Author Appleton

Writing. Fantasy. Sci-fi. Mystery

productivity

How to preserve your story ideas

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It seems like I’ve been coming up with story ideas since I was a little kid, and I feel that it is true. Digging into my childhood memory box will reveal a small treasure trove of hand-drawn picture books I created for my siblings, as well as creature sketches, and lists of the numerous books I was reading. The box of story ideas began back then.

I remember working on a story about a mouse family. My brother drew pictures to go along with the story because he loved it so much. The concept was a family of mice in an abandoned house who get caught between warring factions of living toy soldiers. I still remember that story… Yet the material has been completely lost. The idea is there. Even some of the details stick in my memory, yet much of it will be a struggle for me to regain.

I wish I had had an idea file in a computer back then.

Nowadays those ideas are most often thrown into computer files. I like the security this affords. I can store the idea, then refer back to it at my leisure. The files have grown over the past twelve years. The idea behind them is that they are ideas that I do not have time to write, at this time, yet I intend to get to someday. There are new fantasy novels, science-fiction, mysteries, historical fiction, even a romance or two.

But I would be remiss if I did not mention my notebooks. Writing on paper has always given me my greatest story ideas. Much of the core material behind The Sword of the Dragon books was hand written. There’s nothing akin to sitting outside enjoying nature, the fresh air, with pad and pen in hand. No rush, simply enjoying the process. My preference has bounced between ruled paper and sketchbooks. Each offers a different feel that fuels creativity. Ruled paper allows me to feel more structured, especially for outlining ideas. Whereas sketchbooks feel like a clean slate I can fill with my tiny handwriting.

The writer’s imagination is always gathering ideas. It would be career suicide to throw those ideas out. Even if the raw idea is not ready for publication, its premise or an element of it may stick to create something memorable. A few times I have found I end up incorporating them into existing storylines. The Sword of the Dragon series has benefitted greatly from the use of ideas from these files.

Q: Do you have a system to file your story ideas?

Sleep, Reflection, and the Writer

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My mind is like an engine running overdrive. Ideas are pouring in all the time and I’m running with them. The visions I have for the future are pending realities I’m striving to bring to pass. This last few months has been crazy busy. Work, writing, website maintenance, travel, and now moving. Like it does every time after I run on burnout for so long, my mind has crashed. It reminded me how important balance of sleep and work is in the life of a writer.

Push, push, and push harder! It seems I fall into this trap again and again. Yet one thing is certain, that drive to achieve has been a great asset in my life. When my wife and I were first married I was working a decent-paying job at a factory. Then I finished my first novel and we spent, it seemed, every free hour driving to some bookstore or library to promote and sell my novel. I wanted it to succeed and, it did, but only after I quit my job and we hit the road for about five months. We hit around eleven states from New Hampshire to Georgia and I signed so many books that my hand cramped on multiple occasions.

That trip was a leap of faith. We had a vision for what God could do with my writing and we followed it. It was a scary thing to do at first, but the longer we stuck at it the greater the impact we had. When that first book tour was finished I remember feeling rather burned out.

This month we moved from Connecticut to South Carolina. Again, following the vision God has given me for our family. I feel burned out now. My creativity is a bit drained. Yet I know that I am reminded that I can return to that same productivity level if I persist and create a routine that achieves my goals.

It is easy to stay up until all hours working on various projects, but without sleep the mind reaches a state of exhaustion. When that happens we lose our ability to produce our best work.

Reflection is also important to the process. When I was a kid I had no responsibilities outside of the home. The result was that I had time to sit and read, time to ponder life and its intricacies. Reflection as to what kind of stories I wanted to write, what kind of man I wanted to be.

It is often in the silence, often in the stillness that we refresh our creativity. Our present society rushes from one thing to the next. Little if any value is placed on sleep, reflection, stillness. We can either become casualties of our own drive, or we can look at our future over the long haul. If we consider the effect it will have on our relationships and our physical needs we will prioritize proper rest and strive to take quiet time to reflect.

The writer cannot afford the cost of working overdrive non-stop. Take value in slowing down your life. Enjoy the moments. Enjoy the memories. Step back and let your engine cool before you take it on the road again.

Q: Do you give your mind the rest it needs in order to maximize creative flow?

The Benefits of Uprooting

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Gardening was not my favorite thing when I was growing up, though my mom doggedly persisted in making my siblings and I a large part of it. She was great at teaching us to discipline our time for worthwhile pursuits. One thing about gardening that stuck in my memory: If the conditions for a plant in one location were not ideal, you uproot it to give it its best chance at a healthy life.

Are you willing to give up everything in order to achieve your God-given dreams? Or have you become comfortable, unwilling to uproot even though change may lead to greater things later on? Change is hard but necessary to success.

Being now in the process of uprooting my family from Connecticut to South Carolina, we are somewhat like those plants. Our roots are deep here. Family and friends, places we frequent, connections we’ve made. We grew up in this state. But my wife and I both feel strongly that God wants us to relocate our family into the south. A more conservative environment to raise our family, greater opportunity to connect with active Christian churches, a lower cost of living, and a more centralized geographical location.

Uprooting is hard, and this came about very swiftly. We’ve been planning it for years really, yet nothing is easy about this. I am encouraged in this because the best times are when we step out in faith.

God has always opened the right doors, and slammed shut the others. He has opened every door in its proper time for this event to take place in our lives.

Beside my sadness He fills me with peace
Beside my uncertainty He provides the keys
In place of my fear He builds a mountain of dreams
Before my feet He makes the path a highway.

To grow beyond the present circumstance change is necessary, and I firmly believe that without transplanting God cannot fulfil His dream for us. Providing for my family in a manner that allows me to bless the kids with my experience and be hands-on with their education is something I work on and long to fully explore. To do this my writing and publishing business must grow and in South Carolina is where we are going to grow those roots.

Let nothing stand between you and your dreams. Recognize that staying inside your comfort zone limits you. You must grow, you must strive to achieve, you must listen the voice that speaks to your soul. The heart is deceitful and easily drawn back to the comfort zone, so guide your heart with your God-given dreams.

Q: Are you willing to leave behind everything to accomplish everything?

Fear and Your Dreams

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I have seen many people let fear stand in the way of their dreams, and this troubles me. Fear comes upon all of us when we face something uncertain or unknown. Maybe not all of the time, yet if we admit it fear often keeps us from making potentially positive changes in our lives. This should not be so. Instead recognize your fear and use that as motivation to accomplish your dreams.

Often it is enough to simply acknowledge your enemy and then you can begin to overcome that enemy. The enemy of our dreams is fear. Fear of what others around us will think when we take a “leap of faith.” Fear of failure if things don’t go the way we hope. Fear of how we could let down those we care about and those who rely on us for support. Fear of the unknown.

What does this really boil down to? We are comfortable in the place we exist. We know our routine. We know our job (even if we don’t like it). We know the people around us. Familiarity creates a zone of comfort which we are loathe to risk changing.

But the greatest changes in my life have always been when I stepped outside of my comfort zone by recognizing my fear, determining to overcome it, and used that motivation to make progress toward accomplishing my dreams.

Often I have told people that when my wife and I were first married we hit the road with my first book. We toured eleven states in approximately four months. We relied on meeting new people and forming connections. We had no specific outline for our trip we just knew that God wanted us to do it and that the place we were at was not his best for us. The result? Thousands of books sold, speaking experience and connections established, and my first book contract from a traditional publisher. None of which would have happened if I had remained in my comfort zone.

This year we are making a huge shift, moving from Connecticut to South Carolina. This is going to be a difficult thing but we know that God is in it. We leave a lot behind that we know and love. Family, friends, familiarity with the area, and more… but we look ahead to greater things in store as we follow our dreams. We need to step outside of our comfort zone in order to grow deeper together and with God’s will.

Question: Do you recognize fears in your life that stop you from achieving your God-given dreams?

The Challenge of Writing Part-time

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There have been a few seasons in my writing life when I could devote one hundred percent of my working time to writing. The challenge for me now has been that I have various commitments that vastly limit my creative and writing time. Here is a glimpse into the challenge I face.

This is not a challenge that I take lightly. Time to devote to writing equals greater productivity because my mind is not under the same pressure that it is now. When I get up in the morning I want to give attention to my three wonderful children and to my wife. I want to sit down with them for breakfast, read the Bible with them, pray with them, go over the kids letters, help teach the kids to read. Then I head off to my day job. I work full-time in sales for one of the largest furniture store chains in the country. It is a good job. It pays well. I work under a good management team, and with some great colleagues. This job requires different disciplines than my home life. I must maintain a working list of potential and past clients, and generate new business. This job puts food on the table and the roof over our heads, and more. But it also requires working every weekend and most holidays and is straight commission, which equals higher stress because every week I must put the same drive into it that I have done in the weeks previous.

When I get home I am usually a bit tired. Not physically, for the most part, but mentally. I want to devote evening time again to family (though a few evenings per week I don’t get home until late).

I do not say this to complain, but rather to show you the challenge of being a writer. It requires commitment and vision. For now I chip away at big writing projects that before would have taken me a mere matter of months to complete. Often my writing time is after everyone is in bed. I should be sleeping now because I am tired, but if I don’t write, the books will never be written… and I love to write them. The stories are always building in my mind, urging me to share them.

For now I write part-time, out of necessity. But I am scheming to return to writing fulltime. It will happen again. I have faith that God has given me this drive for a reason and when the time is right He will open the necessary doors. For now my energies are divided in several directions… and it slows the process. The primary thing is to not lose sight of the dream, never give up on the goal, and always take the writing commitment seriously.

Question: What are your challenges in pursuing your dream?

Is debt your puppetmaster?

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Before I was a published author, before I was married, before my book tours, I took a fantastic trip to New Mexico to a writer’s conference. There I formed my first valuable connections in the publishing industry, which eventually led to my books getting published. If there is one thing I would change regarding my early 20’s it would be to not get into debt!

Debt is easy to take on. As soon as you start building credit the world seems to open up for you. “Wow! I can get this amount with a low monthly payment!” Little by little the debt grows until suddenly its chains totally stifle your ambitions and dreams and your effectiveness. Each debt adds a string. One pulls your hand, one pulls your arm, another pulls your mouth, until one is even attached to your heart. Debt can ruin your effectiveness.

To make the trip for my first book tour I took on a small bank loan. At the time it did not seem like a big deal. Looking back, though, it was the first puppet string I allowed to be attached. Debt made the first few years of my marriage more difficult and pushed back the timeframe when I could reasonably achieve the professional and personal goals I set for myself. The puppet had a master and that master was money.

Last year I finally eliminated the vast majority of my debt. I started by getting rid of the brand new car (which I loved) and paying cash for a minivan instead. That was just one step that has now put me back in a position to say, “Now I can make a timeline to achieve my dreams, get back to doing what I love, and be more effective spiritually.”

If I can give one piece of advice to younger folks, it is that they stay out of debt. Debt does three things that hurt your chances of success:

  1. Makes you a ‘servant to the lender’
  2. Puts your dreams on hold
  3. Builds stress in your life

A debt-free person can be:

  1. Free to pursue their dreams
  2. Emotionally empowered
  3. Governed by wisdom in their actions

What we are able to achieve is only limited by the emotional strings we are able to cut.

Question: Have you considered how debt limits your dreams?

Are New Year’s resolutions overwhelming you?

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If you are anything like me you have looked at the New Year and put together a detailed list of your New Year’s Resolutions. I have done this for a long while now, and each year I find I have fallen a little short of my goals and, often, I have burned myself out in the process. This New Year I approached things more simply.

If you are an author, artist, business professional, or entrepreneur the likelihood that you overcommit your time and resources is high. I know with myself it’s become a sometimes self-destructive pattern. The drive to achieve goals, complete projects, and prepare for future projects comes with the territory when we are highly motivated to succeed. Yet when I commit to many objectives I am unable to give each my best effort, and inevitably I fall short of some due to lack of time. 2015 is a new year and it’s time to resist the urge to create a long list of New Year’s resolutions.

This year I have committed to only three things:

  1. Finish writing and then publish “In Search of Dragons”
  2. Eliminate all remaining debt
  3. Build financial savings

These things are very achievable and necessary to my happiness and that of my family. In years past I have had a long list of resolutions. Most years I achieved the majority of the goals I had set, yet I left myself no breathing room. My days away from my day job have so many other commitments that I often feel overwhelmed, which has led to stress and exhaustion. This year will be different and I believe it will boost my productivity and happiness.

If we take better care of ourselves, we can better care for those we love. If we over commit, we will work ourselves to a frazzle and lessen the quality and impact each of our achievements have.

This year take a look at your resolutions. Have you over-committed?

By shaving your list to the bare minimum you will:

  1. Increase the quality and impact of the work you do
  2. Reduce your stress, and
  3. Improve your relationships

These are the results I am looking to have. This is why I have such a short list this year.

Question: Would your year benefit from trimming your New Year’s resolutions to a minimum?