Book review: Sometimes the Magic Works, by Terry Brooks

4/5 stars

"In Sometimes the Magic Works, New York Times bestselling author Terry Brooks shares his secrets for creating unusual, memorable fiction. Spanning topics from the importance of daydreaming to the necessity of writing an outline, from the fine art of showing instead of merely telling to creating believable characters who make readers care what happens to them, Brooks draws upon his own experiences, hard lessons learned, and delightful discoveries made in creating the beloved Shannara and Magic Kingdom of Landover series, The Word and The Void trilogy, and the bestselling Star Wars novel The Phantom Menace.

In addition to being a writing guide, Sometimes the Magic Works is Terry Brooks’s self-portrait of the artist. “If you don’t think there is magic in writing, you probably won’t write anything magical,” says Brooks. This book offers a rare opportunity to peer into the mind of (and learn a trick or two from) one of fantasy fiction’s preeminent magicians." -- Amazon blurb.

I really enjoyed this book; I love reading about how successful authors started their career. The majority of this book focuses on Brooks' journey: how his success was launched by a perfect storm at the start of Del Rey books, how he stumbled along the way, and how the mind of a continual, lifetime storyteller works. I found his discussion of how his imagination has interfered with his everyday life illuminating, and especially enjoyed his two chapters about playing and exploring with his grandson Hunter. His style made me feel like I was sitting down and hearing him reminisce with a good friend.

His comments on craft are interspersed throughout the book. There is a section on outlining, the importance of letting your mind wander, and some traditional advice on writing engaging fiction (show don't tell, start and end strong, etc.) If you're a fan of Brooks' style of fiction and were hoping for an in-depth look at his craft, this book isn't it. It is more of a endearing and meandering conversation, where old nuggets of wisdom are professionally spit-shined so that even the most well-read could appreciate a thing or two.

I loved the "show don't tell" example on pages 125-126:

Telling: "Maud was eighty-one years of age with piercing dark eyes and s tiff, squared-away stance that suggested aching joints. Gray hair hung in a single braid down her back, tied at the end with a ribbon. Deep age lines marked her strong, plain face. She was missing her right arm, the sleeve of her cotton dress pinned against the breast and neatly folded at the elbow. For any years, she had worked in a bookstore, and before that, as a CIA operative. She loved cats and had two old toms at present named Kibbles and Bits. But while cats were welcome in her home, birds were not. She hated birds because as a child she had always been afraid of their beady, quick eyes and sharp little beaks."

Showing (I particular liked the underlined sentences): "Maud moved gingerly today, the result of another twenty-four hours added to her eighty-one years. Oddly enough, she felt the same as always, although her dark eyes might give her away to someone looking closely enough. Ignoring her stiffness and the ache in her joints, she brushed lightly at her braided gray hair and smiled at the sunlight streaming through her cabin window. The smile gave her lined face a warm and reassuring cast, the sort that always suggested to those she encountered that she had a good heart. Kibbles, the better half of Bits, trotted up to her, and she picked up the old tom and held him in the cradle of her good left arm. She glanced down at the empty right sleeve of her dress, checking her appearance the way she had been taught to do during her years with the CIA. Government agent never forgot their training. Or maybe it was booksellers who never forgot, she couldn't remember. She laughed silently at herself, able to push back the years and the past. On a day like this, she could even feel kindly toward birds, and that was rare indeed."

I also enjoyed reading the chapter "On the Trail of Tolkien" where Brooks talks about what he feels the greatest similarity is between them. In my own writing, I want to keep this chapter firmly in mind. Here's my favourite part, from page 190: "It was Tolkien's genius to reinvent the traditional epic fantasy by making the central character neither God nor hero, but a simple man in search of a way to do the right thing... Ordinary men placed in extraordinary circumstances are far more interesting."

I would strongly recommend this book to someone who enjoys author biographies, but in terms of a craft book I think there are better ones out there. Regardless, if you are considering writing Fantasy, this is a great book to pick up.

Book Review: The Giver, by Lois Lowry

2/5 stars

"The Giver, the 1994 Newbery Medal winner, has become one of the most influential novels of our time. The haunting story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community. Lois Lowry has written three companion novels to The Giver, including Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son." -- Amazon

I've had "The Giver" on my to-read list for some time, and eventually bought a very nice hard cover edition of the quartet some time ago (beautiful book; love it when they have the ribbon bookmarks in the hard covers). The book has since languished on my shelf. Then the other night I found myself too exhausted to read, yet too worn out from the day to go to sleep and face another after a long blink, and so I combed through the offerings on Netflix looking for some easy to absorb escapism. Then I saw that they had made a movie of The Giver in 2014. I looked up the trailer on YouTube and was intrigued. But of course, I can't watch the movie before reading the book. So what did I do at 9:15 pm when I had to wake up the next morning at 6:30 am?

I decided that I would finish the book then and there.

Although I read about a page a minute, and the book is slim, it still took me 3 hours. The next workday was rough, let me tell you. And to be honest, I don't think it was worth it.

After the first few pages I was really interested; I felt that Veronica Roth of Divergent fame must have read this book at some point. But then the story failed to launch for me. Granted, this is an old book, and perhaps the "science of the art" of commercial fiction wasn't as prominent back then, but I felt it was a slow, slow launch into the story. And then, just as things were getting started, it was over. The midpoint felt like it should have been an inciting incident, and the ending felt like it would have been a great midpoint, where the protagonist finally switches from being reactive to being proactive. Yet the book just ENDS! And it ends AMBIGUOUSLY!

I am not a fan of non-endings. I thought to myself, "Surely the next book will pick up where this left off. Maybe I'll just read a chapter or two." But the next book had completely different characters. Frustrating.

I understand that Lowry won a Newbery for this. I understand that 83% of readers on Amazon give this 4-5 stars. But I just didn't like it. As I was reading I had this strange feeling that I was reading a literary novel wrapped in genre paper, but the literary side wasn't true literary, and the genre side wasn't real either. I dunno. It just wasn't for me.

That said, the ending did pull at my heart strings; I loved the relationship between Jonas and Gabe. So after throwing the book on my night stand in a huff, I proceeded to spend 20 minutes surfing the internet in an effort to find out if the ending was just a hypothermic hallucination or the real deal (while trying not to ruin the remaining books in the series). Thankfully I did find out, but learned that I would have to read all four books to have this resolved.

I'm not sure if I'm willing to make that commitment.

Book review: The Martian, by Andy Weir

5/5 stars

"Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. 

Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. 

Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first. 

But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?" -- Amazon blurb

I'm normally not a big sci-fi reader (my husband is the sci-fi fan in this house), but after I heard about this on the Rocking Self-publishing Podcast more than once, I had to read it. Both times the book was mentioned, those discussing it didn't even want to talk about what it was about, for fear that they would ruin it for the audience. Color me intrigued. I bought the hardcover, because I figured this book would be good enough to earn a permanent position on my bookshelf. I wasn't wrong.

This book was unputdownable. It takes place in the not so distant future, when mankind has just started sending manned missions to Mars. This is mission number three, and they accidentally leave one of the astronauts behind, thinking he was dead. The story takes off from there, chronicling his time on Mars and his attempts to survive.

A good portion of the book is a series of log entries, but then it starts to switch back and forth between log entries and regular third person prose. I initially found this quite jarring, because the voice of the main character is very distinct and the book had stayed in the log entry style for quite some time before introducing this other perspective. That said, after a while I got used to it, and even within those third person prose sections, the voices of the characters came out (although many of the characters shared the same personality in their quips).

Looking at this as a writer, I think Andy Weir's strong point is his voice and his conversational style, but at the same time I felt there could be more diversity across characters. In a way the book had one dominant voice: a very intelligent person under pressure, who nonetheless can see the humor in a situation. I thought the character could develop more across the book, but I think his steady personality suited the story in the end. There were times when his base personality shuddered a bit, but I wouldn't classify those times as "opportunities for character growth."

Multiple times when I was reading this book, I told my husband that it was the best book I have ever read. It certainly kept me turning the pages. I have read other books with better world building, and other books with better character growth, but this one was one of the best at keeping me glued to the page, worried about the character. Mark Watney was a good man with an admirable personality, and I was rooting for him the whole way. I can count on one hand the times that I have flipped ahead in a book because I could not stand to have to keep reading to wait to see what happened (and I'm one of those people that if a book is said to be good, I try to not even read the dust jacket because I want the true immersive experience!) I had to flip ahead three times when reading The Martian.

I'd recommend this book to anyone and everyone, whether you like sci-fi or not. I really liked the message of the book, which was, for once, a positive and lovely statement about humanity: that when someone is trouble, everyone, in every culture, has a desire to help them. They also used this as the opening to the movie trailer. It was so nice to have a book that touted the virtues of humanity, at a time when most books seem to explore the tragic consequences of being human.

I've been busy

I haven't posted in some time, but I've learned so much. I feel like I can take this writing business by the horns now. I stopped tracking my time, because tracking my time was taking too much time (oh the irony). I have to get over the strange feeling of not having metrics to track, and just accept that it's for the better good. Not quite there yet.

I start my morning by reading The Passive Voice and the latest posts on KBoards; I check back in on them at lunch. In the evenings, I read books on craft and marketing. I've recently devoured several books by James Scott Bell, and have decided that I should really look at the iconic texts of storytelling craft: Larry Brooks' "Story Engineering" and "Story Physics"; Robert McKee's "Story"; and Christopher Vogel's, "The Hero's Journey." I also tracked down a copy of Blake Snyder's "Save the Cat Goes to the Movies." In terms of marketing, I've been enjoying Ryan Levesque's "Ask" and Jeff Walker's "Launch." I'll be reviewing all of these resources in the coming weeks hopefully (but with my track record of keeping this blog updated, who knows? Business comes first :) ).

I also broke down and bought an AlphaSmart Dana; an antiquated piece of retrotech that runs off three AA batteries and can't read SD cards over 1 GB in size. It's an electronic word processor running on PalmOS and it does one thing well: typing. The keyboard is fantastic, and it's a great distraction-free writing tool. Bought a whole set of them because shipping to Canada was so expensive I figured, why not? At least if one breaks I have a backup, and I also now have a dedicated machine for working on this new writing empire I'm building, heh. I'll probably talk about it more in future.

I can't believe another year is almost over... I started this blog in 2014; a few posts back I thought I'd publish my first episode around this time of year. Now, I'm realizing I really should have the complete series plotted before I get any further into my manuscript, even if it takes longer before I make a sale.

I've just been through our first crazy crunch time at work, and some serious burn-out. Now I'm heading head-long into another that won't let up until February. Somehow, this year, I have to keep my head above water and keep working toward my business goals. This is despite the fact that I have taken on a part-time teaching job (yet again), as well as additional part-time consulting work.

Wish me luck.

New blog section: book reviews!

I read a lot. I read for entertainment; I read to learn. I read so much that all of the books sometimes start jumbling together. So I've decided to start reviewing the books I read, making notes of the things I enjoyed as a reader, but also as a writer.

In terms of fiction, I quite like young adult fantasy, dystopian fiction, urban fantasy, and paranormal if it hasn't been overdone. I'm just now expanding into adult fiction, and have started sampling the romance genre as part of my research into indie publishing. I definitely sway more toward contemporary romance and sweet romance. I've also started reading some suspense and mystery novels, but again I prefer those that are a little softer around the edges.

In terms of nonfiction, my two main categories are books about writing, and books about productivity/reaching your goals. Although I am also a big fan of what I call, "stealth anthropology," books such as Scratch Beginnings, and Nickel and Dimed. On my to read list are Black Like Me, and The Cross in the Closet. I also enjoy journalistic discussions of the way we think and psychology (The Psychology of Persuasion, Think and Be Rich, Choice), and discussions about sustainability (The 100 Mile Diet, How bad are bananas?, Garbology). I also devour anything by Malcolm Gladwell, regardless of the topic.

So now that you know my tastes, that is what I will be discussing in posts labeled with "Book reviews." I have told myself that I am not allowed to write these posts during my writing time in the morning, so these will have to happen during my leisure time in the evenings. My plan is that once I finish a book, I write a review before I start another. The exception will be this week, where I am training myself to get up early and taking baby steps (i.e., all I have to do is get up and then I can play as long as I get my ass out of bed), so I will try to write reviews of my most recent reads.

Getting back on the train

I'm not one for excuses, but when I'm looking over this blog I want to know the type of things that tend to set me back. My last post was in May. May. That's not to say that I stopped working toward my goal. During that time I devoured information about the indie publishing market. I've read many, many nonfiction books on the topic. I also started listening to the Rocking Self Publishing Podcast, with Simon Whistler, and it has been absolutely fabulous.

My in-laws visited for about three weeks, so things were a wash during that period, but since then I've been trying to get back into a regular routine. I still waiver between wanting to stay up late at night, and getting up early. During the day, I'm energetic, and think it won't be any trouble to stay up late, after all I did it all through university. At nighttime, as soon as the kids are down, I may be able to make it for a half an hour or an hour or so before my eyelids start closing on their own. And I say to myself, "well, just get up early!" And yet when the alarm clock tolls the dawn of a new day (and I set it so that the new day starts before the actual dawn), I have become a zombie.

So I printed off a sheet for Monday through Sunday, when I would wake up, work on the novel, have leisure time, and sleep. I entered a period of optimization. I realized that I am not a robot. You would think that would be immediately apparent, butt it's not. I love to read. I'll often start a book at night when the kids are in bed, and because it is so good I will read until 2 o'clock in the morning and therefore be a zombie for several days. Yet when I was trying to maximize the amount of time I would spend writing, I essentially eliminated all leisure time. This does not work for me. I've also realized that I need more than the standard eight hours of sleep a night, and benefit from occasionally getting extended periods of sleep. Thus, I bring you my new schedule:

Day	Wake-up	Shower	Write	Leisure	Sleep
Monday	5 am	5-5:30 am	5:30-7 am	8-9 pm	9 pm / 8 hrs
Tuesday	5 am	5-5:30 am	5:30-7 am	n/a	8 pm / 9 hrs
Wednesday	5 am	5-5:30 am	5:30-7 am	8-9 pm	9 pm / 8 hrs
Thursday	5 am	5-5:30 am	5:30-7 am	8-9 pm	9 pm / 8 hrs
Friday	5 am	5-5:30 am	5:30-7 am	8-9:30 pm	9:30 pm / 8.5 hrs
Saturday	6 am	Later!	6-7:30 am	8-9 pm	9 pm / 9 hrs
Sunday	6 am	Later!	6-7:30 am	8-9 pm	9 pm / 8 hrs

Registering a business, deducting expenses

As I contemplate purchasing some more software for my novel pursuits, I'm starting to seriously consider officially setting up a business so I can claim all these expenses. Altogether it will cost $175 to have an official home based business in my city. Ouch. But I do have to do it at some point, and it's a one-time fee, so better to pay it now than when my dollars aren't worth as much due to inflation. Also, going by the CRA's definition, my business is already technically started because I know what I'm going to do and have been making steps toward it on a regular basis, so I guess I already have a home office? Of course, still making product so no sales yet. Not sure what my city defines a "start" as, but I'll register soon regardless.

I'm kind of sad that I didn't read through the CRA stuff before I filed my taxes. Last year I purchased a lot of writing books and software to do outlining and that all would have been tax deductible. I could go back and modify my return, but that's a really big undertaking. Plus I think my big push in January is a good way to define the start of the business (seems to match the following from the CRA: "In order that there be a finding that a business has commenced, it is necessary that there be a fairly specific concept of the type of activity to be carried on and a sufficient organizational structure assembled to undertake at least the essential preliminaries."). Anything in this tax year is game now that I have my head on straight! So far I have some writing craft books, a marketing course, and hopefully software if I can convince my husband of the expense, which looks dismal at the moment, heh.

The good news is I won't have to register for any tax account, since I'm not earning more than $30k a year on this... ha! Hopefully I'll have that problem at some point. But even so, I don't sell the books directly, so not sure how this would work (the retailers would collect the tax so don't see why I would need an account). I'm sure there's some process for commissioned pieces in there, but I'll open that can of worms if I ever get there.

Coming back to the topic of business registration: It appears that Canada does not have the LLC option of our American counterparts to protect our personal belongings should anything terrible happen in this process. The only choice I can go for for liability protection is a corporation, and the thought of corporate taxes is, quite frankly, terrifying. It appears the corporation would pay tax at about 11% for a Canadian-controlled private corporation (CCPC) claiming the small business deduction, and I think I would get paid as an employee and that would be taxed for income taxes. So double taxes? Confusing. In any case, the CCPC would function as it's own "person" so I wouldn't be able to deduct my expenses off my personal taxes. I think I'll stick with sole proprietor (or partnership if my husband decides to get on board) for now, and if I become immensely successful I'll look into this further.

Week of May 4, 2015: Cannot find simple floor plan software to help me visualize my world

Stat summary for the last two weeks can be found here.

I think it's good that I'm starting to track how much time I spend on the business side of indie publishing and how much I spend on actual writing. For the week of April 27, 2015 I spent a total of 13:25 on the author career, and 9:41 of that was used on business related things (learning the business, trends, advice, etc). This is not an acceptable ratio!

I got my butt in gear the next week but came to a point in the novel where my Main character is exploring the school, and I realized I needed a clear picture of the school in my mind. I tried program after program to draw a "simple" floor plan of the school so I could orient myself. It was a major block; I couldn't keep going unless I knew where I was. Going through the motions made me realize that the space I had envisioned was physically impossible because I had huge rooms next to ones that were very small, but for the plot they had to be similar in size. It was a mess.

I spent 26:07 last week on this career, and used 15:17 for trying to come up with a good map. I'm still not there. That said, the exercise was not entirely fruitless. I added more groups inside the school, and came up with their past histories, which groups conflict on a number of different controversial topics, and how the groups work together. Lots of this will be important to the plot, and I feel I have a much better grip on who these people are. I started an excel sheet to lay out what the different groups think about various things (I'm being intentionally vague).

That said, I still do want to make a floor plan. I tried several software programs. I just want one that lets me edit the walls with a snap feature, and let's me copy floors for multi-level buildings, and maybe see the floor beneath. Just something simple to let me draw boxes and stick windows and furniture in them! Here's a quick summary of the software that fell short:

• Sweet Home 3D was nice, and let me see the floor beneath, but the interface wasn't great, and it was slow. Amazingly, they had no pan ability in the 3D view. The only way to get around it was to do a "virtual tour" and make the person 20 feet tall. The walls wouldn't line up well, but at least I could copy them. 
• Room Arranger was the best I think; it had a nice guide feature, but you had to edit the walls separately from the contents of the room (including windows and doors), and there was no easy way to copy a bunch of walls to make multiple storeys. I did the most work in this program, but in the end it took almost a whole day to plan out the first floor of a dorm and the bathrooms. o_O'
• I tried Home Designer but it wouldn't run under my Windows XP Virtual Machine. 
• EZBluePrint 3D seemed ok, but lacked a grid and the interface was just plan odd, but the snapping feature was one of the best. 
• I even watched some video tutorials on Google SketchUp, but you have to make things like windows and doors from basic shapes and that's way too time consuming.

There seemed to be quite a selection of online options, but I have to make a massive building and grounds, and don't trust that my information won't go piff. I like having things as files that I can put on Dropbox and my external hard drive.

I don't yet have an answer to this issue, except maybe drawing everything by hand. I think it would go faster that way, but my space perception is about as good as a one-eyed newborn kitten's. Software programs let you add furniture to the room so you I can say things like, "gee, when I put everything I need in that room I only ill 20% of the space... it must be the size of a football field!" To draw it by hand I'd have to lookup the normal sizes of things for scale, and I couldn't just drag a wall smaller to get it to fit. 

Next week I'll probably come in here with my head between my legs and say I drew the damn thing by hand, and spent the whole week doing it... at least it gets me thinking about the world.

Oh I just thought of something! I'll ask the folks on KBoards! Stay tuned...

Headset for Dragon Naturally Speaking 12.5

I've been dictating for the past few weeks, and while I like it, I'm still getting used to it. One thing I know for certain is that I'll need to upgrade from the headset supplied with the software. It's killing my ears! I went on the Dragon website and looked at all the headsets rated at 6 Dragons (the top compatibility rating) and decided on the Andrea NC-250V Circumaural Stereo PC Headset. Buying it is on my to-do list. Right after new glasses :)

Modeling my world

I met the point in my book were my main character is exploring the "New World," which in this case is a school complex. I realized I couldn't write about what he was seeing unless I had a good understanding of the space myself. I started off drawing the school grounds free hand, but my skills and proportion are extremely lacking. Then I tried redrawing everything on graph paper, but I kept making mistakes, a racing lines over and over, and then having to start over from the beginning.

I thought there must be a way to do this electronically, but I didn't want to waste a lot of time learning specialty floor plan software. It turns out that there is a free software program available that is very intuitive to use. It's called Sweet Home 3D and it runs in Java, which means it will work on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I've installed it and I have to say, it's impressive. It even lets you do a 3D mock-up and walk through the room. All this in less than ten minutes. Needless to say, I'm laying out the whole school so that I always have consistency in what my characters are seeing.

Beta readers

I use this blog as a notebook for my writing journey, so this is just a short post to remind myself to go to Frostbite Publishing for beta readers. Reasonable prices, and KBoards approved.

More on seasons / episodes

After reading more about ebook pricing, I'm thinking my initial plan my need to be revised.

Writing / Editing	Release Date	Book	Length	Price
May 4 - 31, 2015	Oct 4, 2015	Season 1: Episode 1	~25k	FREE
Jun 1 - 28, 2015	Oct 4, 2015	Season 1: Episode 2	~25k	$2.99
Jun 29 - Aug 5, 2015	Nov 1, 2015	Season 1: Episode 3	~25k	$2.99
Aug - Oct 11, 2015	Nov 29, 2015	Season 1: Episode 4	~25k	$2.99
Oct 12, 2015	Dec 26, 2015	Season 1: Omnibus	~100k	$5.99 (save 33%)
Oct 13 - Dec 15, 2015	Feb 7, 2016	Season 2: Episode 1	~25k	$2.99
Dec 15/'15 - Feb 16, 2016	Mar 20, 2016	Season 2: Episode 2	~25k	$2.99
Feb 17 - Mar 13, 2016	Apr 17, 2016	Season 2: Episode 3	~25k	$2.99
Mar 14 - Apr 6, 2016	May 15, 2016	Season 2: Episode 4	~25k	$2.99
Apr 6 - May 1, 2016	Jun 12, 2016	Season 2: Omnibus	~100k	$6.99 (save 42%)

While books are on pre-order I'll list them at a reduced price of $1.99 per episode, or 4.99/5.99 per season.

I've also come up with a new writing schedule. I reduced my hours at work to 3 days a week, but my Tuesdays and Thursdays seem to get swallowed up by my to-do list backlog, and I get less than 2-3 hours of writing in. I thought if I had a more strict schedule on those days I could treat it like a job. I wouldn't be late for work or not put in the time, so why should I not put the time into this career? The schedule below allows for 8 hours of sleep per night (I need 8.5 to feel normal according to my sleep experiment, but this will probably do).

Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday (1.5 hr/day; 6 hr/week)

8:15 pm – 9:45 pm Novel (1.5 hr)

9:45 pm – 9:50 pm Get ready for bed

9:50 pm – 10:30 pm Leisure

Tuesday, Thursday (7.5 hr/day; 15 hr/week)

8:30 am – 10:00 am Novel (1.5 hr)

10:00 am – 10:30 am Break

10:30 am – 12:00 pm Novel (1.5 hr)

12:00 pm – 12:45 pm Lunch

12:45 pm – 2:15 pm Novel (1.5 hr)

2:15 pm – 2:45 pm Break

2:45 pm – 4:15 pm Novel (1.5 hr)

4:15 pm – 5:00 pm Life stuff / Logistics

8:15 pm – 9:45 pm Novel (1.5 hr)

9:45 pm – 9:50 pm Get ready for bed

9:50 pm – 10:30 pm Leisure

Saturday (4 hr/day and week)

10:00 am – 12:30 pm Novel (2.5 hr)

8:15 pm – 9:45 pm Novel (1.5 hr)

9:45 pm – 9:50 pm Get ready for bed

9:50 pm – 10:30 pm Leisure

In total I'll get in 25 hours a week this way. I have 10 weeks left on this schedule, then one week of vacation while kids are in summer camp (writing binge like T/R schedule; 37.5 hrs), then 2 weeks vacation of nothing, and then I'm back to working 5 days a week, so I'll only get in 1.5 hours every night (10.5 hours per week). Note that all of these times are actual writing/editing times. In my "leisure" and during my 20 min coffee / 30 min lunch breaks at work I'll read business related things such as blogs like The Passive Voice and forums such as KBoards, and will try to squeeze marketing in those times as well.

According to my spreadsheet I average a measly 390 WPH writing, and edit at 2500 WPH. I'm hoping to finish editing Episode 1 this week, so starting Monday I'll have 75k remaining. Each episode will take me 64 hours to write and 10 to edit, so about 75 hours total. By the time I add covers and promo planning, about 85 hours, or 3.5 weeks (lets round to 4 weeks because I have to learn book layouts and how to upload, etc). I'll use my summer camp week to arrange promos, covers, beta readers, etc. I want to have the whole thing done before work picks up again and also before the first release, because I like to go back and add hints to make sure they're all a cohesive document. I won't be able to do that with season 2, but hopefully things pick up enough that I can work less at the day job all year, not just for a few months.

Releasing a book as "episodes" and "seasons"

I know I don't really have an audience, so I'll just apologize to myself for not being around in a while. In week seven I had my best week yet, largely because I was getting up very early (4:30 in the morning early) and actually getting things done. Then I decide to switch to writing after the kids were in bed, since I've always been a night owl at heart, but I ended up being so burnt out from work and getting up early for weeks that I'd just surf the Internet or waste time, often staying up until one or two in the morning and being a zombie the next day. Epic fail.

But that's all in the past, right?

I spent the day coming back to the idea of serialization, which I first talked about in March. There's been some debate on KBoards about how readers would respond to the different types of serialization. In the most traditional sense, a serial has a clear beginning, middle, and end, despite being a short piece. Meanwhile, a series is often thought of as several related, standard length books that can be read in any order. Apparently the term "saga" refers to what I usually consider to be a series, which are standard length books with a clear beginning, middle, and end that must be read in a specific order to understand the overarching plot.

The people posting on KBoards seem to be in one of two camps when it comes to splitting a traditional novel into several parts that have no clear beginning, middle, and end, and finish with a cliffhanger. The first believes that readers will consider it nothing more than a money grab, and that they will become annoyed and leave several one star reviews. The logic is that even if the serialization is designed for borrows through Kindle Unlimited, there will inevitably be a number of buyers who won't appreciate having to pay for one book several times. Of course, if one were to price each of the installments at $.99, over a four part serialization the author would only earn $1.20. If the same book was sold for $3.99, the author would earn $2.79. So clearly serialization is not a money grab, but readers may not realize this. I think the key is keeping the pricing of each individual installment approximately the same as the pricing of the box set.

The second camp believes that serialization is a good way to maximize the benefit from the 30 day hot new releases algorithm. Also, readers are less likely to buy a book from an author who only has one book published, and breaking a novel into several parts will increase the number of books available. Several authors have had great success with this approach. Key is having a very clear blurb that specifically says the book is an installment and that it ends on a cliffhanger. As readers of short works are a different target audience than readers of full novels, posters on KBoards also recommend saying that the books will be bundled when the last one is released, so that those who prefer a longer novel format can wait until it is available.

So my current plan is to completely write the book so that I can work in hints in the early stages, but to publish it as for "episodes" approximately 25,000 words long, roughly corresponding to Act 1, Act 2a, Act 2b, and Act 3. The Self-Publishing Podcast started applying the "episode" TV term to serialization as people are familiar with TV episodes that must be watched in order and end on a cliffhanger. The SPP guys release all episodes as a "season" in one fell swoop, Netflix style. I plan on stretching the releases a bit more than this to maximize the algorithm, but for the most part think the terms "episodes" and "seasons" are ideal.

My plan is to release the box set when people are getting their new kindles for Christmas. Each preceding release would occur a month before that date, with the exception that the first and second episodes will be published at the same time. The purpose of this is for the first episode to act as a free loss leader, and the second is immediately available to show that I am an author doing this for the long term. As a reader myself, I will seldom buy into a series if only one book is available because the author may just drop off the face of the earth.

September 2015: Release episode one as free. Have episode two available for $1.99, and episode three available through preorder for $1.99, with release in October 2015.

October 2015: Episode three is published. Episode four is available through preorder for $1.99.

November 2015: Episode four is published. Box set is available through preorder for $4.99.

December 2015: Box set is published.

Total cost to reader purchasing individual episodes: $5.97
Total royalties for selling all four individual episodes: $1.79

Total cost to reader buying boxed set: $4.99 (savings of 16%)
Total royalties for selling boxed set: $3.49

Given the above calculations, it may look like serialization is a bad idea, however exposure is key. By having two books available from the onset, I'll have the benefit of a loss leader with an immediate funnel to a purchase. Also, by releasing the next two episodes and the box set within the 30 day window, a title should be available on the hot new releases list for four months, instead of just one. If I've learned anything from reading KBoards it's that getting discovered is one of the most difficult hurdles to overcome in self-publishing, so I'm hoping this plan will work.

Weekly Progress

I'm a new writer who's still trying to work out how to be productive and write faster. I also love data, and track my output in a spreadsheet. Here I just wanted a place where I could post the weekly totals that I discuss in my Sunday updates, so I could see everything at a glance. I'll be updating this every week.

This form of progress tracking replaces the one I used previously, which didn't differentiate between editing and writing, and as a result the words per hour calculation wasn't accurate. I also realized that I was spending a lot of my time on the business aspect of self-publishing, such as reading about marketing and promotion on KBoards, but I wasn't tracking this at all. So when I would look back on the total amount of time I spent each week on developing this side career, it looked quite low. My old way was like tracking the production line, but paying no attention to the hours logged by the marketing division or the research and development team. This new way of tracking truly captures how much time I am spending on launching my writing career.

Key: W/E = Writing and Editing; B = Business (learning, production, marketing, management); O = Other (learning craft, outlining); WPH-W/E = Average words per Hour when writing/editing.

Wk	Week start	W/E	B	O	TOTAL	WPH-W	WPH-E	Net words
W-1	Jan 26, '15	6:15	n/a	n/a	6:15	273	-	1,707
W-2	Feb 2, '15	10:10	n/a	n/a	10:10	236	-	2,533
W-3	Feb 9, '15	8:05	n/a	n/a	8:05	364	-	2,365
W-4	Feb 16, '15	9:22	n/a	n/a	9:22	375	-	3,435
W-5	Feb 23, '15	10:25	n/a	n/a	10:25	295	-	2,768
W-6	Mar 2, '15	11:16	n/a	n/a	11:16	446	-	4,367
W-7	Mar 9, '15	10:19	n/a	n/a	10:19	450	-	4,955
W-8	Mar 16, '15	-	n/a	6:36	6:36	-	-	735
W-9	Mar 23, '15	2:31	n/a	1:20	3:51	413	-	n/a
W-10	Mar 30, '15	-	n/a	-	-	-	-	0
W-11	Apr 6, '15	-	n/a	-	-	-	-	0
W-12	Apr 13, '15	3:02	n/a	-	3:02	572	-	2,239
W-13	Apr 20, '15	9:42	n/a	-	9:42	475	2,099	476
W-14	Apr 27, '15	3:44	9:41	-	13:25	-	2,735	50
W-15	May 4, '15	5:33	5:17	15:17	26:07	530	4,004	1,584

Week of March 9, 2015: Best week yet, but writing takes so long... getting discouraged.

Week	Week start date	Days I wrote	Words written	Time used	WPH (avg)	WPH (writing)
W-7	Mar 9, 2015	6	4969	12:31	397	449

Re: Scheduling

So this is the end of my second week of early mornings, and it's working out fairly well. I fall asleep quite easily between 8:30 and 9:30, but still have a bit of trouble hauling myself out of bed. Also I've noticed that when I first started this I used to start writing right away, but now that I'm getting used to the schedule I spend time "waking up" with email checks just like I used to do in the evenings, so even though I get up 2 hours earlier, I only get about 1h20 of writing time in. And I hate when I'm on a roll and have to stop because I have to go to the real job.

This of course makes me flip flop back to 'why not just go back to nights?' If I'm going to 'waste' 40 minutes, I rather use that time to 'wake up' with a jog after the kids are in bed and then plow away with writing. That would also mean my social schedule gets less perturbed, and if I was on a roll I could run with it and push through work on less sleep, going to bed early to catch up. That inconsistent sleep schedule is bad for your overall health though. And my husband says I'm less cranky when I get up early, and less dead when I come home from work, heh. It's what I've been doing all my life though, so I feel myself gravitating to it.

Re: The long, long road...

This week was also the first major discrepancy between what I wrote and what I kept. So even though I wrote 4969, only 4550 remain. That stung.

I should be happy that I'm up to almost 5k a week. In the beginning that seemed like something I would never reach, but I still feel like it's not enough. Right now a lot of my weekly count is happening on the Tuesdays and Thursdays I have free. That's going to end, and then what? Back to the 1500-2000 words a week? Can't happen; I need to meet my goals. I'm impatient! The end of the road looks so far away, and then there's editing, and cover design, and marketing, and business stuff, and mailing lists, and figuring out how to stay anonymous.

I read somewhere that whenever you tackle a long task that you should visualize yourself a year from now, and looking back would you have wanted to start in on it earlier, even if it was just a little bit every day? And of course the answer would be yes. Even if I only have half a book the answer will be yes. But once I've got my mind into something I just want to dive right into it and burn through it until it's done. The fact that I can't because of my job is killing me.

I used to love my current job; I even proclaimed that it was the best job in the world, and I really did feel that way. Now every tiny little thing is getting to me, even if 90% of the time things are good, the 10% eats at my brain. And it comes down to the fact that I still work for someone else.

That's never really fit with me.

I started a dog walking business when I was 9. I did desktop publishing layouts in high school and early university but I felt more like a contractor. In my current part-time teaching job I feel like I'm in my own game, me and the students. I have a Department Head, but s/he doesn't tell me what to do; I just give him/her the grades. There's a freedom there. But in my bread-and-butter job I have a clear boss who I report to every week (and my new boss manages very differently than the old one. I used to feel like a team member whose ideas were appreciated; now I feel like a cog in the wheel who should just shut up and do the work.) While I enjoy the work and feel like I'm making a difference, the fact that it's employment won't change, and the environment is so very dependent on the personality of the person I report to. It's the fatal flaw that's gnawing at me, and making me quite unhappy with what most people would fall head over heels for.

I was reading on KBoards that there's no need to try to advance in two careers at the same time, and it hit me that that's really what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to get a promotion at work (largely so I only need to work one job to make ends meet instead of a full-time job plus a part-time job), and I'm trying to make this writing thing viable. I need to not give so much of myself to my day-job. I put in many hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime a year (I'm salaried, so it's expected), but I need to start delegating and protecting my time. Something has to give, and I can't expect my little boys to be the ones who have to go without their mommy. Sadly, that has been the case during peak periods at work, when they'd be heading to bed when I came home. That lasts 4-6 months. Brutal.

As an aside: I've never really blogged before I started this one, but man, writing all that stuff out is therapeutic. Reminds me of a study I read that showed that people who journal tend to have a better outlook, almost as much as those who go to therapy. I can see that.

To serialize or not to serialize

When I woke up a little past midnight tonight my brain was ruminating over whether or not to serialize my first book to take advantage of putting it in Kindle Unlimited and having 'many books' available right out of the gate.  My brain refused to turn off until an hour later, despite the fact that I have to wake up at 4:30...

Anyway, I was thinking of doing something along the lines of what Sean Platt, Johnny Truant, and David Wright of the Self Publishing Podcast do with their seasons and episodes. They've amassed quite a few of them now, so I was trying to figure out how long each one was. I've separated them into works with Sean and Johnny, and works with Sean and Dave, because when Johnny writes the first draft I find they tend to go longer and if edited could have been about 20% shorter. Kindle estimates on the high end of the standard 250 - 350 words per page and uses 350, so the word counts below are going by the page length of their complete seasons for season 1:

• Sean and Johnny
• Unicorn Western: Full Saga (Books 1-9) is 712 pages / 249k, so 27.5k per episode ($8.17)
• Robot Proletariat: Season One is 6 episodes and 388 pages / 136k, so 22.7k per episode ($6.27)
• The Beam: The Complete First Season is 6 episodes and 564 pages / 197k, so  33k per episode ($4.10)
• Sean and Dave
• Yesterday's Gone: Season One is 5 episodes and 503 pages / 176k, so 35k per episode ($4.96)
• Available Darkness: Season One (Episodes 1-6) is 339 pages / 119k, so 20k per episode ($4.96)
• WhiteSpace: Season One (Episodes 1-6 of the sci-fi horror serial) is 6 episodes and 367 pages / 128k, so 21k per episode ($4.96)

The episodes have chapters in them that run about 2-3k each.

Well, now I've used an hour of my writing time to satisfy my brain munchings and set up the above with Amazon affiliate links, so I should head back to actually writing the stuff I may or may not eventually serialize.

Week of March 1, 2015: I think this schedule is the best so far

Week	Week start date	Days I wrote	Words written	Time used	WPH
Week 6	Mar 2, 2015	6	4501	11:16	399

My husband was right; I just had to stick it out for more than a few days. During the weekdays there was only one day I didn't get up at 4:30am, and that was earlier in the week. When I tracked my alertness the first few days were "groggy", the next "ok" and near the end I said I was "in the zone", so I think I'm adapting. I've hit my weekly word count goal for the first time since I started, so yay! 
That said, there's still room for improvement. I realized that things will inevitably keep me from going to bed at 8:30 pm; most days it was more like 9 or 9:30 pm before I got in bed, so by the end of the week I had accumulated quite the sleep debt. I paid the price with a migraine Saturday evening, which screwed up Sunday. Can't afford screw ups like that.
So the new plan is to allow some "sleeping in" until 6:30 am on Saturday, to catch up, because I can't carry a sleep debt forever. That said, when I did that this week I felt on edge all day because I was used to starting my day writing. I put some time in later in the morning, but my WPH is higher first thing when I wake up (400-500, instead of ~300). 
Last week I projected the book would only be 80k, but now I'm thinking it will be 100k again. I'm at 18,352 and I still have 2 chapters before I break into Act 2a, which will bring me to about 25k per Act (Acts 1, 2a, 2b, and 3).

Week of Feb 23, 2015: New schedule... again.

Week of	Days I wrote	Words written	Time used	WPH
Feb 23, 2015	5	3070	10:25	295

My numbers this week aren't too bad considering I used a lot of time for mundane things. Managed to hire a new therapist for my son and got an eye exam (looks like I need my third pair of glasses in 9 months; hopefully things stabilize before I go blind or broke, oi!). I'm actually surprised that I got so much time in. I was off from my main job on Thursday but used the whole day preparing lectures and meeting with students for my second job, and I thought that would hit my word count hard. I did put in two insanely late nights, so that probably made up for it. I've noticed that the 10:30pm-12:30am window has the worst WPH, but the 12:30am-2:30am window is pretty good. Unfortunately the plan I implemented last week to stay up late a few days a week made me feel like a complete zombie.  My husband, bless his dear and patient soul, never laughs at me as I bounce my new scheduling plans off him each week (we have had this routine for many years; I have no idea how he keeps a straight face when I tell him that this week I'll figure out a schedule that catapults my productivity, heh). This time he had some advice: whatever plan I choose, stick to it for a whole month, not just a few days or a week. I figured that if I stay up late my brain is so dead that I have to put in more time to hit the same word count (yay data collection!), so mornings it is. So *drum roll* SJ's plan for the next MONTH is:
WEEKDAYS 4:30 am - 5:15 am: Wake up, shower, snack 5:15 am - 7:15 am: WRITE WRITE WRITE 7:15 am - 8:00 am: Breakfast with the kiddos, make lunches, get everyone out the door 8:00 am - 5:30 pm: MWF: Get to work, work, go home from work; TR: Write and/or do lecture prep 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm: Play with kids, have supper 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm: Kids bedtime routine 8:00 pm - 8:30 pm: Chores 8:30 pm: BED Estimated writing time: MWF: 2 hrs per day; TR: 3-4 hrs per day.  Total for weekdays: 12 - 14 hours per week.
WEEKENDS 4:30 am - 5:15 am: Wake up, shower, snack 5:15 am - 7:00 am: WRITE WRITE WRITE 7:00 am - 9:00 am: Hot breakfast with the kiddos, make lunches, get everyone out the door 9:00 am - 12:00 pm: WRITE while kids are at morning activities or with hubby (may or may not be possible depending on domestic chores) 12:00 pm - 7:00 pm: Family time, chores, exercise, etc. 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm: Kids bedtime routine 8:00 pm - 8:30 pm: Chores 8:30 pm: BED Estimated writing time: 4h45 per day. Total for weekends: 4.75 - 9.5 hrs per week. Total weekly time for writing: 16.75 -  23.5 hrs. At my dismal average of ~300 words/hr, I should get in ~5000 - 7000  words per week. That seems mind blowing to me. We'll see how it goes.
One notable impact is that this will essentially destroy my personal life, since staying up even until midnight will now through my schedule way off. But my social life is basically only seeing my friends once a month, so it should work. Also lacking is any exercise during weekdays. I really want to run for at least 30 minutes every day, but it never happens. If I could get by on 7 hours a night at get up at 3:30 I'd be set, ha! My husband says that I might be able to not feel like a zombie if I get a consistent amount each night (right now I'm on a binge sleep cycle, fluctuating between 4 hours and then several nights of 9 or more). We'll see. When I went without setting clocks I needed 8.5 consistently. Sigh.
One note for this week: I've got 5 chapters in to my book and my spreadsheet calculates that, based on my average chapter length and a plan for 24 chapters, my book will likely be 80,000 words instead of 100,000, so I've changed my ticker on the side to 80,000.

Week of Feb 16, 2015: Aiming for stamina + scheduling

Week of	Days I wrote	Words written	Time used	WPH
Feb 16, 2015	3	3514	9:22	375

Best week yet in terms of numbers, but still not where I want to be. I've been taking Tuesdays and Thursdays off to write and teach (I don't really get "weekends" with two young kids, I just do the mommy job really). Yet despite having all the day available I seem to only log 3.5 to 4 hours of writing. I have to increase my stamina to be more productive on those days, which should really be my powerhouse days. I'd also love to write every day.
I took some time to come up with yet another schedule to try to fit in my day job, part-time job, and writing, and of course family and exercise (although I have yet to get to that last one; I hope I don't die young). They say regular sleep is more important than the number of hours, but my normal cycle is to stay up until crazy-o'clock (as in 2am when I have to get up at 6:30am) and then go to bed early the next few nights to catch up. The potential new schedule looked more reasonable because it had a solid 8:15 of sleep each night, but I don't know how realistic it is. I think I'd do better with longer chunks of time less often, but if Tuesday and Thursday are any indication, maybe not.
I also got thrown a curve ball this week. My son's therapist is moving on to a higher level position so we have to find someone else within two weeks, which will be challenging if not impossible. Taxes are due and I have a very sizeable bill. And I've run out of lectures for my course and have to make more. Fun times.
I got most of the taxes squared away this weekend (earned myself a guilt trip from the kiddos who must think, "don't disturb mommy, she's working" is the natural state of things). I thought I'd just do a course prep marathon in the week coming up and take care of that and a bunch of other domestic stuff (hire a therapist for my son, get my eyes checked and new lenses, order a car seat replacement buckle, refute parking tickets, pay life insurance... the List of Boring goes on). At some point I have to replace my 10-year-old hot water boiler before it explodes, but knowing how life is it will probably get ignored until it explodes and we have even bigger problems. 
I'm thinking I should just give into my natural patterns and schedule marathon sessions. Stay up until 2am on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays, and take a nap in the middle of the day on Tuesdays and Thursdays (plus in bed early Saturday and Sunday). Hmmm. Gonna go work that out and see how it shapes up. =) Maybe at some point I'll figure out how to get more hours into the day.

Weekly progress chart -- OLD VERSION

I am a new writer, still trying to work out how to be productive and how to write faster. I also love data, and track my output in a spreadsheet. Here I just wanted a place where I could post the weekly totals that I discuss in my Sunday updates, so I could see everything at a glance. I'll be updating this every week.

Note: I have changed this to display 2 WPH: one is the overall average, which includes when I'm editing (a lot slower WPH) or when I'm typing new things (the one that matters).

Week	Week start date	Days	Words written	Time used	WPH (avg)	WPH (writing)
W-1	Jan 26, 2015	4	1707	6:15	273	n/a
W-2	Feb 2, 2015	4	2404	10:10	236	n/a
W-3	Feb 9, 2015	3	2945	8:05	364	n/a
W-4	Feb 16, 2015	3	3514	9:22	375	n/a
W-5	Feb 23, 2015	5	3070	10:25	295	n/a
W-6	Mar 2, 2015	6	4501	11:16	399	469
W-7	Mar 9, 2015	6	4969	12:31	397	449

I have changed the way I track things. See my new post.

How to not track your own page views in Blogger

For quite some time now Blogger has not been able to screen out my own page views. But I think there's a solution! You can find it here. In case the site goes down, it's just a matter of entering www.yourdomain.com/b/statsBlockingCookie?action=SET&callback=__gwt_jsonp__.P2.onSuccess in the address bar.

Week of Feb 9, 2015: Going to try getting up early

Well, I got in more words this week than last (2945 vs. 2404) and in less time (8:05 vs. 10:10) but my WPH is still only 364. I have to get that up. Sadly last week I only wrote on 3/7 days, largely due to being tired in the evenings. So I'm biting the bullet and getting up early, cold-turkey and no setting the clock back by so much every day business, and getting BIC (butt-in-chair). We'll see how that works out!

How to get the most money out of Amazon royalties when converting to Canadian dollars

I was catching up on KBoards today and discovered that Amazon uses a very, very unfavourable exchange rate when converting payments from USD to CDN if you have them direct deposit into a Canadian bank account. Many try to get around this by ordering cheques in USD, but this comes with a delay and other bank fees. Alternatively you can set up direct deposit to a US bank account (they won't direct deposit to a Canadian bank account that uses US funds; the bank itself has to be in the US). Conveniently, many Canadian banks have branches in the US, so it's just a matter of finding one with a good fee schedule. The two popular choices seemed to be TD Bank and RBC. Discussions on KBoards seem to suggest that RBC may be slightly better for online transfers. Because I love the business side of things I decided to look further into it. I tried my best, but please note that I'm only human and I may have made some mistakes below. If you spot any, please let me know!

TD Bank costs $5.99/mth USD ($7.49 CDN) for "Simple Checking" but to do "person-to-person" email money transfers "you must have a TD Bank Personal Checking account, a unique United States phone number, a United States issued Social Security Number" (see here), and same goes if you want to do "online banking transfers" to external institutions (just $3 USD if you're willing to wait 3 days, but useless with no US address). On KBoards there was some disagreement on how money could get out of the TD accounts (wire transfers are expensive: $40 USD).  To avoid high fees it seems most economical to get a Canadian TD account in USD (can get one with no monthly fee, just $1 CDN per transaction), transfer for free between the US and CDN TD banks, then either cash the money out at a local TD bank using their conversion rate, or do an email money transfer for $1.50 CDN to your normal institution and use their admin fee rate. The two options are outlined below, using PC Financial (PCF) as the everyday baking account. PCF charges 2.5% for currency conversion after conversion takes place; currently $1 USD = $1.2510 CDN, so $200 USD = $250.21 CDN and the fee would be $6.26. For the sake of argument, I assume only one deposit per month. All calculations are in CDN (I assume that US Bank site fee listings are in USD):

• TD (US) > TD (Canada in USD) > PCF (in CDN): $7.49 in monthly fees + $1.00 transaction at TD (Canada) + $1.50 interac transfer + $6.26 admin conversion fee at PCF (2.5%) = $14.75, or 6.49% of the CDN value. 
• TD (US) > TD (Canada in USD) > TD Converts: $7.49 in monthly fees + $1.00 transaction at TD (Canada) + $6.95 admin conversion fee (~2.78%) = $15.44, or 6.17% of the CDN value.

Meanwhile, RBC (US) charges  $3.95/mth USD ($4.94 CDN) for "Direct Checking" but doesn't seem to have an email money transfer option. Wire transfers cost $75 USD. A Canadian USD account is only $2/mth CDN, and internal transfers to/from other RBC accounts are free, so once funds are moved into the Canadian USD account it can be sent to any banking institution by email money transfer for $1 CDN (your bank's admin fee would apply to the transferred USD), or you could go to an RBC bank and convert the USD in your Canadian account to CDN.

• RBC (US) > RBC (Canada in USD) > PCF (in CDN): $6.94 in total monthly fees + $1.00 interac transfer + $6.26 admin conversion fee at PCF (2.5%) = $14.20, or 5.68% of the CDN value. 
• RBC (US) > RBC (Canada in USD)  > RBC converts: $6.94 in total monthly fees + $8.39 in RBC conversion fees (as determined by the difference between xe.com and RBC's non-cash calculator; ~3.35%) = $15.33, or 6.13% of the CDN value.

Alternatively, if one is patient enough to wait for Amazon to send USD cheques, one could deposit them directly into ones personal banking ABM. Fees abound, however, depending on your bank. PC Financial's "no fee" checking account, for example, charges $7.50 for deposited cheques $1000 or less, and $15 for $1000 or more, plus the 2.5% admin charge for the conversion.

• Deposit USD check into TD Canadian USD account and convert: $1.00 transaction charge + $6.95 conversion fee = $7.95, or 3.18% of the CDN value.
• Deposit USD check into RBC Canadian USD account and convert: $2.00 monthly fee +  $8.39 conversion fee = $10.39, or 4.15% of the CDN value.
• Deposit USD check into PCF: $0 monthly fee + $6.26 admin conversion fee at PCF (2.5%) + $7.50 foreign currency cheque charge = $13.76, or 5.50% of the CDN value.

So the most economical rate appears to be going with cheques after all, with TD. For direct deposit, RBC and an external bank for conversion seems to be the best route, but it will cost a whopping 2.5% more that way.

Week of Feb 2, 2015: Week 2 of data collection

Now entering week 2 of data collection. Last week I spent 6:15 writing and wrote 1707 words. This week I'm up to 10:10 writing, and wrote 2404 words. My WPH is going down, but at least I'm getting more on the page overall. It's a far cry from my 4403 words per week goal, but I'm getting there.

I have the day off of my full-time job on Tuesday and rather than going on a date with my husband I'm going to spend half the day working on lectures, and the other half on writing. I'm 3388 words behind and have to catch up! The red numbers on my spreadsheet really scream how far I'm getting behind, and it's certainly driving me to write and get back in the green. Maybe I'll reward myself with a movie date once I'm back on track, heh.

Finding time to write: Blocking internet access at certain times of day in linux (and making it a recurring task)

Yet another productivity post. My switch to 3 days/week at the full-time job happened this week, but I had to use Tues/Thurs to do lecture prep as I was hired as a last-minute emergency replacement (teaching is my part-time job). My writing time will be less than optimal for the next 2 weeks until I finish all the lectures (or at least catch up a bit), but I did find myself with some spare time tonight around 9pm when the kids were in bed. I figured I'd get in a good 1.5 hours or so, but I wasted the time. Sigh. Warning: the rest of this post might be boring for Windows/Mac users, but if you run Linux, it may be helpful:

I run Linux Mint on my desktop and laptop, and for the last few months I used a modified hosts file to prevent myself from accessing distracting sites on my desktop computer. This is fairly simple. Just type:

sudo gedit /etc/hosts

Then add the following to the end of the file:

0.0.0.0 www.facebook.com

0.0.0.0 www.upworthy.com

Etc. When you try to access the site, it won't be able to connect. This worked fine for awhile, but then I would do google searches and just get lost on other sites (like I did tonight). Sure, I'm reading and learning, but I really didn't need to learn tonight; I needed to write. 

Ideally I wanted a script to turn off all internet traffic at certain times of day (like between 7:30pm and 11:30pm, after the kids are in bed but before I am!), but only on my computer. I found a script by zengargoyle that can do this. First you'll need to install the "at" command (it's not installed by default on Mint):

sudo apt-get install at

Then make a file:

sudo gedit /usr/bin/SelControl

Copy the following into the file:

#!/bin/bash

#from http://ask.metafilter.com/160649/Block-internet-on-ubuntu

PORTS="80" # OR enter PORTS="80 443" for https as well

UNDO=""

for p in $PORTS

do

  iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp --dport $p -j DROP

  UNDO="$UNDO iptables -D OUTPUT -p tcp --dport $p -j DROP;"

done

echo $UNDO | at now + 1 min # <-- change to time you want internet off for

I chose not to block port 443, because I still wanted Google Drive to sync my files in the background. This means that secure websites (those starting with https) still work, so I can still go a simple google search to get a quick definition, but the results are duds :) Once you save the file, you have to make it executable:

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/SelfControl

And then you just run it whenever you want to block internet access:

sudo ./SelfControl

Now this was all well and good in principle, but what often gets me is that I'll "just check one little thing" before writing... and that ends up being quite a lot of things; a whole writing block of time of things. I needed something I could set and forget. For that, I had to set up a cron job (as root, so I could change IPTABLES).

sudo gedit /etc/crontab

Then at the end of the file add:

# added by [your name] to shut off internet at certain times

30 19 * * * root iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j DROP

30 23 * * * root iptables -D OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j DROP

The first number refers to minutes, the second to hours on a 24 hour clock, and the last 3 *s refer to day, month, and day of the week, so * for all three means every day (learn more here). The above turns off access to port 80 (http internet sites) from 7:30 pm to 11:30 pm daily. If you're between your start time and end time on the first day you set this up, just type in:

sudo iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j DROP

to turn off access, and the cron job will turn it back on again at the time you set. If there's an emergency and you ABSOLUTELY NEED to access a website (that isn't https), you can type:

sudo iptables -D OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j DROP

So my hope is that this will force some productivity on me by the sheer lack of anything else to do. That said, blogger is https, so I can still post during writing time, haha. If you'd rather turn off everything (at the risk of not syncing files in the background) just add port 443 to the above. I'm not quite there yet!

Week of Jan 26, 2015: Productivity and optimizing writing speed

I follow quite a few author blogs. One of those is Dean Wesley Smith's. Everyday he outlines his writing achievements of the day, which I found interesting to read in the beginning, but they've become somewhat monotonous. That said, I think blogging about progress is an excellent way to hold yourself accountable, a topic that author-entrepreneur Joanna Penn wrote about this week (someday I'll write a post with all the excellent blogs I follow). In the interests of holding myself accountable but not becoming too monotonous, I thought I might write weekly progress updates.

This is the first week that I actually feel I may be able to do this. It's my final crazy week at work, but my don't-break-the-chain's are keeping me on track regardless, and I feel like I'm getting back into "the zone." I think having achievable baby-step goals really helps it feel less daunting. I've printed out my "production calendar" and will put it up with the rest of my goals in my dining room. (Production goals are another thing Dean is big on.)

My little productivity worksheet is now tracking how many words I write a day. Unfortunately I'm finding that if I write 500 and delete 200 old ones from yesterday, my count is still only 300. I both like and dislike this. It's good because realistically I'm only 300 words closer to my goal; it's bad because I don't really have a good grasp on how fast I can write, and that hurts my scheduling. After reading Rachel Aaron's post on how she used data collection to improve her writing efficiency (check out Step 2), I started keeping a spreadsheet to track how much I write at certain times of day and how I'm feeling. I'll do some rough analysis once I have some data. (I'm a real fan of data; if you are too, you may want to check out the quarterly Author Earning Reports run by Data Guy and Hugh Howey.)

Every Sunday I will (try to) update my word counter on the sidebar, an idea I gleamed from Hugh Howey, a very successful indie author. I'm up to 11,000 if I count early half outline/half draft versions of Act I, which I won't. So looks like 2800.