by Sandra Gulland | Jan 26, 2015 | Adventures of a Writing Life, Resources for Writers, The Writing Process |
We’re back in San Miguel de Allende, back from the beach. It’s always wonderful to come home, but I miss the heat and the sound of the surf. I miss the enchantment of sunsets.
I’m sitting now in my office with my favourite coffee mug on the table beside me and my computer on my lap. I soon must get back to working on Draft 5 of The Game of Hope.
But first: it’s time to go through our photos, is it not? Here’s a panorama stitched together with DoubleTake software:
As I slowly get my office back in order—unpacking, finding the cords, the stacks of Things To Do —I tell myself that now is the time to be selective: throw things out. And so I try: one, maybe two truly-useless things get pitched, but only after great deliberation. Hopeless!
Have you watched this Seinfeld video on “Too Much Stuff“? He’s “congratulating” everyone in the audience for having won a flat-screen TV:
Talk about stuff! Will Self’s writing room: hard to imagine.
Coincidently, I use his book Psycho Geography as a mouse pad.
by Sandra Gulland | Jan 7, 2015 | Adventures of a Writing Life, Publication, Resources for Writers, The Shadow Queen, The Sun Court Duet |
Yesterday was a crazy day: I sent out a newsletter, the U.S. paperback edition of The Shadow Queen came out, and — quite by coincidence — my INK e-book edition of The Shadow Queen launched in the UK and beyond.
Any one of these requires quite a bit of on-line attention, but to have all three in one morning?
Too much!
By 11:00, I decided I needed a walk, so I went out to buy watercolour supplies for the class I’m taking this afternoon. Very therapeutic!
And soon … to the beach, where I will be reading the 4th draft of The Game of Hope with an editorial eye. I put the novel aside December 1. It will be interesting to read it afresh.
I’m reading:
Publishing 101 by Jane Friedman. Excellent. Highly recommended.
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber. I’m only a few chapters in and I love it already. Will it last? I very rarely read speculative fiction. I suspect this one will hold me.
by Sandra Gulland | Dec 29, 2014 | Adventures of a Writing Life |
Last year, I posted a blog with almost this same name—Getting ready for 2014: resolutions on book-keeping and book-making.
I wrote:
We’ve made our resolutions, and one of mine is get to the bottom of the mail in-box three times in the year ahead. Wish me luck.
I’ve gotten fairly good about in-box zero; what I’m not that good at is actually dealing with the emails that I hide away in files with names like “URGENT” “FOLLOW-UP!”
Another resolution is to deliver The Game of Hope ahead of schedule (it’s due December 1). That will take more than luck: that will take constant perseverance!
Bravo! I did manage to do this, sending The Game of Hope to my publisher two days ahead of the due date.
I had other resolutions, of course: keeping my weight down, exercising, etc., which I kept fairly in-line. (I could have done better.)
What I did evolve this year—eventually—were two motivational systems for actually getting things done.
1: The Post-It method
- My To Do List for the day must fit on a post-it note (and not a big one).
- Each item should be measurable: i.e. “30 minutes, bookkeeping.”
- Tasks that are irksome should be introduced in 15-min. chunks. (I.e., said bookkeeping.)
2: The Jerry Seinfeld “Don’t Break the Chain” method
In conjunction with the daily post-it (as well as a more extensive compost-heap of long-term things to do), I’ve started using the Seinfeld method for the one daily task I resist most strongly: exercising. That I’ve finally found a way to actually overcome my resistance is a strong testimonial to the effectiveness of this method.
Here is a snap from my “Don’t Break the Chain” calendar earlier this year:
Every day I do what I’ve promised (30 minutes on the treadmill, in this instance), I colour in the date. The idea is not to have any gaps—and the visual reminder, for me, is strong.
Seinfeld originally suggested this system for writing. (I wrote about using the Seinfeld “Don’t Break the Chain” method in another blog post: A writer’s routine: how many … hours, days, word?) I highly recommend this system if you want to write very day: just make sure that the daily goal you set isn’t overly ambitious. It’s better to write for 30 minutes a day every day, than to attempt 2 hours a day and fail.
“Don’t Break the Chain” calendars
If you’re going to use the Seinfeld method, you need to print out a continuous calendar. Click to download a printable version of this one I created using PDFCalendar.com:
Another continuous calendar created by David Seah allows you to make notes:
The Writer’s Store also offers a calendar to print out: here.
I have a system when it comes to writing a draft: I set a goal of about about 1000 words a day and record my progress in a small Moleskine diary. If you are casting about for a way to keep track, consider this Word Tracking Calendar, also by David Seah.
I was amused to find these very old To Do Lists of mine:
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The colours were random—they did not signify anything. Note the To Do: “figure out the fax machine.” I never did manage that!
My resolutions this year? To finish The Game of Hope and write a solid first draft of The Princess Problem (the working title of the second Young Adult about Hortense). Also: keep up with daily exercise.
And, of course: in-box zero—but without simply filing away the emails to be answered.
by Sandra Gulland | Nov 29, 2014 | Adventures of a Writing Life |
Day before yesterday, I sent the 4th draft of The Game of Hope (working title) to my editor at Penguin—3 days before the due date. Yay!
I woke the next morning with 1) a slight hangover 
(Ha! The result of opting for the wine paring at a fantastic 4-course Thanksgiving dinner), 2) the novel feeling that I could poke around at most any number of things: my blogs, my newsletter, on-line shopping for the holidays coming up. My bookkeeping. (Scratch that idea.) Tidy my desk. Add the last scribbled-up pages to the draft stack (see above).
Curiously, I’m still rewriting in my mind … and thinking about the next novel, the second Young Adult about Hortense.
Newsletter
I plan to send out a newsletter soon. If you’re not on the mailing list, sign up here.
For this next newsletter, one of the subscribers (randomly selected) will win a personally inscribed, autographed hardcover edition of The Shadow Queen.
Reading: I’ve been reading many, many research books, but curiously—no doubt because I’ve been so immersed getting The Game of Hope ready to send out—I’ve had a hard time reading fiction just now. The last novel I got completely absorbed in was The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters—and yes, completely absorbed!
Watching: After watching Pride & Prejudice (2005, with Keira Knightly) three times, I branched out to The Young Victoria, and now I’m re-watching the 3rd season of Downton Abbey.
Listening: to Serial (the podcast). I’m almost finished listening to Washington, a Life, by Rob Chernow. This is an epic work.
Recent blog posts over on my research blog:
An old hat, a necklace, and a letter likely rescued from the trash sell for close to 6 million
Lost and found in France’s on-line library archives
Quarantine: How the spread of deadly diseases were dealt with in late 18th century France
I will have more and more there on the ever-absorbing Bonapartes.
by Sandra Gulland | Nov 21, 2014 | Baroque Explorations |
It’s simply astonishing what one can now find on-line. In the way of any wander through library stacks, I came upon this title on Gallica.bnf.fr, the French national library on-line:
Tableau historique, littéraire et politique de l’an VI de la Républic française.
Of course it was not at all what I was looking for, but although “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you find you get what you need.” :-)
I love the way the digital book opens with its cover:
And then turns to the marbled end-paper:
Here’s a crop of the title page:
(You can almost feel the rich texture of the paper.)
And then, the first chapter division:
What caught my attention “leafing” through this book was the section on legislation, a daily account of laws passed in the years 1798-1799.
They are very detailed: they needed to be. The French government was (once again) creating a government from scratch. Laws mentioned cover passport regulations, import duties, the re-establishment of a national lottery, the legislateurs’ own schedule (they will no longer meet on décadis (the end of the 10-day week), patents, manufacture of goods, the “uniform” to be worn by the members of the legislature …
“…habit français, couleur bleu national, croisé et dépassant le genou. Ceinture de soie tricolore, avec des franges d’or. Manteau écarlate à la grecque, orné de broderie en laine. Bonnet de velours, portant une aigrette tricolore.” – page 142
Alas, I am unable to find an illustration of this costume. No doubt they were somewhat more circumspect than those from 1796. Below left, Executive Director from 1796, compared to Napoleon’s uniform of choice as First Consul on the right:
The legal record is many pages long, but I’ll note a few:
One law passed condemns to death those who rob by force or violence. This is significant because violent crime had become rampant.
Marriages (which must be civil) could only be held on décadis.
One significant law, passed 12 Nivose, an VIII (January 1, 1799), declares that Blacks born in Africa or in foreign colonies, and transferred to French islands, were free as soon as they step foot on French soil. The Revolutionary government had several years before outlawed slavery in France, but I don’t believe that it had gone so far as to declare it illegal in its colonies. (I should note that Napoleon will eventually reinstate slavery in the French colonies, and no: it was not Josephine’s doing.)
It’s delightful how worthwhile procrastinating can be. I found an excellent Revolutionary calendar (more on that later), learned the date when there was an eclipse of the moon, what the new national fêtes were to be, and much, much more.
