The Importance of Saying No

by Linda Rodriguez

I have always had a hard time saying “no.” I like people, and I always want to help good causes. This has led to years of low pay in the nonprofit sector, tons of overwork, lots of volunteer hours, and on the good side, an awful lot of great friends. It also leads periodically to a terrible feeling of overload, that point I get to when I have so many urgent or overdue or essential tasks to do that I’m paralyzed. How do you prioritize when everything needs to be done RIGHT NOW?

When I get to that point, I have to move into To-Do Triage. I list everything that’s demanding my attention (and get the most depressing multi-page list). Then I move down the list, asking myself, “What will happen if I don’t do this today?” If it isn’t job loss, client loss, contract violation, child endangerment, arrest, etc., it doesn’t go on the much tinier list to be dealt with right now.

The trouble is that you can’t live your life in To-Do Triage. At least, I can’t. Not as a permanent lifestyle. Sooner or later, you have to learn to say “no.” Even when it’s difficult. Even when it’s going to hurt someone’s feelings (whether it should or not). Even when it’s something you’d like to do. At least, if you want to write, you will. Sooner or later, you have to learn to guard your time like a mother eagle with her nestlings. And sooner or later, you’ll find yourself having to relearn it all over again. At least, I do. (Maybe I’m just a slow learner, and all the rest of you can learn this lesson once and for all, but it keeps coming up in new guises in my life.)

I remember the first time I learned the lesson of no. I was a young, broke mother of two (still in diapers) who wanted to write. The advice manuals I read were aimed at men with wives and secretaries or women with no children or enough money to hire help with the house and the kids. Since there was three times as much month as there was money, hiring anyone or anything was out of the question—I was washing cloth diapers in the bathtub by hand and hanging on a clothesline to dry because we hadn’t enough disposable income for the laundromat. Yet still I wound up the one in the neighborhood who canvassed with kids in stroller and arms for the March of Dimes and the American Cancer Society.

One day someone who knew how much I wanted to write gave me a little book called Wake Up and Live by Dorothea Brande, who also wrote the wonderful On Becoming A Writer. As I read it, one sentence leaped out at me:“As long as you cannot bear the notion that there is a creature under heaven who can regard you with an indifferent, an amused or hostile eye, you will probably see to it that you continue to fail with the utmost charm.”

I began carving out time and space for my writing, and to do it without shortchanging my babies, I cut out television and most of my community involvement. This lesson had to be relearned when those babies were high schoolers, my new youngest was a toddler, and I became a full-time student and a single working mother at the same time, unexpectedly. It returned to be learned again when my oldest two were grown, my youngest in grade school, and I took on running a university women’s center that also served the community. Every time it had to be learned in a different way with different adjustments. Once I’d given up television, that option was no longer open to me. At one point, I switched my writing to poetry because what time I could create or steal was in such small fragments that it made novels impossible to write.

Now that I’m writing novels again and publishing them (as well as poetry and freelance work still), one of the time-eaters is the promotion work we authors must all do to win the readers we believe our books deserve. It’s not something that can be skimped on, and yet the creative work of designing and writing new novels must go forward, as well. For a while now, each request for my volunteer time and work has had to be carefully weighed, and most reluctantly rejected. At this time, my major volunteer commitment is Kansas City Cherokee Community, our official satellite community of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, set up by the Nation for those of us in diaspora. Everything else must sadly fall by the wayside—and some people are quite unhappy about that, as if they had the right to my time and skills because I’ve given them in the past. I’ve had to learn to deal with that.

What about the time book promotion takes, however? With my first novel (this was never a real issue with my poetry books and cookbook), I said “yes” to every opportunity, every event, every guest blog, every interview, every podcast, everything. And I managed to write books during that time, as well—and had the worst winter, healthwise, in many years, having worn my body down. Now, I’m trying to be more strategic about the promotion opportunities I accept. I’m still saying “yes” to many of them—it’s part of my job, and I know that—but I’m examining them more closely and deciding against some that I don’t feel will be as useful for me. It’s hard, but once again I’m learning that lesson, which is apparently one of my life-lessons—“no” can be the friend of my writing and is necessary at times.

Charles Dickens, who was one of the earliest and most successful self-promoting writers, put it best for writers in any age when he said:

“‘It is only half an hour’ — ‘It is only an afternoon’ — ‘It is only an evening,’ people say to me over and over again; but they don’t know that it is impossible to command one’s self sometimes to any stipulated and set disposal of five minutes — or that the mere consciousness of an engagement will sometime worry a whole day … Whoever is devoted to an art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and to find his recompense in it. I am grieved if you suspect me of not wanting to see you, but I can’t help it; I must go in my way whether or no.”

Do you find it difficult to tell others “no” when they want your time? If you’re a writer, how do you create ways to balance the promotion and the writing?

Linda Rodriguez's Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, an anthology she co-edited, are her newest books. Every Family Doubt, her fourth mystery novel featuring Cherokee campus police chief, Skeet Bannion, will appear August 15, 2018. Her three earlier Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, and Every Last Secret—and her books of poetry—Skin Hunger and Heart's Migration—have received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin's Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices & Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has been optioned for film.

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International Thriller Writers, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Visit her at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com

Taking an actual vacation

I’ve mentioned so many times in this space about how I fit it all in. The full-time job, the two kids, my ultrarunning habit, freelance writing and editing, and, of course, my love of loves, my fiction writing.

I work my butt off to get it all in. I write on my phone at the gym and over my lunch break, edit clients’ manuscripts after the kids have gone to bed and the house is quiet.

It is rare for me to stop doing so much.

But this week it happened.

I had planned on doing a little pre-revision to a rough draft I finished last week. I had a few items I wanted to fix before reading through the manuscript as a whole for the first time, and I decided I would use my vacation in Colorado to do just that.

Whether by chance or the luck of the draw with kids’ naps and downtime, I happened to finish everything on my pre-revision list by Monday evening. Meaning, I still had four days in the mountains and no work on the horizon. Sure, I could’ve just started reading/editing my first draft right then and there. It was ready to go, after all.

But instead, I took one look at the mountains and said, “Nope.”

I decided to let the manuscript breathe for a week, and, therefore, gave myself a chance to air out as well.

So, for four days I took a real vacation. From everything. I didn’t edit. I didn’t revise. I didn’t open my document a single time.

Instead, I went for multiple runs, hiked with the kids, read a book for FUN—the excellent AN EMBER IN THE ASHES by Sabaa Tahir…a book that I told myself I wouldn’t read until I finished my first draft—ate cookies, hung out with my parents and niece, and did yoga on our cabin’s front porch (see the above pic and excuse my sweat because I went for a run pre-yoga).

It was glorious.

It was also a lesson in something I’m typically terrible at: taking a rest. Yes, I know it’s good for the soul. I know it’s good for my creativity. I know it’s good for work-life balance. I know all this, yet I find it impossible to look a window of work time in the mouth and say, “Nah, not today.” No, if I have that window, I hop through it, MacBook Air in hand.

But this time? I’m so glad I let that window fill up without “work.”

When was your last “real” vacation?

P.S.: E.B., as you can see, I pick the mountains over the beach any day.

Could Busyness Equal Creativity?

Now that the final day is here in all its fresh glory, I can say that May had me SWAMPED.

Snowed under.

Drowning in obligations.

Between two writing-related trips, an exciting project, family visits, family illness and a break-neck pace at the day job, it was absolutely off-the-wall bonkers in Sarah’s world. BONKERS.

I feel like I’ve barely had time to breathe, let alone process all that has gone on, but what I can say I noticed is something I totally didn’t expect.

I wanted to write ALL THE TIME.

Somehow, some way, I noticed in the last thirty-one days that my level of creativity seemed to go up with my level of busyness in any given day.

Obviously, this wasn’t a scientific survey or anything, but on recent twelve-hour work days, you’d find me tapping away at my phone with any free second. I wrote them while exercising, driving (typing them after I parked!) and while up with the baby in the middle of the night.

And when I wasn’t actually writing, I was taking mental notes. Or actual notes. Or running through dialogue in my head. Of course, I wouldn’t do that during a three-hour work meeting, but I might during breaks.

Looking at it all, I wrote more than 35,000 words in the month of May.

Words I actually like and are good—I know because I revised them as I went (ah, the power of rereading what you wrote yesterday before starting again today).

I’m not sure what June will hold. Maybe I burnt myself out with work, writing and life in May and will spend the next six months getting my equilibrium back. Or maybe stress didn’t have anything to do with it—I DO love the project I’m working on. Maybe those words would’ve flowed out of me anyway. It’s impossible to tell.

What I do know is that stress can be surprising in the most productive of ways. Not that I want the month of May back. Nope, nope, I don’t want that.

Where have you found unexpected creativity?

A Writers’ Retreat of a Sort

Starting today I have a rare opportunity for the modern writer: a whole week alone.

I have to tell you, this never happens. I’m married. I have a five-year-old. I am never, ever alone. Which is great, because I absolutely love my family and couldn’t imagine not having them around. But, like most people, I’m much more productive creatively when I’m flying solo with no distraction.

Which rarely happens. And when it does, it happens in little chunks here and there—just enough that I’m able to write and edit and hear myself think. But a whole week? Never. Ever.

How’d this come to be? Well, basically, I’m missing out on my favorite time of the whole year. Each summer, my family heads to Colorado with my parents and we spend a week hiking, eating and relaxing in the shadow of Longs Peak. It’s a great time, marked by cool mornings, sweaty jaunts up mountains (see above—the hubby and me on top of Twin Sisters last summer) and lots of reading on a wide porch.

And this year, I won’t be going.

I’m due to have a baby in September, and, after talking to my doctor, decided that suddenly spending a week at 8,000 feet might not be the best idea. I did go on the trip when I was pregnant with my son, but I’ll be nearly three months further along than I was then.

Because he’s awesome, my husband offered to take our son anyway—a great gesture and one that the kiddo will most definitely appreciate. He loves Colorado and he loves grandparent time—so win-win for the little man. I’m sure my husband won’t mind the fresh air either (again, see the above pic as proof), even while on single-parent duty.

While I’d much rather be curled up with some tea and a book in the shadow of Longs Peak, I’m trying to make the most of this very rare week alone.

When I’m not physically at my day job, I plan to be writing or editing—two things I don’t normally have much time to do in the evenings during the week. Obviously, I’m hoping this will mean getting tons of work done. Not only because that would be fantastic, but also because I may never get an opportunity with so much alone time again. Or at least for a very long time.

What would you do with a writer-ly week alone?

The Beauty of 1K a Day

It can take forever to write a novel.

Months. Years. Half-a-decade.

But it’ll take a lot longer if you don’t actually sit down and write the thing.

As you may have gleaned from my last post, I really don’t have a ton of time to write. Between being a mom, having a full-time job and a healthy freelance writing/editing career, I am often SWAMPED.

But dang it if I don’t get stuff done.

Because I’ve learned the art of chipping away.

On every project I worked on last year, I attempted to average 1,000 words a day during the first draft stage. That’s not much. Maybe five pages, double-spaced. For me, that’s about half a chapter or one scene. 

Not much at all.

But when staring down a 90,000-work book from page one? Totally doable.

I can fit in 1,000 words on my lunch break at work. Then, by Friday afternoon, I’ve got 5,000 words I didn’t have at the start of the week. Sure, that’s slow progress—especially when compared to those “fast drafters” out there who crank out 10,000 words a day—but it’s just enough that I feel like I’ve accomplished something—and moved closer to my goal of finishing a manuscript.

Some days I can’t write. Too many family obligations or too much work or freelance to do. So, I double-up the next day. Or go on a tear during a few precious hours during a weekend. As long as I average 30,000 words for a month, I’m pleased. That’s not Herculean. But it’ll get me there.

I’ve written nearly four manuscripts with this technique. Two that were completed in 2013, and two (a solo project and a joint project) that will most likely be finished this month.

They say that to be a writer you must write every day. I don’t necessarily believe this to be true, but I do think that to be a writer who finishes projects, you need to write as often as possible while in the drafting stage.

Not because that makes you a writer, per se, but because it will make the act of finishing a book A. less daunting and B. easier, in that you’ll be in the story every day (aka not staring at the computer screen because it’s been a week). And finishing is the goal, right? Right.

How do you approach the act of finishing a manuscript?

Time Out

I’m a pretty accomplished handknitter, used to do it professionally, but I’m having trouble making my husband a pair of heavy, worsted-weight boot socks (finishing a Christmas present). I’ve had to rip back to fix errors several times now. The thing is that I’ve made hundreds of pairs of socks. I’m an expert sock knitter. But all those pairs have been knitted with many, many stitches of very thin yarn. This heavyweight pair handles differently, and I find myself making stupid errors. So I’ve set that sock aside for now. I’ll pick it up tomorrow, and it will all go smoothly. I’ve learned this through the years of knitting complicated cable sweaters and intricate lace shawls where I’ve had to rip back and reknit, rip back and reknit, until I give it a rest and come back to conquer whatever the current challenge is.

As a novelist, I’ve found myself in the same situation. I’ve written three novels in the Skeet Bannion series—the third, Every Hidden Fear, will be out May 6 and is available for pre-order—but I’ve been working on the first novel in a new series. After having to start over and revise the whole concept of the book once because I decided to do something different with it and then doing it all again (because it was to be a standalone but my agent wanted it to be a series), I was a little over halfway through this new book and desperately unhappy with it, feeling that I was going more and more wrong each day I worked on it. I kept telling myself, “You’re a professional writer. If you show up and do the work every day, you can make it good eventually” over and over just to get myself to show up and add more words to the hot mess on the page. Then I fell ill.

I’ve been down and out (and off work) for weeks now with something that kept getting worse until it finally turned into pneumonia. (Don’t worry. I’m fine now. Getting better all the time.) I wasn’t even able to read in the end. About the only thing I could do was sleep and knit. It was an enforced time out from the book—because I didn’t have the sense to do what I’ve learned to do with my knitting and take a voluntary one. Since I’m recovering and intend to start back to work on the new book today, I printed out what I had and gave it to my trusty first readers—something I never do with unfinished first drafts. I don’t like to have other people’s perceptions and comments until after I’ve finished that first creative envisioning completely. But I was feeling as if I needed to abandon this whole project—that my agent already had an editor interested in. So desperate straits called for desperate measures.

After hearing the same things from both of my readers—it reads great but there are these several trouble points—and having a light bulb go off over my head—oh, of course, that was the problem, and I can do this or that to fix it—I’m looking forward to getting back to work. It turns out that it wasn’t the disaster I imagined. All I needed was some time away from it to get perspective and a couple of pairs of trusted, fresh eyes to zero in on the real problems so I could see that they were fixable, just as with the knitting. I’m going to try to remember this for next time. Sometimes—as long as I don’t overdo it—a time out is exactly what is needed.

Have you ever found yourself in a similar situation?

Getting a Life

Happy Labor Day!

Yesterday I just crashed. I slept late. I couldn’t get myself moving on anything I had to do, not this blog post or another guest blog that’s due, not my usual stint on the WIP, not any of the several business emails I needed to take care of, not trying to clear some of the clutter and mess that have collected in my house as I’ve launched and promoted one book (including much traveling) while writing yet another book under a tight deadline, taking care of a slew of freelance commitments, and preparing and teaching several workshops . Usually I rise early, take a deep breath, gird my loins for the day’s battle with the endless to-do list, and kick into overdrive, but yesterday I couldn’t muster the energy or the will to do much of anything productive. This is not like me.

While driving with my husband past Kansas City’s Plaza, which is a premier pedestrian shopping mall/outdoor art gallery full of fountains, intricate and colorful Spanish tiles, ornate buildings, and beautiful sculptures, I reminisced sadly about the good times we used to have walking the Plaza and sitting on one of the many benches to watch the parade of people. I reminded my husband of the fun we had taking picnic lunches to some of Kansas City’s many great parks to enjoy after a refreshing walk. I waxed nostalgic over the weekend day trips we used to make to explore lovely small towns all around the Kansas City area—I’ve given many of their best features to my fictional town in my Skeet Bannion series of novels. The strange thing is that, though we don’t do any of those things any longer due to lack of time, we used to do them when I had an ultra-demanding, 60-70-hour per week university job. Now that I’m a full-time writer, however, I have no time to enjoy leisure activities with my husband or any of the other things I used to do to make a real life—cooking, fiberart, gardening, going to Shakespeare or concerts in the park, lunches with friends, etc.

How did this terrible imbalance in my life occur? Isn’t one of the joys of being a full-time writer supposed to be the flexibility of time that allows you to lead a fuller, richer life? How did I manage with that old job and all its hours and responsibilities to weave in time for recreation and fun, time with family and friends, time to feed the creative well inside me, yet now I can hardly find time to even wash dishes or do laundry, the minimal tasks required to keep us from sinking into total chaos?

If I were just writing my books, I would have time to enjoy some of these activities still, but I have to promote those books in an effort to constantly increase sales. Publishers are dumping, left and right, amazing writers who have received impressive reviews and award nominations because their sales are just not spectacular enough. So I have to work harder to try to get the word out about my books and persuade new people to try them. The writing and publishing (with its line edits, copy edits, and page proofs) when combined with the promotion and marketing (with its touring, social media, conferences, and events) are two full-time jobs. Since my (successful) writing career is still not earning enough to support me, I must take on freelance writing/editing/evaluating/judging/teaching contracts, yet another full-time job. It’s no wonder I’m so tired!

I’m hardly the only writer in this predicament. Writers who are far more successful and have been doing this for far longer than I have are facing the same dilemma. The Sisters in Crime listserv recently rang with the cries of authors who have run out of steam trying to do all of this. Some are even seriously thinking of giving up writing, which they love, because they just don’t think they can do all of it any longer.

On this Labor Day, I think this is a topic to consider. As a country, we are moving more and more to a freelance or independent contractor environment, where we don’t have paid vacation and sick days and where we can find ourselves working all the time—or feeling as if we ought to be. How do we make a go of this kind of career and still have any kind of life outside of work?

I’m the first to admit I don’t have the answers to that question. I will be spending my Labor Day trying to find some, however. How we spend our time is our actual life, even if we think we’re just doing it until we bring in enough money or reach a certain level of success. I intend to find a way to bring those elements of a real, lived life back into mine. Can I do it without shortchanging the efforts I need to put into my writing and promotion of my work to create a successful career? I’ll have to find a way.

How do you manage that career-personal life balance that can be so difficult to get right?

 

THE SPEEDING OF UP TIME

                                                      Sunrise, sunset, swiftly go the days

                                                      Seedlings turn over night to sunflowers

                                                      blossoming even as we gaze.

                                                      Sunrise, sunset, swiftly fly the years

                                                      One season following another

                                                      laden with happiness and tears.

“Fiddler on the Roof” is one of my favorite musicals and the above song resonates with me even more than the others as it speaks of the passing so swiftly of the years. And the older we get, the faster time seems to go. As children it seemed Christmas or birthdays would never come nor would the end of the school year, although the truth is that teachers, no matter how young or old, felt the same way since students tuned out the closer the end came, and it became exceedingly difficult to hold their attention.

Now for some people my age, their days are filled with long hours with little to do. Or so I hear. Not so for me and most people I know. Today I’m just as busy as or even busier than I’ve ever been. True, I’m not standing in front of a class. I’m not making lesson plans or grading papers. I don’t have to be out the door by 7:30 every morning, and that’s a bonus. I like having time to read the newspaper or write with a morning cup of coffee after I put the dog out and feed her and the cats. Sometimes instead of reading I work on my blog or a poem or write in my journal. I like that quiet time without having to look at the clock to see if it’s time to leave. Still, that doesn’t mean I sleep in much later. I don’t. I still need to get outside by 8:00 or 8:30 to do morning barn chores; feed and water the ponies and put them out, feed the barn cats and the chickens with fresh water for them, too. And then it’s my exercise time – a morning walk in the woods and/or gardening in season.

And now comes my gripe; my biggest complaint, and that is the comments made by others still doing what they think of as a regular job. If I make the slightest comment about how busy I am, I hear “But you’re retired,” as if I’m sitting around eating chocolates and watching TV most of the day. Those of you who are writers, know how little others consider your hours writing as real work. Or maybe you’re a lucky one who everyone holds in awe for the time and work you put into your writing. Maybe if you answer the phone and someone asks what you’re doing, and you say, "Writing," they say, “Okay, get back to work and call me when you have time.” Or maybe you just let all calls go to the answering machine or voice mail. I can’t do that and I don’t have caller ID, either. I’d hate to have people think I was there screening their calls and not answering because I don’t consider them important enough to pick up the phone. So when I answer and they ask what I’m doing, and I say, “I’m writing,” they usually say “I’ll make this short then,” but they rarely do.

Of course, part of it is my fault as I hear all too often. Yes, I have too many critters, maybe. Yes, I have more gardens than one person should have. Yes, I mow my own lawn interspersed with those gardens and not with a riding mower. Yes, I belong to two book clubs, two writing groups and deliver Mobile Meals every other Thursday. Yes, I blog every Thursday for this blog and the Guppy anthology blog once a month. And no, I’m not going to give up on any of those things. Part of my lack of time comes from living alone. I’m the one who does almost everything. Also, I have a rather large family and families require time – the larger the family, the more birthdays, phone calls and other events. But I consider myself lucky to have so many family members even though families consume a large amount of time, they're worth it.

So I guess I’m destined to always be too busy since I’m not willing to eliminate what I enjoy or eliminate family members and friends. I’ll save that for the written page. Now if I could only get people to stop saying “But you’re retired so you have time now.”

So what is your biggest gripe about time?

What one thing do you hate to hear most of all?