Tag Archives: growth

New Job and Writing

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Next week I will begin the tricky balancing act of starting a new job with that of being a writer.

Essentially, it is starting a new full time role in addition to becoming self-employed and starting a business. Many people would not think of being an author as also being an entrepreneur, but in a lot of respects it definitely is.

There is the act of content creation and development, marketing, accounts and finance, as well as any legal elements that might be included. Depending on how much available time there is after a full day at work, this might eat into virtually all of what would traditionally be considered ‘free’ time.

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Of course, actual number of available hours is only a part of it. Time is only valuable if you have the mental energy to use it effectively. That is why some times you can get more done in a single hour than you can get done in an entire day. It becomes about leveraging that mental energy to make the best use of your time to get things done effectively. It may also be having the courage to admit that you are doing a job poorly and it is worth stopping now before you make a bad thing even worse.

This is what I will try to remind myself of over the next few weeks, when I feel as though my writing is not progressing as fast as I would like. I always commit myself 100% to an employer, something I believe to be vital if you want to be credible and trustworthy as a human being. Obvious caveats apply if your employer is treating you unfairly, of course. But my free time is the the time where the hardest fought battles will take place, because honestly, watching TV is just easier than locking myself away and editing.

I guess the hardest fought battles are the ones most worth winning.

Letters From The Past, Thanks To FutureMe.org

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About 9 months ago, I was on a nice beach holiday, reading Quitter and Start by Jon Acuff. It was there that I first read about the FutureMe.org website. I made a note of it to investigate when I got back. Essentially, it allows you to type an email to your future self, sending it to arrive on a date of your choice. This can have all kinds of purposes. For me, I wanted to keep my future self going in the direction I want to be heading.

You see, the previous six months had been a roller coaster of life spinning out of control. The highs had been high but the lows had also been super low. Life does that to you sometimes. You have to learn to roll with the punches. But because of that, a creeping sense of dissatisfaction had begun to pervade my life. I knew I was heading towards a point where I might be able to make some changes. I wasn’t sure yet what they were going to be, but as I sat there, toes in the sand, honestly assessing my life and scribbling everything in my notepad to make me accountable, I was determined to do something.

Sadly, I’d done (to a lesser extent) the same thing on previous holidays. One of the things I had confessed to in my notepad was not having the courage to do some things, nor the motivation to do others. Therefore, when I penned my email to my future self, I wanted to be kind, but also realistic.

It arrived this morning:

Dear FutureMe,

So you’ve just come back from two sunny weeks in Spain, where you did a lot of talking and thinking and list making for the future. You often do that on holiday. But this time, you wanted it to be different. This time you really wanted to mean it.

I strongly suspect that when you get this, you won’t have made the wild progress that you want. Your dreams won’t have all magically come true via a lottery win. But over the next few months after writing this, you will have been making some of the biggest decisions ever. The ones that will shape your life. The ones that will start you on the road to being something and someone you want to be. Remember that.

Remember it, because I suspect when you’re reading this, then the reality you are living in won’t be massively different from the one I am writing this in. That doesn’t mean it’s time to quit. Just look yourself in the eye and ask if you’re really doing everything you can to make the life you want happen. If you can, then great. If you can’t, then pick yourself up and get going again. Keep taking the steps. Keep hustling. Keep going.

If, by some chance you are everything that you were thinking about during this last holiday, then congratulations. Keep being the best you can be. Don’t get lazy, arrogant or sloppy. Be the person you need to be for the people who love you most. Keep living your life so you can look yourself in the eye.

I hope, regardless of anything else, you’ve done those things you needed to do to get some self-belief.

Keep going kiddo.

That is it, completely unedited or censored.

Have I made some changes? Yes, I’ve got to spend six months in New Zealand really working on what matters most to me. Am I a published author yet? No, but I’m trying and I continue to try. I’m exploring self-publishing too, so that I can continue to grow and learn about the industry as it rapidly changes alongside me.

The reality is also that I’m heading back to the UK soon, at least for the immediate future. So perhaps if I had chosen to not have the mail arrive now, but instead a month from now, the geographical context might have made me feel differently. I don’t know. But that’s not really the point. It arrived now, and gave me a little bit of faith for the next steps.Today I will write another one. I’d recommend that you do too.

More info here:

Moleskine vs Field Notes – Pocket Notebook Review

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It seems that pocket notebooks are definitely back in fashion at the moment. The world, thanks to the internet and kickstarter, has become awash with them. As a writer, I’ve carried a notebook around with me for most of my life, so I decided that this is one area I definitely have an opinion on.

Despite the countless brands, the current two front runners are Moleskine and Field Notes. I’ve only recently succumbed to buying Field Notes as they are quite tricky to get hold of outside America without making a bit of an effort. However, I’d heard so much about them that I thought I would have to give them a try.

Both notebooks discussed below have gone through a complete lifecycle in my handbag (purse to any US readers, obviously). Despite all those hardy, manly, everyday carry instagram shots, I don’t think anything competes with the assortment of crap I carry around with me on a daily basis that these notepads have had to survive next to.

Don’t Judge A Book By Its Cover

Except in this instance. The hardcover pocket size Moleskine stands up well to most environments. It’s still got a lot of trend factor, as well as standing up to approval in the boardroom meetings. Because I use a hardcover one, it makes it easier to grab and write if there isn’t a surface available. Oddly, out in the field, using Field Notes is actually more difficult in this sense. Field Notes as a brand has a definite cover cool factor right now, especially some of the limited addition colours ones. But by its very nature, it is more casual; while it might provoke a bit of interest in meetings, it’s not going to be taken as seriously in a corporate environment. Especially after a bit of use. Which leads me to…

Field Notes Moleskine Cover

 

Durability and Longevity

Field Notes have considerably fewer pages than Moleskine books, meaning that this one was only on rotation for about a month. The Moleskine, on the other hand, was in my bag for around six. One looks hardly touched, the other looks well loved. I don’t have to tell you which way round that is. Again, that beat up look has a bit of cool factor to it, but as I keep all my notebooks and constantly refer back to the content in them, it does make me question if they will stand the test of time like the original concept they were based upon.

Paper

In the bid for market share, the quality of paper actually often seemed to take second place to design factor. A lot of brands have started to realise that as more and more people turn away from an entire dependence on smartphones and yearn for the analogue capture of yesteryear – often with a fountain pen to go alongside it – paper matters. On the whole I don’t use fountain pens, largely because I have a mythological perfect one I am still searching for, but I do use a variety of ballpoints and rollerballs. Despite a lot of people complaining about Moleskine paper quality, I would say that the two of them match up pretty well. If anything, the Field Notes have a little bit of show through (but not bleed through) on the back. I’ve yet to try out the Shelterwood edition, which has considerably thicker paper, but in the interests of fair comparison, I’m reporting here only on the standard book. Both brands have options of lined, plained and grid, so pick whatever works for you and knock yourself out.

Field Notes Moleskine Pages

Features

I love the Moleskine back flap for storing bits of paper and the bookmark is definitely a great feature. These are both missing from the Field Notes, but with considerably fewer pages, the bookmark becomes less of a necessity. I’d recommend using a modified to suit your needs Bullet Journal system with both. I recently went back and actually did this to all my notebooks that had a couple of blank pages at the beginning or the end and it makes a huge difference to usability. Field Notes has a built in ruler along the back sleeve and some  fun uses. Both have a user information page at the front, although both brands clearly approach it in different ways.

To Sum Up

Which side of the fence you come down on will always depend on how you use your notebook. For me, the pocket notebook isn’t for work – but when I am working I will use it to capture things so I don’t want it to look too out of place. I love the look of Field Notes especially when I am travelling; there is definitely something of the open road about them. The first real test will be on a road trip around the US and Canada next month, where I’m much more likely to be shoving them in my pocket for practical reasons, rather than just creative ones. After this first run through though, I am still slightly on the side of Moleskine for the way I can actually use them in any environment. If I had an idea last month, I don’t need to go and find the other book because I’ve already run out of pages and moved on.

Finally, I’ve used a cheap supermarket brand (£3/$4.50 US) and found that once you take the ‘street cred’ element away (the ‘look at me, I’m a writer/hipster/adventurer’ element) it works just as well on all fronts as the others, at a fraction of the cost:

Notebook

I Hate Titles

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As I’ll be moving on from New Zealand shortly, I have a few weeks where I can be completely devoted to writing.  This has led me to the realisation of how much I hate coming up with book titles.

Sometimes, I know from the beginning, which is great. When I don’t, I come up with a placeholder, because every file needs a name, right? Then I get to the point where I need a title and nothing seems to work. Nothing seems to fit. Worse, the more I think about it, the more ridiculous my brain gets until I just feel frustrated. In the end, everything sounds like a bad porn movie.

This past week, I have had to come up with two new titles for books in very different genres. The first is one I am submitting to agents to try to take down the traditional publishing route. I know that if I am lucky enough for it to go somewhere, then the title will no doubt get changed anyway. But I still need something a little catchy to begin with if I want to grab attention.

The second is for the first book in a series I am intending to self-publish under a pseudonym. That means there will be no team of professional title-makers to come up with one for me. Annoyingly, the second and third books have had their titles from the start, but this has been stuck with it’s placeholder for nearly a decade. That’s made it hard to shake in my own mind. I finally had the breakthrough last night, which means I can finally think about getting the cover art done. Yay.

Titles. I hate ’em (apart from when I love them).

So, in the spirit of the writing focus and the coffee I have ploughed through to keep going:

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Canada Totem

Road trips: San Francisco, Vancouver, Alaska

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So, I have been on the road now for the best part of a month. The purpose of this was twofold: for writing research and for pleasure.

It has been, without a doubt, a very interesting and busy few weeks. Having flown from New Zealand back in time, we covered San Francisco, Vancouver and surrounds, as well as Alaska. One thing has certainly be cemented this year, and that is the fact I am clearly more of an outdoor person than a city person. Which is not something I think I ever really realised before. Whilst I’ve never felt compelled to move towards the big lights, I could never really say I was much for tramping in the woods either. Perhaps it is something that is becoming more defined as I get older, or perhaps people are becoming less appealing? Who knows.

Canada Totem

 

I’ve certainly got a notebook full of ideas and places, characters that are calling out to me to be written. Turns out the Fieldnotes books are the perfect size for that length of stay. So the trip itself was definitely a success.

The next month will definitely be a busy one as I try to do something with it all…

Plus, I finally purchased a fountain pen in my bid to get back to handwriting some of my work. I’m loving it so far and can really notice the difference, compared to banging out the words on a computer. Review to come shortly.

 

When A City Falls: Film review of the Christchurch earthquake

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Firstly, I really enjoyed this film.

Secondly, I’m not sure I could have watched it if I had actually been in Christchurch for any of the earthquakes. The trauma of it would simply have been too much. All credit to those who were there and braved this film anyway.

When A City Falls

 

Opening with scenes from before the first September earthquake in 2010, I saw the Christchurch that I remember from my travels a decade ago. Calm, relatively peaceful. Actually quite English, in all the ways it used to market itself as.

For me, the power of this film comes from the fact there is no narrator. Other than a few captions to give some sense of date, the raw footage is allowed to tell the story itself. Gerard Smythe and his team put together film that did not shy away from the painful reality, but nor did it seek to sensationalise it. Over the course of a year, you see people get up, dust themselves off, only to be knocked right back down.

It doesn’t take long living in this city to know all these places and be able to relate to it on some level. The aftereffects of the earthquakes touch your lives daily here; there is no escape. Having seen this film, I have nothing but admiration for the people who, unlike me, are not outside observers to the aftermath, but the ones who still can – and often do – relive it like it was yesterday.

Link to the trailer can be found here: When A City Falls

The Rejection Threshold

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I’m not sure if submissions are my least favourite part of writing, but they have to be close. I don’t actually know anyone who loved the submission process and those that say they do are probably lying. Why? Because of this, obviously:

Rejection-Stamp

No-one actually wants to be rejected. Sure, you can put a positive spin on it, say it all leads to growth etc etc, but you can’t actually want to be rejected unless there is something psychologically wrong with you. Of course, if you have the inclination to be a writer, then there probably is something psychologically wrong with you, but that is a matter for another post.

I’ve been putting myself through the submission process for years. I’ve told myself that this year will be different though. Simply because I am not going to succumb to the rejection threshold.

By the time I hit rejection number six, I usually give up. Call me weak-willed, but those form emails (or the brown SAE dropping through the letter box in the old days), never really did much for my self-esteem. It was always much easier to just move onto writing the next story whilst consoling myself with a large tub of Ben & Jerry’s.

Everyone knows that J K Rowling was rejected a dozen times before finally having Harry Potter published. One of my all time favourite authors, Jasper Fforde, was rejected 76 times before getting The Eyre Affair published (although, in fairness, I can see why. You try to describe the book and see if you can come up with anything that sounds vaguely credible). Even William Golding had a taste of rejection, with  Lord Of The Flies being rejected by over 20 times.

I would never even consider myself in that league, but safe to say, if they had stopped at the rejection threshold of half a dozen, the world would be a much poorer place. For me, I need to aim for an even higher number before giving up and reaching for the ice cream. I have decided that 2014 will be the year for it.

Although, 76 seems like an awfully long way to still have left to go….

…but I suppose there is always self-publishing…

 

Tracking Goals: Going Analogue

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Along with Lift (edit: now coach.me), I’ve also found something analogue to help with my habit formation and personal development. This is the cool Goals Journal from kikki K.

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It takes some time to set up, but the process of doing so is really worthwhile. Instead of just coming up with random goals, it starts with the premise of trying to define your dream life. There are several helpful examples that talk you through the process, for example, stating your core values:

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The dream life itself has a few key factors, one of which is explicitly stating when you want to be living this. That took me a bit of thought. I obviously wanted to pretend I could get my dream life as soon as possible. Next week! But reality kicks in. So setting the balance between plausibility and so far in the future you’re not actually motivated to start straight away is a thought-provoking act in itself.

 

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Once you’ve worked out where you’re going to be, there is a section for each month where you define 4 goals. Only four for the month, so as long as you do it sensibly, it always feels achievable. The key part here is stating why you want to do this – how does it propel you further towards your vision?

 

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Of course, we all know that setting out goals is not enough. If only it were. But no, you actually have to take action to achieve them. To combat some of the most common excuses (I don’t have time etc etc), for each month there is a timetable. This urges you to set time aside for your goal work in the same way you would schedule an appointment for all the other areas of your life. This highlights how much time you really do have in your life if you want it badly enough.

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So, tomorrow being the 1st of March, I have completed everything and now it is all set up. At the end of the month, it’ll be interesting to see the progress I’ve made on my four defined goals (and if I gave myself the reward regardless…).

Lift App: Building Habits For Success (Review)

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So, I have started using the Lift app to try to get into the habit of doing the little things that count.

Research has shown that having small goals, such as to drink more water daily, can have a big impact on your overall success. The thinking is that by making small changes and succeeding, you gain a sense of momentum that spreads to other areas of your life. Plus drinking more water is really good for you.

I know from personal experience that having a routine and using habit to achieve a goal can work. So, from a personal development perspective, I like the idea of having a tool that reminds me and rewards me when it comes to habits.

The ’21 days’ thing has been pretty much debunked as a myth, so there is no definite habit formation period that is universal to human experience. With my morning writing, it started to move from pain to pleasure after about two weeks, but I had a strong emotional attachment to the goal to start with. Other things, like going to the gym, I’m going to do because I know the benefits, but there is still an underlying sense of doing because I have to, not because I want to. Logic tells me that this habit will take way longer to cross over from the pain threshold.

The rewards feature (don’t break the streak! High Five!) are nice little touches to keep you engaged. Many of the preset goals have plans attached to them, so you don’t even have to figure out what you need to do from the get-go. This gives you a nice motivational sense of support that you can do the first few steps.

I’ve been using it for around two weeks so far and like the results. I have been to the gym more, read more and have done things to take myself out of my comfort zone. So, even if I haven’t achieved daily perfection I have still made progress, and that is what this kind of thing is really about.

You can read more on the blog here, or follow the guys on twitter.

Productivity and Personal Development: Why 6AM Matters

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There is a current debate at the moment in productivity which seems to be pitting the ‘night owls’ against the ‘early risers’. Whilst I’m of the view that as long as you are getting important stuff done it doesn’t matter, I have to say I fall on the early riser side of things.

Don’t get me wrong, I never used to be. As a writer, I always felt my most creative hours were between 10pm and 2am. Which was great – if I didn’t have a day job. Once I did, then the reality was that creative never actually happened.

Then a couple of years ago, I was listening to a GTD Virtual Study Group podcast which brought to my attention the prospect of getting up early to make sure that if nothing else went right that day, you would always have an hour you could look back on, knowing that you had taken another step towards your goal. Towards doing what mattered most to you, not what mattered most to the boss man.

So I made the transition from getting out of bed at the last possible moment (after hitting that snooze button several times), to getting up at 6am, making myself a coffee and refusing to get up and go to work until I got 1000 words down. From now over a thousand mornings, I must have failed to hit that mark less than a dozen times. Getting to work late and then playing catchup all day was a powerful motivator to get typing.

Now I find myself on the other side of the world, having a writing sabbatical. Which some people would say is a fancy way of saying I’m unemployed. Transitioning careers. That kind of stuff. It doesn’t matter what you call it, it means I get to plan 100% of my time now without the 9-5 (or 8-7 as it realistically was most of the time).

All those hours back. All that free time. So what am I doing? I am getting up every morning at 6am to write, just like I have done every weekday for the past few years. Why? Because it works. Because setting up your day to start right is a key to making it a good day, no matter what else life throws at you.

It doesn’t matter what you do, or what you want to achieve. Starting your day intentionally by making it count is the best way to get there. To live a more productive life. Or, to put it in a way I’ve started to feel a lot lately, a more meaningful life.