Note to self: eat that frog

Yes. I admit I sometimes struggle on the time-management front.  What writer doesn’t, given the time demands of our craft in our already-full lives?

Some people deal with this by getting up, monastically, at 4am and forcibly shoving an extra couple of hours into their lives that way, but that ain’t gonna happen.  I am not a morning person.  Neither is Neil Gaiman, as famously homaged by Diana Wynne Jones in Deep Secret, so I’ll just take that as a  literary sanction for sleeping in.

So, without adopting the schedule of a cloistered nun, there are a number of other tools we can use to improve our time use.  Some of them address big-picture issues, like goal setting, getting your house/desk/psyche organised, or prioritising by using some kind of box/list/diagram/mnemonic with daily, religious fervour.

But there’s another simpler one:

Eat that frog.

No, not the chocolate variety, although they are good too.  (Especially the sublime, velvety goodness of a Haigh’s chocolate frog).  There must be some special compound in good quality chocolate that stimulates creative thought, right?  However, to date this strategy is evidenced more by my splendid physique than by my impressive publishing record.

No, the idea of Eat that frog is to do the one thing you’re most dreading first.  Get it done at the start of the day when your energy is high. Once it’s done, you will have freed up all the time and energy you might have spent avoiding it – and the whole day will be more productive.

This is not a new concept.  Maggie Stiefvater, a YA author that I admire enormously, has talked about time management and the work ethic that allows her to combine writing, painting, and all the other things involved in being an all-round  creative genius and a mother.  At the top of her list is Work first, then play.  Which, if you think about it, is a variant on the frog eating. 

This is a really good writing tool – especially when you’re circling around a hard bit, something that you’re avoiding, something that is starting to look like writer’s block.  Jump on in, eat that frog.  The worst thing that can happen is that you will write a terrible first draft - and aren’t all first drafts awful?  Now that the frog is no longer glowering at you, you can go back and revisit and refine what you need to.  The best thing that can happen – and it may surprise you – is that you release a whole new wave of ideas and energy. 

Note to self:  this post is not about frogs, or time, or even about writing. It’s about resistance. It’s about the inexplicable obstacles we place in our own paths. Especially when we’re about to push through to a whole new level of understanding or achievement. Why do we do this? Who knows?**  All I know is that the times when the resistance is strongest, and the pressure is greatest, are the times when we are closest to breaking through to the place that we most want to be in.

That’s worth eating a frog for.

And here's a nice cautionary tale about what happens when you don't:

I kissed it but it just got bigger
by Cpt<HUN> @ Flickr

  

**Actually, Stephen Pressfield might know. He has written a whole book about this, The War of Art. I haven’t read it but it comes highly recommended by a fellow writer whose entire being lit up when he was describing its value to his writing practice.  

Illegal bookmaking, and other seelie fortunes: Holly Black

Illegal bookmaking is currently camping in my consciousness, since it’s a tidy little earner for Cassel Sharpe, the central character in Holly Black’s excellent YA trilogy, The Curseworkers.  After devouring White Cat recently, I’m now enjoying Red Glove.  It’s a great left-of-centre story that will keep you guessing.  It involves magic but not as we know it, and is told from a unique perspective.  Holly skilfully imbues her character with a fascinating level of tension around the moral ambiguities that he lives with, along with the usual teen angst over finding his way in the world, and love (of course)!  It has piqued my interest to read more of Holly’s work, and especially her short fiction, which promises to be twisted, in every good way.  

And now for the big question. 

Readers might recognise Holly’s name from her earlier work, The Spiderwick Chronicles (with Tony DiTerlizzi), and the Modern Tale of Faerie series (beginning with Tithe).  Speaking of Holly Black’s name, isn’t that a suspiciously good moniker for someone who writes in the fantasy genre? 'Holly' evokes all the mystique of ye olde worlde when evergreens were revered for their magickal properties and bowls of cream were left out for the good folke as insurance against your children growing up a bit …funny.  'Black' hints at the spooky-wooky, the shadow element that gives fantasy its depth and psychological realism.  Surely that must be a nom de plume? 

No, it’s not (if Wikipedia can be believed).  It turns out that she was born Holly Riggenbach (a great name, but not nearly so evocative).  Then she married her high school sweetheart, Theo Black, simultaneously landing herself an accomplished illustrator for a husband AND a kick-goblin-ass publishing name. 

I’m not sure if this is fortune favouring the bold, or just evidence that granting the faerie folk their due respect can pay off.  I’m not sure you could create a better pen name than that if you tried.  Definitely some seelie fortune going on there.  I, on the other hand, also married my young sweetheart, but his surname rhymes with belch and squelch.  I’m sticking with Gascoigne.  

The Dark Path by crowolf @ Flickr 

Everyone's a Winner! Best Australian Blog denouement

Things got kind of busy there for a while, (denoue)mental, you could say. In my frenzy of real-life activity (yes, I do exist away from this computer) I missed blogging the exciting announcement of the Best Australian Blog finalists, and then the winner.

The finalists, then, in the Words and Writing Category were (in no particular order):

·       ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

·       Just Add Story 

·       Killings: The Kill Your Darlings blog 

·       PublishEd Adelaide 

·       The Book Post 

My personal favourite among the finalists (if anyone’s interested) is Just Add Story:  spare, clean writing, plenty of cleverness, and more than a pinch of writerly mystique too (Uh oh. Too late to re-anonymise D:D).  I feel a kindred-spiritedness with this blog, which examines the writing process from the inside, albeit with a different slant to Destination: denouement.  So my (imaginary) money was on Just Add Story to win.

So it’s probably a good thing, then, that I’m a writer and not an illegal bookmaker**, because the winner was ANZ LitLovers LitBlog. This is a massive, longstanding blog, chock full of reviews and commentary about Australian literary fiction (mostly).  The best new blog was Judging your breakfast, and the People's Choice went to TV Tonight, which received 785 votes, in a field where 17,250 people voted for their favourites among 940 blogs. Congratulations to these, and all the other category and award winners.

And as for Destination: denouement?  It was always going to be a long shot, wasn’t it?

I am, however, happy to announce that I received a vote from at least one reader who was not a) genetically or b) contractually related to me (nor even a facebook friend).

That’s got to be some sort of achievement.

I did however treat the whole competition as a massive blog-stomp opportunity, and found some great – mostly new – blogs in a similar vein to my own.  So, in my book, everyone’s a winner!   Congratulations to all those brave blogging souls who stepped up to the challenge just by participating.

And now all the excitement has died down, I can get over blogging self-consciously and get back to writing, about actual writing. 

** More on illegal bookmaking HERE.