I may have discovered the secret to getting administrative and promotional work done: 80s music.

I love the writing part of a writing career. Making up stories is my comfort zone. It’s fun.

The business part of it, on the other hand, is less fun. I put off doing work like bookkeeping, responding to e-mails, and updating my website. Promotion and marketing is even worse. There are aspects of it that can be fun, but because the rest of it isn’t as much fun, I often don’t get any of it done. Part of it is that I’ve worked so hard to prioritize writing so that I don’t get sidetracked in meta-work — procrastination that feels like work but that doesn’t actually lead to a book being published — that I feel weird spending time on other things. And part of it was that my day job career was in public relations, and I hated it. Writing was my escape from my hated day job, both in giving me something else to focus on and in it being my escape plan to eventually have a career I enjoyed. I didn’t realize how much of a part of a writing career marketing and PR would be.

My promo efforts have been mostly haphazard and scattered. I do things when I absolutely have to do them, and I still let a lot slide. I complained about how little my publishers did to promote my books, but I’m just as bad. I keep saying I’m going to do more, and then it just doesn’t happen.

Supposedly, one good way to add a new habit is to combine it with either something you’re already doing or something you enjoy. That’s the “spoonful of sugar” approach. Make the thing you need to do more fun by adding it to something you look forward to.

Which brings me to 80s music. I was an 80s teenager (yes, I’m old). While I didn’t have the best time in high school, I still have a lot of fond memories associated with 80s music. I remember having the radio on in my bedroom when I was scribbling parts of stories in spiral notebooks or reading. Or I listened to the radio while driving the country roads when I finally got my driver’s license and was practicing. There are the songs on the soundtracks of the 80s movies I watched with friends in college. Besides, most of the music from that era is very happy-sounding (even if a large part of it boiled down to being peppy songs about fear of nuclear apocalypse).

The town where I live now doesn’t have much in the way of radio, since we’re surrounded by mountains. There is a local community radio station. It’s volunteer-run, and just about anyone in town can have a radio show. Half the people on my street have shows. This is the station I keep on in my car for when I’m running errands around town and it would be too much trouble to connect my phone each time I get in the car. It’s so random that you never know what you’re going to hear. You can go from old-school country to reggae to blues to French music, to jazz, to current alternative, but I discovered while running errands that on Friday mornings they have an 80s show from 10 to noon. I enjoy driving around town, bopping to songs I remember from high school and college, as well as some more obscure stuff they didn’t play on the radio in East Texas.

I can’t really write to music with lyrics, so I couldn’t listen to this music while writing, but it occurred to me that I could use this for admin/promo time. It’s something fun that I can’t listen to while writing fiction but that makes good background music for doing other work, and it means I have a scheduled, dedicated time for doing my promo work.

I’ve only been doing this for a few weeks, and I’ve had some other stuff going on most of those times (including today), so I don’t have hard numbers yet, but I’ve done a bit more promo stuff than I have in a long time. I’ve even gotten back to occasionally posting on Instagram, and I’ve done website updates. I’m actually looking forward to my admin time instead of putting it off and dreading it. After a few more weeks, if I don’t end up with more Friday funerals I have to sing for (not people I knew, but they need choir members), I may start seeing real results.

If you need the 80s power, you can actually stream this show at the station’s website (live and archived on demand). The list of shows is here, and this show is “Up in the Attic.” You can see how eclectic the lineup is at this station. “Big Pappy Turtleneck” is my next-door neighbor, and the hosts of Native America and The Horseshoe Lounge live at the end of the block, across the street from each other.

I’m about a quarter way into a first draft, and I’m being remarkably sane about it. This is usually when I have no brainpower or energy for anything else (I call it Book Brain), but I’ve managed to get my writing done and I’ve managed to do other things. Yesterday in my mid-morning writing break, I Swiffered the floors and pulled some weeds in the back yard, and I still hit my targeted word count before lunch. I cooked dinner. Though I will confess that I resorted to a frozen entree on Monday, but that’s what they’re there for, and needing the frozen entree was more because I was doing stuff in the yard and lost track of time to the point that I didn’t have time to cook than because my brain was devoured by the writing.

I’m trying to figure out what’s different so I can do it again. One thing is that I’m making a strong effort to start work earlier in the morning, before I get distracted by other things. That allows me to hit my goals before lunch, so anything else I do is a bonus. It also helps, oddly enough, that my back has been a bit stiff. Last week I was doing the writing while also attending an online conference, so I didn’t move around as much as I usually do, and then Sunday morning there was a lot of standing for choir, and during all the standing my back got stiff. So this week I’ve been making more of an effort to take breaks and get up and move. That’s how I did the sweeping and yard work. Instead of falling down the usual social media rabbit hole while I was taking a break, I got up and did housework and yard work, and that seemed to make me more productive for writing, possibly because those breaks were shorter and were a total change of pace.

In general, I think having so much yard work to do helps because it gets me away from the computer, but it also gives me thinking time, which makes the writing go better. It also gives me a sense of accomplishment. I can look out the window and see a difference, even if there’s still more work to do. I’m getting the giant grass under control and clearing out weeds. Seeds that I’ve planted are sprouting. I bought a cherry tomato plant at the beginning of the month, and I already have four baby tomatoes starting to form, plus lots of blossoms. It’s a good balance from writing, plus it’s a good way to get exercise so my back doesn’t feel so stiff.

I also think all the time I spent preparing this book helped. I was starting to feel like I was procrastinating, but spending so much time thinking about the book ahead of time means it’s not quite so draining now that I’m writing. I’m still getting surprises along the way, which is fun. For instance, I realized that I may be writing a WWII resistance thriller set in a fantasy world. That element was always there, since an underground movement was part of the story, but I didn’t realize it would have quite that same flavor until I started writing, and then I decided to go with it. But the structure and the world I set up earlier are still more or less the same and I don’t have to think so much about what happens next, so I feel less drained at the end of a writing session.

It’s nice to get my writing done and also be a functional human being.

The book festival last weekend turned out pretty well. I met a lot of local authors. A fan made a two-hour drive just to meet me, so I felt famous. I sold some books. I had a really good time.

And then I completely crashed. I’m the kind of introvert who doesn’t mind being around people and sometimes enjoys it, but it drains my batteries and I need solitude to recharge. I’m basically a cell phone that’s useful and bright when out and about, but it needs to sit on the charger at home afterward because all that work drains the battery. I had to drive the back road home because I didn’t trust myself not to zone out on the freeway. The back road is the old turnpike road that dates to the 1700s (it’s been repaved since then), and it has all the driving focus benefits of changing speed limits and stoplights, plus it also has all the quaint villages, historic buildings, and gorgeous scenery to help me stay focused. The freeway is more boring, and you’re driving the same speed without stops, so it’s easy to get into road hypnosis and snap out of it with no idea where you are.

Then I got home, made tea, and collapsed on the sofa. Sunday turned out to be pretty social, too, as there was a reception for new members after church, then there was an organ concert, followed by yet another reception, in the evening. I’d recharged enough to get through that, and I had some nice conversations and made new friends (someone who’ll give me gardening advice in exchange for some of my bulbs when I divide them), but I was even more tired when I got home.

By Sunday night, my battery was in the red zone where all you can do is dial 9-1-1. I went to bed early and slept late on Monday, then spent most of Monday working in the yard and brainstorming on the deck. My social interaction was limited to a wave and a hello to my neighbor, who was also working in her yard.

I guess before I do a bigger event like a convention I need to build up better social muscles. Then again, this was one of the more difficult kinds of interaction for me. Put me in front of an audience and I’m fine. I can talk easily. It’s a bit harder being in a mingling situation. Selling is hard for me. I couldn’t sell Girl Scout Cookies, and this kind of event was all selling, with a little mingling.

Now I’m back in my writing cave, developing a new story. That fits well with the time of year when I need to be doing a lot of work in my yard, since I think while I work and come up with ideas.

One of the writing discussions I had with the guys who cut down my tree was about the role of the author in any written work. One of the guys asserted that all writing was ultimately autobiography because it was filtered through the author’s perspective. He seemed surprised that I didn’t disagree.

When someone wants to criticize an author, the term “Mary Sue” or “self insert” gets thrown around (particularly toward women). While it can be annoying to read something where it’s painfully obvious that the main character is a stand-in for the author, living out their fantasies and utterly insulated from all story logic, the truth is that just about all characters have some element of the author in them, since we’re the only person we have experience being from the inside out. Our frame of reference is the way we see the world and how we experience feelings, both physical and emotional. We can empathize and sympathize with others and try to put ourselves in their shoes, but we still have to imagine based on our own experiences.

The way I like to describe it is that I put myself in a blender, add some other things, and then a character is what comes out. Each character may draw on different aspects of myself and leave out aspects of myself and will add other things to it, but I’m still in there. I try not to identify so closely with any character that I let the universe warp around that person and create my own little fantasy bubble universe in which a character is the most special snowflake ever and gets all the good things that I’d like to have, but I can’t imagine how I could leave myself entirely out of a character if that character is going to have any dimension.

But, as I said to the tree guys, the key to writing more interesting, varied characters is to make yourself a more interesting person. The more input you have, the more material you have to go into that blender to mix up with aspects of yourself. That means learning and experiencing. When I’m researching a character, I look for memoirs and autobiographies of people who’ve been in similar situations so I can learn about those situations from their perspective. It’ll still be filtered through me, but there’s other input, and adding that information to my head changes me a little because my view is broadened. I read a lot of biography and history, even when I’m not researching a specific book. I like to wander through the non-fiction section of the library and grab random books that catch my eye. I love YouTube because it’s full of people giving their perspectives on random things. It’s all more stuff to go into that blender.

You can talk to people who are different from you or have unusual professions (like the tree guys), go to different places, try doing new things (like taking a pottery class). To be a good writer, you have to be a lifelong learner. That’s a big part of the appeal for me. I like learning and absorbing information, going to new places and meeting new people — and then getting to consider it “work.”

I’m almost at the end of the draft I’ve been working on, which I’m pretty proud of, given all the distractions this week. You’d think that being iced in would be good for productivity, but I’m spending a couple of hours a day chipping away at the iceberg that is my driveway. They got the street cleared yesterday, using a front-end loader to break up the ice, scoop it up, and carry it away, but that left about an eight-inch high cliff from my driveway to the street, and there’s ice/snow up to the bottom of my car, all the way around it. I generally gear up and run outside just before lunchtime, chip away at the ice while it’s in direct sunlight (though still well below freezing), then run inside when my hands start to hurt from the cold and warm up with hot soup. I do another session in the afternoon. I’ll make hot tea and put it in a thermos, then go outside and chip away at some ice until my hands hurt, then come inside and have hot tea. I have a pathway from my door to the mailbox, a good chunk off the iceberg at the foot of my driveway (where the loader left edges that give me some leverage for breaking it up), and most of the slabs of ice off the top of my car.

I normally don’t get a lot else done when I’m on a first draft. I know it’s always like this, and yet I never seem to take it into consideration when I’m planning. I always think I can spend an hour or so a day on promotion and take care of little projects to organize my house because it’s not as though I spend all day writing. And yet nothing else seems to get done. After this draft is done, I need to do some serious house organizing work because I never finished setting up the basement after I moved in and I need to do that to get the rest of the downstairs in shape. I also had some marketing projects I wanted to work on, and those haven’t happened. So, that’s February’s work. For the next month I spend working on a draft, I’m going to plan better and just admit that the bare minimum of everything other than writing will happen that month.

Now I have about two more scenes to write, and then I’m going to let myself collapse, other than doing more shoveling, if it’s not snowing again.

After just one pottery class, I already have information that will affect the book I’m working on with a character who’s a potter. Last week, we were doing hand building, working without the wheel. We made bowls using molds and “slab clay,” a sheet of clay sent through a wringer-like device to flatten it out. Then we made vases using coils of clay.

One thing I learned was that this takes a lot of upper-body effort. I was more sore the next day from the pottery work than I was from the eight-mile hike I did later in the day. You’re bending over a work bench, so your back gets stiff if you aren’t careful. You have to “wedge” the clay to work out any air pockets and make sure the moisture is evenly distributed. It’s a lot like kneading bread, but the clay is much stiffer than bread dough, so it takes more force and strength. Then there’s a lot of control while doing the shaping.

I also learned that working with clay really dries out your hands. My hands were so rough and dry after the class. I had to keep slathering my hands with lotion the rest of the weekend. They finally started to get back to normal in the middle of the week. It looks like I’ve got a scene with Elwyn I can add, where she comes up with a balm for the potter to use.

I’m having to adjust the timeline of the book based on something else I’ve learned. It’s important to the plot that my potter makes a certain piece that has to be done before the end of the book, but pottery is a slow process. A piece has to be completely dry before it can go into the kiln, and that can take weeks, especially if the piece is thick. The pieces we make during this class won’t be fired until about 2-3 weeks after we made them. We’re doing the glazing in the last class, so they’ll have gone through a preliminary firing by then. If there’s any moisture in the clay when it goes into the kiln, it will boil and make the piece explode. Today’s kilns have some temperature controls, so they can raise the temperature gradually and reduce the risk of explosion, but I’m dealing with a wood or charcoal-fired kiln in the book, so there’s a lot less control. That means I had to find a way to insert at least a week into the timeline so that the item the character makes early in the book is ready by the time it’s needed.

I did learn from the instructor how clay can be recycled and revived, so my scenario of the person trained as a potter coming across an abandoned workshop and being able to use the clay that’s been dried out is viable (I told her what I was writing and gave her the specific scenario, and she told me how it would work). I have to play with the timeline a bit on that, but I found a way to do what was needed more rapidly.

This week, we’re working on the pottery wheel. I had a toy pottery wheel as a kid that used air-dry clay, and I never managed to make anything viable, so I’m a little anxious about how big of a disaster this can be. I keep telling myself that it’s about the process of learning and getting information and I don’t need to make a pro-level piece my first time. I just don’t want to send any clay flying across the room.

My big excitement for the week was getting a new author photo taken. I got the notice that I’d been selected for a library book festival in an adjacent town (I’d applied a couple of months earlier, after battling the warring impulses of “Why would they want a has-been like me?” imposter syndrome and “Do they know who I am? They’d be lucky to have me” ego trip), and they asked for an author photo as part of the things I needed to send in to participate.

That was when it struck me that the photo I’ve been using is more than twenty years old. I had it done soon after Enchanted, Inc. came out and my agent told me I needed a professional photo (I’d been using one I took with the timer on my camera). I’d just had my hair done, since I had some booksignings coming up, so I found a photographer and scheduled an appointment. Based on suggestions from some writer friends, I looked for a photographer who did headshots for actors.

Then I got to the appointment and found that the studio was in an … interesting … location, and the actor headshot thing was his sideline. His main line of work was taking what we can call “professional” photos for the sort of women who advertised on the back pages of weekly newspapers, if you know what I mean. He kept trying to make me look sexy, and most of my expressions were mean and scary. Maybe that’s why I’m still single. When I try to look sexy, I look like I’m plotting murder. We finally found one shot in which I didn’t look like I was about to shoot lasers out of my eyes.

To tell you how long ago this was, after the photo session, I went to see Revenge of the Sith a second time since I was on the side of town that had the theater with digital projection (at that time, there was just that one theater in the area, adjacent to the Texas Instruments campus where they developed that equipment).

I kept using that same photo because I didn’t think I was changing that much. I still had the same hairstyle and my skin was pretty good. I even still wear the same dress. I wasn’t doing as many booksignings after I stopped doing traditional publishing and my books weren’t in stores, and then I backed off doing a lot of other public events. I wasn’t putting my photo in my books, since that adds to the delivery fee of e-books. The photo just lived on my website, so it didn’t seem worthwhile to go to the effort of getting a new one.

Also, I’m not crazy about getting my photo taken, which is funny because I was a notorious camera hog as a small child. There’s a family story about toddler me sitting on my grandparents’ front porch, and when there was some cloud-to-cloud lightning in the distance, I posed and asked, “Is someone taking my picture?” But as an adult, I’m better at staying out of pictures. I especially don’t like posed pictures, and my irritation with the photographer is what comes through in the picture. That made finding a photographer something to dread.

But I figured that with this book festival in a new place, I should probably update the photo. I knew I’d be needing a new photo eventually, so when someone posted to the local Facebook group looking for a photographer, I’d follow the links in recommendations and was bookmarking people I liked. That meant I knew who I wanted to contact, and I was able to get an appointment.

The studio was in a nearby town (where the book festival will be), just off the courthouse square downtown. It’s a family business that’s been around since the early 1900s, and the storefront and sign were like something out of an old movie. The photographer was a lot less sketchy than the last one. She understood my reluctance to get my picture taken and did good poses that kept me at ease, and she didn’t even try to make me look sexy.

It’s interesting to see how I’ve changed. Some of the differences come from having a photo taken in January vs. June. My hair’s darker without having any highlights from the sun and my skin is lighter (though some of that is a makeup difference and difference in lighting/backdrop). My hair is more or less the same, since it styles itself and I don’t have a lot of choice there. My skin is still pretty good and I don’t have a lot of wrinkles. But the flesh seems to have melted off my face. When I was younger, my body was thinner but my face was still a bit round and chubby. Now I actually weigh more and my body’s a little thicker, but my face is so much more hollow. I can see why people get fillers in their face. I have to admit that I look different enough to make it worthwhile getting a new photo.

And while I was there, I got a new passport photo taken, since my passport expires soon and I need to renew it. Due to the photo requirements there, all my inner murder demon tendencies come out in that photo, but it’s probably accurate to how I’d look after an overnight flight.

This week, I’ve been working on the “make the words pretty” pass of Weaving and Wyverns, book 4 of the Tales of Rydding Village series. That’s when I read the book out loud, performing it as though I’m recording an audio book. It’s a great way to catch awkward phrasings and to make sure I’m really seeing what’s on the page, as opposed to what’s in my head. My audiobook narrators have said my books are easy for them to read, and it’s probably because I do it this way.

This is when I tend to find a lot of “why did I do that?” moments, where something doesn’t make sense to me and I don’t remember why I wrote it that way. If I have to read it several times to figure out what I meant, readers don’t stand a chance, so that means rewriting.

This is a pretty draining process because I’m not used to talking this much. I could barely sing during choir practice last night. My voice was pretty much shot. I’m taking breaks between chapters and drinking a lot of water, and I’m trying not to talk when I’m not reading the book.

I have one more pass, when I read the formatted book out loud to myself. That may happen next week, or I may hold it for the following week to give myself a bit of a break. And then the book will be ready to go.

After that, the rest of the year I’m planning to focus on thinking and preparation, getting some new promotional things going, and also giving myself some time off to enjoy the autumn. I scheduled in a week of vacation, but I may not take a whole week off. I may do it in smaller chunks. If it’s a really nice day, I may head to the Blue Ridge Parkway and do some hiking or visit an apple orchard. If it’s a cool, rainy day, I may spend the day baking, drinking tea, and reading. Otherwise, I’ve got an old book I wrote but never revised that I may take a crack at, and I want to do some planning/plotting for future books so I can dive right in next year. I’m going to try to schedule my days so I fit in fun around the writing, either getting the work done in the morning and playing or working in the yard in the afternoon or going exploring during the day and spending some time working in the evening.

But first, I have to get this book done and out into the world.

I had an experience last weekend that turned out to be good research for my fantasy writing: my city had a boil water order that lasted all weekend. There was a water main break that dropped pressure throughout the system, and when the pressure drops below a certain point, they can’t guarantee that the water is safe (I guess the pressure that keeps the water moving keeps bacteria from growing, or something like that). They couldn’t consider the water safe for drinking until tests came back showing it was safe. That meant that from Friday through mid-day Monday, you weren’t supposed to drink, cook, brush teeth, or wash dishes (other than with the sanitizing setting on the dishwasher) with the tap water without boiling it first. Fortunately, they got bottled/canned water donated by WalMart and Coors and were handing it out at the city park, since boiled water isn’t great to drink without steeping tea leaves in it.

For the most part, it wasn’t too bad, thanks to the gallons of bottled water I got from the city. The one thing that was a pain was having to boil water for washing the dishes I had to hand wash. That was where the fantasy research came in. It’s easy to take for granted the amenities we have in modern life, but in the kind of pre-industrial world where most fantasy novels take place, they don’t have things like hot running water (unless there’s magic that creates it). I had to think about how my characters would have to get water from a well and heat it before they’d have water for washing dishes. At least I didn’t have to go to a well, and I had an electric teakettle instead of having to use a cauldron over a fire.

When I got annoyed by the extra work, I reminded myself that this was a valuable research experience.

It’s like the way the great Texas blackout of a few years ago, when nearly the entire state lost power during a bad cold snap and ice storm, made me think about how dark things are without electricity. It’s easy to forget that we’re seldom truly dark. There are streetlights and cars have headlights. It’s darker here than it was where I used to live (well, when we had power there), but it’s still not entirely dark in my house at night because there’s a streetlamp in front of my house. If that’s not enough light, I can flip a switch and have light in the house. I don’t have to fumble for flint to light a lamp. I have to think about how characters are traveling at night when horses don’t have headlights and there are no streetlights. It can’t be a full moon all the time. I also saw how little light a candle really gives off and how small the area lit by a candle really is.

This is my reminder to always think about where the characters are getting light and how they’re getting hot water. It takes more time for them to do things, and their schedule probably has to adjust to the amount of light they have.

Fortunately, we got the all clear Monday morning, and it turned out that the first test they ran on Friday had come back negative for contamination, so the water was actually safe all weekend. Which is good because I’d already brushed my teeth and washed berries before I found out about the boil water notice, and I only learned about it because I had a moment of weakness and checked Facebook before I usually allow myself to do so. Now I’ve signed up to get text messages for city emergency alerts because I don’t want to have to depend on the Facebook algorithm deciding to show me posts from the city.

I’ve mentioned my bad case of Book Brain when I’m working on a first draft, when I don’t have the brainpower to do much more than work on the book and I get easily distracted. I also tend to fall into all-or-nothing patterns, where I’m either writing furiously or getting stuff done, with no in-between. While I’m working on a book, housework falls by the wayside and I struggle with business administrative tasks. I don’t keep up with promotional work. I just write and collapse.

I’ve been trying to work on that so that I have more balance and manage to write consistently while also getting other stuff done, and I had a grand epiphany this week in which I wondered why I have to. If this is working for me, why should I change? Maybe I should lean into it and plan for it. I can plan my writing binge time, and then take care of all the promo stuff during the recovery phase, and that way I can schedule and post things while I’m in book mode without having to switch mental gears and try to create promotional stuff. I can do some cooking in advance and freeze meals and also stock up on some frozen entrees so I don’t have to worry about cooking. I can do a good house cleaning before I start writing a draft. Maybe I could even indulge myself with a cleaning service during the busy months (if I can find someone willing to be that occasional for me).

If I try not to be so intense when I’m writing a first draft, then it’s less likely to get done on schedule and it may not even be as good. I find that there’s an energy that comes from plowing through it quickly. I can be a lot more balanced during the revision phase. It’s just the first draft that takes over my brain and my life.

I don’t know when my next first draft will be. I need to finish this book, then revise, edit, and proofread it and get it ready for publication, and then I need to figure out what to write next and research, develop, and outline it.

I may also try to schedule my first draft time for months that lend themselves to it. Summer is good, since I don’t want to go outside then, anyway. January and February are also good, since it’s too cold to go out much (and if it’s like last winter, there’s snow on the ground the whole time) and there’s not much happening after the holidays. On the other hand, I know I don’t want to be working on a first draft in October because that’s my favorite time of year and there’s a lot going on around here. I’ll want to be able to spend that time hiking and exploring. That would be a good time to brainstorm and outline the book I’ll write in January. I can think while hiking and carry a notebook with me to jot down inspiration while I’m looking at fall colors in the mountains.

I saw a presentation at a conference a few years ago in which the speaker said she works a year ahead. Then her release schedule isn’t dependent on her writing schedule. She can write when she wants and still have her release schedule set. I love that idea, but I’d have to do a lot of work to get a year ahead and write enough books to have some ready for the next year instead of needing to release them as I write them. I’ve got a couple of books I’ve written but never revised, so maybe I could use them as a head start. If I have a release schedule set with books that were written the year before, I might actually be able to do a proper launch instead of just flinging the new book out there as soon as it’s ready.