writing

Settling In to Write

Published on by Kristi Holl

Time to write.

Last week, when my husband was here in England, we saw many incredible historic sights, both locally and in the surrounding towns. I gathered material, bought books, took hundreds of photos and videos, and was only back in the apartment long enough each night to sleep. (Our apartment is the middle and top floor of the building on the left. There is a real estate office on the ground floor.) Three days ago, my husband flew home to go back to work, and I stayed here for a while to get down to work as well.

I love that the village’s name is Settle. I love the connotations of the word. Over the weekend, I settled down and am settling in now, spreading my papers and books and computer all over the dining table and coffee table.

Settling IN, Settling DOWN

When we arrived, the apartment looked like this:

  

Now it looks like this:

Settling down has involved going inside my head now to sort through everything I crammed into my brain last week. I take time first thing in the morning for prayer and reading. I don’t rush. Then I check the weather and enjoy watching the mail carrier go down the lane.

The middle of the day is spent writing, reading, and eating! (A lot of each thing.)

At the end of the afternoon, I need another “settling down” time. So I take a walk, straight up the hillside to a paved path with stone walls on both sides, lots of sheep in the fields, benches that overlook the village, and so much GREEN. [See the photos below.]

Then when I enter the village on the way back, I stop at the local grocery store. Most everyone here shops daily, so you run into the same people. I love that. While I’ve heard that the British in the cities can be stand-offish, I haven’t experienced that here at all.

I am loving the language, and I’m understanding people better, like the tiny older man walking his dog on the trail. I remarked that it was a beautiful day. “Ah, smashing, innit?” he agreed. Or the “bloke” ringing up the groceries who always grins and says “cheers” when you leave. And I am remembering to call chips “crisps” and french fries “chips.” And very kind people loan you a brolley when you’ve forgotten your umbrella.

My Daily Walk in Pictures

Take my walk with me!

   

   

   

   

Retreating in My Retreat

I’ve decided that for the remainder of the time I am here that I won’t blog new material. I just want to settle down and work, pretty much cutting off the outside social media world to see how it affects my writing. From what I’ve read in books like Deep Work, it can have a profound affect on the quality of your writing. This is the perfect time for me to put that to the test. So until I return to Texas the first week in October, I will re-post popular older posts. After I get home, I will share some more experiences and pictures of places I still plan to see.

So, as they say in Settle, “Have a smashing day. Cheers!”

Oh, the Places I’ve Been! (Research, Part 2)

Published on by Kristi Holl

Day Five 

Lovely day for a train ride to Skipton to see Skipton Castle (900 years old) and its church, plus another older church. (Skipton Castle once withstood a three-YEAR siege.) We walked along the canals–I’d love to take a canal boat trip sometime. We have another train ride and castle planned tomorrow! I love castles!

    

    

    

Such a well-behaved school group! The whole class fit inside the kitchen fireplace!

    

    

    

     

            An ice cream boat!

 

Day Six

Another day packed to the brim with making memories: hours on the train through settings that local Yorkshire people say is the “true England,” including crossing the Ribblehead Viaduct, then spending hours inside Carlisle Cathedral and priory, Carlisle Castle, the castle’s military museum, and enjoying the historical city. Now, it’s time to put this great research to use! Excited to get busy writing!

   

    

   

   

      

    

              

      

   

   

   

   

 

The Most Fun Kind of Hands-On Research: Travel

Published on by Kristi Holl

Research, especially when combining travel and writing, is the most fun a writer can have! I have had two published novels set in England, and I’m back here doing research in the Yorkshire Dales for another one. (Anyone here love veterinarian James Herriot’s books and the BBC TV show “All Creatures Great and Small”? That’s the Yorkshire Dales.)

To say that it’s beautiful here doesn’t come close. But since a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll let you decide. (If you follow me on Facebook, you’ll recognize the photos.) We’re staying in an apartment in Settle. When this whirlwind research week is finished and my husband goes back to the U.S. to work, I’ll be eager to dig in and write! 

Day One 

We made it to Settle, UK late in the day. This is what is on our street. We only walked three blocks in each direction. We are in the heart of this little village, and like all small towns, we’re only a few blocks away from both the “city center” and the countryside (a straight uphill climb to the moors). The first picture is The Folly, a building right across the street which we can see from our kitchen window. It was built in the 1670s and now houses a museum and coffee/tea room. I LOVE DOING RESEARCH!

    

   

   

        

Day Two 

After a good night’s rest, we went to church first. (Wonderful service, very warm people.) Then lunch at a pub called Ye Olde Naked Man Cafe (seemed sinful on a Sunday). Hiked to the next village and back–BEAUTIFUL weather, lots of sheep, a train station, fantastic views, more food bought at a favorite bakery…bliss.

   

   

   

   

   

   

Day Three   

On the third day, we hiked for six solid hours, straight up hills and little mountains (and got temporarily lost on the moors by taking a “shortcut”). You had to come down sideways to keep from pitching forward. The burros loved us, but the sheep rolled their eyes and then went back to munching.

   

   

                          

   

   

Day Four

We were ready for something more leisurely today: a steam train ride, then a hike to see Bolton Abbey, and poking around an awesome used book store. Bought some great research material!

       

    

     

     

From Panicky and Distracted, to Peaceful and Focused

Published on by Kristi Holl

Right now, I really must be focused. When this posts on Friday, I will be in Houston, waiting to board British Airways to head across the ocean. But less than 24 hours before leaving, I am sitting here fighting panic at everything left to do before we leave. I should have realized this weeks ago, but packing for a month’s absence is a bit more complicated than being gone for a week. A no-brainer, right?

Usually my To-Do lists are orderly, with little check boxes beside each item. I have tasks in all areas: writing, fitness, family, food choices, and other areas that I like to track.

NOT TODAY!

I gave up earlier this week on having orderly to-do lists because I had too many items every day to fit into my normal planner. No problem, I thought. I’ll just systematically and calmly deal with each item, check it off, and go on to the next one.

Except at the end of each day this week, I had more left to do than I’d hoped for. To honest, I panicked at the amount of extra tasks to do (on top of regular life stuff). So on much of two afternoons, I watched Britbox and Acorn TV instead, dreaming of England without actually making much progress to get there! (Why do we do this? While it felt calming at the time, I actually set myself back even further.)

Calm the PANICKY Brain

So this is my to-do list left for today, with five or six writer things to do before I can start the packing or run to the store for shampoo and all the little travel things you need. Then run some laundry, clean out the refrigerator, and try to figure out how I am going to fit everything I want to take with me into a suitcase and carry-on.

My mind goes TILT-TILT-TILT as I think of packing plenty of warm clothes, hiking boots, books I simply MUST have with me (despite carrying a fully loaded Kindle), those plugs that will enable me to use appliances and my computer without starting a fire, my special foods, and all the rest.

It’s obvious that a third of it will have to stay home. I always choose to take the books, so this trip I may be wearing the same sweater and jeans in every photo taken! Perhaps I’ll go to the nearest village that has an Oxfam store (like our Goodwill) and get a few “gently worn” sweaters.

But what’s the answer to my panic this morning and exchanging it for peace? Taking several really big, deep breaths to calm my racing heart. Closing my eyes and meditating on some truths I know in my heart.

Shifting the Worries to Bigger Shoulders

Related imageI’m not the Good Shepherd. I’m not even an assistant shepherd. Instead, I’m like one of these Yorkshire sheep. I’m not in charge, and I’m not doing life alone. He leads me beside the still waters.

All I need to do is pray for help. And keep breathing! And calmly take one task at a time. It will all get done. I’m not alone in this adventure. And what’s more, it will be fun!

See you all on the other side of the pond!

Research Across the Ocean: Heading Back to England!

Published on by Kristi Holl

Image result for flying to englandI thought this week would never get here, and yet the summer flew by, and now I don’t feel ready! I’m taking lots of deep (excited) breaths this week, getting ready to go to England for a month.

I was in England two years ago, visiting the homes of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and Beatrix Potter, in order to write historical mysteries I had contracted for. I made a mental note during that trip that someday I wanted to go back and explore the Yorkshire Dales. The Dales have the moors like the Brontë village of Haworth, but it’s greener and warmer. For a couple of years, I’ve nursed an idea for a series set there.

Research in Person: Nothing Quite Like It

So it’s time to go back! Only this time I plan to do what I’ve heard other writers talk about for years: stay longer and write there. My husband is coming for ten days, then flying home to go back to work. I will stay the remainder of the month (in a cute little apartment we rented in the small village of Settle.) I plan to write and write and write.

This is definitely one of the perks of being a writer who’s been around a while. I document everything for the IRS, probably giving them more paperwork than they like to read. But I honestly can’t afford this kind of travel unless it gives me a huge tax break. I was able to write off most of my trip last time by proving that I had contracts for the Brontë and Austen books (and I wasn’t just going on a vacation.) Of course, on this trip, I can’t write off my husband’s plane ticket, but the apartment costs the same whether one person is staying there or four people. And renting a car or a driver is the same whether it’s just for me or for us both.

My Plan for the Month

We arrive in England on Saturday morning after the all-night flight. I’ll post some pictures next week while we’re out hiking and visiting museums and riding the trains and exploring the rocky hills (with their grazing sheep and waterfalls and caves).

However, after my husband flies home, I plan to dig in for some undistracted writing. Instead of posting immediately to Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest, I will save those new photos to post when I get home. I only plan to keep up with my husband, children and grandchildren while I’m writing. (That’s the hard part about choosing to be gone this long—all their lives I’ve seen the grandkids nearly every week.)

Deep Work in a Distracted World

If you’re at all introverted, you know the joy I anticipate at being able to write for three weeks without distraction. Oh, I will take plenty of breaks. The apartment is in the heart of the oldest part of the village. The pub and bakeries are only half a block away. A museum housed in a building built in 1670 is right across the street. And just a few blocks away are the woods and the open moors, perfect for walking and ruminating. But mostly, I’ll be reading and writing. (I’ve done months of book research already.)

Last year, when I ran into a number of health issues, I realized I was having difficulty focusing when I got back to work. Some, I learned, was due to illness, but a LOT of it came down to my lifestyle, including too much smartphone use. I went on a reading spree, studying how the brain works. I also read three books that convinced me to unplug from all devices for periods of time, and work (like I used to do on that Iowa farm when I started writing). Your writer’s brain needs chunks of time without the constant influx of information from multiple sources.

We’re All in This Together

It isn’t only me. It isn’t just kids who spend too much time playing video games on their phones. This applies to all of us, and ESPECIALLY to people like us who depend on being able to think deeply and use our God-given brains and imaginations to their utmost.

So, while I’m secluded in that English village after my husband goes home, maybe you’d like to read one (or all three) of these books. (You can get them used, if you want to.) I’m sure I’ll be blogging about them more in the future.

 

 

And now, I’m off to watch a YouTube video one more time about how to pack my Weekender Laptop Backpack. (See below.) It must have thirty hidden pockets. My inner organizer can’t wait! eBags Professional Weekender

 

 

 

Achieving the Writing Life of Your Dreams

Published on by Kristi Holl

Achieving the writing life of your dreams—is it possible? Are you closer to it than you were a year ago?

Here are some articles to read and consider if you hope to make the dream of a writing life into a reality.

“Are You Living Your Own Dream or Someone Else’s?” If we are not careful, we can unconsciously be following someone else’s agenda for our lives. This may be your first step toward achieving the writing life of your dreams.

“Honor the Writing Process” shows the practical side of going after your writing dreams and gives some good benchmarks to measure if you are truly serious about doing so.

“Keeping the Dream Alive” deals with how to not let your writing dreams when life gets in the way. Life happens, sometimes in majorly distracting ways. Can you keeping your dream alive even then? Yes!

“The Power of Incremental Change Over Time” Most people underestimate this. They think they have to take massive action to achieve anything significant.

When It’s Time to Update Your Writing Habits

Published on by Kristi Holl

writingSome writing habits can serve you all the days of your life. But other writing habits need to be moderated or tossed out when your season of life changes.

I’m in a season like that right now, and one thing that works for me during such changing times is to read about famous authors’ writing habits. It gives me ideas of what might work better in my fluctuating circumstances.

Time To Change?

Sometimes the need to revise our writing habits is obvious. Your times and places to write before you have your first child may never match your writing times and places after the babies start to arrive. The same is true for writing when you have a full-time job compared to when you’re retired. (And that changes again when your elderly father moves in with you.) Or when you’re healthy compared to when you’re healing from an accident or illness. So many events can leave you feel overloaded and in need of changing your habits.

Life is always changing, and sometimes drastically. But even with the common, garden-variety type of life changes, old writing habits can become obsolete. Other more workable habits need to replace them if your career is to continue.

Writers Reveal Their Writing Habits

Is your life is in a state of flux at the moment? If your previous schedule and habits no longer work for you, consider a change. Check with successful published writers. See what works for them. Then feel free to copy anything you like and try their habits on for size. We can all learn from each other.

Some great places to start looking include:

Are Your Writing Dreams Big Enough? Shoot for the Moon!

Published on by Kristi Holl

Every 7-10 years, I go through a restless writing period. I sense a need or desire to do something different, usually something “they say” is out of vogue or not the genre flavor of the month.

Lately, something has been egging me on to try something more challenging. I’ll talk about that in the coming weeks, but for today, I want to challenge you with a question. 

ARE YOUR WRITING DREAMS BIG ENOUGH?

Shooting for the Moon

I’ve been reading about famous inventors (like Edison), famous businessmen (like Ford), and famous entrepreneurs (like Bill Gates and Steven Spielberg). They lived in different historical periods and pursued different kinds of projects. But they all had one thing in common. They did NOT set “reasonable and achievable goals.” They dreamed bigger dreams than anyone thought they could achieve. And then they achieved them–and more.

Edison (who only had a few months of formal education) decided to try to invent a light bulb in less than three years, even though far more intelligent scientists had spent more than 50 years so far trying to do the same thing. An outlandish goal! “They” said it couldn’t be done. But he ended up inventing it in two years!

When Ford started his auto company, the other 250 American automakers were turning out 12 to 300 cars per year. A reasonable goal for Ford to set would maybe be 150 cars per year. But his dream was to produce cars that the average family could afford–not just the wealthy. And he ended up producing 1,000 cars per day off his assembly lines. (That’s per DAY, not per year.)

Their Key to Major Success

Because Spielberg and Gates are present-day phenomena, you’re already familiar with their stories. They became such huge successes for the same reasons Edison and Ford did. They dreamed big, new ideas and then went ahead and accomplished what “they said” was impossible.

The award-winning writers of the past and present who became household names did the same thing. Their books were repeatedly rejected at first too, because “they said” no one would read them. Names like Dr. Seuss, Pearl Buck, Louisa May Alcott, Agatha Christie, Beatrix Potter, John Grisham, James Patterson, Judy Blume, Madeline L’Engle, Margaret Mitchell, Anne Frank, J.K. Rowling, Stephen King…the list goes on and on of authors who decided to follow the advice of Write What You Love.

Ignore What “They Say”

Maybe “ignore” is too strong, but at least take all the expert advice out there with a big grain of salt. Because of the changes in the publishing industry, the naysayers are thicker than ever. “They say” you have to write what will sell instead of following your passion. “They say” you can’t get a good agent–you need to settle for someone with no experience whom no editor will work with. “They say” you can’t expect to sell your novel to a national publisher, so get familiar with self-publishing. There’s not a thing wrong with any of those choices, but make sure they are choices you want to make.

There were many, many years where I needed to write for the market 100%. I needed to write what would sell and what I could get contracts for ahead of time. My single parent household depended on that income. The books were good, and some of them excited me, but I was also practical. I have some leeway now though, and lately I’ve been exploring outside my comfort zone where some yet-undeveloped dreams and ideas lie. I have the itch again to write something different.

I’ve been asking myself the same question lately that I posed to you: ARE YOUR WRITING DREAMS BIG ENOUGH?

Writers Finding Encouragement, from Without and Within

Published on by Kristi Holl

Talk about encouragement! I was sent this photo a couple weeks ago. Her name is Kathy Carter, and when she and her husband visited England recently, they stopped at Jane Austen’s home in Chawton. She is in the reading room, and she found my Jane Austen book, A Dangerous Tide, on the shelf. I was astounded that it was still there.

As I wrote in this blog post “Jane Austen and Me,” the book had been accepted to be housed in Jane’s home for 12 months, at which time it would be taken down to make room for others. But the photo of Kathy showed that my mystery was still in Jane’s home, 29 months after it was added. I would have been thrilled with the unexpected news at any time, but that particular morning, it was heaven sent.

I had gotten bogged down in my “dream project,” another historical set in England, wondering if I were chasing rainbows. For decades now, I’ve had contracts before I started writing any books. So working again without a contract on something where I don’t have a buyer lined up feels like tight-rope walking without a safety net. I was waging a war with self-doubt about continuing to pursue this project when the photo of Kathy Carter arrived in my email’s Inbox. What encouragement that was to me just when I needed it!

Encouragement to Keep Writing

Writers all need encouragement. Sometimes we need it because we’re starting out, piling up rejections, and wondering if we’re wasting our time. Sometimes we need encouragement if published books don’t garner the sales or 5-star reviews we hoped for. And sometimes (like me now), we are attempting a book outside of our normal niche, and one that requires skills we don’t yet have. 

The way we get encouragement has changed over the years. When I started writing, we got fan letters from kids in snail mail only, and they weren’t part of a class assignment. (They sometimes started out, “I hope you’re not dead like the last author I wrote to.”) It was easy to save letters in a box back then. Now, you need computer files or places to back up in the cloud if you want to peruse such things later for encouragement on the days when the words don’t flow or your rejection letters outnumber your fan letters ten to one.

Or you can do like I’ve started to do. I print out photos and put them where I can see them. I plan to add Kathy Carter’s picture to this Jane Austen photo group on my office wall. It’s important to do things like this so that you’re reminded of your good news. Otherwise, you can forget all about it in less than an hour as various crises happen and life rushes in to fill your time.

Encouragement On Your Own

But what if you don’t have tangible signs of encouragement? Most writing days, this will be true. You must search out your own encouragement then. There are many places online where writers can now go for encouragement. Two of my own posts include an article on how to stop discouraging yourself (Silent Sabotage) and an article (Learned Optimism) by Randy Ingermanson on simple ways to change your thinking that lift you out of discouragement quickly.

Find sources of daily encouragement. Also search for a writing group (locally or online), or start one, where encouraging each other is a large part of it. And remember to encourage other writers yourself. You will reap what you sow.

 

Good Intentions, Plus RELIABLE Accountability, Spells Success

Published on by Kristi Holl

intentionsWhat do all success stories have in common? Action. Success is the result of action.

What sustains and maintains that success? Repeated, reliable sustained action.

You can’t succeed by doing nothing. You must recognize the importance of being intentional, or having good intentions. But that isn’t enough. The often overlooked step is making it tangible. This intention can’t merely be in your head or scribbled on a scrap of paper that you’ll lose in your car. You must have a system you trust. (paraphrased from Stephen Guise’s blog The Minimum Requirement for Success)

Tracking Progress? Or Losing Track?

One of the hardest things many of us struggle with is not backsliding after getting a grip on a habit we want to establish. I have health habits I work on (drink eight glasses of water each day, exercise thirty minutes each day, no screen time after 8 p.m. so I can sleep, sugar-free day), writing habits (write 25 minutes and rest 5 minutes, don’t check email before 10 a.m.) and spiritual (devotional and prayer first thing). The trouble is, once I establish a habit well and then move on to work on another habit, I tend to forget (and backslide) on the progress I’d worked hard to establish.

There’s too much to remember! And yet, most health and writing habits are only valuable if you are consistent, if you do them daily or almost daily. I’ve blogged about mini habits in the past, and I’ve run several 30-day mini habit challenges which were very successful. Mini habits are much more reliable than motivation to help you meet your goals. I’m still a firm believer concerning mini habits, but I have been unable to find an easy and reliable way to track both earlier habits and new ones I’m working on. 

Until now.

The Best Way I’ve Found to Track Habits

I have tried various ways to track daily habits: wall calendars with check marks, notebooks with a list of daily habits, an erasable board on my office wall. They all had their benefits. I could see the wall calendar and erasable board whenever I sat down to work in my office, so it reminded me then. The notebook idea meant I could take my reminders on the road, thus keeping up with my habits on trips (which is a real challenge.) But nothing worked for all situations.

Then I read Stephen Guise’s idea about habit tracking on a smart phone with a free app called the Habit Loop tracker. It took me an hour to set it all up, but I have used it faithfully for weeks now. It’s fun. It’s colorful. And it’s the only thing visible on my smartphone’s home screen. (In other words, it’s not just a productivity app that is lost among two dozen other apps.) It goes with me everywhere. I don’t have to be online to track a habit. It keeps track of all the statistics for me. It allows me to set reminders, if I want to. And did I mention that it’s FREE?

For a simple tutorial in setting it up, read The New Best Way to Track Mini Habits by Stephen Guise. He takes you step-by-step through the process of setting it up, including screen shots of how he did it. My home screen looks different than his though. I only have the Habit widget and my ten mini habits on the home screen.

Good Intentions Versus Intentions That Work

intentionsGood intentions, for our writing or anything else, only work if we have a way to hold ourselves accountable. If you’re still hunting for a system to keep building reliable habits, I hope you’ll try this Habit Loop idea.

If you do, let me know how it works for you!