Hah! This morning I put off the print-on-demand vendor’s time-suck demand until Wednesday, the next day I have scheduled for diddling away time in largely unproductive frustration and hassle. “On my way out the door to an all-day meeting,” said I.
😈
That would be an all-day meeting with a computer keyboard…
So how did the first day of the Time-Suck-Control Scheduling Strategy go? Not too badly. Not great, really, but it was more or less successful. I set aside yesterday to do nothing but write (around the household chores, the pool maintenance, the fricasseeing plant survival chores…oh well). The entire day was devoted to jump-starting the second bookoid of the Biker Babe series, which is suffering from a low battery.
And yeah, I did get through a scene. And I figured out the problem: Biker Babe is turning into something different from a tale of two people f**king like rabbits as they scurry across the landscape. It’s actually turning into a romance. Yesterday Bobbi (the babe) met Biker’s deceased wife’s best friend, a motherly sort who, devolving into a kind of female mentor, advises her to treat Biker kindly and remarks that for the first time since the Deceased croaked over, “that spark in his eye” has returned.
Problem is, Bobbi is a denizen of academe, something she keeps hidden from the widower’s friends. She’s socialized to feel an intense hypersensitivity to sexist slights and also to resist being stuck in the traditional female role. This is at odds with the biker culture, in a funny way. (Not funny ha-ha, either.) She does not much like being called “babe,” nor does she appreciate being told to sit and wait while he takes up a challenge to beat one of his pals at billiards.
As you can see, trouble is about to rear its ludicrous head…
At any rate, these developments are slowing down the scribbling pace, because setting up the situation distracts from…yes, the rabbitting around.
Today I’ll have to move on to another story, which I’m pretty sure I can crank in one day without too much trouble. Rabbits are pretty easy to describe in action…
The second whiteboard — the one in the office — turns out to be a handy aid in the Time-Suck Control Department. The main whiteboard, which has a calendar and space for to-do’s, resides on the door I have to pass through to get to the car. This forces me to look at the things I’m supposed to be accomplishing now, today. I’ve pressed the second one into service as a place to list time-suck chores.
Writing chores appear on the out-the-door white-board and time-suck chores on the office whiteboard. So, things are less likely to be forgotten, but they’re separated out and assigned to specific 14-hour time slots.
Soon we’ll see if this really works. Tomorrow is another writing day, but Luz will be here for four or five hours. That means today I have to shovel the pigpen a bit, and although she personally is quiet and not inclined to bother me with socializing, having somebody banging around the house still is a distraction.
Wednesday is assigned to time sucks, but the morning will be trashed by a visit to the dentist. I expect to be pretty frustrated and upset by that visit, since he’s about to announce that he’s going to empty my bank account and torture me with a new series of pains and discomforts. Like I haven’t had enough of those of late… Whether I’ll get anything done after that is anyone’s guess. A lot of time-sucks remain to be done on that day:
• Post Fire-Rider, Book II (this entails registering an ISBN, a true time-suck!)
• Read my friend Ken’s suggested links on book marketing; distill new ideas for action
• Write and post an article on LinkedIn by way of attracting attention to the publishing ventures
• Get act together and create a more effective marketing plan; contact a writer who’s doing pretty well & ask for appointment to discuss her strategy
• Send receipt to editorial client
• Build e-mail list of people to pester about new publications
• Start a Pinterest site
• Create a Writers P&S site on Facebook (ugh!)
• Pester the Web guru about getting the sites up and adding lost plug-ins
• Figure out what vendor (above) is talking about and come up with some sort of fix, if needed.
Getting all that done in one afternoon, after the dentist’s appointment soaks up the morning? Highly questionable. And therein lies the reason I need someone to help with (read “to do“) the marketing stuff.