biancadarc.com Blog

Challenge Wrap Up

It’s almost over! January, that is. Reaching for your goals never ends.   

I hope you all got a good start on your resolutions this month. I know I did. And I’m going to continue working on them in February. In fact, I think I’ll institute a month-end check-in each month on this blog. If you want to join me, please feel free.

The last day of each month I’ll post a little update on what I’m doing, what’s coming up and what’s happening with my resolutions. It would be cool if some of you dropped in and let me know what you’re up to as well.

Thanks for participating in the challenge and special thanks to all the great guest bloggers who helped me keep the blog hoppin’ this month. I love you all! Good wishes as we all continue to reach for our goals!

And now, what you’ve been waiting for – the winner of the $10 Barnes & Noble Gift Card is:

Loretta W.

Congratulations!

Be sure to email me at biancadarc at live.com within 30 days to claim your prize.

Come back tomorrow to learn how you could win free ebooks every week in February!

Challenge Check-In #4

Well, here we are at Week 4. Things are winding down. We’ll have a final check-in on the 31st, but we’ve completed our final full week of working on our goals. How did we do this week?

I met the minimum goals I set, though I didn’t for the first two weeks of this month. I’m glad I finally got on track for the latter half of the month and will continue the trend into February. Now, how did you do?

(* We’ll meet back here on the 31st for an assessment of the whole month. If you comment on the 31st, your name will go into a drawing, so be sure to check back!)

One more item of note – I’ll be doing a giveaway each week in the month of February here on the blog, so be sure to check back for details!

Guest: Tayla Bosco

Goals.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear/see that word I get a feeling of “ugh” deep in my chest. I wonder, “great, what am I gonna fail this time?” How else can I depress myself, thank you very much?

It sounds like I never meet my goals , doesn’t it?. But to be honest, I do meet them most of the time. At least my realistic ones. And I think that is part of the issue, setting realistic goals.

How many of us have already failed in our New Year’s Resolutions? How many of us failed in the first week? Is it because we are “failures” or maybe because we set unrealistic goals, or goals were weren’t committed to for one reason or another.

It’s been just about a month, and I bet we are probably 50/50 with our goals. I have met some of mine, and failed at some of mine. Some I flew by with flying colors, some not. But I can tell you based on my personal history, the goals I set that I didn’t care about, or didn’t really want were the ones that I failed at. Those were the ones that I wasn’t driven to work on. The ones that whether it be consciously or subconsciously, I either was willing to or knew I would fail.

Think about that. Ones I was willing to fail. Ones I knew I would fail. Talk about a self-defeating prophecy. Setting goals you don’t want to succeed does no one any good. You fail, and you feel bad, when you didn’t want to do it to begin with.

So, if you are the kind of person that gets depressed when you fail those goals, stop setting them. Look at what you did, decide what you can do, and then set those goals. Each week/month/year reassess where you are and what you are doing. Recommit yourself to the same/a higher/a lower level. Decide what you can do, what you want to do, and then go for it.

Max and Leo want Adele, and if they have to do a bit of redesigning to get her, so be it.

Talya may be new to publishing, but she has many more stories in her head and on paper with which she hopes to entertain and amuse you all. She loves to read, write and hear from fans.

Guest: Michelle Hasker

Beating your muse into submission or Setting the Mood

Okay, maybe beat is a little harsh. Unless your muse has gone off on a hiatus lasting six months. Then perhaps the little twit has it coming.

There are so many things that an author can do to set the mood to make the creative juices flow. Some of my favorites are:

• Burning scented candles. That tells me it is time to release my creative side.
• Putting fresh flowers in a decorative vase on my desk. A little pampering goes a long way.
• Turning on a playlist I’ve devised for the story I’m working on. (Each story gets it’s own unique playlist.) This puts me in mind for a certain story or scene
• Reading a short, hot story to get me in the mindset to write.
• Reading a terribly written story to remind me that I could do better if I just WROTE.
• Washing dishes or folding laundry. Both are tasks that require little to no concentration (unless you are washing glass). I let my mind wander while I have the soothing sound of water or the washer in the background.

I could go on, but I won’t. What works for me may not work for you, but I hope you find something in there to try.

Happy Writing!

Michelle

To learn more about Michelle, visit her website at: www.michellehasker.com

Ever since the spell blew up in her face, Camryn’s world has fallen apart while her fellow witches have prospered. Maybe being good isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. She’s lost her job, her apartment and her boyfriend. Her health is suffering and she looks like death warmed over. What good is being ethical if you have to pay for it with everything you have?

Challenge Check-In #3

For those of you just joining us… we’ve been talking about resolutions and goals since New Year’s Day, encouraging each other to decide on realistic goals and report back on how we’re doing each Thursday of this month.

As some of you may recall, I got off to a rocky start, but I’m proud to say things have taken a turn for the better. I did a LOT better this week! I’ve improved a little each week since we started this, but the most important thing is – I started. I hope you did too.

The initial week was a disaster. Then things got busy and the second week was a trial, but I did manage to start working on my writing goal in earnest. This third week, I added in the exercise goal I’d been trying for, in addtion to the writing.

I’m happy to report the writing went even better this week. I got the galley proof of Jaci’s Experiment off my desk, turned in 2nd round edits on Phantom Desires, finished Dante’s story, which I’ll be submitting soon, and managed to write new material 5 out of 7 days. I also reached my goal of 2,000 words/day on those days, so mission accomplished on that! Yay!

My fitness goal was small, but since I’ve not been exercising at all for the past few months, I wanted to start slowly. My goal was to work out twice each week. This week, I managed to do it for the first time! Double Yay!

I want to build on this small success. I want to continue to aim for twice a week for the next few weeks and if/when that becomes relatively easy, I want to add on a third day. Then I want to extend the length of the workouts and make them more challenging. But that’s a goal for down the road. Right now, I’m just thrilled to have done ANYTHING on my fitness goal. Yay cubed!

So how did you all do?

Guest: Meg Benjamin

I spent a lot of time trying to think of something about me that might motivate somebody else to write. My writing habits aren’t all that special (at least three pages a day, best done in the afternoon after I’ve had time to wake up and kick-start my brain). My way of getting myself going is mainly just to do it.

But then I started thinking about how I got to where I am currently—one novel about to be published, another under consideration, several more ready to send out—and there is one thing about me that’s different. I’m a woman “of a certain age.” No, I won’t tell you what that age is. Let me put it this way—the Beatles aren’t just historical figures for me.

I think there’s this feeling sometimes that writers need to start young if they want to get ahead. But it took me a long time to get around to doing this. I wrote a lot of other things—technical manuals, newsletters, textbooks—before I finally realized romance was where I wanted to be. So here I am, pushing my doddering brain to come up with new plots, new characters, new ways of describing sex without overuse of the words slide and thrust. And I’m not alone. One member of my local RWA chapter started publishing in her late sixties, and now (in her seventies) juggles three different personas for her successful mainstream, erotica, and inspirational romances. I figure if she can do it, so can I!

And so can you, whatever your age. Start now. Write three pages—anybody can write three pages, believe me. So what if you’ve got grown children? It’s easier to write if you don’t have to chauffeur them to soccer games. So what if you’ve got a few wrinkles and one or two gray hairs. They don’t show up on the page, do they? So what if you get drowsy by ten? Write in the early morning when you wake up. And don’t ever think your age is an impediment to writing that novel. Helen Hooven Santmyer published And Ladies of the Club when she was 88, and it was a bestseller. So if someone says you’re too old, tell them “So you think I should wait until I’m younger?” Then go home and work on your novel.

Venus in Blue Jeans: A guy, a girl, a Chihuahua. Two of them will find the love of their lives.

Meg Benjamin lives and tries to write in South Texas. Her first novel, Venus in Blue Jeans, will be available from Samhain on January 27. Learn more at www.megbenjamin.com.

Guest: Eliza Gayle

Goal of Balance

It seems like there are a lot of writing goals running around the blogs this month, but what about that dark and murky side of writing we all try very hard to hide from. You know what I’m talking about I know you do. It’s the one word that can cause uncontrollable chills to shudder through an author’s body every time they hear it.

Promotion.

There I said it. Now we can all breath a collective sigh of relief. Ahh… There are aspects of promotion that can actually be a lot of fun, like interacting with readers via blogs or conventions and forums. But it’s finding the right balance that works for an author and applying that in regular intervals that becomes key. Balance.

Scheduling has become a priority for me in 2009 so that I can strive toward the goal of balance between the day job, writing and promotion. I’m breaking things down into small manageable chunks as I learn what works in my schedule and what doesn’t and my daily calendar and task lists have become invaluable.

For January though I have two new releases and I had to prioritize the promotion a little higher for this month. So between website updates, newsletters, ad creation and so forth, I’m determined in 2009 to find a daily schedule that allows me to accomplish my work and still make time for family.

January hasn’t worked perfectly so far but I am seeing subtle differences as I adjust. How about you? How do you balance your many duties between professional and personal? I’d love to hear your ideas.

Eliza Gayle is a published author of erotic romance in several sub genres including paranormal, fantasy and contemporary. This month she kicks of her new Black Cougar series at Linden Bay Romance and invites you to visit her website at www.elizagayle.net to learn more. For more about Lucas, check out MBAM.

* Eliza is offering a free download of a book from her backlist to one lucky commenter. Leave a comment on this post and you could win!

For Dieters

I’ve been looking around the Web for sites that could help me figure out a good strategy for eating better and getting more exercise. I thought I’d put a list of some of the sites I found here, in case any of you are pursuing a goal of losing weight and/or getting fit. Here are some of the sites I found interesting…

General Health Sites:

Discovery Health National Body Challenge - meant to follow along with TV shows on the Discovery Channel.

Yahoo Health Diet & Fitness - a general site for all kinds of information.

Food-Based Sites:

The Daily Plate - an all-around site where you can keep track of food you eat. It actually looks up nutrition information for thousands of foods and keeps track of them for you. Very cool and free!

Special K Challenge - diet based around Special K foods.

Slim-Fast - diet based around SlimFast foods.

Got any others you can recommend? Let us know in your comments!

Challenge Half-Way Point

31 days in January, so today is our mid-way point. Wow. Where did the month go?

If you’ve had a hard time getting started with your goal, well, you’re not alone. I’ve done pretty well with my writing goals – at least in the past week or so – but I haven’t even considered my exercise goal yet.

See, I got super busy in the past week and a half, and since my livelihood is writing, I thought that was the goal to get a handle on first. Makes sense. And I stick by that decision. But I really need to start considering how to work exercise into my days more often.

I don’t understand how I became such a couch potato. I used to TEACH martial arts. I studied ballet until I was 18. I was a gym rat for a good portion of my life and dated weight lifters in college. I even had a subscription to Muscle & Fitness because of one of my ex-boyfriends. I studied chemistry in undergrad and was fascinated with supplements and how different vitamins and minerals affected our bodies.

Somewhere along the line, I gradually stopped working out and started becoming a couch potato. I think it was becuase of grad school (I went at night, working full time), but that’s been over for a while now and I’m still comparatively inactive. So what’s up with that?

Here we are at our half-way point and I haven’t done anything with my fitness goal. Okay. So it’s time to get started, right? No time like the present and all that. So in addition to writing, this week I really want to work on working out. I’ll let you know how I do next week. Wish me luck!

In the meantime, the new Samhellion newsletter is out with lots of good articles on resolutions and such. I’m one of the editors and I contributed a piece this month, so take a look!

I also wanted to let you know that we’ll be having more great guest bloggers! Please comment on their posts to make them feel welcome and let them know that someone is out there, reading their guest blogs. Thanks!

Challenge Check-In #2

Woops! Sorry – a little late with the Check In post today. It’s been that kind of week.

I’ve done much better this week than I did last. I got hit with edits and a galley proof, but I still managed to write 5 out of the 7 days and surpassed my 2,000 words/day goal twice. That’s way better than I expected with so much going on.

How did you all do?