As I mentioned yesterday, I'll be observing Earth Day all month in an irregular sort of way. I'll be bringing the Environmental Book Club back to life, putting the Kindle edition of Saving the Planet & Stuff on sale at a reduced price the week of April 20 through 26, and offering a free copy to a lucky commenter on Earth Day, itself, April 22.
Speaking of Saving the Planet & Stuff and all things environmental, I learned earlier this year that the original edition of that book was included on an ALA list of Science-Themed Novels. It's classified under Landforms and the Environment.
Landforms and the Environment. Does this mean I could be on the Big Bang Theory?
Yes, I was talking about unit end recapitulation last Tuesday. Not to worry. I'm not talking about recapitulation in the sense of "recalling a charged event" and "feeling remorse if appropriate." I'm talking about what I did and how successful I feel I was with it. Because that will be a factor in my planning for next year.
Time Management Tuesday
I managed a Time Management Tuesday post,
every single Tuesday. Even during
Retreat Week. Even on
Christmas Day. In terms of managing time and perseverance, terrific. But did it do me any good in terms of work?
First off, my time management research last year led me to submit a workshop proposal to the
New England SCBWI for its
spring conference. It was accepted, and I will be teaching a Situational Time Management workshop that weekend. I have spoken at professional conferences before, even at a writers' retreat. This is the first regional conference.
Secondly, I have been using the
unit system (which has evolved a lot since I first wrote about it back in February),
transitional time, and
constant planning to manage my time.
Which leads us to...
The Saving the Planet E-book Edition
Preparing this e-book has been hugely time consuming for both my computer guy and myself. I will go into his work at some other time. I spent huge amounts of time seeking out and planning ways to publicize the book. The unit system and constant planning (see above) were significant here, because for many months I was working part-time. Planning units for the various research helped to make good use of the time I did have. Given that I often had only two days a week and that they were frequently Mondays and Fridays, trying to get into a big writing project might have been extremely difficult. So this was a good use of the time I had. But the fact that it took up so much time will definitely influence what I do next year.
Submission Binge
I did a binge of submitting short stories and essays early in the year, which resulted in a short story being accepted for publication at
Alimentum. Again, that will have an impact on my plans for next year.
The NESCBWI Blog Tour
This is a little project I assigned myself
last year and finished this year. This was worthwhile for a couple of reasons. It provided content for
Original Content, of course, but was also a community building effort before I even got into building community. (See below.) I friended some of the bloggers on Facebook and made connections of one kind or another. And it could have an impact on my planning for next year.
May Days
Last year I took part in a Facebook event called
May Days, which was sort of like binge writing for a specific unit of time. I wasn't prepared for the project, so I just wrote two pages of anything every day. At least one piece I worked on was reworked this fall into a press release for
Saving the Planet & Stuff. Again, this will be coming up again during my planning for next year.
Community Building
When you consider how late in the year I became interested in
community building, I managed to do quite a bit with it--at least, by my standards.
The Connecticut Children's Lit Calendar, the
weekend reading roundups, and the
Next Big Thing Author Meme, which I expect to be posting next weekend, all involve community building. I've also been more conscientious about taking part in the
Carnival of Children's Books this past year and have taken part in the
Carnival of Creativity a couple of times. How will community building figure in to my plans for next year?
Not only are these the bigger projects I've been involved with this past year, they're the projects I've written about here at
Original Content. I'll use them as examples for next week's
Time Management Tuesday post.
A Guide to Fiction Set in Vermont for Children & Young Adults by Ann McKinstry Micou was published this spring by the Vermont Humanities Council. Both my Vermont books, The Hero of Ticonderoga and Saving the Planet & Stuff are included in the guide.
Too bad Planet has gone out of print, huh? I've just had the rights reverted to me, which means that when I can get organized and serious I can try to find a paperback publisher for it.
