The Monthly Reset and Dodging Curve Balls

By

Scott D. Parker

 

A few weeks ago, I wrote about giving yourself the grace to start, stop, and then restart a habit. That was just after Quitter’s Day 2025.

 

Today is 1 February 2025. It’s been thirty-one days since New Year’s Day. How are you habits coming along? How’s that new story or book working out for you?

 

I picked up an older story sitting at around 10,000 words on 1 January and, as of yesterday, I reached achieved a hair more than 21,000 new words. Not quite the pace I imagined as I opened my laptop early on New Year’s Morning—I frankly expected at least 31,000—but those are 21,000 new words I didn’t have. So that’s a win and I’ll proudly wave the flag.

 

It’s important we celebrate our victories, both large and small, because things can change your life in the blink of an eye. Like it did for me this past week.

 

My day job changed our in-office policy from hybrid (in office Tuesday through Thursday; work from home on Mondays and Fridays) to the full five days in the office. Naturally, after three-plus years of that kind of working routine, everyone is having to adjust.

 

But aside from the disruptions and the adjustments and the very obvious blessing of still having a job, a silver lining appeared.

 

On my WFH days, I would always each lunch and play games (backgammon and Yahtzee; 3 games each) with my wife. Now, I truly miss those times, but I quickly realized that with me being in the office, I have two additional hours of writing. It doesn’t easily equate to the missing time with the wife, but my writer self can be two hours more productive.

 

Now, fellow writer, we face a new month, one with a nice and even twenty-eight days. What are your goals for this month? Mine is quite simple: forge ahead on the novel and write at least 21,000 new words. And, like I always say, if you’ve fallen off the writing wagon, all you have to do is the simplest thing possible.

 

Start.

by Scott D. Parker

I’m not sure how many folks might need to read Chip Copley’s Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age, but I certainly did. 

Now, before we go any further, I must say that I am not going through a midlife crisis. At all. Most people who see me ask me why I’m always smiling or be-bopping to a song I hear in my head. I’m an optimistic, happy person. Have been for as long as I can remember.

But this book ignited something in me.

I refer to my current age as “fifty f*cking five!” so you know where I am in life. It’s true that when it comes to, say, my writing career, I used to lament that I didn’t start at a younger age. If I did nothing else other than write a book a year, I’d have more than twenty out there. Heck, if I’d even have kept up that pace since 2005 when I wrote my first book, Treason at Hanford, I would have had more books published.

That’s not how it went, and stewing about that fact and the choices I made gets me nowhere. I do, however, have control on where I am now and where I’m going. And that’s where this book comes in.

A Shift in Perspective

Chip Conley is a little bit older than I am so I see him as one of those more seasoned voices I can listen to and learn from. A central tenet of Chip’s philosophy is shifting our perspectives on aging. 

Many folks hate getting older. They look at old photos and see their youthful bodies, recall that zest for life, and were confident they never forgot where they put the car keys. 

Shifting our perspective from negative to positive actually has good benefits. We’ll ultimately be healthier, our brains function better, our days will become more happy, and we’ll actually live longer. And who doesn’t want that?

Those same folks who see me walking the hallways at work with a grin on my face ask me why I’m smiling. “Because I woke up today.” Yeah, there will be bad days. There always are, but the good days always best the bad. 

The Midlife Chrysalis

Chip sees midlife in three stages. Early Midlife (ages 35-50) involves the emotional and physical transitions. He calls it adult puberty. In this stage, we’re no longer young, but we’re still spry enough to play with our kids or maybe run a marathon or ride a bike 150 miles for MS. 

Your fifties is the center of midlife. We’ve changed our way of thinking about ourselves and have settled into who we are. Chip quotes David Bowie here: “Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.” Kind of also echoes the famous quote from George Bernard Shaw: “Youth is wasted on the young.”

Stage Three of midlife is roughly 60 to 75. You’re probably still working, probably still somewhat youthful, but you see your golden years approaching. 

Chip’s metaphor of a chrysalis—of when a caterpillar consumes, then gestates, and then transforms into a butterfly—is the core of this book. It’s the lens through which he advises us to see our lives. He calls everything that came before a dress rehearsal. 

And butterflies? What do they do? They pollinate and, in his take, this is the stage where we can pollinate the world with the wisdom we’ve all accumulated.

What Does This Mean?

The book examines the twelve reasons why Chip sees life getting better as we get older. If nothing else, take a look at the sample pages on the store of your choice and you can see the table of contents. (Or you can click this link that will take you to Chip's page where he has a video on what inspired him to write the book and other resources.) In addition to the twelve, he also breaks things down into broader categories: the Physical Life, the Emotional Life, and the Vocational Life. 

The more I pored over those pages, the more I saw the possibilities of what I want to do and how I can accomplish the things I want. 

A driving factor in all of this is the growth mindset. Chip defines it not as winning but learning. “A growth mindset facilitates seeking out, exploring, and enjoying new experiences. It is the antidote to midlife boredom.”

It is also the antidote to boredom no matter how old you are. 

For us writers, a growth mindset can manifest itself into improving our craft, learning how to write better stories, and letting folks know about our books. For us readers, it might be going to a bookstore and going to a section you’ve never visited and selecting something brand new to read. For anyone, it can be learning a new language, a new skill, or trying something completely new. 

In short, this is a book that can make you ecstatic to be alive, no matter your age. 

How Do You Read the Books You Read?

By

Scott D. Parker

I’m a book nerd. You too? Yeah, it’s great, huh.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a ton of To Be Read lists on my various devices and literal piles here at my house. I’m always reading blogs to see what’s new. I read articles about new books and keep adding them to my lists. On Facebook, the algorithms are primed to send me sponsored ads by authors or publishing companies promoting books they think I’d like. Sometimes, I strike gold. Others times, not so much.

When it comes to consuming and actually reading these stories, I rely on both reading (on my Kindle or hard copy) as well as audio. I regularly have multiple books going on at any given time, leaving my decision as to which book to read to what I’m feeling at the moment. Well, except for audio: I’m pretty much a one-book-at-a-time listener.

Oh, and my TBR piles and lists are never complete. They only grow. I’ll admit it can be frustrating, but that’s how I’m wired. Long ago, I accepted who I am. 

Book nerd. That’s me. But what if you’re not?

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I met two other couples at a brewery here in Houston. We ate dinner and caught up with each other. One of the guys—let’s call him Kyle, a guy slightly older than I am—started chatting about his reading habits and the authors he reads and chooses. I say authors because we didn’t really discuss styles of books but, based on his author choices, you can figure it out. 

Because she recently watched the Joe Pickett TV show, my wife brought up C.J. Box. When Kyle heard the name, his response was succinct. “Read them all, except for the new one.” I mentioned the Reacher TV show and I got the same response about all the Lee Child books. Kyle also name-dropped Vince Flynn and Brad Thor.

This reminded me of a blog I wrote back in 2011. I had visited four estate sales and two of which had a proto man cave/library with shelves full of Louis L’amour westerns. I questioned which authors we might find on the shelves of folks in the 21st Century. We certainly have some contenders here.

Speaking of westerns, Kyle commented he ran across a list of great westerns all men should read. [It’s actually this list from the Art of Manliness site.] He got the list and started reading the books, in published order, to see how the western evolved. Not everything was available as an ebook so he’s not read them all, but he just took this list and started reading. [That was a wonderful breath of fresh air for an ADHD reader like me.]

But it was how Kyle read that made me envy him (and his non-ADHD self). 

He reads on his Kindle Oasis, the top of the line product from Amazon. This is the one with external buttons. He likes this because he can switch hands, flipping the device over, and the upper button will always be the one to advance the page. He reads for an hour at lunch during the weekdays. In the evenings, there is a Reading Chair in his main TV room. The speakers are set up in such a way that, from where he’s sitting, the sound goes over his head and straight to the couch where his wife sits. As a result, he’ll be in the same room as her but be reading if she’s watching a show he doesn’t want to watch. The sound becomes white noise to him and he’s all in on his book. 

So he’s reading for an hour at lunch and at least an hour (?) at night. Two-ish hours per day. And, presumably, he’s been doing this for a long time. No wonder he can get through the entire Lee Child or C.J. Box oeuvre. Granted, he probably read them in real time as each book came out. 

That’s the kind of reader I’d like to be. 

Not coincidentally, in the two weeks since our dinner, I’ve consciously built in more reading time (apart from my writing time). This is actual reading, not audio. What does it take to read more? 

Choosing to read. It’s pretty darn simple.

So, how do you choose what you read? And how often do you read daily and weekly?

When You’re Down in the Dumps, Be Open to the World Helping You

By

Scott D. Parker

Sometimes, creativity is hard, discouraging, and challenging. In every creative project, there is always a moment (or moments) when you question what you’re doing. It’s an inevitable part of the process. What do you do?

Be open to the signs the world is sending you.

By the way, I’m using “creative” here because this applies to any type of creative thing you do, whether it be writing, painting, composing, researching, or building something.

The Challenge of the Tedious Work

I experienced a couple of challenging days earlier this week. They were days in which I began to question why I do the writing stuff and all the surrounding things an author does to sustain a writing career.

I’m updating my author website this spring. For one thing, I think it’s a good idea to refresh all the public-facing stuff from time to time. My site had been static with one design for …well, I can’t remember the last time I updated it. Another reason is as a cost-cutting measure. The theme I was using is one of those subscription-based plans and, now that my taxes are finished, I was able to see that the money going out (for hosting, webpage theme) was not as much as the money coming in. Thus, I revised my website and opted to use a modern, responsive theme for a single purchase price.

I was struggling with the website mainly because it was not properly formatted. I was beginning to sweat it out, to be honest. What if someone—especially a fellow sax player in my church orchestra who only discovered on Easter that I write books—visited my site at the very same time the site was garbled? Would they ever return?

I was able to slap that thought out of my head rather easily. Is that something I can control? If yes, then worry about it. If no, then soldier on and do the work of updating the website no matter how long it took.

How Long Is a Novel Supposed to Be?

On New Year’s Day, I started my current book. Last year was pretty bad writing-wise so my simple goal was to start and finish this book with the only rule of thumb being write every day. I have met that goal, but, after 104 days (as of yesterday), I have not completed the book.

Which was weird. And it got to overthinking things.

It took me about ten months to write my first one back in 2005-2006. Then I spent seven years not writing the second only to complete my second actual book in about a six-week span in 2013. In those intervening years, I’ve complete more manuscripts, with the fastest being a three-month span in early 2017 in which I completed a novel a month. I was enamored with the pulp writers of the 1930s and fancied myself in their company.

That’s not me.

Thinking my book was too long and too slow, I recently purchased Dean Wesley Smith’s classic Pacing course over at WMG Publishing. In my email conversations with him, he banged my head with the Bat of Obvious: “As for your present book, just write until you find the end of the story and don't worry about length. Then keep learning, as you are doing.”

Yeah, but what about that other book when….? was my first reaction. That’s when another author showed up in my feed.

I subscribe to the Writer Unboxed blog posts and read those posts daily. This week, Kathleen McCleary posted a just-for-me (no, not really) blog post entitled How Long Does It Really Take To Write a Novel? Eager to learn The Secret, I read her post.

And, again, found the Obvious Answer: it depends on the story and the author. In reading the details of how long it took her to write her novels, I found encouragement. She mentioned that writing every day helps (I absolutely concur with that statement) and it doesn’t matter what others have done. Then, like Dean, Kathleen lays it out in a clean, obvious statement: “Let it go.  Meaning, let go of your ideas of how long it should take you to write your book, and just write. You have a story to tell and you are the only one who can tell it, so let it unfold.”

The Work is the Win

The bow on top of the Cake of Encouragement this week came from Billy Oppenheimer. He is Ryan Holiday’s research assistant, Ryan being the guy who is bringing Stoic philosophy to the 21st Century and showing us how it still applies. Billy has a weekly newsletter in which he shares six things he’s learned each week. It’s a great resource.

Billy appeared on The Best Advice podcast and in this episode, he said he followed one of Ryan’s basic habits for sustained creative success:

The Work has to be the Win. “You control the effort," Ryan says, "not the results. You control the work you put in, not how it’s received. So ultimately, you have to love doing it. You have to get to a place where doing the work is the win & everything else is extra.”

The World Can Help You…If You Let It

All of these desperate threads wound themselves in my brain and thoughts this week and cleared away the cobwebs of doubt. Doing something creative is always difficult. There will always be challenges. The key to maintaining the creativity is to keep moving forward. The work is going to take as long as the work takes. When it’s over, you’ll know.

So just keep being creative, because being a creative is a wonderful thing to be.

Photo courtesy of Steve Johnson via Unsplash

It’s Never Too Late to Restart Resolutions and Habits

By
Scott D. Parker

How are your New Year’s Resolutions coming along?

I saw a statistic that said by today—Day 36 of 2023—a shocking 80% or more people have already given up on the resolutions they so fervently made at midnight on 1 January. Eighty percent. I think the figure is higher, to be honest. There’s even a holiday to help folks who waver on their resolutions. It’s called National Quitter’s Day and that was back on 13 January.

As I wrote back in December, I had certain personal goals—okay, let’s just call them habits, okay? That’s what they really are—that I wanted to do in January. I started re-reading the Psalms (one a day for 150 days), I re-read the Proverbs (31 chapters for 31 days in January), and have started to re-read Ryan Holiday’s Daily Stoic. Taking a cue from Bryon Quertermous, I bought a weekly planner and kept track of every habit I wanted to set.

So far? Success. It’s feels very nice to have reached the last day of the why-does-it-feel-so-long January and all my boxes were checked.

The other thing that also was checked? The writing habit. My writing goal for January was simple: start a new project and write on it every day. I had no word count goal but I tend to zero in on 1,000 words per session. Again, 100% success.

Now, it wasn’t perfect. There were a couple of days when I had to slog through the writing, but I sat down and did it.

By the 31st of January, I had amassed approximately 39,000 words on the new novel. That’s not quite NaNoWriMo speed (50,000 words over 30 days) but considering the dismal writing I did in 2022, I’ll take the win. You know how I knew the new habit was locked in? When on that first Saturday morning, I opted not to watch a movie before I finished my words for the day. That Saturday Habit has continued. That, my friends, is a fantastic feeling.

But what do you do if life threw you curve balls in January and you’ve had to catch them, dodge them, hit them, or let them hit you?

Start again. Seriously it’s that simple. Just start.

What’s great about February is that it has the fewest days of any month. If you’ve wanted to start a new habit and have fallen off the wagon, start again on Monday. Do the writing, do the exercise, do the reading, do the calling of your friends or family you haven’t spoken to in a long time. There are only 24 more days in February. It’s a nice, short length of time to get back to the habit you know you want to ingrain in your brain.

Start today or tomorrow and do that new habit every day for a week. Your reward? The Super Bowl. Then aim for the next week. You make it that far, you’ll only have ten more days until the end of the month.

You know you want to create that new resolution, that new habit. I’m here to tell you that it’s never too late. But you will have to do one thing:

Start.

Intentional Reading

By
Scott D. Parker

Do you ever feel left out of a conversation?

It’s only mid-January and while the year is still brand-new, the old year still has a few remnants lingering. The biggest me for is the various Best Of lists still readily available. I read many of them—books, TV, movies, music—and made an interesting observation about the book ones: I read few of them and could not contribute to the conversation.

I’m an avid reader I have anywhere from 2-5 books going on all at once. Well, let me clarify: I’m re-reading Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic in 2023 so I’m only reading a page a day, but it’s still active. I’m blazing through the audio of Dead Silence by S. A. Barnes (for my SF book club), I’ve started Vinyl Resting Place by Olivia Blacke (from Murder by the Book’s Cozy Mystery subscription service), I’m re-reading P.D. James’s Talking About Detective Fiction, and I’ve bought a copy of The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. The Blacke book is new and the Barnes book is just shy of a year old and the rest are older.

I have always liked my rabbit-trail way of reading. I’m easily influenced, be it from podcasts, news interviews, Twitter, or recommendations by my fellow writers at Do Some Damage. But when it came to reviewing the Best Mysteries of the Year or the Best Non-Fiction of 2022 or just about any other book list from 2022, I found myself woefully behind.

And it’s not even close.

As such, I created a resolution specific to reading and it boils down to a single phrase: Read Intentionally.

What does that mean as a practical habit? Well, it means I’ll be more aware of books that are released throughout this year and make active decisions to read more new books in 2023 than I did in 2022. I still get to made judgement calls—I’m aware that Prince Harry published a book this week but I have zero interest in it.

On the fiction side of things, this week saw the publication of Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows. I can’t tell you how many fellow writers read this book pre-publication last fall, but it seemed like it was everyone. The praise was universal. Throw in the blurbs you see on press releases and the book cover and you’ve got yourself a contender for a Best Of list in 2023 right out of the gate.

Harper’s book was the first can’t-miss book of the year, and I didn’t. I download the audiobook on release day and am looking forward to giving it a listen.

Later, as the year goes on and more books like Harper’s are released, I plan on keeping up. Then, come December 2023, I’ll have a list of favorite books that will include newly published ones. Why the emphasis on ‘newly published’? Because I still find myself drawn to older books and I don’t want to leave them behind.

Agatha Christie

For the past few years, in light of the success of the Rian Johnson films (Knives Out; Glass Onion) and the Kenneth Branagh adaptations of Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, I’ve been curious about Agatha Christie. 2020 celebrated the century mark of her first book and the yearly reading challenges started. I didn’t do very well before but I intend to change that. I plan on reading—intentionally—the books on the Read Christie 2023. This year’s theme is “Methods and Motives.”

Good news: I’m one for one. Sad Cypress is January’s book and I’ve already listened to it. Even better, if you check out the website, they’ve listened ten of the twelve books on tap for the year. That way, you and I can stay abreast with the new challenge and read at least twelve Agatha Christie books. I’m particularly looking forward to February’s book, Partners in Crime, the second book in the Tommy and Tuppence series.

Oh, and you don’t have to read the books they suggest. They have a particular method of murder or a motive and you are free to pick any of her books. But as a Christie newbie, I’m just going with the flow.

The Great February Reset

by
Scott D. Parker

Do you know the best thing about February is? No, not the holiday. Valentine’s Day is one of my least favorite holidays on the calendar. It has always felt manufactured, like if the folks who sold flowers, chocolates, and greeting cards all got together and invented a holiday to increase their bottom lines.

Actually, one of the best things about February is the chance to reset on any habits you might have already broken.

I suspect you’ve seen all the historical data that tell us many people stop doing their New Year’s Resolutions sometime around 14-19 January.  That's just two weeks. Typically we think of resolutions like going to the gym or talking a daily walk to help us exercise or stop eating a certain food or abstaining from alcohol.

Those are all well and good, but often, we creatives want to start a habit and, in some ways, that can be more difficult, especially if we’ve fallen by the wayside prior to New Year’s Day.

But here’s the thing: a New Year’s Resolution is not a one-and-done. It’s not like if you fall off the wagon sometime in mid January you have failed for the entire year. Let’s not judge an entire 365-day cycle by the actions of a 14 or so days.

I’m a firm believer that every new month is an opportunity to get back into a habit or reinforce one you started the previous month. I resolved to write a 1,000 words a day in 2022 (or reach 365,000 words for the year). I’m happy to say that my streak is intact, but boy, some of those days were a slog, especially with a day job.

In fact, I battled with myself over just how important a streak like this is. To remind myself of the power of streaks, I need only look at the small calendar on the fridge. I had fallen away from taking vitamins every day so I needed to start that back up again. I did the Jerry Seinfeld thing where I put an X on the calendar for each day I took my vitamins. Eight days into the new year, I forgot. Boom! Busted up my streak and my January has a hole in it. Irritation.

But my writing streak is alive. My writing resolution is alive. I hope your resolutions are alive, too.

If they’re not, dedicate the month of February to creating a new habit. It’s only 28 days long, an even four weeks. Chances are high if you maintain that new habit until 1 March, you’ll be good to go. But if not, then let March be your new start date. Heck, let each Sunday be a start date. Just start. Then continue. The rewards will flow to you.

Totems

By Russel D McLean

Since we moved into the Gothic Monstrosity last year, we have tweaked and adjusted the interior in many ways. The Literary Critic has gone to town painting and restoring furniture while I have mostly got out the way and focussed on the office. Its now finally getting to where we want it, but while the office was almost complete, something was missing.

And now its here.

A typewriter. From what I can tell this one's from somewhere around '53-'57 and still in great working order. I have in fact now put in a piece of paper with the opening paragraph to The Big Sleep typed up. And it works. It is the missing piece of the puzzle for me. Suddenly the room feels right. And in the few days since adding that last piece, my productivity seems to have increased.

Why?

I think there's something to be said for mascots and tokens. I think that some things can help to focus the mind and serve as a reminder of what you're attempting to achieve. I learned to write on my dad's old typewriter. Having one of my own even if its purely decorative reminds me of why I'm still doing this in a way. Its a connection to what's important to me about writing. Even the years in which the typewriter was created matters, too. I had expected to find a piece of old junk that didn't work. When I picked up that beauty (at a bargain price, too) I felt better about the fact that it worked, that it was in perfect condition. Its too loud, of course, to use regularly, and I'm very happy typing at a computer, but I think there's something quite beautiful about typewriters of that era; a kind of slick hope for the future that has vanished from design.

Or maybe I'm just mad. Maybe I'm just filled with a strange nostalgia for the past. Might explain why I also have a vinyl player, why most of my music is from the 60s and 70s, long before I was born.

All writers have habits and tokens and things they keep around when writing. For me, the typewriter is something I've yearned to have for a long time and now that its here, I feel like my writing space is complete; other things will be window dressing but I now have something there that reminds me, every day, where I've come from and what I'm hoping to achieve.

Hard habit to break

By: Joelle Charbonneau

I’m a writer.  Which means…drum roll please….I write.  No big surprise.  Right? I admit I haven’t been at this writing thing as long as some.  I wasn’t an English or journalism major in college.  I didn’t dream of a career that involved sitting behind a computer making stuff up.  Heck, even had I dreamed of it, I would never have thought anyone would pay me to do it. 

A little under 10 years ago I decided to try my hand at writing.  For whatever reason, when I started writing, I did the bulk of my work in the afternoon or in the late parts of the evening.  I freely admit that I am not a morning person.  Or, perhaps more important, while I am able to make beds, get breakfast on the table and fish clothes that match out of my closet, I find my brain doesn’t appreciate being asked to be creative in the A.M. 

As most of you probably know, I have a toddler in the house and I consider myself lucky that at 4 years of age, the tot still enjoys taking an afternoon nap.  This has allowed me to continue the writing pattern that began long ago.  Write in the afternoon (when the tot is napping) and continue writing in the evening (when the tot is asleep). 

Yippee!  Right?

Right!  Well…sort of.  Kind of…

See, while this writing pattern has been successful for me thus far, I didn’t have the amount of work e-mails to answer nor several books a year to copy edit, proof, tweak jacket copy and the myriad of other details that go along with a book’s production.  I also didn’t need to write several manuscripts in any given year.  I do now.  And though having this work is thrilling, I am finding that my current writing habits don’t allow enough time for me to get as much done as needs to be done in any given day. 

So, I’m working on changing my habits.  Every morning the tot has swim lessons.  When we started the summer, I brought a book to the pool and read for the 40 minutes the kid splashed and kicked.  In the last week, I have packed up the laptop and fired it up poolside.  I’ve also brought the laptop to the park and sat on the porch with it while the kid does the kiddie pool routine.

The results of this experiment have been mixed.  While I am more than willing to be productive, part of my brain is determined that the routine I have used for so many years is the way I write best.  That I can’t be as sharp or funny or…whatever…during different times of day in places where there are so many distractions.

But I am determined to persevere.  Which is where you come in.  Have you ever had to change a habit and found yourself doubting whether or not it will work for you?  Do you NEED to exercise at a certain time or day?  Do you only write well when you first wake up?  Am I the only one who feels this pull to keep doing what has been successful in the past?  And if you have changed a personal habit – how long did it take before it felt natural or before you stopped doubting it was a good choice?  Trust me – with 3 more manuscripts to write by summer of next year, I really need to know!