Friday Done List April 3

It's Easter Week. Whatever time I haven't been baking and cleaning, I've been angsting about not being able to write. In Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman says sometimes we have to accept we can't do everything.

Next week I will begin again.

Time Management Tuesday: Recalling "Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals" Brings Back the Good Old Days

Recently--Sunday, in fact--author Ryan T. Pozzi suggested on BlueSky that people read Chapter 13 of Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. I have that book! And it was Sunday, when I feel as if I should be able to go off on deep tangents with my reading. (I often go off on tangents with my reading, they're just not deep as a general rule.) And Chapter 13 isn't that long. So, I did, indeed, read it.

Back in 2021, I did a seven-part arc on Four Thousand Weeks, a blog-while-you-read thing. I found the book to be much more about time philosophy than time management, and Chapter 13 is very representative of that. Burkeman seems more concerned with how we should live than he is with finding ways for us to manage our time so we can live as we want to live. That is not a criticism. We're just talking two different ways of thinking about and talking about time. 

For those of us who are intent on trying to manage our time so we can live as we want to, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals doesn't seem to have a lot to offer. However, rereading Chapter 13 led me to skim my Four Thousand Weeks blog posts. I was reminded of some philosophical points I want to try to keep in mind.

Chapter 13 Cosmic Insignificance Therapy

Chapter 13 deals with the idea that individually we're not all that important in the grand scheme of things. And this is good for us. We can lower the bar and use our time to enjoy the small moments of life, knowing that we are not expected to struggle to use our lives to accomplish something big and profound. Enjoy your time in your pollinator garden, Gail, without worrying that it doesn't attract much in the way of bees, which is what you're supposed to be doing with it. It's okay to admire the spring ephemerals you planted, even though you know they don't do much except please you.

This knowledge can be a relief, as Burkeman says, though, personally, I've known people who would take a we're-not-that-important-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things philosophy to mean that there's no reason for them to make an effort with, say, environmentalism or voting. One person doesn't make a difference, after all. I feel this attitude carries a bit of risk. 

But it's good for me, since it's pollinator garden time!

We Pay for What We Do with Hours of Our Lives

In another portion of the book, Burkeman writes that when we become distracted with something like social media, we pay for the time we spend on the distraction with hours of our lives, the hours we could have been using to do something we value more. He didn't elaborate on this point, but it was meaningful to me, because it was similar to something I'd read about minimalism. When you buy something, you really pay for it with the hours of your life it took to make the money you exchanged for it. 

I'd forgotten about Burkeman's view of social media, though I have been applying something like it, nonetheless, to my on-line reading in general. Do I need to read any more about the man formerly known as Prince Andrew? Do I need to read about this week's best memes? If I could stop doing that, wouldn't I have more time for reading the New Yorker and all the links to journal articles I keep saving? It's a possibility, at least. 

Procrastination is a Solution to a Problem

Time management writers usually deal with procrastination as a problem to be solved. Burkeman has a fascinating spin on it. He sees procrastination as a solution to a problem we may not even know we have. The real problem is that the work we're doing is hard. Or it's boring. Or we know it's going to get us nowhere. We may not even be aware that we're trying to escape it when we rush off to Facebook or BlueSky, where we can find something easy and interesting to do and quickly. We just think we're procrastinating. 

Figuring out what problem we're trying to escape and trying to deal with it might be a better use of time than heading to social media. Maybe it could make some kind of change in our lives.

I Need to Do More with Time Management 

I haven't been reading or writing much about time management the last few years, because I've seen so many people on-line writing about the subject who clearly have no background to be doing so. They've just read a book or even some on-line material about it. Which sounds a lot like me. I'd rather not be that person.

But while I haven't been reading or writing about time management, my ability to manage my own time has been spiraling. Going over my Four Thousand Weeks blog posts brought back the days when I was hungry for ways to get things done and sometimes even finding a few. I'm going to go back to some time management writing because it makes me feel good, which I think Oliver Burkeman would appreciate.

One thing I've done to manage time recently is revise blog posts for essays that I could submit to publications on the Medium platform. As luck would have it, one of the first essays I wrote in this way was We Are All Going to Die, In Case You Weren't Feeling Enough Time Pressure, which was published back in 2022. It's a review of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. 

Time Management Tuesday: Recapitulation 2025

Don't you just love assessing yourself? I do, which suggests that I am very easy on myself.

I've been doing a recapitulation post related to my work (yeah, I'm not touching my personal life) since 2012. You can read about the Yoga Journal article that inspired my annual recapitulation. 

What recapitulation involves, for my purposes, is going over the work goals and objectives I created back in January and assessing how I did with them. Among other things, it helps set me up for creating work goals and objectives for the next years. 

The Heritage Month Project became a very big part of my reading, blogging, and writing this year. In fact, two of my Medium essays on Heritage Month reading were boosted by the platform, which drew a lot of readers to one of them. The Heritage Month Project was not a goal for 2025. I must have thought of it in January.

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

My plan was for this to be my main focus for 2025. And it was.

Objectives:

• Work on the starts made during December. Yes! I worked on 7 of these starts, submitted them, and had 3 accepted for publication.
• Make two submissions a month. Anything. Anywhere. I made 53 submissions this year, so I nailed this objective. Though I wasn't formal about getting 2 out a month, I must have done more than that. For those 53 submissions I got 19 publications, including 1 to a college literary magazine, which was gratifying. Yes, good to recall that, since not 5 minutes ago I got a rejection from an on-line litjournal.
• Read short-form work every day, using my new reading system that I will someday do a blog post about. Both to enhance my mind, of course, but to look for new publications to submit to. Try to read both a short story and an essay from that system I just mentioned. I have no recollection of that reading system was. I did use Lent as a temporal landmark to manage reading short-form work every day during that period. It was not a good experience.
• Focus on short-form reading during Retreat Week, which is coming up soon. I think I did that. The thing I really recall from last year's Retreat Week was watching videos from a local historical society. Those were great.
• Expand my reading of publications on the Medium platform, looking for new sites to submit to. Yes.
• Take workshops on short-form writing. Took 7 workshops! Also, at the beginning of the year, I started going through notes from earlier workshops, which was helpful, but I didn't finish.
• Spend more time with essay Facebook group. Really. Maybe I should just give up this objective.
• Revise a chapter in my scifi adult book as a short story. I started it!
• Submit that scifi story, of course. It should go without saying, but these are objectives, so I'm saying it. I didn't finish the short story, so I didn't get to this point.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

I made this a more important goal last year. The point was to broaden readership and create an identity as a short-form writer.

Objectives:

• Keep the short-form publications features on website updated. I have trouble doing this. I'm behind. 
• Continue with the Annotated Reading posts on Original Content, which support other writers. I gave up on this when I got started on the Heritage Month Project.
• Continue promoting the Annotated Reading posts on BlueSky, which both supports other writers and connects with them. Continued until I stopped doing the Annotated Reading posts.
• Continue republishing the Annotated Reading posts as Random Reading articles on Medium. This both supports other writers and fills any gaps in my publishing history there. The bulk of the work is already done, so we're not taking a labor-intensive task. Stopped that when I stopped doing the Annotated Reading posts here. Those received no attention on Medium.
• Attend virtual events for writers. I can't recall any of these. There may be far fewer of them now.
• Attend local events for local writers. I went to a fantastic book walk featuring local writers.
• Continue supporting local writers on Facebook by sharing their local public events. Yes. I did quite a bit of this.
• Update website and blog to feature BlueSky instead of Twitter. Done.
• Work on increasing followers on both Medium and BlueSky. Even though many of the people who follow me at those places do not seem to be people who would be at all interested in my writing. Perhaps you have read that engagement on Blue Sky is low? I find that to be very true. Expanding followers there is very difficult. Part of this may be because on Twitter I was still part of a children's lit world and that was a big part of my Twitter world. On BlueSky I concentrate on other types of writers and publications, and it's always difficult to break into a new network.

Goal 3. Submit book-length Work to Agents and Editors 

This was way down in my goal list this year. I have the manuscripts done, so I haven't forgotten about them. But they're no longer my big focus.

Objectives:

• Submit to an agent if one catches my attention. It appears that I submitted to 5 agents this year.
• Submit this month to an agent who has already caught my eye. Three of the 5 submissions were in January, so presumably the agent I was referring to here was one of them.
• Follow agents on BlueSky. I have not done this since moving to BlueSky. That's how iffy I feel about pursuing this goal. Not many.
• Take part in BlueSky pitches. I'll be missing the first one next week while on retreat. I found very few of these.
• Pay attention to agents featured in SCBWI's monthly publication. Yes,

Goal 4. Play with the 19th Century Novel Idea, Which Does Have a Title, But is Mainly a Fun Think Piece

Objectives:

 

• Continue researching fun stuff. Yes.
• Continue using the organizational system of the fun stuff research that I managed to create the end of last year. Not that great an organizational system.
• Focus on creating characters. Yes. And came up with a few more. Because you can never have too many characters, right?
• Focus on more plot points. I actually did well on this.
• Maybe write some bits and pieces. Started a couple scenes during the Advent Project.
• Read more historical fiction. I definitely did this.

Thoughts Regarding 2025

Finding time to work was a struggle this year, yet I managed 53 submissions and 19 publications. I would have liked broader readership for those published works but having them published is part way there. Also, not all of those submissions were for new work, but finding submission opportunities for older work is time well-spent, too.

As usually happens, creating this recapitulation post has provided me with some ideas for next week's goals and objectives for 2026. Stay tuned.

Time Management Tuesday: Looking Forward to the End of the Holidays Doesn't Mean You Hate Them. It Means You Love Temporal Landmarks.

Last week I got an email from the Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio with a link to its spring Zoom writers' workshops. I went through that thing like a gardener sucking up a seed catalog in January. I am excited about putting the holidays behind me so I can take workshops, get back to a more regular writing schedule, take on a new reading project to replace this year's Heritage Project, increase my market research, start new submissions, and....everything! I am psyched for everything! 

My sister, a serious rubber stamper and card maker, looks forward to Christmas being over so she can deal with a "to be answered" box filled with letters, a craft room that is a wreck, and a table that is piled high. I do not know what table she is talking about or what it could possibly be piled high with.

I don't believe that what we're feeling is any kind of intense dislike for Christmas and the labor and distraction leading up to it. Instead, I think we are feeling the impact of the temporal landmarks, calendar events that provide opportunities for fresh starts, that surround us right now.

A number of cultures celebrate holidays at the end of the year, each with a lead-in season beforehand involving ritual, food, and, well, shopping. The beginning of all those holiday seasons is a temporal landmark, marking the start of something. The holiday comes, and now you've got another temporal landmark, the beginning of "after the holidays." 

Then, of course, it being December we have the end of one year and the beginning of the new one, a very big temporal landmark that has a big impact psychologically.

All those temporal landmarks coming together provide some significant power, drawing us, at least my sister and me, into the excitement of what's coming up. 

Being excited for what's coming up in life doesn't mean you can't enjoy what's happening now, your holiday. And enjoying your holiday doesn't mean you can't look forward to what you're going to be doing in the coming new period. We're not talking a binary, either/or situation. Instead, this is a classic example of being able to hold two thoughts in your head at the same time.

Enjoy whatever holiday you observe and best wishes for whatever you're excited about doing in the next few months.

Time Management Tuesday: The Advent Project. Or The Holiday Hell Project. Whichever You Prefer.

Since 2021 I've been spending my Decembers on what I call either the Advent Project or the Holiday Hell Project, a way of writing while dealing with the hell of preparing for a holiday that is a bizarre combination of materialism, media-induced spirituality, nostalgia, and some other stuff. In addition, we are one of those families that routinely has relatives terminally ill or actually dying in December or, if we're lucky, we're waiting for medical test results. Or, if we're really lucky, someone is just run-of-the-mill sick at the peak holiday time. 

Our history is bad enough that as December approaches I often feel undirected, low-level fear. This year we have ducked health crises so far, or gotten them out of the way early, but we have two different family groups going on extensive trips, involving flying out of the country. And back. Why? Why? No, I am not filled with the freakin' joy of the season. 

Or maybe I am. This is the joy of the season here. 

Which brings us to the Advent Project.

The Advent Project 

My Advent Project, which I believe I've also called my December Project as well as the aforementioned Holiday Hell Project, leans on the concept of temporal landmarks, calendar dates/events that mark a difference of some sort. Temporal landmarks make people feel they can begin something new.

If there's anything I love, it's beginning again.

And that's what I do during the Advent Project. I accept that this is a rough time of year to get anything done and just focus on beginnings. I try to begin a new writing project each day. I get something down in Word, file it, and then walk away and do whatever else I need to do for December. 

Where do these beginnings come from?

• My writer's journal.
• Beginnings from earlier years that I didn't do anything with and add some more to that earlier work. Yeah, begin again. I'm not a purist about this. I want to generate material.
• I'd like to take a peek at very old projects in the filing cabinet and either start something with them or throw them away.

Last year, I did, indeed, make 25 beginnings. You only need 25, because Advent ends on Christmas Day! Maybe Christmas Eve. I don't know. But my point is, I didn't have to slog it out to the end of the month.

• 7 of those beginnings were moved to working files in 2025
• 7 of those beginnings that made it to working files in 2025 were submitted
• 3 of those beginnings were published

Not big numbers, but, remember, all those beginnings are still available for me to do something with in the future. I may tinker with some of them this month. Beginning is hard.

Also, other years' beginnings ended up worked on, submitted, and sometimes published.

Get this, I was pleased with today's beginning until I looked at last year's beginnings and realized I'd begun it then, too. So now I've put those two beginnings together, and I have a lot of material to work with in January. Don't think I'm not excited about that.

That's one of the positives of the Advent Project. When it's working, I feel excitement about going to work after it's over.

I've done today's beginning as well as this blog post (and received an acceptance on a humor piece I wrote over the long weekend), and now I can walk away to maybe do a little Christmas work and try to deal with the disorder that's somehow accumulated around me. As it does in December.

Happy Advent Project!

Time Management Tuesday: My Lenten Reading Project. Yeah, It Didn't Go Well

I am what might be called a cultural Christian. I went to sunrise service at our lake this past Sunday, because it only lasts a half an hour, I could throw a coat on over blue jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt, and when I got home around 7:30 AM I could feel that I had been to church on Easter and now had the rest of the day for other things. I took pictures to prove to family members I'd gone.

I cling to some of the trappings of my Christian life. 

For instance, I like using the beginnings of some of the Christian church seasons as temporal landmarks, a point at which I can start a new project that I complete at the end of the season. I've been successful with my Advent/Holiday Hell projects the last few years. I just finished a Lenten reading project that I'm not as happy with.

Traditionally Catholics and maybe other Christians give up doing something during Lent. That's little Catholic Gail's recollection of Lent--fish sticks or macaroni and cheese for dinner on Fridays and giving something up. Sometime in the more recent past I read a suggestion that instead of giving something up for Lent, we take something on we don't normally do.

I want to point out that I am aware that that writer probably meant taking on something spiritual. I took on some different kinds of reading. While I don't actually feel bad about that, I recognize that I should.

In 2016 I did a Lenten reading project involving nonfiction. And you want to hear something bizarre? I see that that is when I finished reading How to Live: A Life of Montaigne by Sara Bakewell, and a month and a half ago I submitted a personal essay involving Montaigne to an anthology. And just last week I submitted a humor piece involving Montaigne to a humor site. Wow. Is that almost spiritual?

Then in 2023 I read The Essential Ruth Stone during Lent and liked the experience enough that I continued reading the book after Easter until I'd finished it.

2025 Lenten Reading Project

This year I came up with the idea to read a short story a day during Lent...any short story...because I'm focusing on short form writing now and even doing some self-study of short story writing. Expanding my knowledge of short stories seemed like such a good idea.

Except I don't feel I expanded my knowledge much. In fact, I didn't get much out of this project at all. I did read a New Yorker short story I liked a lot and think I can use for next month's Heritage Month Project. But many times, I had to rush to get the reading done for the day and just chose any random piece of flash fiction I could find. Then I wanted to keep a list of everything and that was time consuming.

No, not one of my more successful projects.

Oh, wait. You know what I should have done? I should have done a sentence or two of reader response for each story. Well, live and learn.

Note in the list below that towards the end of Lent, I started reading Shirley Jackson short stories. I have her book, Let Me Tell You, and read some of the essays in that for Women's History Month. If only I'd just read the short stories from that book these past 40 days, I'd probably have finished it. That would have felt like an accomplishment.

In fact, I think that's what was wrong with this project. It wasn't focused enough, the way my reading of Ruth Stone's book was. If I had just read Jackson...yes, that could have worked for me.

My Short Story Reading List

Ash Wednesday, March 5: Good Stretch, Rebecca Meacham https://wigleaf.com/202004stretch.htm

March 6: Maladies, Kevin Yeoman https://www.failbetter.com/content/maladies

March 7: Everyday Miracles, Benjamin Woodard  https://mrbullbull.com/newbull/fiction/everyday-miracles/

March 9: Traps, Kara McKeever https://cutleafjournal.com/content/traps

March 10: This Used to be a Story About a Racoon But Now It’s An Obituary, Ani King   https://gooseberry-pie.com/this-used-to-be/

March 11: Dried Up, Kim Magowan  https://cutleafjournal.com/content/dried-up

March 11 (Catching up for March 8):  “Family Portrait” 1860, Rebecca Meacham https://atticusreview.org/family-portrait-1860/

March 12: Footprint, Jennifer Handy https://flywayjournal.org/fiction/jennifer-handy-footprint/

March 13: The Last Murmuration of Gwyneth, Winnie Bright https://writingdisorder.com/winnie-bright-fiction/

March 14: The Procedure, P.A. Cornell https://www.abyssapexzine.com/2024/01/the-procedure/

March 15: Interesting About E and A, Helen Oyeyemi https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2016/03/interesting-about-e-and-new-short-story-helen-oyeyemi

March 16: The Frenzy, Joyce Carol Oates https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03/24/the-frenzy-fiction-joyce-carol-oates

March 17: The Golden Hours, Lynda M. Bayley  https://www.frazzledlit.com/p/the-golden-hours

March 18: The Paradise, Shirley Jackson

March 19: How to Bake Without Eggs, Edith-Nicole Cameron https://literarymama.com/articles/departments/2025/03/how-to-bake-without-eggs

March 20: Books and Roses, Helen Oyeyeme https://granta.com/books-and-roses/

March 21: Death and His Family, Francine Witte https://fictivedream.com/2025/03/02/death-and-his-family/

March 22: Firmanet, Engine Roar, Jewels, https://redrockreview.org/issue-51-2-2/fragment-engine-roar-jewels/

March 23: One Minute Thirty-five Seconds, Caleb Ludwick https://fracturedlit.com/one-minute-thirty-five-seconds/

March 24: How Hauntings Happen, Melissa Ostrom https://www.stonecoastreview.org/how-hauntings-happen/

March 25: Outer Space, Tom Saunders Outer Space - SmokeLong Quarterly

March 26: Sanctuary, JJ Amaworo Wilson  https://www.stonecoastreview.org/sanctuary/

Marcy 27: Gulls of the Argarve, Matt Barrett  https://flash-frog.com/2025/03/17/gulls-of-the-algarve-by-matt-barrett/

March 28: Harrison Road, Kate Gehan https://bluestemmagazine.com/sps24/kate-gehan

Mary 29: Snow Queen Seratonin, Mary Buchanan https://www.tinymolecules.com/issues/twentytwo#mary-buchanan

March 30: Angels, Mary Miller, https://www.vestalreview.net/angel

March 31: Marked, Desiree Cooper https://fracturedlit.com/marked/

April 1: Sorry I Didn’t Call You Back, Arah Ko https://splitlipthemag.com/poetry/0524/arah-ko

April 2: Dream Interpretations for Beginners, Miriam Gershow Issue 19 |Miriam Gershow – LEON Literary Review

April 3: Two Micros, Jeffrey Herman https://okaydonkeymag.com/2024/11/29/2-micros-by-jeffrey-hermann/

April 4: When He Says That You’re A Goddess, Amy Strong https://frictionlit.org/when-he-says-that-youre-a-goddess/

April 5: Materials Needed Kyle Weik https://flash-frog.com/2025/03/31/materials-needed-by-kyle-weik/

April 6: The Books of Losing You https://www.newyorker.com/books/flash-fiction/the-books-of-losing-you

April 7: Micro Monday (3) https://fictivedream.com/2025/04/07/micro-monday-1/

April 9: From, To, David Mezgozis https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/14/from-to-fiction-david-bezmozgis

April 10: Paranoia, Shirley Jackson

April 11: Still Life with Teapot and Students, Shirley Jackson

April 12: The Arabian Nights

April 13: Mrs. Spencer and the Oberons, Shirley Jackson

April 14: Easy Street, Steve Trumpeter https://www.bartlebysnopes.com/stories/easy-street.html

April 15: How We Met, Bruce Holland Rogers https://www.flashfictiononline.com/article/how-we-met/

April 16: It Isn’t the Money I Mind, Shirley Jackson

April 17: Company for Dinner, Shirley Jackson

April 18: The Greatest Guy in the World, Shirley Jackson

 

 

Time Management Tuesday: Heritage Months as Temporal Landmarks for Reading

Heritage months (also sometimes called history months) are designated periods of time during which various ethnic groups, often ones that have traditionally been viewed as outsiders or other, are recognized. They are like temporal landmarks, calendar events that create opportunities. I love temporal landmarks.

Various organizations recognize and support different heritage months. Northwestern University does a good job of recognizing more than one group per month. 

Right now, the U.S. Department of State recognizes nine heritage months, which I am listing here, just for the record. 

• Black History Month
• Women's History Month
• Arab American Heritage Month
• Jewish American Heritage Month
• Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
• Military Appreciation and National Veterans and Military Families Appreciation Months
• Caribbean-American Heritage Month
• Immigrant Heritage Month & World Refugee Day
• Hispanic Heritage Month 

My plan this year is to observe the months as the U.S. Department of State has listed them, because when I was planning this last fall, this was the most official looking list I found. I will stick with it to the extent that I can.

Now why would I want to plan a year of reading around heritage months?

So Many Books

Over the last 20 years or so, there have been surges of interest in just how many books are published each year in, let's say, the United States, since that's Original Content's home country. Here's one source that says 4 million books were published here in 2022. The same source says that 2.1 million books were self-published the year before, to try to give us an idea of what's going on with that. Quite honestly, though, I thought I saw a figure recently that said only 500,000 books are traditionally published in this country each year and another 1 and a half million are self-published, which would bring us to 2 million books, not 4.

Because 2 million books is so much more manageable a number than 4 million.

I am nitpicking in order to make the point that a lot of books are published each year. And then all those books are out there, and more books are published the next year and the next, plus there are all the books kicking around from years gone by.

So many books. I can't read them all. Neither can you.

So Hard to Find Numbers

Though there has been a great interest in increasing diversity in publishing since 2020, I can't find a lot of numbers to tell me what's happening with that. How many of those 2 or 4 million books are written by black writers or Asian writers or Arab American writers? If you scroll down here, you'll see that these people say that at whatever point this was published over 75 percent of writers in the U.S. were white, 7.6% were Hispanic, 5.9% Black, 4.9% Asian, and 0.4% American Indian/Alaska native. (These are their terms.)

The point I'm making now is that when a writing group is a small percentage of the whole writing group, they're going to produce a small percentage of the total number of books published. They can just physically only write so many books. Those books can easily get lost in the millions of books published. Even white readers who consider themselves color blind in their reading interests are not going to have a lot of books from nonwhite writers showing up in their personal book radar.

Where Heritage Months as Temporal Landmarks Come In

Writers can use temporal landmarks to help focus on particular things--using weekends for specific writing projects, assigning the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day for revision, using periods organized by groups, like National Poetry Month, to be their new draft time. This writer is going to use this year's heritage months as temporal landmarks to organize reading.

Why not just read these writers all year long? I do. But, like the people I described above, I only read what happens to pop up in front of me. Observing heritage months gives me an opportunity to do a little seeking out.

Additionally, as I said last year when I announced that I was going to do this, "when times are...strange, shall we say...publicizing the work of groups whose work didn't always get much attention in the past is something positive we can do. It doesn't involve name calling or ranting, which I've never seen doing anything for anybody."

Also, I love temporal landmarks. Focusing on one thing is just so freaking exciting. I am so up for this. I am actually reading two books now for Black History month. Sadly, I often peter out toward the end of a temporal landmark project, so I am worried the heritage months at the end of the year will be getting less attention from me. But I will just have to plan more carefully to avoid that, won't I?

My Real, and Very Shallow, Reason for Observing Heritage Months with My Reading

Lulu Blog has a lovely post on The Importance of Reading Black Literature. But it doesn't mention what I get from reading literature written by anyone from a group I don't belong to.

If you are a reader who has been around a while and has read a great deal...has read so much...a lot of what you read isn't what we might call new. There is a lot of sameness. There is a lot of old wine in a new flask kind of thing going on in books by your favorite writers or books in your favorite genres. Reading books by people in groups you're not as familiar with opens up opportunities to read about new characters and experiences. To read something different.

That's not a very virtuous reason for doing this. But maybe that's the best reason of all for reading the work of writers you're not familiar with. 

You should be hearing about my heritage month reading throughout the year.

 

Time Management Tuesday: Goals and Objectives for 2025

I have a number of Facebook friends who each choose a word to guide them for the new year. That just isn't enough for me. I don't need guidance. I need to be told exactly what I'm going to do. That is what goals and objectives do for you. That's why they're significant for time management. Goals and objectives are how we plan to use our time.

Once again, goals are what we plan to do. Objectives are the individual steps
we are going to take in order to meet the goals. I'm doing something a little different with the goal statements this year. I'm using some verbs instead of just phrasing them as topics. I've always used verbs in the objectives, but I think they should be in the goals, as well.

Goal 1. Write And Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

This will be the main focus of my 2025 work.

Objectives:

• Work on the starts made during December.
• Make two submissions a month. Anything. Anywhere.
• Read short-form work every day, using my new reading system that I will someday do a blog post about. Both to enhance my mind, of course, but to look for new publications to submit to. Try to read both a short story and an essay from that system I just mentioned.
• Focus on short-form reading during Retreat Week, which is coming up soon.
• Expand my reading of publications on the Medium platform, looking for new sites to submit to.
• Take workshops on short-form writing.
• Spend more time with essay Facebook group. Really. 
• Revise a chapter in my scifi adult book as a short story.
• Submit that scifi story, of course. It should go without saying, but these are objectives, so I'm saying it.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself And My Work

I'm making this a more important goal this year. The point being to broaden readership and create an identity as a short-form writer.

Objectives:

• Keep the short-form publications features on website updated.
• Continue with the Annotated Reading posts on Original Content, which support other writers.
• Continue promoting the Annotated Reading posts on BlueSky, which both supports other writers and connects with them.
• Continue republishing the Annotated Reading posts as Random Reading articles on Medium. This both supports other writers and fills any gaps in my publishing history there. The bulk of the work is already done, so we're not taking a labor-intensive task.
• Attend virtual events for writers.
• Attend local events for local writers.
• Continue supporting local writers on Facebook by sharing their local public events.
• Update website and blog to feature BlueSky instead of Twitter.
• Work on increasing followers on both Medium and BlueSky. Even though many of the people who follow me at those places do not seem to be people who would be at all interested in my writing.

Goal 3. Submit book-length Work to Agents and Editors 

This is way down in my goal list this year. I have the manuscripts done, so I'm not going to forget about them. But they're no longer my big focus.

Objectives:

• Submit to an agent if one catches my attention.
• Submit this month to an agent who has already caught my eye.
• Follow agents on BlueSky. I have not done this since moving to BlueSky. That's how iffy I feel about pursuing this goal.
• Take part in BlueSky pitches. I'll be missing the first one next week while on retreat.
• Pay attention to agents featured in SCBWI's monthly publication.

Goal 4. Play with the 19th Century Novel Idea, Which Does Have a Title, But is Mainly a Fun Think Piece

Objectives:

 

• Continue researching fun stuff.
• Continue using the organizational system of the fun stuff research that I managed to create the end of last year. 
• Focus on creating characters.
• Focus on more plot points.
• Maybe write some bits and pieces.
• Read more historical fiction.

I See a Change

Back when I first started doing this, I had many more goals. Was I doing more back then? I don't think so. I just didn't do some of those goals. I read somewhere recently that it is much better to do less and do it well. I would not say that I do things "well" when I concentrate on fewer goals, but I am sure I do things better when I concentrate on fewer of them. 

Time Management Tuesday: The Recapitulation Post, 2024!

I'm at it again, folks. Recapitulating, this time for 2024. I've been doing this since 2012. My ability to stick with things is impressive, isn't it? For what it is worth? Here you can read about the Yoga Journal article that inspired my annual recapitulation. 

What recapitulation involves, for my purposes, is going over the work goals and objectives I created back in January and assessing how I did with them. Among other things, it helps set me up for creating work goals and objectives for the next year.

I've got to say, 2024 was productive as far as, you know, productivity is concerned, but December had a lot of rejection. Not leaving the year on as much of a high as I should be.

Goal 1. Adult Essays, Short Stories, and Humor

Objectives:

• Complete a rough draft of something every week. (Nope. Not even close. In fact, I spent several months working on one traditional length short story. It was a situation I'd been thinking about writing about for a long time, so there's that.)
• Submit something somewhere every month. (I made 72 submissions this year. So, yeah, I nailed this one. Those 72 submissions resulted in 13 acceptances/publications. The most submissions done and acceptances I've ever had.)
• Increase my reading of short form work and journals that publish them. (Tried. Got a plan for next year. Plans are good.)
• Spend more time with essay writing Facebook group. (Again, nope.)
• Research changing membership at Medium and perhaps change it. (Did that, for what it was worth.)
• Take short-form writing workshops. (Took eight.)

Goal 2. Submit 143 Canterbury Road to agents

Objectives:

• Continue researching agents. (Yes. This is so tedious. I read about people who submit to a hundred agents for a project. How? They find that many people interested in their genre, age group, etc.? Because I don't.)
• Write a submission letter. (Yup.)
• Make submissions. (Eighteen submissions. I also submitted other book-length work to 13 agents. I believe the last of those rejections came in this month.)

Goal 3. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding

Objectives:

• Update the short-form writing links on website. (Done. But needs to be done again.)
• Provide social media support for other writers. (Yes, primarily for local writers, but also with the Annotated Reading posts. Also attended a couple of local author events.)
• Attend virtual events for other writers. (Didn't see many of these this year.)
• Be more organized about marketing own short-form work. (Define "organized.")
• Continue Original Content and promote posts. (Yes.)

Goal 4. 19th Century Novel, which is totally just for fun

Objectives:

• Research the fun stuff. (Well, I collected fun stuff.)
• Organize research of fun stuff. (I actually did that this past month.)
• Blueprint some fun parts. (Maybe in my mind?)
• Write bits and pieces, if they're fun. (A couple of bits.)
• Read more historical fiction and nonfiction. (Yes.)

Note that I had three real goals this year. My plan was to do more of certain types of writing by not spreading myself as thin. That did work, but it could have worked better.

Time Management Tuesday: Everything You Do Speaks to Everything You Didn't Do

This is one of those flash essays that begins with something that seems totally unrelated to the topic but is in reality a hooky lead-in to what the writer wants to address. You have been warned.

I spent two-and-a-half days of Thanksgiving weekend on a sewing retreat. In my laundry/sewing room. In my basement. By myself, though I found out yesterday that someone I know would have come sewed with me, if I'd thought to ask her. I hadn't done a sewing retreat since 2022. This time I was making shopping bags out of blue jeans and cloth Christmas bags out of remnants of Christmas material from years gone by, as well as some new fabric. I also mended Donkey.

This is what I believe is called unnecessary creation, which I read about in an essay by Todd Henry in a book called Manage Your Day-to-Day. Unnecessary creation involves creative activity engaged in by people who work in some other creative area. An example would be a writer who normally writes regularly who spends some time doing some sewing, a different type of creativity. The theory is that involvement in some other kind of creativity will spur your regular, daily creativity.

I have found this to be the case, particularly while playing with journals and reading during vacations. Or binge cooking. Something else happened with this sewing retreat, though.

But Unnecessary Creation Takes So Much Time!

My sewing retreat was a terrific experience. However, by Sunday I was dwelling on something I once read..."Everything you do speaks to everything you didn't do." There were other things, at least one of them being work-related, that I didn't do that weekend, and by midafternoon Sunday they were beginning to hang over me like death and taxes. I got a couple of them done that evening, but still I was very aware that there had been an opportunity cost for my weekend.

You can read about opportunity cost in an interview with Dan Ariely, also in Manage Your Day-to-Day. (Ariely's work, by the way, is the inspiration for the TV show The Irrational.) When you spend time on Activity 1, you no longer have the opportunity to use it on Activity 2. While I was spending time in my basement creating shopping bags out of old blue jeans, I couldn't spend that time on something else. 

What I Really Want to Write About is My Holiday Hell Projects

What this all is leading to is the Advent/Holiday Hell Projects I've been doing since 2021. You know, the project that involves me starting a different piece of short-form writing every day between December 1 and December 25. The idea being that these were all starts I could pick up and run with the next year.

This year I've been revisiting the starts from earlier years. Anything I like I do some more work on and move to the 2024 file. There have been quite a number of them. I only just started looking at the 2022 starts.

While I did finish, submit, and publish 8 of the 31 pieces from 2021, I did nothing with the other 23. Some of them I think were good and I could have gone somewhere with them. At least 1 I might have tried submitting somewhere as is. Instead, I forgot about them. I did even less with the starts from 2022 and 2023.

Why?

I can tell you why. During those years...years...I was working on an adult novel, 143 Canterbury Road. I was working on it even though I hadn't been able to sell a novel since before 2008, and I've never sold an adult novel. 

I was desperate to finish that book, though, and paid a very high opportunity opportunity cost for it. The time it took me to write that book I couldn't spend on short-form work, even though the last few years short-form work is the only writing I've been able to publish. 

In a lecture last week, author Steve Almond said, "You write about what you can't get rid of by other means." That was certainly the case with 143 Canterbury Road. The setting and some secondary characters were torn from the headlines of my life and writing about them was a sort of therapy. 

But therapy isn't free. My therapy had a hefty opportunity cost, because it kept me from other kinds of writing that I would almost certainly have been more successful with.

I'm out of therapy now, and 2025 is another year.

Time Management Tuesday: A Holiday Hell Project for Writers

In December, 2021, I went deep into something I called the Advent Project. I like the concept of Advent, because I like temporal landmarks, and Advent, being a roughly month-long season in the Christian liturgical calendar, is very much a temporal landmark. However, not everyone knows what Advent and the liturgical calendar are. Many Christians don't know what the liturgical calendar is. It occurred to me that calling it the Holiday Hell Project instead would not just be better communication in terms of people understanding it, but better communication in terms of what is actually happening here. We're talking about a project during Holiday Hell.

My legions of followers know that I have whined and complained about surviving December for years. And years. But that 2021 Holiday Hell Project kind of turned my life around. At least in December. I described how it came about back in February, 2022. That's not a story to brag about. But I was happy with how things turned out.

How Did Things Turn Out, Gail?

Well, what happened was that I accepted that I wasn't a writer who could write a lot during the month of December. It's all I can do to juggle writing and personal life during regular times of the year. Holiday Hell...I won't say it's beyond me. But it kind of is. And I am aware that I have it easy. Years ago, it wasn't unheard of for me to have a contractual deadline for a completed book draft in January, which meant some under-the-knife work in December. Yeah, that doesn't happen, anymore. Plus, I do not have to generate income in December. We're talking a privileged person here, and still I struggle to get to December 26.

So, in 2021, I accepted that I wasn't someone who could write a lot during December, but I could write some. The writing I did was short starts of flash and humor. And my goal was to do one every day. I found material in old writing journals. Some may have come from working files, things I'd started and revised during December, 2021.

• In 2021 I started 31 pieces. Eight of them were later completed and published. One has been completed and submitted.

That was a major success for me. I actually looked forward to 2022.

Things didn't go as well in 2022.

• I had only 15 starts. One was recently finished and submitted, though I must admit that I'd forgotten that I did anything with it in 2022 and started over again.

Last year, 2023, was a mixed bag, though I was excited about how things turned out. 

• I had 31 starts, but some of them were extremely brief with just a list of writing prompt questions to work on with them at a later time. One of them did become a traditional short story, though, and has been subbed a few times. It's out right now, in fact.

Are You Doing This Again, Gail? Because It Doesn't Look as If You Kept Up with This Very Well

Well, here's the thing. In December of 2022 and again in 2023, we had a family member waiting to have medical tests and/or waiting for results of medical tests. All resolved itself well, very well. But it's called Holiday Hell for a reason, folks. Even this year the cat just started two meds. 

But as Holiday Hells go, this year's is pretty copacetic, as a man I worked for when I was a teenager used to say. I am enjoying my Holiday Hell project this year.

In fact, I'm going through the starts from earlier years, seeing if there's anything I want to continue with. And by golly, there is. I haven't finished looking at the 2021 starts, and I've already moved six to this year. And there's a couple more I've got my eye on. Then there are the 2022 and 2024 starts to look at. And my writer's journal. And my filing cabinet. I suspect I won't even get to that, though.

I'm hopeful that what I'm doing this month will make it possible for me to hit the ground running in 2025 and bring a bunch of these starts to completion. Then start submitting them.

For me the Holiday Hell Project takes a lot of the work burden off December and leaves me feeling very positive about the upcoming new year. It's all good.

Except for that title, of course.

Time Management Tuesday: Slow Writing--Not A Process but a Lifestyle for the Few, Not the Many

I am finishing my slow writing arc today. There's a sense of accomplishment for you, even though what I've learned these past few weeks suggests that slow writing, assuming it exists as a process at all, probably has nothing to do with time management and productivity and everything to do with lifestyle and privilege. Oh, well.

To recount:

Week 1  Slow Writing In November Instead Of NaNoWriMo?

Week 2  Week Two Of Slow Writing Trying to pin down what slow writing is.

Week 3 Slow Writing and Privilege

Last week I said the first two items in John Fox's  A Manifesto for Slow Writing  at Book Fox were worth giving some thought. And then I gave some thought to the first. Well, now I'm going to give some thought to the second.

Fox says in Item 2 that slow writing isn't about the completion of a project, it's about "becoming a certain type of person." He goes on, "The writer is successful if they can attune themselves to a certain kind of consciousness. The project-based method for writing is one that will only end in unhappiness. Slow writing is about being, not completing."

First off...it is not about the completion of a project. That is extremely significant for writers who are looking for ways to do just that. Slow writing, Fox is saying, is not for you.

On the other hand, what Fox is talking about is what I have been working toward since 2008 when work went to hell for me. I've grown to love sitting at my desk in front of my laptop for a few hours a day, even though what I do there does not get me the kinds of completion (book publication) I was getting pre-2008. I love researching all kinds of work-related things. Children's publishing is pretty much done with me, and I'm not despairing over that, because I've moved on to other kinds of writing, and I have those to explore and work with. I write, because I'm a writer. I am attuned to that consciousness.

During Week Two, I wrote about Nicole Gulotta who described "slow writing as not so much about reducing your speed as it is about reducing your scope. It's a lifestyle." I most definitely have changed my scope. I work differently now, because I'm doing different work. (Aside--I just noticed that Gulotta has a manifesto at the end of her slow writing piece, which is what Fox calls his article on slow writing. Why do slow writing advocates feel they need manifestos? I hate manifestos.)

But, Gail, Doesn't Living Like That Mean You're Not Generating Much Income?

Indeed, it does. Slow writing, as I realized last week, works best for the privileged writer. I am the poster woman for privilege, if you don't define privilege in terms of Ivy League educations, second homes on Martha's Vineyard, wearing brands other than Lee jeans, and traveling on every continent (How many are there?) but in terms of having someone else provide you with a roof over your head, food on your table, and time. I am that kind of low-level privileged. 

My family has never had to rely on my income, which is a damn good thing, because even when I was making "regular" writing money, it wasn't all that regular. That's why I can spend a great deal of my time reading about and thinking about whether or not slow writing is a process that can help me produce more work instead of, ah, producing more work. That's how privileged I am.

The slow writing lifestyle probably isn't for writers who have to maintain a day job or who juggle with adjunct teaching jobs at several colleges in order to make enough money to live. It's probably not for the writer I read about a few years ago who had to line up grant money so she could afford to take maternity leave from writing for a few months. It's not for the writer I've seen on Medium who describes having to produce nineteen-plus pieces a writing a month to generate the monthly income she needs and how she's going to have to have writing stockpiled so that in the future, if she gets sick again and can't work for two weeks, she has something to submit, publish, and make money on.

I just don't see what I've been able to learn about slow writing helping any of those writers.

For myself, though, I'm going to lean into that slow writing lifestyle. For a few years, I've been doing something in December that is definitely what I'm now thinking of as slow writing. I can only do it, though, because I don't have to generate income next month.

More about that another time. 

End Note: I checked out a preview of The Art of Slow Writing by memoirist and essayist Louise DeSalvo. It appears to combine various writers' experiences with some traditional time management talk about protecting time. I didn't see anything that defined "slow writing" as a distinct process. But I didn't see the word "manifesto," either, so that was promising.

Time Management Tuesday: Slow Writing and Privilege

Here we are on Week 3 of my slow writing arc.

Remember Week 1  Slow Writing In November Instead Of NaNoWriMo?

And Week 2  Week Two Of Slow Writing? That really should have had a more descriptive title, since it deals with trying to pin down what slow writing is. But Zen tells me not to dwell on the past.

So we are moving  on to Week 3, where we admit that slow writing is going to be problematic for some people, particularly those who need to generate income. To do so, I'm going to refer you to A Manifesto for Slow Writing  by John Fox at BookFox. 

I want to put out there that I have trouble with manifestos. They are way too doctrinaire for my tastes. It's not that I'm such a nonconforming rebel. But I can't even tolerate 90 percent of writing prompts I see, because eh, I don't want to write about that stuff. So, sure enough, I can't fall into step with some of this particular manifesto. But the first two items are definitely worth some thought. Only one of which I will address today. Because, as I said las t week, I practice slow writing here by writing about small aspects of a whole, rather than force feeding everything into one long piece, overwhelming for both you and me.

Those Who Don't Have the Option of Actively Resisting

Fox says in his manifesto, "Resist the commercial pressure to pump out manuscripts at breakneck speed." He then goes on to discuss Marilynne Robinson who went twenty years between publishing two well-known books. I'm not sure that that's a good model, because most writers at some point accept that they aren't Marilynne Robinson. Fox ends this part with "Everything in the writing industry pushes the writer forward at a quicker and quicker pace, and this machinery must be actively resisted." Manifesto indeed!

This is a cry-to-arms that can only be answered by those writers who can resist because they are privileged enough either to be making decent money from their work or to not need income from it.  All the other writers are dependent on the machinery to make whatever they can. Self-published writers, who aren't dependent on the writing industry, are in an even worse spot as far as being able to choose slow writing is concerned.

Self-published Book Writers and Slow Writing

A few decades ago, it wasn't unusual to read about self-published writers who were trying to pump out short novels multiple times a year. They did this because, without access to the book distribution avenues traditionally published authors had, they couldn't sell very many copies of any particular title. Many of them also weren't paying for editing, design, or professional cover illustration, the lack of which could have hampered sales as well. Since they couldn't sell many copies of any one particular title, they tried to have multiple titles available. Sales for each book multiplied by the number of books=trying to get a decent income.

I don't read about that much anymore, since the self-publishing world learned that in order to compete with traditionally published books, self-published writers would have to seek out and pay for editors, design people, illustrators, and even marketing...all the things traditionally published writers got automatically through their traditional publishers. You could say that having to do that slowed these writers down. But it was the administrative work of publishing that did it, not "slow writing."

Self-published Short-Form Writers and Slow Writing

Internet platforms like Medium and Substack provide the possibility of generating income for self-published writers of humor, essays, short stories, food writing, travel writing...you name it. They are self-publishing their work right there, though Medium includes publications that act, to some degree depending on which one you're dealing with, as gatekeepers should you want to submit to them. The income generated, though, is small. Sometimes ridiculously small. To date, I've only made fifty-five cents on Dinner at Shirley Farr's House, one of my more sophisticated pieces. (Keep in mind that there is always the possibility that I'll make a few more cents on this somewhere down the line and that if it had been published in most literary journals, I wouldn't have made anything.)

Like the self-published book-length writers in days of old, self-published writers at Medium increase their income by writing a lot. And I mean a lot. There are people there who try to write and publish every day. I know this, because one of the things many people write about is publishing on Medium. One woman wrote an article about the month she published as many stories there as I had in over three years. How-to articles are popular at Medium, especially articles on how to publish on Medium. A particularly interesting one was by a fellow who explained he spent three hours per article, which included Internet research and writing. There have been articles from writers complaining that some editors of publications don't respond the same day they submit. These writers have publishing schedules! 

At Medium you get paid a tiny amount for each reader you attract to a story. You may not have attracted a lot of readers for each piece you published this month, but if you published thirty pieces at a small number of readers per piece, you might be able to get some kind of payday for your effort. Additionally, if you publish a lot, some magic algorithm thing might happen and you could have your work promoted, that could attract followers, if you build up a few thousand followers those people will be seeing your work regularly and if a certain percentage of them read it...income!

Does this kind of rapid writing produce stellar results? Would slowing down maybe enhance things? Let's not go there.

My point, as I did state at the beginning, is that slow writing, which appears to be mainly a lifestyle not a true method of working, is going to be a hard sell for those writers who really need to sell regularly. 

Time Management Tuesday: Week Two Of Slow Writing

So here we are with Week 2 of my November Time Management Tuesday slow writing arc in which I, once again, ask, Can we be more productive by slowing down?

What is Slow Writing?

Well, there's a question or you.

First off, slow writing can refer to a method of teaching writing to children. I don't teach writing, so I'm not going to comment on this, other than to say this is not what we're talking about.

When looking for slow writing information on-line, you will come across material on how slow writers can speed up. We're not interested in that. 

What we're talking about here is related--somehow--to other slow movements, particularly slow work.

My Favorite Recent Reading on Slow Writing

The best piece I found on slow writing this month comes from Nicole Gulotta's The Art of Slow Writing: Pacing Yourself in the Digital Age. Gulotta describes slow writing as not so much about reducing your speed as it is about reducing your scope. It's a lifestyle. You mindfully integrate your writing life into your personal life, paying attention to how you can work during different stages of your life. I'm probably experiencing confirmation bias, since what she's talking about is very similar to the situational time management I've been writing about here for more than ten years.

Gulotta also mentions Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown, which I did an arc on a couple of years ago, connecting his thoughts to writing.

I definitely have a specific writing lifestyle these days, and it probably does relate very much to slow writing. But before I get into that, next week I'm going to cover some slow writing conflicts.

What I Just Did There Was, I Believe, An Example Of Slow Writing And How It Can Benefit Readers

In Nicole Gullotta's piece on slow writing, she talks about it involving life overall, but not specific kinds of writing. 

I'm going to suggest that a specific way of practicing slow writing is to write and present a larger concept piece in smaller segments. By which I mean we don't just break writing something into smaller tasks, then put it altogether and present it, as in a novel or a dissertation. I mean we break something into smaller, complete types of writing that make sense of one aspect of an overall subject and present/publish them.

So today, I am only writing about what Nicole Gulotta has to say in The Art of Slow Writing instead of writing this much and then going on with something that's going to be quite contradictory. I also want to write about privilege in relation to slow writing. I might go on to the connection between blogging and slow writing. Whatever I do, I'll do in separate pieces of writing. 

This slows down the process for me. It makes it less of an ordeal to write, but also makes it possible for me to be much clearer and more thoughtful about everything I write on this subject. I'm not racing to get the equivalent of a magazine cover story written and published today.

But it will also slow down the reading experience, which I think is going to be a good thing, too. Readers will be handling one concept at a time, instead of multiple ones.

Slow writing may have something for everyone.