Author: Nicole Luttrell

I'm a speculative fiction writer. That means I write about dragons, ghosts and spaceships. Sometimes I write about the ghosts of dragons on spaceships.

Making your own self employed work schedule, so that you get shit done.

We are still in full sign up mode for the Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas challenge.  Can you make thirty new ideas next month?  Click right here and find out.

I am not yet a full time writer. In fact, I am currently a more than full time day jobber. Even so, I have work hours for my writing. I have to if I ever intend to be a full time writer.

I used to be a full time writer, when my little one was very little. Actually, I was a stay at home mom when I was with my ex. I learned a lot about making my own schedule during that time. Things that I use now while I’m trying to fit at least part time writing hours into my day. Things that will be essential to my life when I get my dream life.

Do you have a writing schedule? Or do you currently have more of a fly by the seat of your pants mentality about your work? Trust me, your writing and life will benefit from having a schedule. This is even more important when you’re becoming your own boss.

When you’re making your self employed schedule, here are some questions you need to answer for yourself first.

Your own internal clock needs to be your first concern. No amount of bullying and self hate will make you create good work if the time you spend at your desk is when you’re so tired you can’t see the keyboard, it’s just a fuzzy thing sitting on your desk. Now, I’m a morning person. I’ve been getting up at 5:30 to write before the day job, which I didn’t really think was going work at first. But it has to my joy. Writing after the day job has not worked, try as I might. By the evening I don’t have any creative energy left, so that’s never going to be prime writing time

You have to consider the schedule of people around you that you can’t control. If you live alone, go ahead and skip this part. If not, your partner’s work schedule, kids school and sleep schedule, these things will play into your writing time. Even your room mate can be a distraction. I have found that, since my writing space is in the living room, I work best when either everyone is gone or everyone is watching something I can tune out.

(That, by the way, is one of the secrets to my success. I learned as a little girl to read and write with the tv on. My mother, sadly, was a huge fan of trash tv. You’d be surprised how many novels I read and short stories I wrote while Jerry Springer was on.)

You should strongly consider the schedules of the people around you that you have control over. Like, for instance, if you have small children who nap. Or older kids that can be sent to play outside at opportune times. Or if your partner can be asked to go take the little ones to the park. Whatever pull you have on the actions of others, take it. Be loving, be flexible. Be willing to compromise. I find that if I take the monsters out of the house so my stay at home dad can have some personal time, he’s more willing to take them on errands so I can have some desk time. As for the monsters, they have learned that I need to be left alone for exactly twenty five minutes at a time, and then they can have my undivided attention.

Once you’ve taken some time to consider all of this, there are some tips that I, and many other awesomely productive people, take advantage of. Five, to be specific.
1. When you look at your to do list for the week, you want to consider what sort of work you have to get done. A week’s to do list for me might include a certain amount of chapters for Woven, editing a short story that I wrote a week before, a few stories that had been rejected that need sent back out, my Paper Beats World blog posts and a new rough draft of a new story to write. The first thing I consider is how much creative energy each of these projects is going to take me. Fiction takes the most creative energy. Rough drafts are the most draining, but editing takes a lot too. So I use my early morning time to write fiction. Whatever Woven book I’m working on comes first, followed by my short fiction. Sending stories takes almost no energy at all, because I can write a cover letter in my sleep. So I can spend an hour after work sending out some of my pieces without a problem. My blog posts also take little creative energy after I’ve planned out my posts for the month, because it’s basically talking. I really like to talk. So that’s another thing that I can do after work if I must, but it really is best done earlier in the day if possible. So think about how much energy each of your projects is going to take.
2. Deadlines are you friends, trust me. I know, it might not seem like it, but they are. Otherwise it is way too easy to say, “I don’t really need to get that done today. What’s it going to hurt if I leave it until tomorrow?” Make yourself realistic deadlines, and stick to them!
3. And when I say realistic deadlines, I mean it. You need to schedule days off, and even vacations. Why? Because you need to charge your batteries, that’s why. You need to switch off, watch bad tv, go to the beach, play video games all day, read comic books. Look, I love writing, I do. I understand the desire to keep going, every second I get. And while I’m still at my day job, I take almost every second I can get to write. But I always take one day a month where I don’t work, don’t write, don’t clean house and don’t stress about it. My family and I also take at least one vacation a year, and none of my writing goes with me. I also take my monster’s birthdays off, and spend the whole day not only celebrating their day, but the anniversary of the days that made me a mommy and step mommy. I’ve got to live my life, and so do you.
4. Finally, do have set work hours, and don’t write outside of them. Have a time when you are done for the day, as a rule (see below.)
5. Understand that there are going to be times when all of these tips go right out of the window. There are going to be nights when your stop time comes, and you just don’t want to. Let yourself keep going sometimes. There are months that I get to my day off, and decide to devote the whole day to my current writing project instead. And a deadline, for me, can always get pushed back if life happens, as I’ve said many times before.

Here’s the biggest thing to remember about making your own writing schedule, though. The whole point of being your own boss is working how you need to work. It’s all about writing our stories, and getting those stories to other people. Whatever you need to do to make that happen, do it so long as you’re healthy and happy. If you’re your own boss, be a good one.

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Markets, Something in The Machine

Don’t forget to sign up for Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas!  All the cool kids are doing it, you know.  Click here to sign up!

Augh, so this one is kind of late, as the deadline is creeping up on us here.  If it makes you feel better, I’m in the middle of writing my story, and might get it done today, I’m not sure.  But here it is, this week’s market, called Something in The Machine.

It’s an anthology that is going to center on horror and fright from the machines that our lives depend upon to an increasing extent every day.  Here’s the catch, though.  Your story needs to not come off as anti technology, or anti progress.  While the horror should come from the machine, it shouldn’t be demonizing technology.  As a techno freak, I approve.  Two thumbs up and all.

Genre- Horror
Word Count- Under 10,000
Sub Date- July 31 (I told you it was soon.)
Wait Time- Not specified.
Payout- $5.00
Rights- First publication rights and exclusivity for six months.

Here’s your link to full submission details.  Good luck.

Also, here’s a story prompt for your weekend pleasure.  Or to get you started on your story here.  What’s your favorite bit of technology?  How could it kill you?  I went with a tablet, myself.  I’m pretty sure at this point I need it to breath.

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Check This Out, PayPal

Don’t forget to sign up for the Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas Challenge!  Click here to sign up.

Honestly, is anyone not using PayPal at this point? I really love it, both personally and professionally.

So if you’re not using it yet, here’s why you should be.

Personally

Simply put, I shop on-line a lot and I don’t like the thought of someone stealing my card information. I spend enough money on things I don’t need myself, I don’t need someone else doing it for me.

I also use it to reign in my spending If I’ve only got a certain amount of money in PayPal, then only a certain amount of money is going to Jet Pens.

It’s also really, really easy. It’s just a button on most of my favorite sites, so I don’t have to type in my whole credit card number,

Professionally

Take all of the reasons I love using PayPal for my on-line purchases. Now, those are your first three reasons for loving them as a small business owner too. If buying your book is easy, your readers are more likely to buy.

The big thing, though, is that it’s easy. What do you know about security when it comes to paying on-line? What do you need to do to make sure your customers are safe? Yeah, I don’t know either. That’s why I like PayPal, because I don’t have any idea how to do that. And you know what? With more books to write, social media to blast, books to write, editing to do, books to write, covers to design, and books to write, I don’t have time to learn it. I’d much rather have PayPal do it.

So this week, check out PayPal. Let someone else take care of the money portion so that you can worry about everything else.

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The Writing Life, July 14

Did you sign up for Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas, yet? Do it now so you don’t forget!  Click right here to sign up!

My adventures this week included trying dry shampoo for the first time and introducing a new budgeting technique to avoid overdraft fees.

There are two reactions to what I just wrote; tell me more so that I may learn, and what the hell does that have to do with writing? If you had the first reaction, we will get to that. If you had the second reaction, I want to tell you why you should care first.

Being an indie writer requires a tight budget, a lot of confidence and a tight schedule.

And my new adventures, if they work, will save me up to sixty dollars a month, forty minutes a week, and make me feel more confident.

So, dry shampoo. I found this recipe on the awesome blog, Living Well, Spending Less. Now, I have super oily hair, which I usually either was every night or feel like a grease ball. My oldest monster has my hair. You would not believe the amount of times we have been late somewhere because I noticed, too late, that her hair or mine looked like someone had rubbed cheap pizza on it. With this dry shampoo in the house, though, my life is better.

* It is cheaper than shampoo, and now we use less shampoo. (Less water, too.)
* I save twenty minutes every time I’m not taking a shower I don’t need.
* I feel more confidant about how I look, and about my mothering skills.
* I smell like awesome chocolate.

As for my money saving tip, it’s pretty simple. I don’t keep track of my money, spend too much, and overdraft. So this week, I’m taking out the amount of money I know I can spend, then moving my debit card from my wallet, were it’s all to easy to retrieve, to my check book that lives on my desk. It’s simple, but I hope it will be effective.

So that’s what’s new in my life. How about you?

Things that rocked this week-

* Fail, my Mash story was way too long, and I couldn’t cut enough of it without hurting the core of the story. Win, I submitted it to Flash Fiction instead. There is no great loss without some small gain, I have always said this.
* Wal-Mart has their back to school stuff out. Fifty cents for composition books!
* I am so pumped about your reaction to Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas.
* I’m not lying, this dry shampoo is awesomesauce. I smell like chocolate!

Things I’m looking forward to this week-

* I should be finished with part one of the fourth draft of Broken Patterns. Okay, that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is to me. It’s a step towards being done with the fourth draft, and there’s only one more draft after that.
* I’m working on the rough draft of a new story, the second to last one for my short fiction collection. Eight stories down, two more to go. I’m really getting there.

Not a super exciting week. I’m working a lot over overtime hours at the day job to pay for some computer upgrades around the house. So it’s a head down, nose to the grindstone, any progress is good progress kind of week.

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What Self Published Writers and Stand Up Comics Have in Common, (And what we can learn from them!)

Have you signed up for the 30 Days, 30 Ideas Challenge?  Why not, don’t you want 30 new ideas?  Sign up here.

I really like stand up comedians.  Louis C. K, Gabriel Iglesias, Kathleen Madigan, Lewis Black, Patton Oswald.  These are all some amazing people in my book.  I can’t talk about stand up without mentioning two of my favorites that passed on, of course, Robin Williams and George Carlin.  (Quick tip, don’t watch Robin Williams stand up with your kids or parents.  NSFW, kids, or your mother in law!)

Stand up has always been something I loved.  Like everything else I love, it influences my writing.

As self published writers, we should see the stand up comic as our brother.  They’ve got a lot in common with us, and a lot to teach us.

  • We’re all trying to get noticed.  Whether it’s sweating an open mike night or shouting at people from twitter to go download your newest book, that’s all we’re after.  We just want people to look at what we do, and like it.  We want fans, basically.
  • We all usually start out broke.  Most stand up comedians are just like you and me.  Working a day job, squeezing in hours to write, scribbling ideas down on paper during a thirty minute lunch break.  That’s the life, indi writer or comedian, until you make it big.
  • We are all busy.  Like stupidly busy.  That’s what life is when you’re working two jobs, but you work one for free.  Tell me this, have you ever written a blog post on your tablet while grocery shopping with your kids on your day off, hoping you might be able to squeeze an hour in at your desk in between cleaning up the house and doing some laundry just so you’ve got clean undies to wear to work during the coming week?  (Guess how my day is going.)  Stand up comedians do that too.
  • We’re all passionate, though.  That’s why we put up with the crazy and the sleepless nights.  Because we know what we want, and it’s those big shiny name in lights.  Comedians want to be headliners.  We want our name on that shiny book cover.  We all want to be somebodys.  Household names.
  • More often than not, though, we’re all just working for experience.  We want to say, “Here’s where my work’s been.  Here’s who actually paid me a few bucks for something I scribbled on the side of my shopping list.”  The credit is more important than the money, every time.

Stand up comics have us beat on a few things, though.  After a lifetime of loving them, here’s what I’ve learned from stand up comics.

Be Fearless-

Say the bad words people tell you not to say if it’s what rings true.  Write about the serious stuff, the humiliating stuff, the real life stuff.  Write about how you feel about things, even if you don’t think it’s popular.  Write about how people actually act, not how we wish they would.  Write like your parents will never read it.

Fight through rejection-

You got a rejection letter?  Great, that loser in the coffee shop who wears dumb hats didn’t get one, because he didn’t bother to try.  Go get another rejection letter, get boo’d off stage somewhere else.  Learn from it, and do it again.

Don’t be afraid to go solo-

Because why not?  If you try and try and try to get an agent and no one’s biting, what are you losing by self publishing instead?  Oh, you might not sell any copies.  Are you selling any copies right now, with the book sitting in your desk?

Always have fresh material-

No one would go see Kathleen Madigan if she told the same jokes over and over.  People set Carlos Mencia on fire when they found out he was stealing other people’s jokes.  Always have something fresh, something new, something that you just finished working on, and now you’re going to write something else.

Handle your hecklers-

Stand up comedians are ready for hecklers.  They are so ready for them.  And the good ones will rip a heckler apart.  They will make lifelong fans out of other people because of what they did to a heckler.

We get hecklers.  People who would rather hate on your work than make anything of their own.  It’s not a bad idea to have some witty zingers to defuse a situation and make them look stupid.  So be ready with some scathing, smart remark for haters, and then move on.  (But don’t do that to honest critics.  Take good criticisms with humility, and don’t lash back just because you’re pissed.)

Stay clean, and emotionally healthy-

So, we can learn this from our own ranks, but since I mentioned Robin Williams earlier I’ve got to say something about it.  Depression is a real thing.  I don’t know if writers and comedians suffer from it more than other people, but we hear about it more.  I have depression.  Some days no one, not even me could tell.  Some days nothing is okay, and there is no reason for it, but it’s still not okay.  That’s a real illness, and it needs medical care from a professional the same as any other illness.

Stay off drugs, too.  I kind of mean that for everybody.  July 5th was the three year anniversary of the death of a good friend of mine.  He was addicted to drugs, and caught hepatitis from it.  It killed him.  My daughter’s uncle died because of a compromised immune system due to drug use last year.  They both left behind children and friends who miss them every day.  Their drug use, in both cases, was largely due to depression that they didn’t have the tools to deal with any other way.  If you have a problem, get real help.

Don’t be a Hemingway, don’t be a Robin Williams.  Don’t become another famous face on a magazine, dead before your time.

Love what you do, even if you get no love for it-

I’ve never had a bad time writing.  If I never get published again, I’ll still write until the day I die.  Because I love it, I truly do.  Stand up comedians would tell jokes if no one laughed, if no one came to their shows.  The best would play to a house of one, and have a great time doing it.

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Writing Prompt Saturday, What’s your Dream?

Have you signed up for the Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas Challenge yet?  Here’s a link if you haven’t yet.

I have a dream life.  It’s very specific, I have details.  Here’s my dream.

I want to live in a city apartment in Pittsburgh.  I want there to be a nearby coffee shop where I am known by name.  I want to be a novelist that at least flirts with the best seller lists.  I want to attend writers conferences and sign copies of my books.  I want to go to New York to meet with my agent, and I want to have book signing tours.  I want to speak at libraries.  I want to have an office, in my Pittsburgh apartment, where I go to work every day.  And I do mean every day.  I really don’t like taking days off from writing.

What’s your dream?  What makes you want to be a full time self published writer?  What do you think your days will look like when you achieve this dream?

I want you to go into detail with this exercise.  Really picture your dream work day.  I imagine a hot cup of coffee over a few hours of my most recent novel in the morning.  Then an hour of social media followed by any office work that needs done, balancing the budget or reading contracts.  Followed by an afternoon of short fiction work and blog writing.  Then an evening playing with the monsters and my husband.  I think I could spend the rest of my life just like that and be perfectly happy.

Let me tell you why this exercise helps me.  When I’m working hard, when rejection letters start coming fast, when I work ten hours at the day job just to come home and put in two more hours at my desk after the monsters are in bed, it’s not easy.  It’s sometimes the hardest thing in the world to drag my fat self out of bed at least an hour before I would need to so that I can get some writing time in before the day job.  When it’s too much, when I just don’t want to do it.  When I think I could just take one day off even though I know it would turn into another and another.  That’s when I think about my dream.  A desk at a window that overlooks Pittsburgh, with a days worth of writing to look forward to.

That’s the sort of dream that will get me out of bed every morning, guaranteed.  Whats yours?

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Market, Witches, Warlocks, Demons, and other Evil Doers

Have you signed up yet for the Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas Challenge?  Don’t worry, you’ve got all month to do it.  Here’s a link to sign up.

This market is probably my favorite one this month, because I get to write about a bad guy!  In fact, you have to.  This anthology is all about writing a story from the point of view of an evil, dark character.  Whether your evil protagonist wins or not is up to you.  Mine probably will.

Genre- Horror.

Word Count- 4,000 to 8,000

Submission Date- September 1

Wait Time- Two to three months after deadline

Payout- $25.00

Rights- Not specified

Here is your link to the full submission guidelines.  Let me know if you have any success with this or any other market, and I’ll include you in the monthly brag board, complete with a link to your site if you’ve got one.

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Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas Challenge.

For the past ten days I’ve counted down to today. Here, on twitter and facebook, I’ve counted down, and now it’s time to tell you why.

Next month is August. It’s Paper Beats World’s birthday. It’s first birthday.

I wanted to do something special, something exciting. Here’s what I came up with.

I love thirty day challenges. Take a month, and see what you can do to better your life in some specific area. No spend months, positive thinking months, tidying for ten minutes a day, I’ve done them all. Now, I want to do one with you.

For thirty days, I want to come up with a different, brand new idea. It can be an idea for a short story, a novel, a character, a plot bunny (I do love my plot bunnies), whatever comes to mind. The point is to make sure you find some time every day to think of something new.

I think that this is a practice that can help every writer, no matter where on the road you are.

For new writers, ideas are valuable and might be thin on the ground. If you’ve written one book, but aren’t sure where you want to go next, you might need a little push. Even if you’ve been at this awhile, sometimes your imagination gets stagnate.

As for me, I’m working on a series. That means that I’ve been living in the same universe through two books now. I love the Woven universe, but even the best toy gets boring if you play with it too much. I depend on short stories to keep my imagination fresh. I am always seeking out new ideas even if I don’t think it will fit into Woven. Either I can write a short story that have nothing to do with Woven. Or, maybe something will click in my brain, and I’ll realize I can use it any way.

So what does signing up for the thirty day challenge mean for you?

-You’ll get an e-mail every day, reminding and inspiring you to come up with a new idea. Sometimes it will have a prompt or guide, but you don’t have to follow that if you don’t want to. The important thing is to create a new idea.
-I’ll be hosting twitter chats every Thursday at 8:00. We’ll get together and talk about ideas and the amazing things we writers do with them
-After the event is over, you’ll be left with a notebook full of ideas. Think of it as your shield against writers block.
-You might also be left with a good habit. If you spend thirty days thinking of something brand new, maybe you’ll find that on the thirty first day, one comes to you just out of habit.

If you want to join the Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas Challenge, click here.

As a bonus, it will also sign you up to receive the road to full time newsletter once a month.

Your first e-mail will arrive on July 31. And, of course, I’ll be participating in the challenge as well.

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Check This Out, Mail Chimp

When you start selling your books and other products, you’re going to need a mailing list.  I started one last month, called the Road to Full Time.  I’m really glad I started one.

  • It allows me to talk at length about my actual step by step process to becoming a full time writer.
  • People who sign up for newsletters are actively saying, “I like what you have to say, and I would like to see more than you post on your site.”  That feels good.
  • When my books start coming out, I’ll be able to let the people who like me most hear about them, and offer specials.
  • It’s one of the most cost efficient ways to advertise.  Remember, you have to do all of your advertising when you’re a self published author.

The trouble is, I have very little time, and not a lot of money to spend. So, I started using MailChimp for my newsletter.

If you want to sign up for my newsletter, click here.

If you don’t want to sign up for my newsletter, click there anyway to see how easy MailChimp works.  Seriously, I just copied some code and attached it to that text.  It takes no time.

As for creating the newsletters, it is also easy.  That was really important to me.  I have worked for a lot of newspapers and newsletters for different organizations I’ve belonged to over the years.  You know what the worse thing about those were?  Page layout.  It sucks a lot.  MailChimp is by far the easiest program I’ve used for it.  Which is nice because I don’t want to be worrying about page layout.  I want to be worried about the content.

This is one of those things that you set up, and forget about it until you’re ready to make a new newsletter.  Images are easy to upload, and you can write articles right on the template, same as on WordPress.

So this week, check out MailChimp.  And let me know if you make your own newsletter.  I’m excited to see them.

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The Writing Life, July 7

One more day until the big announcement. Check us out tomorrow for all the awesome details for something really cool we’ll be doing in August.

So, on Saturday something pretty amazing happened. Yes, our country had its birthday and I blew up fireworks and ate greasy food and all that.

Way more important, to me, is that Paper Beats World reached 1,000 views for the year!

It has been eleven months since I started this little site, and I have had so much fun with it every day. I’ve learned so much, and gotten to meet so many awesome people. I can not thank all of you enough for reading, and sharing your journeys with me.

Honestly, I thought maybe three people would read this thing. So thank you all. I hope you get something out of reading here, and I hope to hear more success stories as the months go by.

What rocked this week-

* I finished my rough draft for Mash. The deadline’s July 15, by the way. Get on it if you haven’t started yet.
* I watched all eight Harry Potter movies with the husband and my monsters. I’m glad we finally did it, but that last movie was such a let down. Really, you span two books and you can’t even mention the whole back story with Dumbledore being friends with the second most evil wizard, or the fact that Harry had all three deathly hollows and got rid of all but one? Really?

What I’m looking forward to this week-

* Tipsy writer twitter chat tonight. That’s always a good time, hope to see you there!
* My super big, terrific announcement is tomorrow! Don’t miss it!
* My favorite show is starting again on Sunday. It’s Ray Donovan, on Showtime. If you follow me on twitter, you already know of my obsession.

What are you excited about this week? Looking forward to anything fun?

Have you signed up for the Road to Full Time newsletter yet? It prints once a month, and it’s all about the journey from part time writer, to full time. You can sign up right here.

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