Looking for a few good writers   

January 21, 2009 | Comments

I’ve been up to my ears in a new project, and am looking for writers and Channel Editors to help make it happen. I’ve talked to several great folks, but I want to cast as wide a net as possible, so I’m asking for your help. If you’re passionate about any of the following topics and can write a reasonably coherent sentence I’d love to talk to you!

Money Management / Budgeting / Personal Finance
Food
Entertainment
Holidays
Household Management
Kids
Environmentalism
Travel - NEW
Shopping - NEW
Health and Fitness - NEW
Household Maintenance - NEW
Car Maintenance - NEW
Budget Decorating - NEW
Going Off The Grid - NEW

Take a look at Budget Artists for more information!

Can I call you back? I’m in a meeting.   

January 8, 2009 | Comments

Every so often, when I describe what I do to someone, they respond with an amazed expression and ask me “How??”  It’s happened often enough that I’d like to answer here.

Ok, I work at home, with three young boys and an almost-crawling baby underfoot.  We homeschool, and I attempt to keep the household running at a basic level of efficiency.  But use this line as often as a high-powered corporate executive.  Why?  Because it reminds me to be fully present in whatever activity I’m involved in.

“I’m in a meeting right now.  Can I get back to you later this afternoon?”

It’s always such a temptation to spend all day with my head in my latest story, or chatting with readers - or blowing off work entirely to make blueberry playdough cakes and play trains!  On the other hand, if I’m knee-deep in a new project, it’s so easy to set the boys up with one independent activity after another and find that I spent all day doing nothing but breaking up disputes over whose turn it is.

So how do I get anything done, without paid childcare?  Meetings.  I schedule at least one meeting every week.  I’m the only person who attends, we meet at the local coffee house for about 2-3 hours, and my husband gets to have the kind of four-on-one parenting experience that I’m lucky enough to have every day.  Dinner goes in the crock pot so we can sit down and have dinner together as soon as I get home, and I get about 4 hours worth of work done in 2-3.

To make it all work, I have to be prepared.  I walk into the coffee house with a to-do list, my word processor already started on the laptop, and my email client shut down (unless I’ll be using it of course).  My research is neatly filed in my briefcase (or stored online, but that’s another post!) and ready to go.  This way, I don’t spend my work time trying to figure out what to do.  I can hit the ground running.

Goals for 2009   

January 2, 2009 | Comments

Yes, everyone has one of these posts.  But instead of a laundry list of all the things I hope to do this year, I’m going at it a bit differently.  Every year, I dream up what I want to do, and guess what?  90% of it never happens.  The question is, why not?

1. Life is messier than it looks on paper.  When I sit down at my nice, clutter-free desk, it’s easy to forget that the baby won’t always take 3-hour naps at hte exact time that the boys are ready for some independent time.  Kids will get sick.  For that matter, I will probably feel under the weather at some point.  Crises will happen that require me to drop everything and put out the fire.
2. As author JA Konrath reminded me recently, I don’t get to control everything.  I have absolutely no control over whether or not a publisher buys my novel, or my next nonfiction book, or the article I queried.  Of course, that doesn’t excuse me from putting together the best submission package I possibly can, but beyond that things are out of my hands.
3. Goals change.  And that’s ok.  New opportunities pop up, and sometimes when we follow out our original goals we find that the destination isn’t as rosy as we thought it would be.  It’s ok to change course, as long as we do it intentionally.

Of course, I still have a laundry list of things I’d love to accomplish this year.  And the top of the list is accepting life as it is, even while I work constantly to improve it.

There’s no such thing as a small victory   

February 11, 2008 | 1 Comment

A victory is a victory, period!

This weekend, I had a pretty ambitious list of stuff to get done. This was the first weekend we were home after traveling the for the past two weekends, so I was in major catch-up mode. On Friday night, I made a comprehensive list of everything that needed to get done, appointments we had, everything. I wrote it on a big sheet of newsprint (borrowed from the kids’ art supplies!) and tacked it up on the living room wall.

By Sunday afternoon, I was exhausted and convinced that we had spent all weekend running and gotten nothing done. Until I started marking off all the tasks that we had accomplished, and I realized that we had actually finished well over half of what I planned. Considering the ambitiousness of the plan, getting half of it done is a real victory!

When we label our victories over the craziness that is life “small” we minimize the time, effort, and creativity that went into those accomplishments! There’s no such thing as a “small” victory! Take the time to celebrate your victories and see how much more motivated you are to keep on going, even on days when your motivation is practically non-existent.