Chaos, kids and scheduling

by | Jan 2, 2010 | Uncategorized

After sending child B back to bed 3 times since 4:30 a.m. I heard her get up again. And said to the husband, “Didn’t you just send her back to bed?” And he said, “Yes, but then a butterfly in Brazil flapped its wings and that changed everything.”

I laughed, but it’s true. Raising kids and chaos theory go hand in hand. Complexity in action with unpredictable results.

Which brings us to scheduling. I actually started planning this year last year. I put things in place to help me achieve those plans. And yet I’m starting off the year with some schedule triage, because despite all the planning you do, things can and will go wrong. I build slush into my schedule, but it’s hard to predict how much is enough when you deal with multiple unpredictable factors. PBW wrote an excellent post, when H1N1 hit her household about the importance of schedule buffers. It’s true that we need them and usually more of them than we think. Pretty much my top priority of the year is getting my buffer back.

Here are some things which can impact the best-planned schedule.
1. Kids. Butterfly, Brazil, schedule blown sky-high. It happens.
2. Revisions. Revisions are unpredictable because you never know if they’ll mean hours, days, or weeks of work. It’s hard to say that a schedule should allow X time to revise each project when X is so subject to change without notice.
3. Requests for proposals. I try to keep multiple proposals going so that I can put things together in a timely way. But you may be asked for something completely different and the time to develop that takes, well, time.
4. Health. I started making lifestyle changes this fall after everybody got seriously sick, because I realized that I could not afford to put it off. Health problems happen, but if you plan the time for prevention, it happens less often and has less impact.

My schedule was mostly on target for 2009. But I’ve increased the size of my target buffer zone for 2010, because the next time a butterfly in Brazil flaps its wings, I want to be prepared for the chaos.

Charlotte Sometimes

by | Jan 1, 2010 | Uncategorized

Welcome, 2010! It’s a New Year and time for some new things. I have lots of new projects (and projects in process) that I’m excited about and can’t wait to see finished and published and even newer projects I can’t wait to get to write. This year I think my main writing goal is to see just how much I can do when kids go off to school. Youngest goes part-time in the winter semester and full time next fall, so this is time to kick things into high gear.

One of the things I’m very excited about is becoming Charlotte sometimes, a new name for a new genre. Charlotte writes YA and middle grade. (She already wrote some picture books but those may never sell.) I hope you’ll hear more about her soon, but I’m going to begin putting some of my working time aside for her as I get things delivered. She’ll even have a website, because I realized how badly I want this, and that made me realize that I needed to just do it. Act as if. If I were really planning to sell YA, wouldn’t I have a pen name, a URL, and a website for that? Yes. So I’m going to act as if I expect to have a YA career, because I sure won’t have one if I do nothing.

I love the erotic and romance projects I’m doing, but I want to stretch myself in different directions. I also think switching between writing for adults and writing for kids is a great way to keep things fresh on both ends.

Are you planning to stretch yourself in the new year?