This Year Will be Different, part XLII. And Also, Please Help Me Out With This

2011 is already giving me every indication of being a banner year, writing career-wise. The first week of the year is just over I've already had a couple of pieces of good news regarding some future publications that I'll be blogging about in the near future.

I did my usual year-end review of the past, and decided that it was a pretty good year overall, goal-wise. A few of the goals I knocked off last year: selling our house, buying a new house, and moving (about 98% of the credit for these accomplishments goes to my beautiful wife, who was able to handle contractors, realtors, inspectors and an insane husband with grace and aplomb). I was also able to scratch "Foreign language publication" off my list, in a year that saw Generacion Dead and Beso de Vida released in Spain. I was thrilled to have a short story published in the Kiss Me Deadly anthology, fulfilling yet another long-held goal. I didn't hit my whole list--in fact, I failed miserably at a number of the things I wanted to achieve--but, onward and upward. Bury your dead (unless they are differently biotic dead) and move on.

The second part of my New Years' ritual is the annual gaze into the future Looks bright, very bright. Note to self: buy sunglasses, wear sunscreen. I try to project what I want my year to look like and what I want to accomplish. I delivered my goals for the next year to myself (I'm a stern taskmaster) a few hours before the ball dropped. Or the Snooki dropped. Whatever it was we dropped this year. I reviewed what I had submitted, and we decided that the fifteen goals that I'd submitted were good ones. A nice mix of creative, business, family and personal goals, a few of them were holdovers from last year that I didn't accomplish--I'm determined to do a film project and a comic book/graphic novel project, and although I've done a lot of blah blah blah about both, nothing has happened yet.

I enjoy this process, I really do. And it always seems something like magic to me when one of the goals clicks into place--last week, just a few days after writing them, the mechanism to complete goal #4 clicked into place, clear out of the blue.

Anyhow, here's where the "please help me out" comes in. A bit of patience, if you please.

One of my goals, #14 is

"Renew focus on my Internet/Blog/Social Media Presence"

What does that mean, exactly? And why is that a goal for me?

Well, here's what it means now:

A.Continue to answer all reader emails and Facebook posts (I do pretty good with this one. I might miss a few, but I try my best)

B.Blog on DanielWaters.com at 52 times this year (I did horribly last year; 23 blogs in 2010, down from 77 the year before)

C.Have Tommy and the gang blog on mysocalledundeath.com 26 times this year (again, horrible--12, down 28 from last years' 40)

D. Update my status on Facebook three or four times a week (I probably do something like that now)

E. Continue to do the occasional online interview/guest blog when invited and schedule permits. I think I did a dozen or so of these last year, the most recent of which is Here at The Book Smugglers and is about my favorite YA book of the year.

I guess that is actually a bunch of little goals within the bigger/vague-er goal. So, why? Why do I want to commit myself to doing all that work this year?

Mainly because of something I realized when I went weeks and sometimes even months without blogging:

I miss it.

I miss it. I like blogging, and I love the interactivity of blogging; I said a lot of what I wanted to say about the topic in this School Library Journal Article Here and I'm kind of shocked, embarrassed and disappointed with myself for being such a slacker. Yeah, Inner Voice #8 is saying, you moved, you took a job, you have pre-teen kids, etc. etc. And then Inner Voices #3 and #7 say, "Shut up, inner voice #8. We don't make excuses here. And will you please put the cap back on the soda bottle tightly?"

So, a plea for help. Help keep me honest and on track with my goal. And if you are so inclined, let me know what you like me to blog about, and what bores the heck out of you. Let me know wheat it is that you like in your "Internet Relationships" with other authors, and what you don't (I should mention that I'm a little scared of Twitter; let me know if I need to get over that fear. Should I do a newsletter? Write about what I'm reading? Write about writing? Offer a free story here and there? Write about writing about writing? Create humorous videos? More dog photos (we have a second beagle now). Music? As I type this, "The Living Dead" by the London Suede is on, appropriately enough. That song nearly always moves me to tears. I'm thinking I should pretty up this site a bit, too. What else should I be doing? What do you think?

What do you think?

I'd like to end with a shout out to Brendan Halpin, who's blog Here directly inspired my fourteenth goal.

Bully for Me

I'll have an entry in an upcoming project from Harper Collins called Dear Bully: 70 Authors Tell Their Stories, which was put together by fellow writers Carrie Jones and Megan Kelley Hall, neither of whom had to bully me into contributing.

You can read all about the project here

Happy Halloween

People have sent me numerous emails this year telling me that they are going out with Generation Dead themed costumes (yay!). Supposedly, there will be hordes of Karens,Phoebes,Taks, and even one Mal out there on the streets getting treats.

Sometimes people will provide the evidence, like S. did here with her awesome Margi costume:



Other times people will send me evidence of their zombification, as BlueMonkie here did:



Have a safe and happy Halloween! White vans don't have candy!

True Tales of Terror

Tomorrow I'll have a guest post at totalbookaholic dot blogspot dot com. Jessica, who runs that fantastic site, asked for a true paranormal story so I gave her one.

Be advised that it is kind of scary. And true.

Seriously.

I like Pretty Pictures

This was done by Leti, a reader from Spain who tells me that Beso de Vida will be available there on October seventh! Thanks, Leti!

Know Your Goals: Or, the Thrilling Story of My Facebook Profile Picture

I changed my Facebook profile picture the other day. I think I've been on Facebook a couple years now and I've been blogging about a year after that. It is the only time I have ever changed my picture, and quite likely I will never change it again. I'm impressed and amazed by the frequency that most people change their profiles, but I just don't have the energy. For that, anyway.

Here's my new photo, which my wife took of me two years ago:



While this might look like a casual snap of me staring off into space or taking a snooze, it was actually a very staged photo, one that was a celebration of sorts for my wife and I. It was meant to look like this:





That's Don Was,a musician and music producer.It is an advertisement for a brand of speakers. One of the tag lines, which you probably can't see, is "Was at Work". I ran across this advertisement in a magazine when I was out of college working various dead-end jobs, and sort of became a little obsessed with it. I'd long known by this time that I wanted to be a novelist, you see, and that advertisement (shallow of me, maybe) helped me conceptualize what my vision for my life would be. I told my future wife Kim that the advertisement spoke to me in such a way, and I was fortunate that she bought into that vision, going as far to write the company to see if she could get me a poster of the advertisement. The company did not have any posters, but they were kind enough to send a color photocopy of the advertisement on heavy card stock.

Now, don't get the wrong idea when you look at these photos. My personal vision for my life was not to just sit around in a tropical paradise, napping whenever I chose. What kind of fool would want that for a life? I was going to work countless hours every week pursuing that as a goal?

Well, not exactly. I still work seventy hours a week. When I'm writing, I like working seventy hours a week. I'd work more if I could. But sometimes that work requires that I stare off into space; as the writer Jack Ketchum said, and I often quote, "Sometimes staring at the wall is writing!"

My vision was to make writing my work, and from that work, achieve certain forms of autonomy. The autonomy to work where I wanted. When I wanted. With a dress code that included bare feet if I so chose. But most importantly; the vision was to create and to bring something forward that others could experience and possibly enjoy and find interesting. The kicker of the advertisement was that Don Was had just won a Grammy. Despite appearances, this was not a lazy man. At least, that was how I chose to read it.

I should mention that I carried the advertisement with me for over a decade before my wife took the similar photo of me. That's a lot of seventy hour work weeks in between, but that was how many it took for me to feel like I'd achieved at least enough of my vision to not feel like I was lying to myself by replicating the photo.

Inspiration and motivation are where you find them. I've had the photo nearby my desk ever since I first saw it, and I'll take it out every so often, when things are going good, when they are going bad, when I need to be reminded just why it is I do the things that I do. And now every time I log into Facebook, I'll be reminded of what it feels like to fulfil, even momentarily, one's vision.

And then, once it is fulfilled, create a new vision...






My next vision for myself will include having hair like Mr. Was's in this photo...

Wherin I Enter the Digital Age and Give Away a Signed Passing Strange

I finally, finally got a Kindle. Love it. Whoever guesses the very first book I downloaded will recieve a signed copy of Passing Strange.

Hint: befriend me on Facebook so you can see all the wrong guesses there--improve your odds of winning!

Hint #2: My books are only available in the U.K. on Kindle