I started off my February post here by mentioning I’d been busy lately. In fact, I had to check because I started off this post in almost the exact same way.
Oops.
However, it’s less me running in the same rut than that things haven’t really let up yet. Happily, last Friday I finished the draft of Rogue’s Paradise, which is due to my editor 3/15. It’s out with the crit partners (CPs) right now. Once I finished that, I turned to line edits on Going Under. My editor asked for those by 3/9 and I negotiated for 3/12. Those are almost done and need just one more pass – something I’ll do as soon as I complete this post. Then I’ll turn to polishing Rogue’s Paradise, using the approach I detailed in my November post, Easy Steps to Polish that Draft, and incorporating comments from my CPs.
Amusingly (and with perfect timing), another editor sent the developmental edits for The Tears of the Rose, that second Twelve Kingdoms book I mentioned in that polishing post – and those arrived Friday afternoon, hours after I finished Paradise. (I was dreading the eventuality that those edits would arrive before I had the opportunity to clear my head space of these other two books.) The other aspect of this auspicious timing is that I can do the edits on Tears and then go straight into writing book 3 of that trilogy, The Talon of the Hawk, which is due 6/1.
Thankfully, also, the sixth and final episode of my serial novel, Master of the Opera, comes out 3/20 – so my promo efforts for that will be over. Gives me a bit of breathing room before the 5/27 release of the first Twelve Kingdoms book, The Mark of the Tala.
See what I mean?
But I took the weekend to chill. We drove to Tucson for my mother’s birthday and I spent a lot of time hanging out, chatting, and reading for pleasure. My mom worried that I was tired and I was. But the rest helped and now I’m ready to get back at it. She wanted me to take it easier than I am.
I can’t.
That’s the thing about deadlines. If you don’t work on stuff, it doesn’t go away. It just stacks up and makes the work even more difficult later. Yes – in the future I’ll make sure not to stack my writing deadlines together so tightly. For now, however, I need to get through them, and keep myself sane and healthy while doing so.
My husband pointed out to me that the issue isn’t time management. Earl Nightingale takes the position that the concept of “time management” is worthless because time is beyond our control. Time flows as it flows, whether we attempt to manage that or not.
What IS within our control is the work we do. That is, I need to manage the work within the time that I have. One solution, I’ve decided, with the man’s input, is to resist the urge to multitask. One thing at a time. And when I rest, I rest. An hour or two of solid relaxation is far better than five hours of working social media while answering emails and watching a movie.
That’s my plan. Anyone else have good suggestions for work management?
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Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author with a writing career that spans decades. Her works include non-fiction, poetry, short fiction, and novels. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial
Award. Her essays have appeared in many publications, including Redbook.
Her most recent works include a number of fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns; the contemporary BDSM novellas of the Facets of Passion, including the newest, Five Golden Rings, which came out as part of the erotic holiday anthology, Season of Seduction, in late November; and a contemporary serial novel, Master of the Opera, which released beginning January 2, 2014. A fourth series, the fantasy trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms, will hit the shelves starting in May 2014. A spin-off story from this series, Negotiation, appears in the recently-released Thunder on the Battlefield anthology.
She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, a border collie, plentiful free-range lizards and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine.
Jeffe can be found online at her website: JeffeKennedy.com, every Sunday at the popular Word Whores blog, on Facebook, and pretty much constantly on Twitter @jeffekennedy. She is represented by Pam van Hylckama Vlieg of Foreword Literary.
I need a nap just from reading about your schedule, Jeffe. The thought of having that many books in various stages of production at the same time may give me nightmares.
My main time management tool is my Three-Day To Do List with priorities marked for each day. And I’m making a real effort to limit my “fiddling around on the Internet” time so I have more time for writing…….and naps.
I love the idea of the three-day list! I’m afraid mine is a very scary one-year list. Totally agree on the “fiddling around on the Internet” thing. Something I can definitely trim!
I don’t know how you’re keeping up. And don’t you have a day job on top of it all? I juggle many irons as well and people are always astounded by how much I get done. I think it’s because I manage the work. I figure out what needs to get done and by when, which lets me prioritize. Focusing is sometimes hard for me as well because–oh, look! Squirrel.
Damn squirrels! And yes – I have the day job, too. *sigh* This would all be MUCH more doable without that!
My God you’re busy. Good thing to think about. I tend to add too much and run up against my deadlines every time.
Yes, TOO busy, Julie! I tend to add too much, too….
(and I just noticed I have three “too’s” in that comment)