Sunday, April 1, 2018

Spring Cleaning


April 2018 Blog

This one is for me. It’s time to put my ducks in a row.

Duck Soup: A Haiku

Just as well, perhaps,
My ducks won’t line up; they would
Make easy targets.

The unfinished symphony that is my life is better described as a cacophony of strident chords punctuated by uneasy silences. Before I go to wander aimlessly among the souls in purgatory, I need to attempt some basic harmony in both my personal and my professional life.
It has occurred to me that “I may not live out the year” gets more likely as each year passes. So…
It’s time to get so organized that even my labels have labels and so productive that each literary debut is greeted with “another one? I haven’t finished reading the last one yet.”
My deepest regret is that this effort will require two things I am loathe to relinquish: (1) my frequent nap times and (2) spending so much time working jigsaw puzzles on my computer. The next thing to go would be my Twitter time, but I’m  hoping simply to make that more productive.
As to the need for labels – I am tired of looking for things I know I have somewhere, and replacing those things is an unnecessary expense I can ill afford.
I grew up being told there is “a place for everything” and to put “everything in its place”. I never realized, when I was young, how important that would be to an “old person”.
The labels themselves need to be bigger, the older I get. Also, inventories are very helpful (with locations) – so you know what you’ve got and where it is. This is especially important when you possess literally hundreds of books and VHS tapes and DVD’s and CD’s. It’s also nice to be able to grab last month’s bills to make sure you actually paid them (assuming you remembered to pay them and actually made a note on the bill).
I  know I promised myself to do all this before, but those “shiny objects” that always seem to pop up have buried my good intentions under so much glare, that I need a list to remind me to look at my lists.
Did I forget to mention lists? They are particularly important the older or busier you get. (That’s it! I’ll claim to be busy. Age has nothing to do with it. Right! And on that note, my memory fails me.)
I’ve taken to making lists of the things I need to do each day,  but I find I frequently need a list each morning to reference the things on the list I need to do. And if that’s not complicated enough, I need to do those things of a morning, so I can spend the afternoons being literary, literally (Had to throw that in).
In the early afternoons I need to find time –  to write, to edit, to publish (including formatting), to promote –  you know, all those things important to an indie writer’s career.
For writing, I need to finish several manuscripts that have lain dormant way too long. Then they join my “for editing” list which currently includes the second of three ‘Black Oak” western paranormal novellas.
My “waiting for publishing” list includes more “Life’s Lemons and Lemonade” collections, the Black Oak sequel and the Sam Rock on which I’m still working. All that will require a lot of formatting. I guess I should include putting all my books on audio, especially the novels. Audio is so popular these days, I’d be remiss not to tap that market.
Promotion is still my biggest problem. I need to post my catalog on Twitter at least daily and make use of other sites that do promotion, although my funds for such are extremely limited. I realize you can’t “hide your candle under a bushel” and expect to be successful.
So it looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me. But if I don’t get at it, I’m going to leave an awful lot “unfinished” with no one knowing how to complete what I had in mind.
I feel I owe it to myself, my family and my friends to get as much out there for posterity as I can.
We’ll see how many ducks I can put in a row this first full month of Spring –  traditionally a time of renewal.
Until next month, I welcome your reactions and responses to any of my blogs. I love to hear from my readers. Also, here are links to my Twitter and Facebook accounts, if you care to share your thoughts with me there:
All of my books are available on Amazon.
April’s featured novel is my Young Adult fiction: The Chronicles of Acqueria: Blood Moon Treachery”.  https://tinyurl.com/ydbhv3ae



This month’s featured poetry chapbook is again “The Castleweaver's Tales: A Dozen Glimpses of Medieval Madness: 25th Anniversary Edition”.  https://tinyurl.com/ybllonvw

By the end of April, in honor of this being National Poetry Month, I plan to debut my second “Life’s Lemons and Lemonade: A Collection of Haiku: Volume Two: The Write Life”.



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