Moving and The Writing Life

 

By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin

Last week I missed writing a new article about the Writing Life for the first time in years. After ten years in Colorado, we moved back to the community in Southern California where we lived ten years earlier. Change has been a key word in this process.  In this article, I want to show how my skills as a writer gave me what I needed to make this move.

Moving is Hard

To get published is also hard but possible. We used movers to pack some of our fragile possessions and to carefully lift outside our furniture. With publishing, there is much to organize and learn how to write a book proposal or a query letter or just formatting your magazine article so it looks professional. Each of these steps is part of the process and something every writer has to do if you want to get published. 

Much Is Different

Our new place is radically different from our former location. To enter the writing life, you have to continually make new connections and study different companies. For example, to get published in a magazine, you have to study that publication and see what types of stories they publish and do freelance writers send those stories or are they staff written? For three days to get to our new location, we drove eight or nine hours each day. Ahead of time we had made hotel reservations and planned our path. Yet at times there were delays in the process and it's the same with the writing life, sometimes it takes an unexpected amount of time to reach a particular editor or literary agent. 

There Is A Lot to Learn

Because we lived in this community years ago, the street names and various locations has a feeling of familiarity, yet we are struggling with even simple directions. I’m constantly using the directions feature on my phone to go to anywhere. The world of publishing is similar and is always changing. I’ve been studying the details for years yet I still have a lot to learn. It's an action step I encourage for each of you--always be learning more about the publishing world. 

Your Routines Are Changed

When we moved across country, the location of everything shifts. For several days last week, the bulk of the day was spent unpacking boxes and organizing the things as they came out of those boxes. The process of moving interrupted my writing and I wasn’t able to blog last week. Often my writing routine has been changed or interrupted. Many writers create a certain pattern about when and where they write. Of necessity, I’ve learned not to place restrictions on my writing routines. I’ve written in busy environments such as coffee shops but also in libraries, on airplanes and in hotel rooms. Every writer needs a measure of discipline and persistence to get it done when your routine is interrupted.

You Have to Adapt

To prepare for our move, I used my scheduling program for my social media posts to Twitter and LinkedIN. Because of using this tool, these posts continued whether I was near a computer or not. My posts to Facebook simply didn’t happen during these days. The move has forced many changes and I’ve had to adapt to get things accomplished. For example, during our several days of driving to our new location, I had authors sign their Morgan James contracts. Often late at night, I was working on my laptop to keep these authors moving forward through the production process. Admittedly working on my laptop is different from using my desktop computer. I had to adapt to accomplish some simple publishing tasks. 

The same sort of action happens in the writing world. We need to adapt as writer to give the readers (and our editor) what they expect and want. If your book proposal is incomplete or missing a critical section, because of the volume of submissions, you will often get a simple form rejection letter. It is best in these situations to use a checklist to ensure you have all of the essential and expected items. It's why I created my book proposal checklist to help writers achieve this need and submit a complete proposal.

Each Day Gets Better 

As I explained in the opening, moving is filled with confusion, a feeling of being lost and many changes. Yet as we’ve worked through the details of each day, it has also gotten better. We love our new location. As we’ve unpacked our belongings, the routines of life are slowly falling into place and getting better. 

The same sort of process happens in the writing world. As you tackle something unfamiliar such as writing a magazine article or a book, the more you work at it, the process gets easier. Each day is filled with challenges yet also opportunities. As a writer, I am often a plodder and keep moving forward in the process. It's the same element I’ve used with this move. Persistence and the ability to keep moving forward helps me know that eventually all the confusion will disappear and life will even out. 

Continue Your Routines

As we’ve set up our kitchen, we’ve intentionally kept many of the same patterns of our former kitchen. For example the plates and silverware are located in similar places. This pattern has helped us settle into the new location. I suggest the same is true in the writing life. If you have a place where you write, where you keep your pencils and computer, maintain that place as much as possible. It will help you be able to consistently take action with your writing life.

Overall there are some basic characteristics of every writer which have also been in play with our move:

--persistence

--a commitment to continued learning

--a sense of curiosity and adventure

--knowing as I continue, things get better every day

My writing life feeds into my regular live including my recent move. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Tweetable:

Moving is disruptive to The Writing Life. This prolific author and editor explains how his skills as a writer have helped the moving process. Get the details here. (ClickToTweet)

Much of the publishing process is outside of the writer’s control. 10 Publishing Myths helps writers have a realistic perspective and take action. Get 10 Publishing Myths for only $10 +FREE shipping + over $200 of free bonuses.

Save Or Discard

By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin

True confession, I am a lifelong saver of stuff. I love my books and it’s hard to part with them--even if they sit on my shelf and I never open them again.

There is a basic principle of human nature: if you have empty space in a drawer or closet or bookshelf, as new material comes into your life, you will fill that space with something. 

As I write this article, we are moving again. Every time you move there is a lot of sorting and getting rid of things as a part of the process. I’ve been sorting through my various books and narrowing down the books which will actually stay in my office. It’s been a difficult experience for me but with each book, I’ve asked myself, “Will I ever open or read this book again? Will I need it for some forthcoming writing project?” If the answer is, “no,” then I’m probably getting rid of it. 

Think about the various books on your bookshelf. Do you read one type of book such as suspense or romance or nonfiction? I read many types of books such as a variety of how-to-write books, nonfiction (Christian and general market), children's books, fiction (in many different genres). I also have a series of Bible reference books and a variety of translations of the Bible. My bookshelf space in my new location is limited so I've been reducing my books--which is a painful experience but I’m being realistic with each book. If I get rid of one or two books, I can often track down the information which I need using another method. I’ve done this process with past moves and it is rare that I’ve gotten rid of a book which later on I needed. This sorting process while difficult is a necessary part of the move.

I understand the necessity to sort my possessions on a regular basis from the example of my parents. For over 45 years they lived in the same home. After their passing, we even found their report cards from grade school. The volume of stuff they accumulated was remarkable and has taken a lot of energy to process. As I mentioned earlier, in many ways I’m a saver but I’m also trying to walk a different path and regularly slim down my possessions--even if I miss a few books and need them later. 

How do you handle this process of saving or discarding? Do you have a regular system or just allow any empty space to fill? Let me know in the comments below.

My articles in other places. Often in these article, I encourage you to publish your work on other blogs and places. Here's some of my articles which have been published recently:

Every Writer Needs a Safety Net appeared on Writers on the Move. I give the background and reasons for every writer to diversify in their writing life. 

Write an Evergreen Magazine Article is a type of magazine article you can publish over and over. Get the details of how to put it together for your writing in this article. 

A Practical Story: Why A Proposal Is Important Once a month I write an article about book proposals and in this piece I give a practical story about why every author needs a proposal which is your business plan for your book. 

Tweetable:

Do you save or discard? This prolific author and editor gives details about his natural tendency yet his commitment to change. Get the details here. (ClickToTweet)

Much of the publishing process is outside of the writer’s control. 10 Publishing Myths helps writers have a realistic perspective and take action. Get 10 Publishing Myths for only $10 +FREE shipping + over $200 of free bonuses.

Three Ways to Get Your Writing Moving

Are you stalled with your writing? I understand how it can happen. One of my Morgan James authors wants to write her book but is crazy busy with her occupation. She asked me for some ideas and strategies to get the book written. Many writers have this challenge of a full-time occupation but dreams of other things in their life. Yet without action, those dreams stay just ideas and do not turn into anything concrete for their writing—like magazine articles or books or information products or ebooks or anything. Their writing is in stall and not moving ahead.

Whatever you want to create or write—including for my book author who can't seem to get her book finished—is to figure out what you can do. Then make an action plan to do that action over and over until the writing is completed. I know these words sounds simple but it is how any goal is accomplished. You do it in bite-sized pieces. No one sets out to write a 50,000 word nonfiction book or a 100,000 word novel. The thought can overwhelm you and throw you into a stall so you don’t get it done.

How do you accomplish your goals? The first step is to break the task into a smaller size. Can you write a page a day?  A manuscript page contains about 200 to 250 words. Or can you write two pages a day? That would be 500 words. Create a plan to write consistently.  If you are consistent, you will be shocked how much material you can accomplish in a week or a month or two months.

The next part of the goal setting is to figure out when you can consistently write and set a time in your schedule. Maybe your best writing is early in the morning or you have a few minutes at lunch time or maybe it is late in the day. Block this writing time into your schedule and do it over and over. Eventually one session turns into more words and you finish the book manuscript from the beginning to the end.

What is something you want to accomplish in the next few months? Here’s some of the steps:

1. Write down your goal and put it on a post-it or note card where you can refer to it. This concrete action will show your intention.
2. Plan your action steps and break your goal into bite-size pieces.
3. Take regular action and move forward to accomplish your goal.

No one likes or enjoys the discipline of working on your book. Yes, some of the storytelling and work is fun but most of it involves simple obedience and doing the work. For example, The Writing Life contains over 1300 entries and I’m moving toward 1400 entries.This volume of material did not happen in a single day or week or month. It was done bit by bit and consistently over days, months and years. I began writing these articles in 2009 so it has taken some consistent time and energy to accomplish. 

I have more details about goal setting and how to accomplish your dreams in Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams. It contains several dozen ideas about how to accomplish your publishing goals.

Be encouraged and you can do it too. Take action and write your book and accomplish your dreams. If I can help you in this process, don’t hesitate to reach out to me.

Tweetable:

Is Your Writing Stalled? Here's Three Steps from a Prolific Author. (ClickToTweet)

I'm Moving Back to Colorado (Again)

“Don't you live in Arizona?” a friend asked me recently. 

“No, I've been living in Southern California for the last two years,” I explained. We moved here to be near our youngest daughter. It turned out Kim had twin boys last October and added to her two year old. We've been able to help out over the last two years during a critical time in life.

I often spend my days on the phone and email speaking with different authors because of my responsibilities as an acquisitions editor at Morgan James. I was telling another author about how we were going to be moving again. She asked if I was going to have time to get together with her for breakfast or coffee. I said yes and I was speaking with this author on her Los Angeles cell number—but she was in Arizona. So we didn't get together. The two conversations showed me many people are confused about where I live.

I understand the confusion because I work for a New York publisher, I have a New York phone number and extension on my business card. Yet I have been living in Southern California. Two years ago we sold our home in Arizona and have been renting—which makes moving a bit easier. We are in the process of moving again for the third time in three years. Whew. 

Moving does strengthen your organization skills. It's fruitless to keep moving things that you don't use on a regular basis.

Our family takes a number of magazines—several of them weekly magazines. I've learned the majority of my addresses can be easily changed online. I did a google search for “Name of the magazine” + “customer service” and almost immediately I went to the right location. Entering my account number and zipcode my current address came up, then I could change it to our new address. If you are moving, I recommend you change the addresses online since it will be immediate and quicker than other methods.

We are moving to Highlands Ranch, Colorado where we have two children and five grandchildren. Other children are nearby and we will see them more often in Colorado. We've lived in Colorado Springs two other times so going back to Colorado seems familiar. Instead of Colorado Springs, we will be living in the Denver area.

Our movers will arrive tomorrow but already I've taken some public steps to change my address. First, I've changed the contact details in my LinkedIn profile. Also I've changed my location on twitter. Finally I've changed the contact page on my terrywhalin.com website.

I do not have all of my addresses changed but I have changed several of the critical ones. For example, I have a regular newsletter which reaches many people. I will not be changing that address until I reach Colorado early next week.

In the last ten years, many activities have shifted to the Internet. With the move, my work with Morgan James Publishing will continue without interruption. Thanks to email and cell phones, I'm fairly easy to reach. Here's the key: I'm reachable when I want to be reached. I can ignore a call and let the call go to voice mail then call the person back when it fits my schedule.

All too often people feel like technology drives and controls their world. In reality, technology can help you control your environment if you use the tools that you have been given. Lots of transition is in the works here. It's been ten years since we've lived in Colorado where there are distinct seasons (spring, summer, fall and winter). It is going to be exciting—and a bit disruptive for a few days but then everything will settle down.

How do you handle the transitions or moves of life? I hope you handle the changes with grace and high expectation.

On the Move

In the last couple of weeks for the first time in eight years, I moved physical locations. I've had several job transitions during my years in Arizona but not a physical change. Our family moved to Irvine, California to be near family and also to downsize. The experience has thrown off my regular writing.

While I've heard (and followed) the various writing maxims for many years such as write every day and take action every day. Over the last few weeks my efforts have been focused in some other area than my writing. It has meant I've done very limited writing and most of that writing has been limited to emails and nothing which shows up on these entries about The Writing Life.

From my moving experience, I rediscovered the cleansing nature of downsizing. For example, I had three bookcases in my office but in my new place, I only had room for two bookcases. Also in the moving process, I sorted through boxes of books which I was stacking in my garage. I hauled 30 boxes of books to my public library where I donated them. In the process of sorting, I made snap decisions about hundreds of books—whether to give away or keep them.

To be honest, I have looked for a couple of books on my shelf and not found them (which means I gave them away). Yet overall the elimination process has been valuable because I eliminated the “stuff” clogging my bookshelf. What action can you take today to sort through some books on your shelf and donate them to a good place like the public library?

To compound all of the change in my life from the physical move, I also changed jobs right in the middle of it. Each day I've been actively calling and emailing authors about their projects with Morgan James Publishing. As a publisher, we're excited to have another book on the New York Times bestseller list (the week of July 15^th). Congratulations to Gordon D'Angelo and his book, Vision: Pathway to Victory. Getting on this list points out one important fact: Morgan James is selling books through the bookstores. 

On the writing front, what are you actively doing to be on the move? Many writers dream but never take action. They read about writing but never write. Or they try a couple of times and get rejected—and every writer gets rejected—and put their writing away. To succeed with your writing you have to be on the move and taking daily action.

Here's some active steps you can take:

—get connected. As a writer, you need to know others who are writing in your area of the market. Reach out to them via email or on the telephone or face to face. Don't see them as competition but instead view them as colleagues. Reach out and help them and they will help you. I've learned a tremendous amount from other writers—in forums, in face to face interaction, in books, in blogs and much more. If you and I are not connected on some place like LinkedIn, then take the initiative and send me an invitation. LinkedIn goes to my personal email address and while my public profile says I have 500+ connections, I actually have close to 2300 connections. Here's the key—just like everyone else, I started with one connection. You can build it as well but need to be taking action on a consistent basis.

—get published. I've written a great deal about how to get published in these pages. I'm talking about print magazines, online publications, newsletters and yes even books. Print magazines in general have a higher standard and are more respected than online publications. Take some time and study the details in my article on the basics of writing for magazines—then take action and write some query letters and get published. It does not get published sitting in your computer. You have to take action to get published.

—get educated. I repeatedly learn from others and a writer's conference is a great place to increase your learning about the marketplace and be on the move. This coming Saturday and Sunday I will be at the Greater Los Angeles Writers Conference. In a couple of weeks, I will be at the Texas Christian Writers Conference in Houston. I have a number of live events where I will be speaking this fall (use this link to keep up on my schedule).

In recent weeks, my focus has not been on these entries—to my regret. I've recommitted to writing here on a regular basis. I'm back on the move and hope you will be as well.

Years ago I heard author Paul E. Little speak about how to find direction for our life. He said something that has stuck with me, “God can't steer a parked car.” Are you on the move?

Plan Careful Moves

Whenever I make a move (in any area such as the writing life or my physical location or my Internet websites), it's best when I make a careful plan then move. A careful plan allows for the best and most thorough outcome. It doesn't always happen this way.

For example, several months ago, I decided to move my Internet websites from Homestead.com to Hostgator.com. I have been a long-term advocate of Homestead.com and they host millions of websites plus have great "point and click" tools where you don't have to learn HTML or much computerese to operate them successfully. I've built about a dozen websites on Homestead.com and still have a number of my sites there.

I had some great reasons for switching to Hostgator.com including the additional technical capability, more space and a cheaper price. As I advanced in my technical skills for my sites, I constantly found things that I could not do on Homestead.com. In a sense, I had outgrown the "point and click" technology and was moving into a different area.

A couple of months ago, I began moving some of my websites to Hostgator.com. I started with some sites which did not have a lot of additional material associated with it and were easy to move. Then I moved my personal website http://www.terrywhalin.com/. I had been on Homestead for so many years that I "forgot" my main email address which people have around the globe: terry@terrywhalin.com was also connected to this account. For several days, I didn't get any email at this address (big clue). I had to make some additional changes to correct this issue.

This weekend, I moved my literary agency website from Homestead.com to Hostgator.com. If you searched for Whalin Literary Agency on Google, then you would find this entry:

Whalin Literary Agency
Whalin Literary Agency carries this experience in the marketplace. We help authors develop their ideas and then connect those authors to the best possible ...
whalinagency.homestead.com/ - 8k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

It is not what I wanted people to find for my agency website but was the top entry in Google. So...I made the switch this weekend and my new agency site is up and operational. I still have a few images to move and put in place but overall it has the same functionality as the old website.

Late last night I was pleased with this move. Then I remembered my agency email account was set up like my terry@terrywhalin.com Unless I made some additional technical moves, I would not be receiving those emails. I made the additional changes and that email is functional.

As I shift around my Internet websites, the work isn't finished. I have a number of my single product landing pages to move to my new Hostgator platform. With each site that I move, I learn something and become a little quicker at making this transition. I'm on my way as I carefully plan this transition.

Why am I telling you about it? I hope that my experience will be useful to you in your own moves and writing life. It's not simple for any of us.

Integration and Moving

For some time I've had the feeling that my days on blogspot were numbered. Yes, I have written over 680 entries on Google's tool, Blogger so there is a lot of information in these entries about The Writing Life. It always amazes me how people will comment on some entry that I wrote several years ago--but it happens infrequently.

Three or four times over the last six months, I've been told that I need to be on Word Press and to get off blogger. Yes, it took several times before I got the message. I was fighting the typical resistance each of us have to making a shift in how we've been doing something. The most recent encouragement came when I was listening to some CDs from Mega Book Marketing 2006 in Orlando, Florida. Armand Morin told about taking the country music world with an unknown country singer and placing the record on the Billboard music charts. Morin is one of the top Internet marketers. It turns out that Morin confessed to being the country artist that was promoted in this manner--Michael Lee Austin. One of the keys that Morin used to get this buzz was a Word Press blog. He made it crystal clear in his presentation that it wasn't a blog on blogger but on Word Press. He had the Nashville music executives calling him and wanting to know exactly how he achieved such an instant success. He gives the details in his presentation and it came from keen Internet marketing.

For some time, I've had several separate sites and I'm now working to bring them into one location. I've taken some of the initial steps. You can see if you go to Right-Writing.com and look at the top button under the home page--which says "Right-Writing Blog." If you check out this button it takes you to my new Word Press blog. Word Press has a tool which imported all of my entries on blogger (over 680 of them plus all of the various comments (more than 1600 comments). Like any move, everything is still in transition and not perfect but it is in motion. I'll get it merged together in short order. One of the elements which is only partially changed over is my blogroll but that will be handled in the next few days.

I have not changed my feedblitz subscription--yet. If you are reading this entry using that method (and more than 200 people are using this system), when I make this change I will change the feed so it comes from my current blog and not the old one. There is no need to resubscribe or change and that transition should be fairly seamless. My challenge is going to be the various links. Many people have used the blogspot address instead of the URL which I have had pointing at the blog: http://www.thewritinglife.ws/.

Watch for the changes.They are in motion.