MY PRODUCTIVITY HACKS, PART ONE: MULTIPLE WIPS by Max Jason Peterson

Photo by Max Jason Peterson

I’ll just say it: I love having multiple works in progress (WIPs). I’m aware that my method of creating works of art (written or visual) doesn’t appeal to everyone. But for me, working on multiple projects helps me make steady progress, continue to advance my artistic skills, and enjoy the pleasure and challenge of my own creativity, without getting stuck as often as I might otherwise. It also helps smooth out some of the ups and downs in productivity I have experienced when concentrating on only one project.

Although I have lots of projects planned, I typically tend to focus on two to four that I give top priority as far as what I’ll finish first. This isn’t set in stone; I do often work on other things in between, particularly shorter works. I’m also creating both writing and art projects, which are quite different skills, so I try to work both into any given week. With art, I typically focus on illustrating one chapter at a time, so I might be painting one piece or as many as six, but all are usually part of the same theme or storyline.

To start out, don’t worry if you only have one WIP. More ideas will come as you work. Once I started collecting ideas for stories, poems, and artworks, I found myself gathering more and more—probably far too many to complete in one lifetime. This is a good thing, though. It gives me the freedom to choose to work on the things I find most compelling or relevant for me in that moment. This is important, because enthusiasm can help carry a creator through the hard parts—and there are many.

Likewise, since my projects tend to be long (novels or highly detailed paintings), my completion rate is better if I have more ideas to choose from; the ones that excite me most are likelier to sustain my interest for the long haul. This is especially important for projects that carry a greater degree of difficulty—whether that be a heavier emotional burden, a lot of research, or learning new skills. Finally, by picking the projects that inspire me the most, I hope that the ideas that rise to the top will also be those of most interest to readers, and that my energy will translate into a more memorable experience.

Given my time constraints, I can’t wait for “inspiration to strike.” Instead, I line up projects that I know will inspire me enough that I want to work on them. If a particular project isn’t speaking to me that day—especially if the thought of it makes me feel too tired to write or make art—I consider whether it’s time to switch, depending on the reasons. Sometimes it is important to just power through: like when I’ve reached part of the narrative that’s emotionally challenging or requires me to push my abilities to the limit. But it might be time to switch if I need to wait to approach the material when I have more energy or information. Maybe I need time to collect reference shots, do research, or brainstorm for better story solutions.

While these are definitely part of the creative process and not a reason to grind to a halt, switching over for a day or two until you have time or energy to complete them can help you keep your creativity flowing and help you avoid feeling stuck. I’m not saying that one must create every day: but the more times when you want to create, and are able to do so, the more confidence you’ll have that you can create when you want to. And this definitely helps when you’re facing the blank page or a challenging part of your work.

Having the option to switch really does help me cut down on artistic blocks or exhaustion. After writing an emotionally draining chapter for one novel, I might need to focus on something lighter for a while to recharge and reawaken my sense of fun. Plus, taking a break between sections of a novel to write a poem, polish a short story, or make a small watercolor sketch can be refreshing. Completing things successfully boosts my confidence and satisfies my urge to make beautiful things. This translates into greater energy when tackling new skills or longer projects. “A change is as good as a rest” for me, creatively speaking.  

Generally, I do try to work in my projects in blocks whenever possible. Though I always have something going on with both art and writing, my aim with each is to finish a certain goal before moving to another project. (With art, the goal might be illustrating a chapter, which can include multiple pieces, but they’re related.) So I try to keep going on the project I switched to until I reach a goalpost, such as to edit a chapter or write a certain amount of rough draft. I set these goals myself before starting. It’s important to pick achievable goals, because you are training yourself to succeed.

Though I believe in the power of multiple WIPs, it’s important to not simply bounce between projects without finishing your goals. Switching too often—especially if you’re doing it to avoid hard work—can prevent you from sinking in deeply enough to make real progress. Pick a project and commit to it. (If you need to switch a few times at the beginning because whichever project you selected just isn’t working for you right now, that’s fine. Just be sure to settle in with the one you finally pick.) There’s another good reason for this: each time I switch, I need to refresh my memory on all the details about plotlines, characters, facts, and what I’ve already covered. So switching too frequently is inefficient, due to this startup time, especially with longer projects that have more to reload.

However, when the time comes to switch, the change is helpful not just to my mental state, but to the quality of the project. It gives me the chance to approach the work afresh. Rereading notes and previous sections to pick up the story threads often generates new insights and better story solutions. And, as an added benefit, it’s generally helpful to get some distance from a draft before editing it; switching projects gives you the time to come back with fresh eyes.

I find it helpful to create a lineup of which projects I’m concentrating on to finish first, and the order I’m working on them. This way I always know which WIP to work on next, and often this helps me dive in without spinning my wheels so much. And because I’m expecting it, by the time I switch, I’ve often collected additional ideas for the next project that provide momentum as I plunge back in. (Note: When ideas come to me for any project, I do stop to write them down. It’s frustrating to forget them, and this also helps me get started when I return.)

All this being said, sometimes one needs to take a break from creating altogether. This, too, is part of the creative process—letting yourself have downtime to enjoy life, relax, immerse yourself in your favorite media, appreciate nature, or take comfort in loved ones. Be kind to yourself.

And enjoy your creativity!

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For more information about Max Jason Peterson (they/them), visit maxjasonpeterson.wordpress.com or the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram links through gardnercastle.com. Here’s a recent interview as Adele, but the author goes by Max in daily life.

IS IT LOVE OR JUST MUSICAL THEATER? by Judy Fowler

 

Did you grow up listening to the lyrics from Broadway musicals?

"I'd do anything for you, dear, anything." In this still photo from Oliver, two down-and-out young people act out what they think love is. Poor dears. 

In "Climb Every Mountain," from The Sound of Music,  a giddy, failed novice named Maria gets some advice. "Find a dream that will need all the love you can give every day of your life for as long as you live." And hurry up about it!

These songs stirred me when I first heard them while I lay on my stomach on my parents' new wall-to-wall carpeting. I was seven. As the soundtrack played on our new hi-fi, and with few liner notes to tell me what the play was about between songs, I accepted the music and lyrics as realistic. Captain Von Trapp was smug and cold to Maria. He repelled her. A duet about Edelweiss ends in passionate love, and they drop everything.

 I listened to the cast album of My Fair Lady. Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison's English accents threw me a little—why can't the English learn to speak? Their characters disdain each other until the last five minutes when he admits he's grown accustomed to her face. Cue Eliza's return.

After that, The Music Man. "May I have your attention, please?" charming con artist Harold Hill sings to Marian, a piano teacher and librarian whose life is on hold until she finds a quiet man who'll "occasionally ponder what makes Shakespeare and Beethoven great." In Act One, she rejects his advances. His passion overpowers her reserve, and two hours later, she leaves her books to run away and have a happily ever after with the fraudster.    

The chorus member and the Chorus Line. Pippin and his "corner of the sky." I became an emotional magnet for their anxieties, partings, and amped-up happiness when "love" arrived after two hours. When someone tells Anna in The King and I that "he'll always need your love," she decides not to get on the boat back home. Even if the king is a tyrant, how could she leave the guy who danced her around a ballroom barefooted in "Shall We Dance?" How could I? 

 The two-act Broadway musical created a groove in my young brain that elevated romance, fantasy, and any distortion of reality delicious enough to win a Tony Award. Even when it went fast and ended badly, love won out. Maybe I got addicted. I started auditioning for school musicals.

"You're getting too warm," my mother said. "You'll have to watch that."

 "Listen to more Shostakovich, less Funny Girl," a college friend suggested. But it was too late. I wanted flowery words.

As soon as I was old enough, I left the safety of my mother's Camelot to run away with mesmerizing, aggravating partners who needed my help to find their corner of the sky whose love I had to have to climb every mountain. These relationships never worked out. 

Fifty years after I tore the shrink wrap off The Sound of Music, I realized my mother was right. I'd fallen too young for the two-act obsession. Sudden, ill-fitting relationships, including the one between Hamilton and the Schuyler sisters, aren't supposed to have happy endings. Broadway raised me to mistake limerence--an intense crush-- for love.

Wikipedia defines limerence as "an infatuation based on the uncertainty that the person you desire also wants you." Researchers have considered that the desire to "be in love" may be due to the roller-coaster it brings on chemically. Lowered serotonin due to OCD-like intrusive thoughts alternating with dopamine highs that reward our brain circuits are a combination designed to defeat calmer pairings.

Broadway should offer young people a remedial third act to listen to (sold separately on Spotify). In Act Three, the music man fleeces some people out of their hard-earned money to get money for Marian's supper. She brings up, for the hundredth time, all the steady jobs he'd be good at. He leaves with a headache when she sings a plaintive tune about the library career she threw away for their fugitive lifestyle. He leaves her in the lurch, or she hitches a ride back to Iowa on the Wells Fargo wagon and meets a friendly, boring banker reading Hamlet.

 In My Fair Lady's Act Three, Eliza Doolittle will leave the challenging but obnoxious professor again (the second time never works out). She opens a posh flower shop in Mayfair and eventually settles into a pleasant relationship with someone who gardens. She avoids the professor at parties. 

And there's no way go-getter Kevin in Book of Mormon sticks around very long with the fantasist Arnold or the guerilla chieftain after he wins a free cruise to Orlando, where the nightlife suits him better.  

Unfortunately, that Broadway brain groove runs deep. In my late '60s, a devilishly charming fellow of similar age asked if he could read me his poetry. I'd learned about limerence by then and had no contact with him for a year. Then I dropped my guard, and we ran away to the circus until the show closed two years later. 

But I climb, I climb. A year ago, I entered what I thought would be a dull relationship with someone who falls asleep over Shakespeare but who makes us dinner and ponders what makes me tick. This could be Act Three material.

Broadway knows about—but won't win Tonys with—Act Threes. Take, for example, the real-life Maria von Trapp, the inspiration for Maria in The Sound of Music. She ended her climb in Stowe, Vermont, where she and her musical family opened a successful hotel she managed into her eighties. 

My Act Three might end well, too.

 

 

How Do I Kill Thee? Let Me Count the Ways by Teresa Inge

While participating on the Women Solving Crimes panel at Malice Domestic this year, the moderator asked us about the different weapons we use to kill people in our novels and short stories.

Fortunately for me, the panel had received the questions in advance, which gave me time to review all the homicides I’d written and determine my methods of murder. With sixteen books, I was beginning to lose track of how I kill people!

I began my murderous review with Mutt Mysteries, a four-book series with dogwalker, Catt Ramsey, who solves crime and murder with her dogs, Cagney and Lacey. I had multiple victims and killings in these books. The weapons include a cutting board, knife, gun, pruning shears, and a dog trimmer. All of which fit right into each killer’s homicidal hands.

In Virginia is for Mysteries, a three-book series, I was on a killing spree with boards! I gave one victim a blow to the head with yet another cutting board, then used three wooden boards in various stories to kill people, smashed a killer in the face with a chalkboard, and used a glass vase to kill another.

In other books, I used different methods and weapons. These include strangulation with a lanyard lassoed around a victim’s neck, a chest stabbing with a road sign, a stab in the neck with a pink beach charm, and three shootings in three stories. I then pushed a killer over a riverboat’s balcony and shot him for good measure before lodging a corkscrew in a victim’s neck…twice. I finished the review with blunt objects to kill two victims, and a fatal allergy reaction to another.

After the review, I realized that I had never poisoned anyone. What would Agatha Christie think? That’s when I began tracking my methods of murder and vowed to use poison in my next story. Check out the attached graph to see the weapon that I used the most.

THE 2024 SUMMER OLYMPICS by Sheryl Jordan

   

The 2024 Summer Olympics occurred from July 24 through August 11, as you have probably seen on news outlets and social media platforms worldwide. I enjoy watching the games as much as I can, and some would say I become a bit obsessed with them for the two-and-a-half weeks of full coverage. My fondest memories of the Olympics were watching the various events with my family growing up. I now enjoy watching them with my husband, daughter, and grandchildren, or alone late into the night.

Although I have always been a huge fan of the Olympics, I knew little about their history, origins, and how they have evolved. Here are a few fun facts:

Origin

Did you know that the first games, known as the Ancient Olympic Games, date back to 776 BC? In honor of Zeus, they took place in Athens, Greece. The games occurred every four years, known as the Olympiad. The last Ancient Olympic games recorded were in 393 AD.

 1,500 years after the last Ancient Games, the first modern Olympic Games occurred in Athens, Greece, from April 6 to 15, 1896. The games have continued every four years since then, except for three cancellations in 1918, 1940, and 1944, and a postponement in 2020. The 1918 Berlin Games were canceled due to World War I. The 1940 Tokyo Games were canceled because Tokyo's award to host was forfeited due to Japan’s invasion of China, the Sino-Japanese War, and the start of World War II.  The 1944 London games were also canceled due to World War II. The 2020 Tokyo Games were postponed until July 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Evolution of the Games

The Modern Olympic Games have evolved in many ways over the years. In the 1896 Games, approximately 280 male athletes from twelve countries competed in forty-three events.

Women first competed in the 1900 Paris Olympic Games. Twenty-two women out of 997 athletes competed in tennis, golf, croquet, sailing, and equestrianism. Since 1991, any new sport that wants to be added to the Olympic program must have women's competitions. In the 2012 London Games, women competed in all sports events for the first time. In 2016, 45 percent of the participants were women. Gender equality was first achieved this year at the 2024 Summer Paris Games, where 50 percent of the 10,714 athletes from 206 countries were women. Wow, it’s about time!

The Rings

The rings representing the Olympics were designed in 1913. The original design was used on the Olympic flag, which consists of five interlocked rings in colors from left to right: blue, yellow, black, green, and red on a white background. The renowned design represents the unification of athletes from the five inhabited continents of the world: Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South Americas, and Oceania. The colors represent almost all colors of most flags in the world.

 The Torch

The torchlight represents unity and harmony around the world. It is one of the most significant symbols of the Olympic games. The tradition of lighting the Torch began in the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics. It is lit in Greece and carried by renowned athletes to the host country, where the Olympic cauldron is lit and remains ablaze throughout the Olympic games. It has traveled around the world several times and through hundreds of countries.

 The Medals

The athletes compete for three medals in each sports competition – Gold, Silver, and Bronze. The medals are awards for the athletes' hard work, with the top three athletes winning the medal, but I wondered what metals they are made of. Each Olympic Games has variations on the medals. The medals for the 2024 Paris Games include a steel replica of the Eifel Tower. The gold is mainly made of 92.5 purity silver and about 6 percent pure gold. The silver medal is made up of mostly silver with the same purity rating. The bronze medal is made up of 95 percent copper and about 5 percent zinc.  Who knew? All these years, I thought the gold and silver medals were made of pure gold and silver!

Also, gold medals weren’t always included in the Olympic awards. In the Ancient Olympics, first-place winners were awarded the silver medal and an olive branch. The second-place winners were awarded a bronze medal and a laurel branch. Gold medals didn’t exist until the 1904 St. Louis Olympics.

The United States won the most medals in the Olympics' history, with 2,959. It was followed by the Soviet Union and Great Britain.

After the 2024 Summer Olympics, the United States won 126 medals, 40 of which were gold. They were followed by China, with 91 medals, including 40 gold, and Great Britain, with 65 medals, including 14 gold.

I enjoyed watching the 2024 Paris Olympics. My favorite competitions are basketball, gymnastics, track and field, and swimming. I was rooting for the United States, but I appreciated all the talented athletes from all over the world giving their all. There were victories, upsets, disappointments, and mistakes were made. Some competitions were allowed for the first time in history, but they will not return to the 2028 games. There were lots of surprises and famous entertainers and athletes from past games. I found the 2024 games to be very entertaining.

What struck me most while watching the Olympics was the camaraderie of teammates cheering each other on and the respect most athletes had for their competitors. This made me think of how authors support and encourage one another. Authors from different parts of the world and of different genres cheer each other on and celebrate each other's wins whenever a book or story is published and released, or when we finish writing a chapter we’ve worked on and have rewritten it over and over. And all the edits we do to make our stories the best they can be for our wonderful readers who anxiously await the next book. We are a team we all can win at writing!

Did you watch the 2024 Summer Olympics? If so, what were your favorite competitions?

SEXY AND SASSY SIGNING 2024 REVIEW- BY: Kimberly Thorn

 

Sexy and Sassy Signing -July 19, to July 21, 2024

The weekend of July 19, 2024, through Sunday, July 21, 2024, romance authors swept the City of Norfolk off of its feet.

It was the 8^th annual Sexy and Sassy Event where over 80 romance writers celebrated the ever growing billion-dollar industry by mingling with romance fans.  Each year there is a different theme, this year’s theme was Hot Hawaiian Nights.  The writers as well as fans pulled out all the stops this year especially.  They brought out their leis, flower clips for their hair, Hawaiian dresses and flip flops.  This writer learned that if you are single, the flower clip goes on the right side of your hair, but if you are taken, it gets clipped to your left side.  Dully noted!  Events included several socials, workshops, author panels, an Ohana brunch and a huge signing event.  Several vendors were there as well, including the new Chesapeake romance bookstore, Novel Grounds.

I attended with my sister for the first time, and we had a blast.  There were several local romance writers there who included Hunter J. Skye, Nan O’Berry, Jenna Jaxon, T.B. Bond, Dawn Ibanez, Allie Marie, A.R. Moler and the one who started the annual event, Amy Marie. 

My sister and I went for a couple of different reasons.  First, we went because we were curious as we had never been before.  As a matter of fact, I hadn’t heard about this even until early last year when I attended my first ever Chesapeake Romance Writers’ meeting.  The event planner Amy Marie was there speaking to the group about it and I had absolutely no clue about what they were talking about.  Thinking back to then boy was I a newbie or what?  Second, we went to help support not only some of my writer friends, but fellow local authors.  We enjoyed conversing with and getting to meet several new writers who included some of the following:

Kimberley O’Malley, who not only writes romances but also has a wonderful cozy mystery series that is a funny, quick read.

Sue Langford, who had tote bags with the cutest sayings on them.  I purchased four.  Of course, one for me that said book babe and one for each of the ladies at my work for their Christmas that I will fill up with goodies. 

Britt DeLaney, who writes para-normal and sci-fi romances.  She offered the wrapped blind date with a book but mixed it up a bit.  With her blind dates with a book, it wasn’t just one book you purchased, but the whole set.  What a great idea!

Sidonia Rose, who had her hubby working with her which I don’t know about you, but I find it absolutely adorable.  He seemed to be just as invested in not only her writing but her writing career as she is.  She writes sweet and young adult romances.  She also has some cute notebooks with funny sayings on the covers.  (I know, every writer’s dream and downfall.  Just what writers need, more notebooks!)

MaryAnn Jordan, who has several different romance series with some great covers.  Two books in her security agency series are my Christmas gifts from my sister.  If only I can wait until December 25^th to look at them…..I mean read them!

Third, well where else would a bookaholic spend their weekend?  Fourth, my sister went looking for not only her favorite romance author, Nancy Naigle but for Christmas gifts for those on her list that love reading.  I showed her last October at another author signing event about purchasing books directly from authors and having them sign them. She gave a few of those signed books as Christmas gifts last year to some family members and they absolutely LOVED them.  They even requested more.

While there were a few hiccups, overall, it was a fun event where we got to broaden our horizon on romance novels.  There were authors there that wrote everything from sweet romances to hot and steamy ones with all types in between, including fantasy and sci-fi.  The list of attending authors for next year has already started being posted.  If you don’t see your favorite one yet, never fear because the list will increase with interested authors as the time becomes closer.  It was a well-attended event, and it isn’t a stretch to say that I think that it will be even bigger next year.  If you’re interested, here is next year’s line up, so far.   

Save the date!  In the meantime, go get a romance of your choice, gave a refreshing cold drink, and go have your own Hot Hawaiian SASSY time!