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The Queen of the Planner’s in Crisis

The Queen of the Planner’s in Crisis

For years and years, I have been queen of the planner. But lately, I’ve sorta dropped the scepter. I blame the problem on this summer’s series of tight book deadlines, speaking engagements, and family life changes.

After all, a planner isn’t all that necessary when the week’s task is COMPLETE THE FIRST PROOFS BY FRIDAY or PREPARE TO SPEAK AND SCHMOOZ IN KENTUCKY or HELP YOUR DAUGHTER AND SON-IN-LAW MOVE TO OHIO or WRITE AN INDEX BY AUGUST 17 or ACTIVATE MOM’S IN-HOME HEALTH CARE POLICY. With things like that on the top of the to do list this summer, all I had to do was start running with them every Monday and hope to to reach the finish line by Friday.

But now the deadlines are met, the daughter and son-in-law are moved, and Mom’s in-home health care should activate soon. Which means life includes some breathing room, at least for a few weeks. Which means all I want to do is sit on the couch and breathe while watching DVDs of all the family unfriendly TV series we couldn’t watch with kids in the house. Which means I need to start making to do lists again, or I will get absolutely nothing done until there’s another deadline breathing down my neck. But there will never be another deadline breathing down my neck because I’ve done absolutely nothing to create one.

So it’s time to polish up my queen-of-the-planner tiara and start sparkling again. Except that I’m way out of practice when it comes to picking and choosing a few items from the long list of what needs to get done this week and transferring them a daily to do list. Tell me, which ones would you choose from this list for your Monday morning?

  • Update blogs
  • PTSD research for book proposal
  • Get started on items in book marketing folder
  • Get ready for company on Labor Day weekend
  • Send stuff to Wanda for new ones sheet
  • Send updated bio and interview questions to publicist at Discovery House
  • Contact university and community college about available interns for tech projects
  • Update speaking topics on website
  • Grocery shop
  • Finish influencer list for publicist at Discovery House
  • Email people about participating in the blog tour for my new book
  • Call people about being part of the special needs ministry planning team at church
  • Call Steve
  • Transfer Mom’s car title
  • Write two Sunday school skits
  • Run stuff for Monday evening board meeting

Sure, the last item on the list is a given since Monday evening is almost here. But other than that, where would you start? Seriously, could you add “make a comment on Jolene’s blog” to your to do list and then send some advice really soon. Because until somebody provides some direction, this former queen of the planner will be sitting on the sofa watching DVDs while polishing her tiara or looking under the sofa for the scepter she dropped back in June.

So sad, don’t you think?

Lamaze for Writers

Lamaze for Writers

Writers often compare the process of writing and publishing a book to pregnancy and delivery. At least female writers who have given birth do.

Want to know why they do it?

Because, as this past week and a half have demonstrated, it’s the closest thing around to a perfect analogy. That lightbulb switched on for me two years ago, during the writing of A Different Dream for My Child. But as it turns out, my first labor and delivery was a piece of cake.

How do I know that?

Because the labor and delivery of Different Dream Parenting, which is happening even as I type, has been a little trickier than the first time around. The problem with this problem child is paginating the index. Turns out, hunting for random words in a manuscript and recording the page numbers accurately is painstaking work, with emphasis on the pain.

How do I know that?

Because the past few days of index work have been painful. So painful that I’ve developed lamaze technique for writers. The emphasis is more on relaxation and distraction than breathing, since birthing a book doesn’t require the massive intake of oxygen necessary for birthing a baby, and I’m big on hyperventilation. Here’s how I do it:

Stage One Labor:
Work on index until head begins to ache. This is the indication of stage one labor. Put on happy, distracting, soothing music and keep working until your head feels like it will explode. This indicates the beginning of stage two labor.

Stage Two Labor:
Take a deep, cleansing breath and let it out slowly. Turn off the music and walk down the road to the mailbox and back, breathing naturally. Then answer some emails, check FaceBook and Twitter. Or do some light housework – laundry, dishes, food preparation – until your head clears. Go back to indexing until your head feels ready to explode again. When deep cleansing breaths, walks to the mailbox, social networking, and light housework fail to clear your head, you are moving into stage three labor.

Stage Three Labor:
Take two deep, cleansing breaths and exhale slowly. Put in a Monk DVD and watch an episode. Absorb Monk’s persona – the love of order, columns, straight lines, and all things neat and tidy – until you love the thought of spending hours at a detail-oriented job like indexing. Return to indexing, refreshed and motivated.

Warning:
DO NOT give into the urge to push until you reach the letter z. Then have at it and birth your bouncing baby book!

My Personal Bastille Day

My Personal Bastille Day

Sorry about the brevity of this post, but the guillotine dangling over my head is making it hard to think of something to write about today. See, my editor sent the page proofs for Different Dream Parenting about a week ago, and they have to be completed – along with the index – by August 17.

So my mind is a litany of picky, precise corrections…

  • Is that the current, politically correct way of referring to that special need?
  • Yikes, another grammatical error!Hmmm…don’t like the placement of that side bar.
  • Or that one.
  • Or that one.
  • Has that been the style for labels throughout the book?
  • Does that sentence sound right?

…that continue non-stop for 327 pages, along with a series of indexing conundrums…

  • Oh, there’s a term that should be in the index.
  • No, it shouldn’t.
  • Yes, it should.
  • No, it shouldn’t.
  • Yes, it should.

…that continue for slightly fewer pages, only because the dedication, table of contents, and appendices don’t make good index fodder.

Come August 17, my personal Bastille Day, my horizons will expand beyond the world of punctuation, grammar, page design, and key words. Until then, forgive the brevity of this post…

  • Did I already say something like that?
  • Is that correct grammar?
  • Did that sentence sound right?
  • Should Bastille Day be in the index?
  • Yes.
  • No.
  • Yes.
  • No.
  • What about guillotine?

Hmmm…

Out of My Hands

Out of My Hands

The first proofs (the edits on the original manuscript sent in by an author) are out of my hands. On Friday I emailed my first proof edits back to the publisher. Now the editor assigned to Different Dream Parenting will spend the next month wrestling with my changes and overseeing the typesetting.  Then she’ll send the final proofs this direction for final inspection before it’s off to the printer.

Suddenly, life is not in the thrall of one, all-consuming task master. Suddenly, I have choices to make. Time to fill. A multitude of ideas to pursue. And no more excuses to avoid unpleasant tasks like weeding the flowerbeds. Boy, did they need weeding.

So this morning in the aftermath of last night’s doozy of a thunderstorm, while the sky cleared for a few short hours, my hands were busy pulling weeds, deadheading blossoms, pruning the plants in hanging baskets, and treating my arms and legs to an unplanned, but highly effective mud bath.

By the end of an hour, the flowers had been granted a reprieve in their battle against the weeds for access to the sun. The gardens no longer looked wild and neglected. The spreading violas were tame once more, the daisies were cut down to size, the dead rose buds were gone, and everything remaining had the natural, shaggy beauty my daughter loves.

I could have done more, but indoor tasks were calling. Lists to make, blogs to write, marketing to be done, emails to send, workshop presentations to prepare, new book proposals to plan. More than can possibly be done before the final proofs arrive.

But for a few short weeks, I’ll bask in the freedom and the chaos, the chance to dream and shape something new. I’ll dive into the mishmash of new beginnings and see where they go. I’ll enjoy unexpected mud baths and life with the natural, shaggy beauty of my flowerbeds. My empty hands are itching to get dirty. It’s time to bring on the mess!

A Pair of Penetrating Eyes

A Pair of Penetrating Eyes

For about a week now, I’ve been editing Different Dream Parenting. going through the suggestions sent by the editor at Discovery House and making changes. The process is slow, humbling, engrossing, and painful at times. My thoughts ranged from Did I really write that confusing sentence? to Why does the editor have to be so picky? to I don’t want to do this anymore!

But then something happened this weekend which improved my attitude about the entire process. I was listening to an audiobook by a best selling suspense/conspiracy theory author. He’s written many books and made boatloads of money. Still, I won’t reveal his name – not out of respect, but out of compassion.

I walking along, listening to a scene where the protagonist (male) was in the hospital after an accident and the person who is revealed in the end as the antagonist (female) comes to visit. When the woman enters the room (wearing a white skirt that accentuated her tan legs), the author said, “She placed a pair of penetrating eyes on the man in the hospital bed.”

An image of two eyeballs lying on the fresh, white sheet covering the hospitalized man came to mind, along with several rascally thoughts:

Wouldn’t the eyes roll off onto the floor?
Or would penetrating eyes sink through the sheets and burn into the protagonist’s chest?
Did the sight of penetrating eyes make him want to barf?
What color were they?
Were these the antagonist’s actual eyes?
If so, is she now blind?
Or if they were extra eyes, did she pull them from a pocket?
Wait, wouldn’t penetrating eyes burn right through her pocket?
So were they in a carrying case?

And finally:

Why in the world didn’t the author’s editor catch that?
Thank goodness my editor wouldn’t let that kind of sloppy writing slip past her.

Suddenly I was eager to return the slow, humbling, engrossing, and sometimes painful task of editing that is ruling my life right now. I was grateful for my editor’s eyes which had deftly penetrated the snafus in my manuscript. Every now and then, I wonder, Does she ever take out those penetrating eyes on some poor sucker’s hospital bed?

A Sneak Peek at Different Dream Parenting

A Sneak Peek at Different Dream Parenting

Looking for a special a treat to plop in your Easter basket come Sunday morning? Here’s one that’s better than chocolate, better than dyed eggs, better than jelly beans, better than live chicks and bunnies, better than stuffed animals.

Drum roll please…

It’s a sneak peek at my upcoming book, Different Dream Parenting. And it’s not just a page loaded with informative content, chosen willy nilly from any old chapter in the book.

Another drum roll please…

It’s an excerpt from the index. Yes, you heard that right. It’s a sneak peek at the one section  packed with features found nowhere else in the book:
alphabetical order,
straight right columns,
key words and concepts,
discriminating capital letters,
commas and semi-colons,
and other goodies that make the hearts of left-brained librarians go pitter pat.

Please keep in mind this is just the first draft. I’ll be adding lots more juicy, tantalizing key words and phrases during the rewrite – you know, the kind of stuff that really grabs the reader so they keep turning pages and coming back for more. Sometime in the future, page numbers will make an appearance, but not quite yet. And the editor just emailed to say the house prefers running outlines over tabbed one. So today, I’ll be adding teeny, tiny feet to each page and shoving them into miniature cross trainers so this index can run like the wind. But not now. Not yet. Now’s the time for your sneak peek at Different Dream Parenting.
A final drum roll please….

Documentation,
computer,
individualized educational plans (IEP),
insurance,
hospital,
medical,
parent,
sample forms,
Dougy Center,
Down Syndrome,
Durable power of attorney,
Early childhood intervention,
Eareckson Tada, Joni,
Easter Seals,
Elks Club,
Emergency preparedness plan,
Employment,
Estate planning. See Financial and estate planning
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR),
Exceptional Parent Magazine,
Extended family,
Facebook

Are you a little breathless? Hankering to hurry on over to Amazon and pre-order the book? Dying for the sequel? Well, stay tuned, ‘cause when the running index revision is done, you’ll get another sneak peek.

Same time.
Same website.
All new content.
All the time.
We aim to please.