The Oatmeal on Working From Home

I recently made the switch from a 40+ hour work week in the office to working from home most of the week. This has been sort of my dream forever, but we should always be cautious of what we wish for. The Oatmeal, for instance, warned me about a few habits to avoid in this comic strip. This panel is my favorite:

What are your tips for staying productive, healthy, and social when working/writing  from home? I made a list of RULES (of course I did), and so far I'm happy to report that I've been following them!

Teddy Wants You to Quit Balking and Finish That Book

Checking in for Row80! My goals right now are all about revising, and I'm happy to report that I haven't derailed, despite attending an 8-hour work event on Saturday.

I only had 25 pages to read through this week, so I planned ahead and breezed through them by Friday. Today, I'm incorporating line edits and bigger changes for the first 50 pages into my manuscript doc. It's slow-going, but still satisfying.

I also reorganized the notes I have for the broader changes I need to make. They range from switching someone's name to rearranging entire chapters. This part gets a little sticky. One of the greatest things about writing a book is that you get to create everything - you are an architect, fashion designer, governor, CEO, psychologist, and sometimes chief torture agent.

Given all these fancy responsibilities, there are times I seriously don't want to make a decision. I wish someone would just tell me what to do. Beta readers and critique groups can give you ideas, but ultimately it all comes down to you and what you decide. Ditch an entire character? Rewrite the beginning? Switch from third-person to first? The pressure... the pressure!!!

This quote is a nice motivator for me when I want to demote myself from all responsibility:

Theodore Roosevelt: In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

I've been stuck doing nothing before, and it definitely is the worst.  Happy writing (and rowing) all!

Fun With Camel Case

I have an irrational love for title case. Five days a week, when I show up to the office and put on my editor goggles, I'm like a title case hawk.

But some of the non-editorial folks I work with generally aren't the wordy type, and have interesting ideas about capitalization. So when a coworker showed me this site:

http://titlecase.com/

I nearly fell off my chair. It's the ANSWER! The truth!! And it reduces all the back and forth emails about titles in a snap.

The site also has a couple case options that might come in handy if you ever need to convert text. I never heard of camel case before, but I'm thrilled that it exists.

And as for "shortened" - well, that's just a nice, regular, correctly spelled word for the rotten, crunched, insulting thing kids these days call text speak. It's also called Textese, which is the most hideous word  I've ever scanned from left to right. Something inside me weeps a little when 'two' is replaced with 2. For the love of Scrabble! Why?!

So, in short -  http://titlecase.com/

Title Case:      Stop Hurting My Eyeballs with Text Speak, You Jerkface!

Start Case:     Stop Hurting My Eyeballs With Text Speak, You Jerkface!

Upper Case:   STOP HURTING MY EYEBALLS WITH TEXT SPEAK, YOU JERKFACE!

Lower Case:   stop hurting my eyeballs with text speak, you jerkface!

Camel Case:   StopHurtingMyEyeballsWithTextSpeak,YouJerkface!

Shortened:      Stop hurting my eyeballs w/ txt speak, U jerkfac!

Password:      $+0p hU7+in9 mY e`/e6@!!$ 

Visions of Revisions Danced in Their Heads

Some good tips from Query Tracker on revisions in this post:
http://querytracker.blogspot.com/2011/08/pre-revision-before-you-break-out-red.html

I especially like this one:

"Know where you are weak. We all have weaknesses. And we all have strengths. We also have things that fall in between. For me, some of my weaknesses include overusing "that", not conveying exactly what I saw in my head, sparse setting, and too many metaphors. I was going to list some of my strengths, but feel really weird doing that, so we're going to move on to the stuff in between."

 I didn't realize half my poor writing habits until I:
- Read my WIP out loud
- Gave it to readers / a critique group for the first time
- Counted the number of times I typed "very" in a chapter

Writing self awareness has been key for me, and requires constant vigilance! It's the Mad Eye Moody way.