Real Words

There is a webinar coming up soon that caught my eye and I figured it might also interest some of the folks who read my blog. It’s all about how to get the best incoming links to your website or blog. This is a topic that you might think that you already know something about but there are two good reasons that the webinar could be worth checking out anyway:

1. Things change fast on the web. The best ways to get high-quality incoming links are not the same today as they were one or two years ago. It’s important to have the most updated information.
2. Refreshers are always helpful. Even if you really do know all of this stuff, it’s helpful to have your mind refreshed about it. It’s like a little poke that says “oh yeah, that’s what I should be doing” and it motivates you to re-focus your efforts on correctly building new incoming links.

My big writing project for 2010 is to go through all of the old writing that I’ve been meaning to go through for years. I have tons of projects that relate to this. I’ve got old files on my computer that need to be organized, some of which can be deleted and others that can be re-worked into new articles. I have an entire box of old scraps of writing that date back more than ten years. I have several poetry and fiction projects that were started and have been ignored. It’s my goal to go through these, save the stuff I’m actually going to use, mine some insights wherever I can and then toss the rest. The goal here is to clear out the old writing (either by using it or tossing it) in order to make room for new writing.

What I’ve discovered is that it’s not easy to accomplish this task (which is why I’ve been starting and stopping it and putting it off for so long). But I think I’ve found a system that works for me. Here it is:

Identify all of the writing to go through

The first step for me had to be to get organized enough to know what I wanted to look through. Then I needed to prioritize. The main things I want to look through are computer files, that box of writing and my unfinished projects. I prioritized them in that order.

Define clear goals for what to do with the writing

My biggest problem with going through my writing has always been that I don’t really know what to do with it as I’m going through it. Sure, there are some scraps that I clearly just need to toss but mostly there’s a bunch of stuff that may or may not be useful to me in some form. Defining exactly what I’m looking for as I go through my writing makes it a lot easier to actually sort through it. For me, the goals are:

• Repurpose any work that can be used somewhere else. This goal needed to be even clearer so I had to set specific things that I was looking for such as writing to use in my personal blogs, writing to repurpose for clients, writing to turn into magazine articles for specific magazines … By defining this, I am able to do a much better job of organizing existing writing for new uses.
• Look for any insights into myself. Much of my writing, especially on those scraps of paper, reminds me of things about myself that I had forgotten. That’s why it’s so hard to get rid of some of it. What I’m doing is setting aside anything that provides specific insight and then journalling about it now before I get rid of those original pieces of writing.
• Save any great lines. Usually there are only one or two great lines of writing in a whole stack of papers. I’m learning to look for those and then set them aside while getting rid of the rest of the writing junk that is there.

I recently got inspired to update my website with new content. The old website described all of my different work as a writer including what it means to me to be a writer. However, the truth of the matter is that I don’t do much freelance writing work these days. Although I do a little bit of it, my main focus is on blogging for businesses. The new content on the website reflects this (although there are a couple of pages available with information about my other writing).

I’ve never known quite how I want to organize the information in my website so I’ve played around a lot with it. For now, I’m happy with what I’ve put together here. I feel like it conveys what I do an why clients need it, presents a solid portfolio and offers information on services and rates. However, it’s always hard to know if you’re conveying things the way that you want to when you work for yourself and don’t get feedback from others.

So, I’m putting it out there. If anyone else who is familiar with blogging and writing wants to check out my website and offer some thoughts on it then I’d love to hear them! The site is www.kathrynvercillo.com.

Just a quick note to let you know that I’ve started writing blog posts over at Scribophile which is a really great community for writers. I’ll be writing on some of the same topics that I write on here but expanding on them over there. Mostly I’ll be writing about the writing life and how to manage it.

My first post over there is on the topic of How to Stay Creative when you Write for a Living. I find that it’s really tough to maintain creativity in my work since I write all day long. It’s even tougher to find ways to be creative in non-work writing. However, I think it’s important to do so and I’ve learned some tricks over the years which I’ve shared in that article.

Would love to know if anyone else here is using Scribophile!

Once again, life has happened and I have found it difficult to update this blog as regularly as I would like to. My goal here has generally been that I’d like to have daily posts on the topic of my writing life and what it means to be a writer. However, I seem to be stuck in this cycle where I fall behind and then I feel bad about falling behind which makes me disinclined to write more so I put off doing a new post even longer.

I’m a little bit embarassed about this. I would never let it happen on a blog that I do for my clients. I haven’t let it happen much on my other blog, Diary of a Smart Chick, which is a collection of thoughts about (and links to) the topics of my current writing projects. And yet it consistently happens here.

So, I want to make a commitment to writing for this blog on a regular basis. I won’t say daily because that might be too much but I want to get at least 3 posts up per week here. I have some exciting things planned for this blog in terms of some guest visitors, reviews and giveaways so I really don’t want to let things slide.

Here it is then - my commitment to this blog for my readers as well as for myself. I want to be present here on this blog so that it can become the kin of active conversational community that I know it has the potential to become. And I want to commit to it because this part of my writing life is important to me even though I let other things crowd in on it all of the time.

I would love to hear your thoughts about how to best make a commitment to your own blog when you write full-time for others professionally. Please share!

I’ve mentioned here a few times that I’m working on establishing and accomplishing a series of new writing goals. Those included:

• Cataloguing my work
• Getting published in more print magazines
• Finishing a personal book
• Doing more collaborative projects

I’ve added a few more goals to that list:

• Submitting work to anthologies
• Setting and achieving some clear goals for my 3 personal blogs
• Creating and executing a plan for more active promotion of my Hubs

Taking a look at my list, I’ve figured out that there is one specific writing goal that needs to come before everything else: getting organized!

I tend to be basically good at getting naturally organized. My freelance finances are in order. I’ve got my client’s files in good shape. None of that is a problem. However, I need more organization as it relates to these specific goals because there are areas where I’ve let things go. So, my specific goals for getting organized include:

• Doing my planning on paper. Several of these goals require creating action plans. I like to do those in my head but I’m actually going to do them on paper.
• Collecting all of my creative writing. I have poems, stories, essays and books that are written and half-written. They are in journals, on scraps of paper, on various computer files and who knows where else. Before I can reasonably submit work to anthologies and magazines, I need to be able to see what I have. This means learning about good methods of organizing this stuff and then going through the process of organizing it. That’s the big goal as far as this goes.
• Deleting all unnecessary files. I back things up all of the time and I have multiple copies of several things that I didn’t need to save in the first place. I want to get to where I only have what I really need again.

So, I’m still working on the bigger goals but I’m focusing right now on the small organizational goals that I believe will put me in a better place for meeting the big goals in the end.

It’s funny how things work out sometimes. I got a last-minute invitation to go camping and decided to work my schedule out in order to make that happen. I finished up all of the month’s work early and let everyone know that I would be gone. Then some things happened and the person that I was supposed to go camping with couldn’t go after all. I was bummed out about it for a little while but then I just let it go.

I think that I normally would’ve just returned to my standard routine but I’d already gotten it in my head that I needed this break from the Internet world. So, I decided to keep the computer off even though I was here at home. I didn’t contact my clients to let them know I was around. I didn’t sign back on to my social networking sites. I just pretended that I was still camping.

I managed to get a bunch of projects done around the house that I’d been working on for awhile. More importantly, I feel like the break helped me to get more solidly on track with some of my writing goals. With pen and paper in hand, I mapped out a daily and monthly work schedule that is more in line with my goals for work right now.

I also re-instituted my morning writing routine. I used to haev a solid routine that included some inspirational and educational reading, a little bit of blogging and journaling and some non-writing stuff like yoga. I’d gotten off track with that and was able to resume it in the past week. The lack of computer distractions helped me just sit still and be with myself. All in all, this vacation was good for my writing self even though it wasn’t what I’d planned on.

Just a quick note to let you know that I’m going to be gone through August 1st. A last-minute vacation worked out for me so I’m going to be taking it. Unlike most of my trips, which are working trips, this one is a laptop-free vacation. I’ll be leaving blogging and other web writing behind. I’ll be doing some camping and road tripping and getting back to the basics.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that I won’t be writing. I’ll have my journal and a notebook with me so that I can write the old-fashioned way. I’ll let you know how that goes when I get back! Have a great rest of the month!

I mentioned last week that I’d established some new writing goals for myself. Here’s an update on how I’m feeling about those so far:

• Creating a catalog of my work. I located all of the different disks and files that I’ve stored everything on over the years. That’s the first step in going through everything. That’s all I’ve done with it so far but at least I took a tiny action!
• One dozen magazine publications. I recently had someone request the right to republish one of my articles in a magazine. I want to get my hands on a hard copy of that magazine so I’ve emailed about that. I need to make a more solid plan about this goal though.
• Finish a personal book. I’ve committed to a specific book project that will take 9 months to complete. Since it’s in such early stages, I really don’t want to discuss the details but I’m on my way with this goal.
• Collaborative writing projects. I haven’t made any progress on this goal yet but writing about it today is making me feel more motivated to get some ideas out there for people to possibly pounce on.

Tell me about your writing goals. What tiny step have you taken recently to realize them?

I used to be really committed to taking a tech-free day every week. This was a day that didn’t allow for TV, computers or cell phone conversations. I was working A LOT of hours back then so it was an absolute necessity to take those days. But when I started working less, I kind of dropped the ball on this.

I’m thinking about instituting these tech-free days in my life again. I think it’s really important for me to unplug sometimes. The computer is the big problem. I spend pretty much all day on my computer. If I’m not working or reading or researching online then I’m watching Internet TV or playing Internet games.

I feel like if I turned this stuff off for an entire day every week, I’d get to do more of the things that I say that I want to do. I’d go wander around the city more. I’d do the creative projects that are always only half done around here. I’d sit still with myself.

I’m having a tough time re-committing to this though. I’m not sure what my hesitation is. I suppose that I should probably just take the leap.

Does anyone else do this?