Deborah Woehr

This year zipped by at such a dizzying pace. I’m looking at my list of accomplishments below and thinking, “Did I do all that?” I guess I did, but it feels like I haven’t done much of anything. Looking back, I’d have to say that this was a good year, full of learning and excitement. Thank you all for enriching it with your comments and insight. I wish you all the best for 2006 and in the years to come.

• Got The Writers Buzz up and running.
• Learned how to market the above.
• Made several blogger friends
• Learned basic HTML and CSS
• Launched The Writers Blog Alliance
• Moved into my first house
• Quit a soul-sucking job on a good note
• Had minor surgery
• Launched several experimental blogs and determined which ones I have time for.
• Participated in the NaNoWriMo contest–didn’t make the deadline
• Launched an anthology project, due in February
• Set my goals for 2006
• Hit the 50% mark on Prosperity, my WIP

Every now and then I like to go to the free download sites to see what useful/fun programs I can find. At the time, I was looking for an alternative to Word. I did find a few, but also found a great program to organize my writing. It’s called NoteBook and is available only for Macs. A 30-day free trial is available.

I’ve always kept paper notebooks, only to lose them in the constant shuffle. Since I’m always on the computer, this was the perfect solution. I’ve included some screenshots for you to see.

Adding pages in a hierarchy is simple. Afterwards, you can change the order of your pages by dragging them to the desired position.

This feature is awesome. You can drag a pic directly from the web, which will produce a link rather than an image. Or you can download the image to your computer and drag it into your NoteBook file.

I included this shot to show you how easy it is to include hyperlinks in documents. In this case, I copied a document from the web and into a “cell” on the page I created. The hyperlink appeared without me having to create it.

In the Spring of 2004, I went to Scottsdale to attend a Mega Conference, whose guest speakers were the biggest names in Internet Marketing. Mark Victor Hansen (co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series) was a guest speaker and the main reason I went. The host of this event was Dan Kennedy, who has written numerous books on marketing and self-improvement. I’ve included an unaffiliated Amazon link to one of his books, if you’re curious.

No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs

I came home with a lot of notes, ideas, and a few homestudy courses. Out of all this information I received, only one thing has remained with me after all this time. It came from Dan, who said, “The reason why most entrepreneurs fail is because they are horribly unorganized.”

This took awhile to sink in, obviously, because my office remains a disaster area. I’m the only one who can change that, so I won’t bore you with the particulars. Lately, I’ve been reading posts from other writers with this same problem.

Organizing Your Writing: Part I

Melly’s post gained some excellent feedback from her readers and how they keep themselves organized. She asked me to elaborate on how my latest tactics are working, which I will do in the next post.

My husband and my oldest left for their outing this morning around 10:30. What surprised me was that my youngest didn’t pitch a fit about not being able to go with them. I think he was still enthralled with his Christmas presents.

An hour later, he started bugging me for lunch. Of course I was right in the middle of an emotionally charged scene with my characters and getting nowhere. So, I abandoned my computer and took him through the Drive-Thru.

We rarely have any one-on-one time together. My oldest is very verbal and demands a lot of social time, where my youngest is quiet and independent to the point where he sometimes gets overlooked for his brother. Today was his day.

We played Scrabble and several games of Chess. I love his exuberance and his competitive spirit. His skills continue to improve, and soon he’ll beat me at Chess. Scrabble is another story.

My husband bought a .45 and a .36 revolver shortly after we got married 15.5 years ago. Having guns in the house never bothered me because I grew up with one in the house. It’s a guy thing. He’s always kept the guns in a safe in his closet so the kids won’t get them.

I went shooting with him and his friend once, when we were first married. I made them very nervous when the paper came back with five bullet holes in the head. He got the safe shortly after that.

Last week he told me that one of the things he was going to do this holiday week was go shooting with his friend. No problem. Twenty minutes ago, he informed me that he’s going to take our oldest along. Semi-problem: I’m a mother and don’t relish the thought of my 12 year-old holding a gun, much less firing one. On the other hand, it’s good for him (and his brother) to be educated about firearms so they will respect them.

I received my own education when I was seven years old. My family and I lived on a steep hill, which caused our backyard to be split-level. My mother had planted a vegetable garden behind our sandbox. One day, my sister and I were playing and noticed that one of the carrots was jiggling.

We freaked and ran into the house, yelling to my mother. My father came rushing out to see what the racket was about, and we told him what we saw. He told us to stay in the dining room and that he would take care of it.

The house we lived in had a big bay window that overlooked the backyard. On a clear sunny day, you could see the Pacific Ocean from our dining room. This day was like that. We huddled together in the dining room as my father carried his rifle through the house and outside.

I’m surprised that my mother didn’t shoo us away. She continued to fold laundry while my sister and I watched my dad aim his rifle at the carrot. All of a sudden, the shot rang out and the rifle bucked in my dad’s arms. Then he bent over and scooped something out of the ground.

Moments later, he returned and held up a dead gopher for all of us to see. I’ve never forgotten about that. I don’t know about my siblings, but I never had a desire to touch that rifle. I’ve told my sons about the gopher several times. They laugh like it’s no big deal. That’s why it’s important for them to learn that shooting a gun is nothing like the video games make it out to be.

This is the first picture I took with my new camera. As you can see, the boys are less than enthused.

Strangely enough, I was the first one to wake up on Christmas morning. I’m thinking it was the anticipation of the boys’ reactions to their gifts. This year I got them something special, professional artist’s pencil drawing kits. I started drawing when I was about twelve or thirteen when my mother bought me a Jon Gnagy set, which came with a booklet of lessons. I’d found one kit at the art store but decided to wait until later to get it. Well, it was gone, forcing me to buy what I did. I threw in a couple of “how-to-draw comics” books for good measure.

This gift didn’t receive nearly the wow reaction I’d hoped for. What can possibly compete with the latest Need for Speed video game and the diecast 2005 GTOs that “Santa” brought them? My husband couldn’t get the video game to work on their computer, which was par for the course. It turned out that the computer needed more virtual memory, which he fixed yesterday.

The night before, he and I ribbed each other over Macs versus PC’s. I’m a diehard Mac fan and refuse to convert to PCs (short for Pile of Crap). My latest reason comes from the fact that my sons’ PC refuses to upload the pictures I’d taken on Christmas Eve of the reindeer/sleigh light display I told you about earlier. I’d wanted to post them yesterday, but didn’t have the heart to interrupt my son’s fun/frustration with his new game.

My husband surprised me with a brand new digital camera. Typically the people around here keep their decorations up until New Year’s. Let’s hope that’s the case with this neighborhood because I really wanted to show you this setup. Grr!

We ended the day with the movie Scrooged. I enjoy watching Bill Murray movies, and he was great in this one. The Ghost of Christmas Past is hysterical.

How was your Christmas?

I finished Chapter 12 on Friday. Woo-hoo! I tried to give the beginning of this scene a funny twist by having Amanda wake up in the town cemetery (which is across from Bud the Pervert’s house), dressed in nothing but her panties. She is forced to run home with her arms crossed over her boobs with a couple of onlookers staring at her. The real embarrassment comes when she gets caught by Travis.

Later on in the scene, the malevolent ghost visits her as she is sleeping. Avenge me, he says before he drops some clues that will become crystal clear to her later. Isn’t that always the case?

The Four Candles burned slowly.
Their ambiance was so soft you could hear them speak…

The first candle said, “I Am Peace, but these days, nobody wants to keep me lit.”
Then Peace’s flame slowly diminished and went out completely.

The second candle said, “I Am Faith, but these days, I am no longer indispensable.”
Then Faith’s flame slowly diminished and went out completely.

Sadly the third candle spoke, “I Am Love and I haven’t the strength to stay lit any longer.”
“People put me aside and don’t understand my importance.

They even forget to love those who are nearest to them.”
And waiting no longer, Love went out completely.

Suddenly…

A child entered the room and saw the three candles no longer burning.

The child began to cry,
“Why are you not burning? You are supposed to stay lit until the end.”

Then the Fourth Candle spoke gently to the little boy,

“Don’t be afraid, for I Am Hope, and while I still burn,

we can re-light the other candles.”

With shining eyes, the child took the Candle of Hope

and lit the other three candles.

Never let the Flame of Hope go out.

With Hope in your life, no matter how bad things may be,

Peace, Faith and Love may shine brightly once again.

from jsmagic.net

I hope this next year brings you further into realizing your dreams. Merry Christmas, Everyone!

How many of you outline your novels before you start on them? If you do, how do you keep yourself on cours? I’ve tried traditional outlining as well as mindmapping, to no avail. New ideas always spring up and poke holes in my carefully written plan. Outlining non-fiction is much easier because the research is out there, waiting for me to gather it up, organize it, and turn it into something useful.