Create a Time Management Plan – Platform Challenge – Day 23

Robert Lee Brewer’s platform challenge assignment for yesterday was to create a time management plan. He believes that we must manage our time so we can remain connected on our social networks and still spend the majority of our time writing.

I have been fully aware of this ever since I retired from my day job in April 2010 and plunked myself in my chair at my home office and began my life as a full-time writer. Even though I allow myself a lot of time to write, I find myself wandering every so often to look at my email, check my Facebook comments and likes, see if anything is happening here at Choices, and respond to Twitter messages and retweets. I feel if I’m going to participate in the social media at all it’s a matter of give and take. If someone gives to me, I have to give back.

View from my office 

Just now I found a comment on an article that went live yesterday. If someone was generous enough to make a comment on my piece, I had to write a thank you right away, didn’t I?

Well, no. It could have waited. Like Robert, I’m going to reward myself with fifteen to thirty minutes of social media time after I finish each piece of writing I’ve assigned myself for the day. My assignments for today are:

• Finish and submit a piece for the Journeys through Grief  newsletter – Check
• Write poems for the PAD challenge – since I didn’t respond to yesterday’s prompt, I had to write two poems today – Check
• Post a blog piece on my Red Room page – that was easy, I posted a piece I had written for this blog – Check
• Write a new Choices blog piece – I’m doing that now.
• Reread and edit my piece for PsychAlive and get it ready to send off.
• Work on my novel – I try to write 300 to 500 words a day, and so far I’ve been successful at it.

That’s about three to five hours of work right there, so I have precious little time for social media. Right away I know I have to limit my social media breaks to no more than fifteen minutes each – at least for today. And really that’s plenty.

I could also consider a shorter writing assignment list for each day. Actually that will happen almost automatically. My April platform and PAD challenge participation will end at the end of this month, so I’ll have more free time almost right away. And once I submit my two or three regular monthly articles, I don’t have to worry about those for a few weeks.

So my workload varies. What I need to do is write down what I have on my plate each day, and then check the boxes as I finish each task. I can then reward myself with some social media time as I check that finished box. I think that’s all the time management I’m going to do. It’s not rocket science. 

Call to action - April Platform Challenge - Day 19

As part of the April Platform Challenge my task today is to ask you to do two things:

• Please click on the share buttons  - they are big and prominent at the top of the right side bar on this page

• Please sign-up for my email feed – see the little box just under the share buttons. It has room for you to type in your email address. Please click Submit when you've finished.

And one more thing that is not part of my assignment:

Please join me at the LA Times Festival of Books on the University of California campus either or both Saturday and Sunday June 21 and 22, from 12 noon until 2:00 pm. I’ll be at the Greater Los Angeles Writer’s Society booth number 970. Hopefully I’ll be signing lots of copies of my book: Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother’s Memoir of Living with Her Son’s Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide (Lucky Press, 2011).

You can’t miss me. I’m the one with the long gray hair.

April poem a day challenge

In honor of National Poetry Month, Robert Lee Brewer, editor at Writer’s Digest and creator of Poetic Asides, holds a poem a day challenge. I love to take the challenge because his prompts are always fun. He also provides his examples to help get us started. This month Robert has also created a platform building challenge through his blog: My Name Is Not Bob. I’m doing that one as well.

Here are a few of my April PAD poems with Robert’s prompts.

Day 5. Write a poem about something before your time. Maybe it’s a certain time in history. Or a type of music. Or a story that was shared by friends or family–before your time.

Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris

brought back a world before my time

and people that I would kill

to have known:

Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald

Porter, Baker,

Picasso, Man Ray, and Dali

all in the raucous 1920s.

And for a little more romantic and quiet

take he took us even further back

to the 1980s Belle Epoque

and the artistic worlds of

Toulouse-Lautrec, Gaugin, Degas.

If I can’t be as lucky as Gil

to go back in time,

Woody’s homage to the creativity,

beauty, and romance

of the City of Lights long past

will have to do.

Day 10. Today’s “Two-for-Tuesday” prompts are: 

1. Write a Forest poem or 
2. Write a Tree poem.

Three Palms (Tweet-length)

Outside my window I only see

their wide round trunks

still wet from last night’s rain

that seeped in streaks

into their vertical pores

Day 11. Pick a season (any season) and make it the title of your poem; then, write your poem. For instance, your poem might be titled “Winter” or “Spring” or “Rabbit Season” (if you have a sense of humor and like Looney Tunes cartoons).

What Spring?

In sunny southern California

we have no spring,

and no summer, fall, or winter

either for that matter.

Here the seasons are all mushed together

It’s never hot enough to break a sweat

or cold enough to see your breath

But somehow the flowers

know when to bloom

and the leaves

know when to fall.

Day 15. Use the following five words in your poem: slash, button, mask, strap, and balloon. Use them in any order.

In sharp sweeping strokes

he slashed the flimsy fabric

eliminating all traces

of straps and buttons.

He let the skirt flow free

to billow like a floating

balloon.

April challenges update

I took a break over the weekend and caught up today with my two April challenges.

The Platform Challenge Days 5 through 8:

Day 5. Create a blog – since you’re reading this you know I already have a blog. I also post at several other blog sites you might not know about:

http://redroom.com/member/madeline-sharples/blog/  - Red Room blog

http://www.naturallysavvy.com/savvy-over-60 - Naturally Savvy Over 60 blog

http://www.psychalive.org/index.php?s=madeline+sharples&image.x=15&image.y=7 - PsychAlive blog

http://tlswriters.wordpress.com/ - The Last Sunday Writer's  group blog

Day 6. Comment on a blog: Robert LeeBrewer posted a few possible ways to respond (and he suggested linking back to our own blogs). I think these are great suggestions. I just need to learn to follow them:

Share your own experience. If you've experienced something similar to what's covered in the post, share your own story. You don't have to write a book or anything, but maybe a paragraph or two.

Add another perspective. Maybe the post was great, but there's another angle that should be considered. Don't be afraid to point that angle out.

Ask a question. A great post usually will prompt new thoughts and ideas--and questions. Ask them.

Day 7. Add share buttons to your blog by going to the Add This website: 

Day 8. Create a LinkedIn profile.

The only thing I hadn’t already accomplished was to add share buttons on my blog. I already have them at the bottom of my posts supplied by blogger, but I added some at the top – bigger and hopefully more conducive to sharing. Now, I’d like to know how to get rid of the ones below the post.

The Poem a Day Challenge

And I wrote three poems (drafts of course) today to catch up with the poem a day challenge. Here’s the list of prompts I’ve received from Robert Lee Brewer so far. I’ve also included a couple of the draft poems I’ve written in response.

Day 1. Write a communication poem

Day 2. Write a visitor poem

Day 3. Write an apology poem, or…Write an unapologetic poem

Day 4. Take the phrase, “100% (blank);” replace the blank with a new word or phrase; make the new phrase the title of your poem; and then, write your poem

Day 5. Write a poem about something before your time Here’s mine:

Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris”

brought back a world before my time

and people that I would kill

to have known: Hemmingway,

Stein, Fitzgerald

Porter, Baker,

Picasso, Man Ray, Dali

all in the raucous 1920s.

And for a little more romantic and quiet

view he brought us even further back

to the 1980s Belle Epoque

and the artistic worlds of

Toulouse-Lautrec, Gaugin, Degas.

If I can’t be as lucky as Gil

to go back in time,

Woody’s homage to the creativity,

beauty and romance

of the City of Lights long past

will have to do.

Day 6. Write a hiding poem. Here’s mine:

They kept the real words

hidden away for years.

How could anyone in this family

have a mental illness?

Instead, they’d say:

She had a nervous breakdown

He was just a little depressed

She is having a little crying jag

anything instead of saying

those stigmatized words.

Well, the truth finally came to light

where it should have been all along.

Don’t keep it hidden.

Talk, write about it

often. Perhaps then we can

save some lives.

Day 7. Write a poem describing a scene in which two or more people interact without speaking.

Day 8. Write a rejected poem. 

If anyone cares to take these prompts and write to them, please do. And please post them in my comments.

April Platform Challenge - Day 2

Today's platform-building task is to set goals, including short-term and long-term goals. Robert Lee Brewer wants us to also make a list of goals to accomplish by the end of this year; and then, make a list of goals to accomplish before I die.

Here are my goal lists:

Short-term goals:

• Complete April Platform Challenge on My Name Is Not Bob blog
• Complete April PAD Challenge on Poetic Asides blog
• Get an ebook of my memoir ready for publication
• Submit poetry to chapbook and full-length book contests
• Have lots of sales at the LA Times Festival of Books
• Finish editing Keith Alan Hamilton’s Nature IQ book of poetry
• Answer Daisy’s questions for her SunnyRoomStudio blog
• Keep on with my social network marketing efforts
• Set up blog tour for release of my ebook

Long-term goals (same as goals to accomplish by the end of 2012):

• Publish my ebook
• Produce and release a CD with Paul’s music
• Finish my novel and find an agent for it
• Publish full-length poetry collection
• Continue writing articles for PsychAlive and Naturally Savvy

Goals to accomplish before I die

• Be a better wife, mother, and friend
• Become a grandmother
• Travel to places on my bucket list
• Live in Italy for at least four months
• Erase the stigma of mental illness and suicide so that lives can be saved

·