What's On Dena's Plate This Month

A friend who reads my blog said to me yesterday, "I can tell you're busy, but what exactly are you working on?" Since I'm bereft of any clever ideas for today's blog, I thought I'd give you a run down of what I'm up to these days.

•  I just received an assignment from Motorhome magazine to write a tips article for traveling with pets. So I'll spend the next few days looking at RV list-servs and e-mailing friends and family, searching for people who travel with their pets in their RV to interview.  I also need to find a vet or pet expert to glean advice from.  The article is due in 3 weeks.
• My Art Jewelry marketing column is due Feb. 24th.  This month, I'm showcasing business success stories from our readers, touching on new artists, mid-way artists, and established artists.  I have a list of readers websites to look through and today's job is to contact the 3-5 people I think I want to focus on and arrange interview times.
• My humor columns for U Manatee Magazine is due March 6th with the theme for this issue being "The Great American Outdoors."  I've scribbled down a few thoughts but need to rough out a column so it has time to sit and be polished before I send it off.

Those are the "must-do's."  I also have an assignment for Toastmaster magazine to write a column about whether or not speech content should be evaluated.  I don't have a deadline for that, but I need to get cracking.  My goal was to submit it in January and I haven't started work on it yet, so you can see how that's going.  But I'd like to send that out by early March as well.

Then there's always sending out query letters for new work.  It can take anywhere from 1-8 months to hear back on an assignemnt, so it's best to always have numerous letters in the works. 

I also have on-going projects that pop-up in seeming random patterns.  I do work on them, they go away for a little while, then reappear with a new flurry of activity.  Those projects include:

• Working with a Life Coach to help her pull together two 3-hour workshops on Empty Nest Syndrome and general Life Coaching.
• Ghostwriting a newspaper column.  I could tell you who and what about, but then my contract dictates I would have to find and kill you.
• Writing a bi-monthly networking column.

Next are groups and meetings.  These include:

• Wednesday morning networking meeting
• Children Writer's Group Critique meetings the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of the month
  
• WGOT Writer's Critique Group the 3rd Thursday of each month
• WGOT Board meeting 1st Wednesday of each month 
  
• Toastmasters every Wednesday at noon
• Writing time with friends every Wednesday, 9-11:30.

At the moment, I have a Toastmaster's speech I'm due to give in two weeks, plus I'm entering the International Speech Contest and need to come up with a topic and write a speech for that and start practicing for what I think is the March 15th contest date.

I also have some classes I'm teaching soon, including a three-hour magazine writing class at UNC-G on the 18th.  

The critique groups require I read and comment on people's work (that never feels like work as I'm in really good groups with great stories to read) and for the WGOT I'm in charge of planning and organizing community workshops so I spend time finding facilitators and locales and coordinating dates.

Then there is the "Misc." group and what bothers me is that so much of what is in this category I feel should be priority.  I just haven't quite figured out how to make that happen.  But here they are:

• Continue writing my middle-grade novel.  Right now, I'm only looking at it about once a week, which is ridiculous and nothing is going to get done that way. I'm mulling over options to overcome this.
• Market Lessons In Stalking.  This is a huge category unto itself and includes research, publicity, pulling together the long overdue press kit, seeking out gift store distributors and so many other tasks it makes my head hurt to think about them which is probably why nothing ever gets done here.
• Mentoring.  I'm working with two young women as they start their own businesses.
• Editorial work for NC Careers Magazine.
  
• Journaling.  Huh?  What's that? I'm supposed to do it every day but find it too is becoming a once-a-week thing.
• Working with a friend on her book project and speaking career.  Another area I enjoy working on but can never seem to find the time.
• I met a dynamic woman in my Networking group who has given speeches around the world and we met to discuss pulling together a Women's Speaker Bureau for our region.  I'm supposed to be doing some research for that but (ahem!) haven't touched it yet.

And of course, I'd like to exercise and see my husband and friends and family every now and then and maybe occasionally clean the house. Blair and I haven't been out to our land in months.  Partly because I've been traveling and he's sick, but also just can't seem to find the 2 hours to go.  BLAIR said last night we need to sit down and do some evaluating on our time.  BLAIR.  So you know our schedules are getting out of hand.

Honestly, I don't know what to give up.  The networking and Toastmasters and public speaking and teaching classes all feed into the promotion of the writing career.  I can't give up writing for magazines because that's my income, and I want to do my novel writing but can't just do that in a vacuum.  My critique groups are my creative lifeline as is my writing time with friends, so I'm not touching that. Come August, I'll rotate off the WGOT board and give that up. And if I get enough speaking engagements on my own, I could give up Toastmasters.  But, I just love the people in my group and it's a perk going there each week so I'll probably continue.  I just think it's a matter of FOCUS and better TIME MANAGEMENT.

Like maybe not spending 20 minutes typing out a blog entry.   Color me embarrassed.  Bye-bye!

Volvo Owners As Highly Evolved People

I haven't heard anything from the owner of the Volvo I scrapped on Wednesday.  He/She could be preparing their court case against me, but I prefer to think I had the fortune to literally bump into one of the nice people of the world.   You never know these days.  The scratches were minor but you always run the risk of getting the "You owe me a brand new bumper for my 1984 car" individual.  I saw waaaay to much of that sort of behavior in my claims adjusting days.  So thank you, nice Volvo owner, for restoring a bit of my faith in the rational-mindedness and kindness of people in our nation.  Kudos to you.

BookSense Advance Access Program

My friends Pam & Michael Cable alerted me to a wonderful little gem of a program called the BookSense Advance Access Program. Here's a description pulled from their website:

Several times each month, we email over 1,000 independent booksellers with news of galleys, reading copies or finished books that you are offering for review. After receiving a free review copy from you, stores will read and decide whether to carry the title, and hopefully even nominate it for the Book Sense List. We make no promises, but the Advance Access program has proven to be a very effective way to get the word out about your titles. Stores will email you directly, and generally, you can expect requests from 25-50 booksellers. The stores do know that it is "first come/first served," but the more booksellers you can provide copies for, the better, of course.

 The fee is $50 and the mailing with Lessons In Stalking listed went out on Monday, February 6th.  Since then, I've had 15 independent booksellers request my books.  Requests have come from Arizona, Iowa, Alaska, Maine, California, New York and--my coup of the day--the Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge Massachusetts. 

At this point, it's just me sending them a free review copy of my book.  But that has several things going for it.  One, they've requested it, so it's not like a blind mass mailing where I hope they look at it.  Two, in their e-mails requesting the book, several bookstore owners already said, "Oh, this looks like a staff pick book for us" or "Our customers love cats.  We can't wait to receive your book."  So I'm extremely hopeful sales will be forthcoming.  The final benefit is I would MUCH rather be in small independent bookstores where owners know my book and can talk about it to clients vs. the major chains where it would just get shoved on a shelf and lost.

So all in all, I'm feeling very satisfied I've gotten my $50 worth of value from the program. I stated I was willing to send out up to 50 free review copies, so I'm hoping the requests keep flowing in.  And if anyone needs to find my book in the upcoming months, I'll  direct you to the "Ha-vad" bookstore.

A Bump In The Road

I was manic this morning.  Wednesdays are my crunch day.  Today I had a networking meeting from 7:15-8:45, writer's group from 9-11:40, Toastmasters from Noon - 1, met with 2 fabulous women I'm mentoring from 1:30-2:30, and then home to clean up for my writers critique group (Potter's Plotters?) meeting here tonight.

So I flew out the door at 6:20 am, 5 minutes later than I planned on leaving, plus I had to let my windshield defrost. Morning traffic into Greensboro can back up so I wanted to give myself time, especially as this is the Networking group I was late for the one time and  must now never, ever be late for again.  So I'm haulin' butt through traffic, going faster than I should, cutting in lanes, and just feeling harried to get there on time (which to me, means early).

I make it to my meeting with 10 minutes to spare.  But we let out late,  so I again found myself zooming through traffic, scowling at people going a mile or two under the speed limit and just not practicing safe driving skills.

I pull into the parking lot across from the Green Bean at 9:03 and rejoice--the first slot is empty.  Lucky me.  So I turn my car in and hear a scrapping sound. Crap. I misjudged the distance and hit the bumper of the green Volvo station wagon beside me.

I get out and look at the bumper.  I can't find a mark.  Yippee!  Then I look at my front bumper.  It's not bad, but I obviously scraped something, so I take a closer look at the Volvo's bumper.  Yes, there it is.  Some scratches along the lower portion.  I grab a piece of paper and write my name, number, e-mail, put the date and time and place it on the windshield asking them to please call me.  I haven't heard yet, but it's only 4 pm so they may just not be home yet. 

I take that whole episode as a warning from the Universe to SLOW DOWN.  I got lucky I just bumped an empty car versus something more serious happening on the road at 55 mph.  I was pushing the clock to get to my 1:30 meeting but made myself SLOW DOWN and flow with traffic.  A five-minute lateness would not kill me. And I ended up pulling in right at 1:30, anyway.

Interestingly, the speaker I evaluated at my Toastmasters meeting today gave a speech on how she finally overcame her habit of always being tardy.  She gave the real life example of how when she was young, she actually got locked in the K-Mart where she worked not once but three times because she didn't make it outside in time and no one realized she was still there.

At one point she asked us, "Who here is the person who is always early and finds it unthinkable to be late?" About 6 of us raised our hands.  I may have imagined it, but I swear tshe looked right at me as she said, "I could have guessed those."

So my challenge is to learn not necessarily not to be prompt (perish the thought) but more not to have a cow if circumstances dictate that I be a few minutes late.  Better late and uninjured than on-time with a criminal record. Right?