Marilyn's Musings

If you think I'm going to give you some wonderful secret about how to manage your time, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. What I am going to do is tell you how I do it. When I was younger, I did far more than I can manage now. I've learned that my mind works much better in the morning then it does in the later afternoon or evening though so I center my biggest jobs and those that require more intelligence soon after I'm up. I've always been a person who showers and dresses right after I get up--which is usually around 4:30 or 5. I'd certainly like to sleep longer, but it doesn't happen. I started the getting right up and dressed soon after I had kids. With children, you never know what the day may bring, who'll you have to take or pick up from school, or take to the emergency room. Already being dressed helps in these situations. When I had my care home, my ladies left for work around 6:15 a.m. Licensing liked to make unannounced visits ar...

Authors complain a lot about how much time must be spent on promotion and how that takes away from their writing time. In this day and age with so may writers self-pubbing and their books appearing on Kindle and Nook and other e-readers, if a writer doesn't promote he or she will not even be noticed. So what's the answer? It's a dilemma I face every day. When you write two series a year, as I do, you have to spend at least half of your writing time producing a book. As any writers knows, writing the book isn't just sitting down and cranking out the chapters. A lot of thought and research must happen first. In my case, I start developing characters and what I think will happen to them. Once I'm actually writing, often I have to stop and do more research. When the first draft is done, taking about three months, I read it chapter by chapter to my critique group and then fix the things they've suggested and other things I've found along the way. When that's ...