dECEMBER 2019/jANUARY 2020 nEWS

OUT WITH THE OLD: IT'S TIME TO GET REAL!

​I’ve gone through somewhat of a revolution in the last three weeks. Old ways haven’t worked, so new ones are in order. Resistance is futile. Time management and goal setting ARE my friends, and the old ‘I don’t do resolutions’ me has been booted out the door. I hope (help!)…

Times are changing at home!

​Alright, I know, you know, the whole world may as well know, I didn’t post news in November. I wrote a whole blog, twice. I revised and edited, I chopped and changed, I wrote it, and I hated it, so, no blog, damn it, but more on my failures in a bit.
It’s hard to believe we’ve entered 2020. Not only has a new decade begun, but this year brings big things in the Larkins household – first and foremost, a fifth birthday. I’ll officially have two school girls, thus, hopefully, more time of the useful kind for writing. There will also be a fortieth (not mine yet!) in my house, and then there are the significant family birthdays that somehow stack up into the perfect storm for this year! Three 65ths, a 60th, a 30th, a 16th, and more. Lord help this introvert!

​The end of 2019 also saw the change of hands of the original farmhouse on the family farm. We’ve cleared out much of my grandparents’ things, and my grandmother allocated family treasures. I’m a bit of a family-tree nerd, so I know a little about my grandmother’s grandmother and I’m thrilled to inherit some of the treasures she brought over from Ireland to New Zealand many decades ago. My grandparents were also unintentional collectors of local history had never threw out anything that might have a later purpose. Beyond the family heirlooms, we found many treasures of interest to the local museum, including my grandfather’s Peninsula Borough Driver Licence, and memorabilia from the long-since closed Hoopers Inlet School. It was a long, dusty, and fascinating task that has made room for the next generation of farmers, my sister and her family. It’s been a lesson in adaptation for all of us. My grandfather’s grandfather built the house, and each generation of farmer has lived in it at some time or other. We’ve had to put aside the strangeness of touching things that we weren’t allowed to as children, such as the arrangements of artificial flowers and treasures on the sideboard, and let go of it being my grandparents’ home, to allow space for the future.

​Christmas brought the usual – over-stuffed-with-sweetness children, shopping, gatherings, gifts, and honouring the reason for the season. What I hadn’t realised in the past was just how much time it demands. Last year I set a goal (a very loose resolution) of working on my author business for a certain length of time per day. That meant recording my hours daily, and I can say truthfully, that in December I did not meet that goal. With Little Miss finishing up at Kindy, picnics, final school assemblies, shopping, wrapping, cooking, gatherings, having children home, and then a husband on holiday, my use of time tipped wildly in favour of family rather than work. I’ve enjoyed it though, and found that I naturally needed to step back from many of my work duties over the holidays. I’ll have to factor that in for this year too, now that I have a new schedule, but I’ll write about that in a bit.

The only other thing of note I’ll share for the end of 2019 was something that gave us a bit of a shock, literally! Between Christmas and New Year, we had a few stormy days with hail, thunder, and lightning. It’s not a common thing on the Otago Peninsula – more of an every-few- years kind of thing. Well! We had two days of storms in a row, and the second day absolutely hammered the Dunedin area with over three-hundred recorded bolts. It was absolutely relentless and ended up right on top of us. There were multiple emergency services callouts to homes and power poles hit in the city, and we got the fright of our five years in the home we built when one of the large Macrocarpa trees just thirty metres away got hit. It was an instantaneous flash and bang, so bright and loud. It scared us good and proper and unsettled the children right on bedtime. After the storm I went investigating and found that not one but two trees had been struck, looking much like an enormous bear had raked it’s claws down the trunks. No doubt I’ll end up using it in my writing – it’s too good not to, but I’m in no hurry experience that again!

I met a goal, but...

​Last year as a writer surprised me for two reasons – one good, one surprisingly not so. I set a time goal for each day (and ultimately an average for the year to beat), and hit it (yay)! On the other hand, I didn’t accomplish nearly as much as I thought I would. I expected to publish a novel and several shorts, write a fairly regular blog, and keep up with my news. One of those things I managed, and I got a few shorts out, but failed dramatically in the publishing stakes. Now that I’ve been prepping for this year, I understand a lack of concrete goals being at the core, and failure to implement a regular routine. Upon reflection, I set a goal and achieved it, but it wasn’t enough. I had ideas of what I wanted to get done, and foolishly expected to do it. Yes, things changed up on me with childcare, but I could and should have done better. So clearly, for this year, I need to step up my game and make changes. Big ones.

Time to step it up.

​Believe it or not, I need to think bigger, not so much in terms of wants, but in goals and planning. I’ve already started, perhaps a bit later than I should have (I’ll need to factor in thinking about 2021 much earlier, perhaps in November), but I’ve put a bit of research and thought into all of it and come up with a plan. I’ve got goals, too. They might be a bit of a stretch, but I won’t know until I try, and I’ll consider this a trial year for goals (last year was for time). They include some pretty exciting freebies, more regularly published short stories, and getting my novel, The Weight of Expectation, published (I will, I really will!). I’ll still have two little charges at home a couple of days a week, but with both of my own children at school I’ll have a dedicated number of days to work just on writing. I’ve got lists of things I can do with kids at home too (like planning and idea gathering), and looking ahead, I can factor in days that’ll be high-load days, and low-load (like December!). I’ve got the opportunity to create balance, now I’ve just got to execute it. Beyond looking at the year, I’ve researched deeper on productivity and discovered the importance of journaling, reflection, and breaking the year into months, weeks…and so on, looking at the long-term, but also breaking up goals. I intend to blog about this in deeper detail, but I’ll hint at MANAGEABLE CHUNKS.

I’ve also got to balance family and work – like all parents do. It’s slightly tricky, given that I work from home. As an independent author, I’m not working to other people’s deadlines, and I have the opportunity to dedicate my time as I see fit, but less work means less productivity, so… I’ve got to find the best balance. I’m confident I can do that more efficiently than I did last year.

In short, from last year I learned:
Measuring time isn’t everything – goals are important – and to go along with that, big goals need to be broken down into steps, as does time. Rewarding myself with things that feed my writing is a sensible idea – like reading and making the most of the mobile library (because I avoid going to town wherever possible).
Making the most of the dedicated writing time I have (like JK says, protect your writing days!), will be essential. Knowing what to do with those grabbed moments (like when the toddler’s sleeping), will be useful too – visuals will help me. Rewards might too. I’ve activated my awareness, now I’ve got to follow through.
So, in short, the lady that ‘doesn’t do New Year Resolutions,’ has made some (cringe), but I’ve only ever avoided such things because I struggle with the idea of failure. It’s time to toss that silliness out and lift my working game. If I want to succeed as an author, I need to step up and do it otherwise the dream will be lost. What will keep me going is just that: The Dream.
Time to go out there and get on with it. 

Coming up in 2020...

New short tips blog posts monthly.
Free Flash Fiction Fridays - a new quick read every month, and best of all, they're FREE!
Short Story Sunday - every second month I’ll endeavour to publish a new short story (starting in February).
New-look prompts - on stunning new backgrounds, and searchable chronologically or by genre. The first are already up on Pinterest with five new prompts weekly.

​Have you set goals for 2020? Do you want to learn about the discoveries I’ve made around goal setting and time management, follow Emily Larkins, Author on social media.
Please share your ideas and discoveries in comments.

Have a great month,
Emily.