Tag: productivity

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I Know It Doesn’t Seem Like I Was Productive Today…

April 18, 2012 jcladyluv

Every day is not going to be the most productive day like I usually imagine it to be when I get out of bed in the morning. I imagine that after I take my daughter to school, go do my workout at the gym, come home to shower and get dressed that I would be ready to load myself with a cup (or two) of coffee and get straight to work. However, it does not always work out that way.

A part of me becoming more focused on my goals and turning my dreams into reality is to make sure that I am more productive everyday. Sometimes that calls for me to begin to realize that productivity does not just lie in the work that’s being done in a manner that can be always be seen.

Even if at the end of a day I don’t have a thousand words on my novel written, or I don’t write two or three query letters to be sent out, or I haven’t started that outline for the next novel that I was supposed to start the other day, or I don’t have the most prolific words for my blog post, it doesn’t mean that work is not being done.

A lot of times a writer’s work begins in their minds first. An idea formulates and is planned out in extensive detail within the walls of your mind and it takes life all before you even take pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). Research is also a big part of a writer’s world because that aspect of any project is extremely important and can not be avoided.

So on days like today, when I start to begin beating myself up for not having a finished query letter to send off, or for not being words closer to completing my novel, I have to remind myself that it doesn’t mean that I wasn’t productive. I do an enormous amount of my work in my head, and another large part is done in my research efforts. I can’t allow myself to feel like I’m not getting things done just because I don’t have a finished product. Some days my mind just needs to do the work within its walls and that’s okay.

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

Cutting the Ties of Negativity That Keep Me Bound

April 12, 2012 jcladyluv

“One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.”

~Lucille Ball

It is important when being a writer, in business for yourself, that you have adequate support around you. People reassuring you that you will be successful and that actually believe the encouragement that they are giving you. People that you can bounce ideas off of and they get how your mind works and don’t automatically assume that you are crazy. People that don’t tear you down every chance that they get.

I think that I have built up a good circle of people who believe in my vision and what my purpose is. It may be a very small circle but it is there. The problem that I continue to come up against is the people, or person in particular, who continues to tear me down with every open shot they get.

Now I know that I am supposed to cut any negative form of energy that enters into my circle and threatens my belief in myself but family is a little harder to get rid of. Every time I get to a place where I feel confident in what I am doing and I begin to stop doubting myself (at least not on an everyday basis) this person says such negative, nasty, unsupportive things. Sometimes they just say things that are downright hateful.

I asked someone once how you are supposed to extract that negative energy from your life and your circle when they are family and you have to deal with them on a regular basis. This person told me that just because that person is your family doesn’t mean that they necessarily deserve to be treated the way people normally would treat their family. He said that if they are not living up to the title and are not giving me that emotional support that family is supposed to give one another then they are family in title only but not in their actions.

I never thought of it that way and even though I try to keep this in mind, every time I have to deal with this person (which is often because my daughter is very close to them) the negativity is just there and sometimes it seeps in my subconscious whether I want it to or not. Last night the negativity seeped in for a little while but for a writer there is typically a battle to keep out the voices of doubt, whether it is your voice or the voice of others.

I didn’t necessarily win the time and productivity battle today but every day won’t be perfect and you have to just take the good with the bad. Tomorrow will be a better day, one where I will avoid all said persons projecting negativity my way.

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

Getting Back in the Swing of Things

April 11, 2012 jcladyluv

I am not full of thought provoking and inspirational quotes and phrases to say today but I really wanted to make sure that I posted. I am starting to feel my drive kick back into gear, on some days I would even say high gear.

I am having more and more productive moments and planning out several projects that I want to work on. I am finally sending out query letters (although they are not perfect) and I am even beginning to work on my novel again, little by little (every little bit counts).

I am happy to be gaining momentum on the dreams I have been continuously chasing since I was younger. I have been trying to keep a positive frame of mind as well as keeping my eyes on the goals that I have set for myself.

I think if I take my eyes off of those goals I’ll start to slip back into the land of un-productivity once again. So far this week I am winning the battle of time and I plan to keep it that way.

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

Being Broken Down To Be Blessed On the Way Back Up

April 10, 2012 jcladyluv

“God never intended for you to go through something and get nothing out of it.”

~Bishop T.D. Jakes

Sometimes I have days where I feel encouraged and empowered. My writing flows, my productivity is better then average and I feel like I am going to get to my destination. Then there are other days when my writing is not going as smoothly, there is no productivity and my destination seems further and further away. Those are the days that I just feel broken down. I try to think of the wise people who tell me that it’s not going to always be that way but the message never came across to me as clear as it did the other night when I was watching Oprah’s Next Chapter where she did a sit down interview with Bishop T.D. Jakes.

Now anyone who knows me well enough (either personally or through this blog) knows that I am spiritual but I am not necessarily terribly religious. Meaning I don’t necessarily believe that I have to go to a building (i.e. church) to get the word that God is trying to communicate to me. But every once and a while I will see and hear a Pastor, Preacher, or in this case Bishop say something on television that will make me wish that their church was within my reach so that I could go get that message in person.

On Oprah’s Next Chapter when Bishop T.D. Jakes told his congregation that “The blessing is in the breaking; that, which refuses to be broken refuses to be blessed; It is the breaking of life that produces the blessing of life.” I felt as if that message was meant for me. Now I know I wasn’t even there, and this was after all a repeat on TV so it wasn’t even live, but yet I felt like I was directed to watch it for a specific reason; because it’s what I needed to hear.

I always see my breaking points as my own little personal failures but I suppose the truth is that they are the foundations for my future successes. They are the models of what I need to look at so that I know not to repeat the same process that got me to that point in the first place. They are lessons for me to learn from, not mistakes for me to forever regret.

Bishop T.D. Jakes also said “The most blessed people I have ever met in my life have gone through something that broke them.” In essence, adversity breeds success and a multitude of blessings. If you look at the most successful people, they didn’t get to that place without having to be broken down at some point in their lives. Why should I be any different? Why should I expect to get to the level of success I know I am destined for without having to go through the trials and tribulations to get there?

The words I heard him speaking were so powerful and so profound and while I realize this is not the first time I have heard that message, this is the first time I have believed the words as I said them to myself. Building up any business that you want to have takes a certain amount of tenacity and drive. However, when it comes to building up a business that is centered around your love of writing and your sense of purpose, it takes guts, and courage, but most importantly belief in yourself and in the very words that you speak. The words you say are very important and you never know who your particular message might touch, giving them the strength to not stay broken so that they won’t miss their blessings.

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 No Matter What of It All

April 5, 2012 jcladyluv

“No matter who you are, no matter what you did, no matter where you’ve come from, you can always change, become a better version of yourself.”

~Madonna

This week I have actually been really productive, or at least more productive then I’ve been in a really long time. I am starting to feel that drive again to get what I need done no matter what. I heard a celebrity say once that those three words were words that drove her to the level of success that she had reached. She said that if she always told herself ‘no matter what’ the job or task had to get done then she would be driven to do it. It may not be done perfectly or maybe not even in its entirety, but it will get done. I’ve been thinking a lot about those three words and this week that is what I have had in my mind. Instead of trying to make everything perfect and get every single thing done, I have just been content on getting whatever I could get done, no matter what.

I was talking to Ms. L. last night and I told her about the submission that I finally sent off to a magazine. It sounds like something that you would think I had been doing on a regular basis by this point but sadly it was not. I have spent months agonizing over whether editors will like my article ideas, whether my writing was really as good as I thought it was that they would even pay attention to a query from me, but mostly I had been trying to figure out how to write the PERFECT query letter. I have stacks and stacks of books (and internet research) on how to write a perfect (or irresistible) query but none of them seemed to help me. I had sworn that I would not send out a query until I got the query letters just right. The problem with that theory was that none of my query letters were coming out perfectly, so of course nothing was being sent off.

This week I said that I was just going to start sending query letters, even if they weren’t perfect, even if they weren’t even close to being right, because if I don’t send anything out then obviously no one will see my work and I will never see my byline in any national magazine. So I did. I sent a submission, and it was indeed imperfect, but it also indeed felt really good. The thing is that I can’t promise that the queries will be perfect, but I imagine that with more practice in sending them out on a more consistent basis, they will get better.

I also told Ms. L. that I was going to work on my latest novel that I have yet to finish because I honestly haven’t touched it since the end of National Novel Writing Month (I’m not sure why I haven’t). I said that even if I didn’t write much on it that I would at least work on it for half an hour, no matter what. I in fact did work on my novel, and though I did not write much on it, I did write for a half an hour. I plan on working on it tonight as well.

I am finding that this week is turning out to do for me exactly what I wanted it to do for me (at least on the writing level) which is re-light that fire under me to get moving and put all my plans in motion. I think now that I have really started to visualize my dreams I can begin to see them as my reality. It’s helping me put some action into all of the planning that I have been doing. It feels really good to feel that fire starting to burn again. I just hope it doesn’t go out again anytime soon. I’ve got too much lost time to make up for. But I will get the job done, No Matter What!

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

Proceed Without Caution

March 27, 2012 jcladyluv

“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.”

~Diane Ackerman

So I am on a mission this week to re-ignite my fire and drive to become more productive in my writing career and I came across this article by Sage Cohen on ways to harness your fear and make that fear fuel your writing. There was a specific tip about focusing on the process instead of the results and it struck a chord with me. I am always focused on the end result of any and everything. I have always been a planner (at least in my adult post-motherhood days) I suppose I am overly cautious that way. I have this need to know how things are going to turn out primarily because I just can’t stand the not knowing.

The reality of any situation and of life really, is that there is absolutely no way of knowing how anything is going to turn out. There’s no predetermined outcome for things (well there is but only God knows what they are), it’s just a game of wait and see. I don’t exactly know when I became so obsessed with being cautious about everything because I never used to be that way, at least not with my writing. My writing was always the one thing where I just wrote and whatever came of it when I was done was what became of it. I wrote and believed that whatever I wanted to make happen with it would become a reality as long as I put in the work.

Over the years it seemed like I put in more and more work with my writing and nothing grand (the way I dreamt it up in my mind) was happening and I just started to doubt a little bit more and believed that caution was the way to go. The problem with that is that caution and creativity don’t really mix well together. I somehow forgot how to just enjoy the process and deal with the results of that process when they needed to be dealt with. Now of course results do indeed matter, but not at the expense of the sheer joy of working your way through the process.

Writing is an extremely rewarding, healing, and invigorating process. However, by constantly agonizing over what the results are going to be when I am done, I have somehow stopped enjoying the actual process of it. Maybe that means I need to take a step back and just fall in love with the process again, minus all of the cautionary measures. Old habits are hard to break but I am certainly going to try to get back to that place where I didn’t worry so much about what was on the other side of the bridge I was crossing, just so long as I made it there.

Caution can be good sometimes on your way to any destination in life but too much apprehension for anything can hinder you from enjoying the journey you are taking to get there. I think I just have to accept that I can’t know the end to every story, especially when I am not the author of it. What God has planned for me is what he has planned and the only part that I can control is the lessons I take away from the process. I think God has been trying to tell me to enjoy the journey and let him worry about where I end up. It’s about time that I start to listen!

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

Reigniting an Old Flame

March 26, 2012 jcladyluv

“Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible.”

~George Claude Lorimer

I listened to Ms. L. the other day as she talked about the series of articles that she just had published in her city’s local newspaper and the projects that she has coming up (let me add, paying projects), and how she is really starting to make some pretty good income with her writing just as she wanted to do with her business. Just as we both had hoped to do with our businesses. She is beginning to flourish and I am really proud of her. But honestly I am a tad bit jealous as well (but not in the bad way). It’s not that I don’t want her to succeed but I just wish that I was flourishing just as much as her, alongside her.

When I listen to her and hear her talk about her daily activities and just how productive she has been I see the same fire lit under her and the same drive inside of her that I used to have. She’s always on the go and pulling all-nighters and I can remember when I used to be the same way. My drive was so intense that I barely slept and I would skip meals just so that I could work on my writing. I have no idea when that fire in me started to die down. I didn’t mean for it to.

I know that I haven’t loss my passion for writing or for any of the things that I hope to do with my writing and my media company that I am currently trying to build up. I have a multitude of plans and my brain is constantly turning with more and more ideas by the hour, sometimes by the minute. But yet when it comes to actually executing those ideas and plans, after I’ve done all of the normal things that need to be done during my day, I sit down and the act of execution on those plans falls by the waist-side. I get tired and at times I accidentally fall asleep without ever tackling any of the things on my to-do list.

I don’t mean to be such a full blown procrastinator and I certainly don’t mean to have a head (and notebook) full of plans and ideas and never accomplishing even a tenth of them. I wish I had an explanation (at least a good one) for falling down on the job of making my dreams happen and I wish I understood why my drive and my fire isn’t naturally there the way it used to be, but I don’t. All I know is that this week I plan to get it together because I will only have myself to blame if I fail and no one else can make this happen for me.

I suppose I will just have to do what people do when they go to start their stove and they hear the clicking sound but yet the fire doesn’t immediately come on like it used to. They don’t just stop cooking their food, they go light a match or a lighter and get the fire started again themselves. I know that I still love what I do and I know I still have the passion for it and now I am just going to find a way to reignite the fire so that my dreams don’t burn out too. If any of you out there are feeling like the biggest procrastinator in the world, you are not alone and it does not have to stay that way. The flame can always be reignited, even if it has to be done manually.

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

https://writetobe.wordpress.com/

10 Things We Sometimes Do to Sabotage Ourselves

February 9, 2012 jcladyluv

I was thinking of all the ways and things people do to sabotage themselves. Largely, I was thinking of all of the things that I am doing that are making me sabotage myself. Unknowingly, this week has turned out to be one of looking inward at myself and reflecting on the things that I want and most importantly what I need to change within me to get those things that I am striving for. I had no idea that was what this week would be for me but I am tired of feeling as if I am watching the life I want pass me by. So I made a list of ten things that people do to hold themselves back from success.

Procrastination
Making Excuses
Pointing the finger at everyone else but yourself
Doing a whole lot of planning without a lot of doing.
Keeping people around you that are not going to give you a swift kick in the ass
Not going after every possible opportunity that you can get your hands on
Not taking care of yourself (both mental and physical health) before you take care of others
Open their minds to change and do something new
Say yes to everyone and continue to say no to yourself
Over think everything instead of just doing

Okay so that’s my list of which I am probably guilty of more than half of those things on that list. Tomorrow I will go a little further into self-sabotage and what we can do to stop sabotaging our own destiny.

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

https://writetobe.wordpress.com/

10 Commandments of a Successful Writer

January 28, 2012 jcladyluv

Today I started thinking of things that I could do to be a better, more successful writer. Things that I am not already doing or that I am not doing enough of. I began thinking if there were Ten Commandments for a writer what would they be. So I compiled a list of some things that I think should be a commandment for a writer to follow, at least one that wants to be successful at it.

Write Every Day (No Matter What!)
Start a blog and blog frequently, if not everyday
Make your presence known on the internet. If you don’t have one already, get a Facebook page, a Twiiter account, and a LinkedIn account.
Maintain your presence on the internet by committing yourself to social networking daily
Read about the Business of writing and your craft. You can never know too much about what it is you love to do
Trust your talent and your skill. If you don’t believe in your talent, who else will
Get a thick skin because there will be rejection letters, probably more than you would ever like to see, but you have to keep believing in your talent.
Read consistently. You have to be a great reader to be an even better writer.
Network with other artists, not just writers
Start calling yourself a writer to the rest of the world because you are one.

Well the list probably isn’t perfect but those are definitely some things that I know that I need to work on to become a better and more successful writer. What would you guys add to this list or better yet, what would your list read? Until tomorrow…Always strive to be a better writer than you were yesterday!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”