Tag: focus

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Write 2 Be Magazine is now out so please go check it out at http://write2bemagazine.com/. Also please go and join the magazine on twitter https://twitter.com/write2bemag, join the email listing for the magazine or submit a request for an author interview at Write2bemagazine@yahoo.com, and also like the Write 2 Be Magazine fan page https://www.facebook.com/Write2BeMagazine. Please help support my endeavor and my new journey and help me spread the word about Write 2 Be and its meaning.

The Reasons Why My Novel Might Not Be Finished Yet

February 19, 2013February 19, 2013 jcladyluv

I started my current novel some time ago (I’m embarrassed to even say how long ago it was) and it should’ve been finished by now. In fact I should’ve not only finished that novel but have already been well into the next one. Nevertheless, I am still not finished yet. I think that these are some of the reasons that I haven’t finished my novel yet:

Too many ideas
Can’t balance my time effectively
Too ambitious with the projects that I want to accomplish
Too much time spent not writing

In the end they all boil down to excuses that just aren’t good enough but I thought identifying with them would possibly help me finally get to the point where I could perhaps finish the novel. I believe the biggest reason I can’t seem to finish is the fact that I just have one too many ideas running around in my head; too many characters; too many plots. I did what I seem to always do. I get to that point where I am almost at the end (literally, I’m on Chapter 22 of a novel that is supposed to go to chapter 29—of course that could change) and then another idea that I’ve had in my head for sometime starts to become a stronger presence in my subconscious and then it’s the only idea I can concentrate on.

It’s a terrible habit that I have and it almost makes me wish that my problem was having a lack of ideas so the ones I have won’t take over every other project that I am working on. Perhaps this is another form of writer’s block. I always thought that it pertained to not having any ideas or inspiration to write at all but I think it might be just as bad to have so many ideas that you can’t focus on just one. Maybe I can’t seem to finish because it is my first attempt at writing a mystery and I’m nervous it won’t turn out as good as I am hoping. This is the point where I chuckle at people who seem to think that writing is easy and that all writers do is come up with stories. It’s so much harder then people think it is.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

Ready for the New Year!

December 31, 2012 jcladyluv

I wish I could explain my absence from the blog saying that I was in just such a writing frenzy that I couldn’t tear myself away from my novel, or my articles, or my work for various clients in order to blog. Unfortunately I can not say any of that. I had intended on getting a lot of work done last week but intentions do not necessarily mean action and I hate to say that I did not put action into those intentions.

I had time away from having to do homework for school and my daughter was even gone for a few days with her father but the time just disappeared into thin air. I did some reading and I did some planning in my head but as for them making them to the actual physical form of being on paper (or on the computer screen), it just didn’t happen. I’m not going to make excuses because there aren’t any.

If I waste time dwelling in what I didn’t do that was supposed to get done by now then nothing still gets done. I promised that in this coming year that I was going to direct my focus on the things that I can control in my life and not continue harping on what I couldn’t. I can’t go back in time and change things to be the way that I want them to be so I will live in the present and just do better.

I’ve already made my lists of the accomplishments that I WILL get done in 2013 and I am already in the mindset to accept that things must change and that all of my efforts will be directed towards making the changes that need to be made in order to get back on track. Hopefully all of you are geared up and ready for the New Year and have your plans of action ready to be put in motion. Happy New Year everyone and let’s make this the year it is meant to be!

I have the Write 2 Be Empowered… What is your Write 2 Be?

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

Write 2 Be Magazine will be debuting on January 15^th, 2013 so please go join the magazine on twitter before it debuts on https://twitter.com/write2bemag and join the email listing for the magazine at Write2bemagazine@yahoo.com. Also please feel free to go and friend me on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310 and like my Write 2 Be Magazine fan page. Please help support my endeavor and my new journey and help me spread the word about Write 2 Be and its meaning.

Shifting the Focus

December 6, 2012December 6, 2012 jcladyluv

So every year in December I try to prepare for the year that is coming. I can’t help it, I’m a planner, that’s just who I am. I make lists (yes I am an extreme list maker) for different avenues of things in my life. Typically I make 3 lists (goals for the year, books to read for the year, and writing projects to accomplish for the year) but this year I added a list (goals towards better health) which only adds to the expectations I place on myself.

There is one thing that I am changing about how I make my lists. Usually I push the envelope with the lists I make in the fact that I make them highly unattainable and marginally off focus, hoping to push myself to a higher standard to achieve them. This time I am making the lists not only with a more realistic expectation of completion in mind, but also with a different focal perspective in my sights as well.

I think that a part of my problem in the previous years (also one’s that just did not go as great as I had planned) is that my focus was on the wrong things. My focus was shifted on things that I just didn’t have any actual control over; things that required me trying to work my way around the plans that God already has worked out for me. I’m realizing now that there were things that I should have been directing my focus towards, things that are actually in my power to control, things that are where my focus needs to be, that I just wasn’t concentrating on the way I should have been.

Quite possibly, the reason why all of my plans for previous years were not going accordingly is due to the fact that they were my plans for me and not God’s plans for me. It’s not that I don’t also want the things that God has mapped out for me, it’s just that my focus got off track on other things that I thought I wanted and they weren’t necessarily what was right for me to have (at least not at this time). I was focusing on the wrong things. I was placing my energy into things that weren’t right for me. I was putting time into forcing something that was out of the realm of God’s plans. I was getting off track.

Now that I’m in a better place, a place where I can clearly see that the direction I was going in was leading to the wrong destination, my focus has shifted. My mind is clear. I know where my energy and time needs to be placed and everything else that comes as a result of that, is whatever is meant to come to me. My writing career hasn’t been what it should have been by now because I wasn’t focused on that. I thought I was. I had even managed to convince myself that I was steadily focused on that. However, my actions were just not matching what I was saying.

I wasn’t putting the energy and time into doing the things that I, as a dedicated and passionate writer, need to put into it. I was focused on other things that just weren’t worth my time. I wasn’t focused on the number one thing for my life (besides my daughter of course) which is my writing and my career. I’ve got it now and I’m back on track. Next year should be really interesting!

I have the Write 2 Be Ambitious and Driven…

What is your Write 2 Be?

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

Write 2 Be Magazine will be debuting on January 15^th, 2013 so please go join the magazine on twitter before it debuts https://twitter.com/write2bemag and join the email listing for the magazine at Write2bemagazine@yahoo.com. Also please feel free to go and friend me on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310 and like my Write 2 Be Magazine fan page. Please help support my endeavor and my new journey and help me spread the word about Write 2 Be and its meaning.

NaNoWriMo Day # 26: When the Idea Fairy Strikes!

November 26, 2012 jcladyluv

If any of you out there are anything like me, you get a heavy stream of new ideas just as you are entering the home stretch of a current project and need to stay focused solely on that project alone. If that is the case then just as you are finishing up your 50,000 words for your NaNoWriMo Novel in these last four days you will all of a sudden start to be hit with new wonderful ideas for the next novel.

Soon those ideas will invade your head space and you may find yourself unable to maintain your focus on the NaNoWriMo novel that you are currently finishing. This is going to be hard to do but you have to ignore those ideas for these next four (well probably three by the time most of you read this) days just until you have finished what you set out to do in the beginning of November.

Now of course I’m not saying to ignore 100% and not at least jot something about those ideas down quickly (operative word being quickly) but you can’t afford to go into long drawn out plans and outlines here. Not when you have another novel that you’ve already started to finish up.

I know how hard that is for us writers to do, just scribble some notes with no full detail about an idea without elaborating on it as badly as you want to (this would be why I have so many started and not finished novels) but your job for these last few days of NaNoWriMo is to stay focused on the task at hand. So remember that you are almost there, only three more days to go after this one, and you will have completed this goal.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

NaNoWriMo Day # 15: The Halfway Point

November 15, 2012 jcladyluv

It’s officially halftime. You’ve invested so much of yourself and your time to this novel already. At this moment some of you may be wondering if you can keep up this routine and this drive for the next fifteen days and finish this up strong.

Thanksgiving is next week, you’ve got to go out of town or you’ve got family coming in town. You’ve got all of this food to cook and the kids are going to be home from school so your time is going to be harder to divide up. Not to mention Christmas is right around the corner and we all know how much preparing for the Christmas holiday can take out of a person. It’s tough to even imagine finishing up this task knowing that soon (next week) your focus will be torn.

As unimaginable as it seems that you can actually finish this novel in the midst of a holiday season embarking, it really is possible. It may take some extra effort and perhaps even more sleepless nights (or nights with a lot less sleep than you normally get) but it is in fact doable. As tempting as it might be (and believe me, I know it’s very tempting), don’t throw in the towel. You have hung in there this long and now that you’ve made it to the middle of the month you owe it to yourself (and your future readers) to finish what you started.

Now for those of you that don’t have this problem of losing focus right in the middle of your journey, please share your secret to staying focused (perhaps even bottle it up and sell it) because I sure would like to know. If this month is like a piece of cake to you and your story is flowing better than even you expected, then congratulations and keep writing. Halfway past the starting line and halfway to the finish!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

No NaNo For Me This Year

October 11, 2012 jcladyluv

Normally around this time of year I would be preparing for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) by getting my outline together and doing the research necessary. However, I am not participating in NaNoWriMo this year and really I am a bit saddened by it. I feel in some ways, because I have done it every year since I have heard about it, that I am letting myself down by not doing it but I just don’t think that I can commit to it this year as I do every other year. I don’t have my outline completed for the novel I want to do and I haven’t even begun the research and on top of that, I am not quite finished with the novel I started last year during NaNoWriMo.

So to make myself feel a little better about not being able to fully commit to NaNo this year I have decided that I will use the time during NaNoWriMo to focus more on a novel that I have completed (a couple of years ago) and pitching it to agents and also pitching article ideas around to various magazines and newspapers and also working on my Write 2 Be magazine that is set to launch in January of 2013. I guess it would also be a good idea if I finish up the novel from last year’s NaNoWriMo.

With all of that I think that I will be pretty busy during the month of November even without having a new novel to focus on. If you too are a person who traditionally participates in NaNoWriMo and will also not be able to this year, don’t dwell on what it is you can’t do. Instead come up with another plan of something else within your writing that needs to get done that you can place your focus on. I plan on still making the best out of this NaNoWriMo doing a lot of things with my writing that I have been putting off and just can’t put off any more.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

The Crutches That Keep Us From Healing

September 21, 2012September 21, 2012 jcladyluv

I broke my foot when I was 19 years old. I was attending MorganStateUniversity and it was during the winter when it had snowed and iced and as I was on my way to a class I slipped and fell and could not get up. I had to be taken to the hospital and once examined, I had my foot put in a cast and given crutches and told to use them everyday for the appropriate healing time or else my foot would not be able to heal itself properly.

For anyone who knows me, I am a hardheaded person who typically likes to formulate my own method of how things will wok better for me and needless to say I didn’t really use the crutches. I tried to use them but they never felt like they actually gave me the support that they were supposed to give and they became more of a hindrance than actually helping me. It would not be until years later that I realized that using those crutches properly as instructed would have saved me a lot of physical pain down the road.

To this day I have problems with my foot (especially when it rains) and I know that with any body part that gets broken you are going to have problems but I think because my foot didn’t heal properly, it gave me extra problems. We all have our own personal crutches in life. There are ones that we are supposed to use that we don’t, there are the one’s that we use when we don’t need them, and then there are the ones that we use far longer than necessary and then on top of it we don’t use them effectively enough so that when we no longer have the crutches we are ill prepared for the journey without them.

I have had a crutch for the last several years and it was one that was supposed to only be used to get me in a better position for what it is I really need to be doing. That crutch was supposed to allow me time to get myself ready for when I no longer had them anymore. I had been relying on that crutch for so long that not only had I not realized that I should have removed them a long time ago, but now because I didn’t use that crutch properly as they were supposed to be used, I am ill prepared for the journey without them. The crutch that was supposed to end up helping me has now become the thing that has hindered me the most and without it I feel as if my world is literally crashing in on me.

A week ago, I had so much school work with this Master’s program that seemed to be getting the better of me, and I was frustrated because not only did I not have the time to write (due to massive amounts of school work) but I also do not have the time to market and promote myself or query to bring the money in as a writer that I need to make. A week ago I also had a crutch that I knew would be there, until it wasn’t anymore.

So here I sit, with the crutches pulled out from under me abruptly, with no notice, and amazingly I am sitting here doing the research and working on querying, and thinking of the next project as well as how to complete the novel I am still working on so I can query that, and surprise of all surprises I can am still managing to get my homework done. I seemed to have suddenly made the time that I needed to have all along.

Now I’m not going to say that I am glad that the crutches were pulled out from underneath me without fair warning because I am not in a good place right now and at this moment I am not seeing how it is going to get any better as quickly as I need it to. I can say that without those crutches, I have suddenly jumped into action. I am getting things done even as I am typing this blog post that I thought I wasn’t able to make the time for.

I can see now that those crutches were not helping me like I thought after all. They were giving me an excuse not to take immediate action. They were feeding the fear that I already had about whether or not I can make this work. I thought that they were giving me a way to prepare when really they were keeping me from taking that giant leap of faith that I always thought I was taking.

Most crutches do help us heal from whatever it is that is broken. However, at some point we have to remember to remove those crutches when they are no longer needed because then all they are really doing is getting in the way. I took too long to remove mine, don’t wait until it’s too late to remove yours.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

There is No Comparison To Be Made

August 6, 2012 jcladyluv

So I have begun CampNaNoWriMo as of last Wednesday and I was right that it would help me get focused again on my novel. I haven’t necessarily written the amount of words I should have written by this point but I have gotten back into the story and my mind has started swirling ideas around regarding the outcome of my character.

My words are coming along much better then I thought they would but I do still have that feeling every once and a while of wishing that I could write like…well any of the writers who crank out more than three or four novels in a year. That list would contain some of my favorites like Joyce Carol Oates and James Patterson and Eric Jerome Dickey and Zane.

I keep thinking to myself I wish I could do whatever it is that they do to produce the amount of work that they produce. Then I remind myself that I have to stop comparing myself to other writers because I am not them, but rather the best version of myself that I can be. I do that a lot you know. Think that so many other people have it better than I do and have so much more than I do or that they seem to be able to be so much better at writing or succeeding in general than I am.

I try not to compare having the old saying in the back of my mind that the grass is not always greener on the other side, but it’s hard when you see others who just look like they have it all, like they have all the answers to the questions that I keep asking. But just like other people don’t know my story and my struggles, I do not know theirs either. I don’t know what they had to go through to get where they are and what they have to continue going through now that they’ve gotten where I seemingly would like to be.

It is a slow process but I am learning to take stock in what I have and what I can do because the truth is that there is no comparison to be made here. I am me, not anybody else and what I have is for me to have or for me to struggle with. I have to keep in mind that I shouldn’t wish for anyone else’s journey. These struggles and this journey of mine is what was meant for me to travel and I am going to take stock in every bump in the road along the way until I get to the destination that was meant for me.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

From One Struggling Writer to the Rest Who Think They Are Struggling Alone

July 9, 2012 jcladyluv

Sometime last week (it may have been the week before that) Ms. L sent me a link to a blog post titled Don’t Break the Chain by a wonderful blogger named Catherine Ryan Howard who I am now following (and you all should be too). Ms. L knows I have been struggling with finding the time to write and work on all things related to my writing business so she thought that this would be helpful. Well as usual, Ms. L always knows just what I need to read (and hear) to get me jump started again. Of course it helped to know that this post also helped Ms. L as well because I knew that I was not alone in my struggles to be productive in my writing efforts.

Well the blog post talked about many things in regards to one being more productive but more importantly it gave the idea of marking off days on a calendar with a red X for every day that you have accomplished your daily writing goals, whether it be actually writing or working on the business side of your writing career, and of course after so many days of seeing a chain of red X’s you get into the mode of not wanting to break that chain and having to see those X’s stare you in the face everyday becomes an incentive to actually get things done.

Well there is a website that helps with that, for those of us who don’t want to go out and buy a huge wall calendar to mark down the days. The website (once you register) will allow you to mark each day with a red square for every day that you have achieved your daily goals and you can even create other chains for you business efforts or whatever other goals you want to set. I signed up (almost immediately) and have found it to be extremely helpful.

I have actually been getting things done because I simply just don’t want to break the chains that I have created for myself. Who knew something so simple as marking off days on a calendar could be so helpful in keeping me focused and making me produce more work. I hope that any of you out there who is struggling with this very same issue clicks on the links to the websites and gets started on their road to becoming more productive.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”