Deadline AND Promo Mode

This month’s going to be pretty tricky. I have the following irons in the fire:

• still promoting The Billionaire’s Ink Mistress from April.
• Preparing for One Cut Deeper’s release on May 18th.
• Which means Carina promo (done) and extra blog posts for other sites (I’ve done 2 so far). One of them is really fun – KoKoKoNa helped me!
• AND on top of all that fun, I have a deadline for The Billionaire Grinch!  I promised it to Tera by mid-May.

AND the kids are SUPER busy with school out this month.  Basketball practices and games for two kids (at least Littlest quit softball so we don’t have entire weekends devoted to tournaments). It’s band and choir concert season (which means 4 performances – the pain of having musically inclined children) and a parade next week. So extra rehearsals after school…

Not to mention Princess’s job and upcoming trip to Hawaii end of this month.

PLUS: Huge Evil Day Job project stresses that I feel like I’m constantly behind on, because things keep getting added to my neverending list.

I’ve really been struggling this year with motivation and energy. Spending more time in front of the computer (whether Evil Day Job or writing) just wasn’t helping. In fact, it was slowly killing me (Sitting is the New Smoking).

My calves and knees are aching more. My wrists are killing me (even though I don’t have that many words to brag about). My overall energy has been really low in all aspects and I’m struggling to get things done, like I’m walking in quicksand.

I had to get a grip on things. My stress level has been through the roof, which isn’t good for my blood pressure. I’m sitting all the time, frantically spinning my wheels but not getting anywhere fast. I actually started to have some anxiety symptoms (tight chest) and my mouth is full of fever blisters.

Something had to change. I didn’t want a heart attack for my birthday this month!

So I’ve started a new program that’s really helped. My trusty old timer. I’ve been setting it for 20 min increments. Then as often as I can, I get UP out of my chair and do something. Like pick an upbeat song and walk around my office for a few minutes. Stretch. Do a few squats or pushups (though with KoKoKoNa in my office, getting down on the floor is an invitation for play time, not exercise).

I don’t have time for a huge workout program – and I don’t have the mental willpower to tackle Power 90 again. But I CAN do the same moves in three-to-five minute increments.

I don’t know why it took me so long to think of this. I’ve already “worked out” 15 mins today just by taking 5 min breaks as often as I can throughout my work day. I’ve done lots of stretches, marching in place and general steps from cardio programs, a little kick-boxing, some light dumbbells. I mean, I work from home, so no one can see me dancing in my cubicle. I might as well take advantage of it!

On the writing front, this is helping tremendously. I do the same thing: set the timer and write for 20 mins. During that time, I can’t check email or Twitter or open a browser at all. Just words. Then I can get up and take a break. The first couple of sessions, I’d only get 200-300 words. But now, I can get 500, 600, even 800 words in 20 mins. Crazy, right?

That’s 2000 words an hour. I couldn’t BUY 2000 words a DAY before this.

Without sitting and struggling for hours at a time.

The other thing I made myself do last night: I took my “outline” – which was really a couple of sentences in a loose 3-act structure and a few candybar scenes sketched out – and filled it out with much more detail. It took an hour, but I jotted down everything I could think of that I wanted to cover so far. It could use more work as I go (especially near the end), but having a better outline (than a note that says “the hero does the despicable” because I had NO IDEA what I meant by that….) has enabled the higher WPH counts.

So May’s a crazy busy month. I’ll post when I can – definitely when I finish BIllionaire #3. If anyone wants to beta read it before I send it to my editor, I’ll probably only have a day or two before I need to send it in, so it’ll be a quick turnaround. Comment or email me if interested.