business

First day of Summer Break

By / June 6, 2011

It is now 4pm and I have accomplished exactly none of my usual Monday Morning business tasks. A small piece of my brain is ready to panic since this is obviously evidence that I will never get any work done all summer long and we are dooomed. Except we aren’t. The first day of a new schedule is always rough. I’ll see how it goes again tomorrow. If the problem persists for more than a couple of days, I’ll make adjustments. We’ll make kids and business co-exist in the house during the same hours one way or another.

For now, I’m tired and done trying to work.

Introducing Myself

By / May 29, 2011 / 3 Comments

I’m still working on figuring out how best to introduce myself to new people here. The focus of who I am shifts depending upon the social circumstances of the introduction. So far I’ve been introduced as a fiction writer, a blogger, Howard’s wife, the manager of Schlock Mercenary, one of Mary’s alpha readers, and as Mary’s guest. It has been a fascinating opportunity to watch how I am treated based on the framing of the introduction. Unfortunately the usefulness of the experiment is somewhat foiled by the excellence of the people to whom I’ve been introduced. I’ve been uniformly spoken to with respect and interest. The shape of the respect and the follow-up questions is different, but if the conversation lasts for any length of time the other aspects of who I am also get touched on.

The one major role in my life that has not been my primary introductory lead-in is being a parent. Again, that gets mentioned but often much later. Once again I’m having the experience where I mention the quantity of my children and people are a bit startled. I’m still sorting the experiences and trying to rehearse so that I can introduce myself comfortably. The process is surprisingly similar to writing an elevator pitch for a book. I now have two sentence introductions for my blog, my Schlock Mercenary work, and my book. Having the pitches is really useful so that I don’t have those deer-in-the-headlights moments when someone says “And you are? What do you do?”

This convention is perfect for playing with the introductory options and pitches, because I’m not actually trying to pitch anything. I have no goals to forward, no people I need to seek out in order to advance my career. I am able to just meet cool people rather than seeking out people because I am hoping for something from them. It is a very pleasant way to attend a convention.

And now, to breakfast.

Poised on the Brink of Printing

By / April 26, 2011 / 2 Comments

I am currently exporting all the pages from Emperor Pius Dei (EPD) out of InDesign and into a PDF. This process will take 20 minutes during which I can not be working on editing. I’m snatching the break like a drowning swimmer grabs a life preserver. I know that in a very short while I will be out of the water, but I’m still holding tight.

This morning my desk had a printed copy of EPD which was sporting a forest of paper tabs. Each marked something for me to fix. It was the fourth time I’d faced a forest of tabs. Set 1 was from our copy editor. Sets 2 & 3 I generated for myself by paging through carefully until my eyes could no longer focus. Set 4 was provided when good friends, family really, came over for a proofing party. They gleefully marked anything they could see which might have been the slightest bit wrong. Which is exactly what I told them to do. They were my spotters-of-wrong-things. I paid them in pizza.

I stared at the multitude of tabs this morning and nearly cried. My brain and eyes are so tired of this book. I went to work anyway and soon discovered that the majority of the tabs indicated things which only took me seconds to fix. They were all the kind of thing that the average reader is unlikely to ever notice, but which I would feel bad if I left. In under an hour I mowed the forest flat. It was much easier than the previous sets of fixes.

Next I export to PDF (waiting on it now.) Then I page through the PDF on a last error check. Then I export and upload to our printer’s FTP site. At that point I am done until the first proofs come back for approval. If you had asked me 10 days ago, I would not have believed we would be shipping files this week. I expected mid-May and it had me panicked about getting books before the Summer conventions. If you had asked me last Thursday I would have said “maybe by April 30th.” Howard worked amazingly fast. 40 margin art pieces in five days. The test printing, two rounds of it, took a single day instead of three. (Yay Alphagraphics). My work all went faster than my previous estimates told me to expect. I half expect the FTP process to be miserable to make up for all the good fortune.

Hugo Award Nomination

By / April 24, 2011 / 2 Comments

This was written two weeks ago, but I could not post it until after Hugo Nominations were publicly announced:

Through the joys of caller ID, I knew it was Howard calling before I picked up the phone.
“Hi hon. How is Canada?” I asked, cheerful to hear from him while he’s off at a convention and I am home with the kids. He was out in the world, giving presentations and promoting the comic which pays our bills.
“Canada is good. Email is better.” He answered. I could hear the smile in his voice and I knew what was coming next before he said the words. “Schlock Mercenary Massively Parallel was nominated for a Hugo.”
I smiled through my sigh of relief. The comic has been nominated for this Science Fiction award for the past two years, but it came in last place both times. Howard had all but convinced himself that he wouldn’t even make the ballot this year. The fact that he did, that we did, is a boost. One that apparently doesn’t get old.
“Yay!” I said into the phone. It doesn’t say enough, but Howard knows what I mean.
“Know what else? Writing Excuses made the ballot too, best related work.”
My smile inched into a grin. We’d been hoping for this. The wording on the best related category had changed so that podcasts were eligible. I could think of nothing more worthy than the weekly podcast Howard did with Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells.
“Oh wonderful!” I said. It was just as inadequate as yay, but words really can’t express the rush of good feeling I was trying to send to my husband so far away from me. It seems we’re always sharing the Hugo nominations over the phone. The second weekend in April is popular for events which involve Howard.
I thought ahead to August and the award ceremony which would be held at the World Science Fiction Convention in Reno. During the nomination period I’d silently told myself that if Howard made the ballot, I would get a new dress. He’d made the ballot twice. I’d stick to one dress, but my feet fairly danced with joy. I would have friends with which to share the emotional crucible of award nomination. Instead of feeling slightly misplaced at the pre-Hugo party, I would have good friends to stand with. If the nomination ended with an award, we could rejoice together. If not, group commiseration was built-in.
But all that was in the future. Standing in the kitchen, pushing the phone to my ear, and grinning, I could only feel the joy and honor to be nominated. It meant that out there in the world of Science Fiction, people liked Howard’s work enough to put his comic on the ballot. That truly matters, because we love this genre and we love the people in it. The fact that they love Schlock is heartwarming.
“The hard part,” Howard continued “Is being here at a science fiction convention, with people who would love to rejoice, and not being able to tell them yet.”
“So call Brandon and Dan. You can all be glad together.”
We talked of other things for awhile before he had to go, both of us smiling more than the conversational topics called for. Then we hung up and my feet did another cheerful little dance as I walked over to return the phone to its charger. In two more days he would return home and we could celebrate together.

Congratulations to all of the Nominees!

Farewell Vacation, Hello Deadlines

By / April 15, 2011 / 2 Comments

“I need a deadline. Tell me the absolute last date on which we can send files to the printer and have books in time for GenCon.” Howard said.

I turned away from him and stared out the van window. The red rocks of Arches had vanished behind us. The rocks I could see were just redish-brown, though the cliff formations were every bit as stunning. Vacation was over and it was time to assess the work ahead. The problem was that I don’t like to impose deadlines on my husband. The business manager in me loves them. She wants to schedule every minute detail so that it is all predictable. The family planner loves the idea of working at a steady pace and letting the projects find their own natural completion date.

“April 30th.” I said.
Howard’s face shifts as if he has been gut-punched. It only lasts a second, but I see the expression. I knew I’d see it. I never want to be a source of stress in Howard’s life, but we work together. It is my job to hand him tasks, even when they may be stressful.
“We have to get all the art and proofing done in two weeks?” Howard’s voice has an edge to it.
“Oh no.” I wave my hands a little, as if that could wipe away some of his stress. “That’s the end of your work. The proofing can come after.”
“Give me the final deadline.”
I look down at my shoe, calculating days in my head. Somewhere during this conversation, I’d pulled my legs up onto the seat with me, half cross legged. I was aware that it was an effort to feel safer, less stressed. It didn’t really work. I still had to give out a deadline. I knew the deadline, spoken aloud, would catapult us into several weeks of work-very-fast. I knew that ease would vanish in our scramble to get the book done. I wished that, just once, we could reach the final stages of book preparation with time to spare. We meant to do that this time, but Howard had the winter of unending sickness.
“May 12.”
The words were spoken. I could not take them back. Truthfully, my speaking them aloud changed nothing about the realities of printing production and convention dates. The deadline was already there. I’d been watching it the whole time. All that changed was that Howard could see it too.

The scenery kept rolling by outside the window. Howard and I hammered out a plan to get the work done. Then we talked through the months beyond the deadline, hoping to be able to arrange things better for the months to come. I am not looking forward to the stress of the next two weeks. On the other side, there are good things. Far off in October we’ve even penciled in another family trip. There is just a lot to do between now and then.

Visualizing My Schedule as it Flows

By / April 12, 2011 / 2 Comments

We are now six and a half years into our adventures in creative self-employment. The first eighteen months were all about scrambling to find ways to bring in more money and to spend less. The two years after that were all about growing the business and figuring out how things work. We succeed at business growth until we spent a year and a half so insanely busy that we had to learn how to turn down opportunities. The past 18 months have been one long effort to balance work and life in ways that allow both to prosper.

At each stage I had to re-conceptualize how I managed my life and the lives of our family. Last year I struck upon thinking of our schedule as a fluid river with a few fixed points rather than trying in December to plan the following April, May, June. Things always change in between and if I picture them already set, I have to re-set them. If they flow, then changes in the fixed points alter the flow without me having to panic. Conventions and appearances are fixed business points. Book creation and releases are fluid. Kid concerts and school schedules are fixed. Family outings and housework are fluid.

Most of the big fixed points for this year were placed on the calendar last Fall. One of the most important ones was a family vacation. I put it on Spring Break and I made reservations for a place we could go. I expected to arrive stressed and worried about work. I particularly expected it after the addition of a convention right before it and right after it. I’m not stressed. I can see how things will flow. It is all going to be fine. I’m looking forward to our departure.

When my life was crazy

By / March 26, 2011

Yesterday I sat at the kitchen table, black binder in front of me. It was a simple three-ring binder filled with printed pages and opened about halfway through. The pages to the left were covered in scribbled notes, stars, and arrows. Pages to the right were pristine, as yet untouched by my editing pen. This was my essay book, my work in progress. I called it Stepping Stones whenever I didn’t just call it My Book. Working with pen and paper was kind of old school, but I found that it better engaged the editing portions of my brain. I had just reached the portion of the story where it was time for me to tell about undertaking the XDM book project.

Four pages were unclipped from the binder. They represented four attempts to wrap events around story. Four times I had made different arrangements of words to tell what happened. They all lacked a connecting thread, the heart of the story which explained why all the events matter. I got up and walked away from the table yet again, hoping that a different location would help me find that thread.

Working on the XDM X-Treme Dungeon Mastery project was crazy. It really was. The quantity of work was impossible for the allotted time. The opportunity cost was horrendous, thought we didn’t know all of that until after the project was complete. For all the craziness of it, doing the project was exactly the right thing to do. Because it was right, we did the impossible. It was not the only factor to that crazy impossible spring. We were also in the midst of the Scrapyard of Insufferable Arrogance printing process and book release. We ordered slipcases to make boxed sets at the same time. Then we counted books and realized that the time had come for us to reprint Under New Management. To add even more craziness we also remodeled Howard’s office, did major book shipping events, and ran a booth at GenCon for the first time. All of that within 5 months.

I found the thread when I remembered the night when I lay curled in my bed all but broken. Putting a book together in only five weeks with no prior experience in textual layout was a real trial by fire. I came out changed, stronger. My emotional trial and triumph was the thread which linked all the facts. I scribbled notes until all the pieces were outlined. I would have to type them in detail later, but I’d caught the essence of what I intended to say.

I flipped the binder closed and got up from the table to go stand at the sink where warm air from a heating vent would blow across my feet. I could hear my younger two kids upstairs playing with a friend. My teenagers were downstairs, thoroughly involved with their screens. I could see my planner sitting on the counter, open to today’s list of tasks. Most of them were already checked off. My life as it currently stands is quite busy. My days are full, and I am frequently reluctant to list my things because I always get the same reactions of disbelief and/or admiration. Also frequently, I feel overwhelmed by my things. It is good for me to remember that what I deal with today is as nothing in comparison to the spring of 2009 when we did XDM. I have survived far worse, I can handle what is in front of me.

Partitioning my days

By / March 25, 2011

I’ve made a discovery. It is the same discovery I’ve made at least three times in the past four years, which does dampen my excitement a bit. However, I will still apply it in my life. Again. Perhaps this time it will stick.
I am going to start better partitioning my time.

Two days ago I wrote about child induced task limbo. After the fact, I recognize that the limbo was only half caused by the expectation of interruption. It was also created by the fact that all of my days have turned into a mish-mash of everything. I constantly task swap between business, household, and parenting. This leaves no time which feels free for relaxation. It was also not leaving time for anything but the barest bones blog writing. And then there were the household things which were forever incomplete because no time was set aside for them.

So I’m making new rules for myself. Or rather, I dug out my old rules and realized I should still be following them.

From getting up in the morning until dropping the kids off to school my time belongs to the kids and the house. I am not allowed to get on a computer nor to check the internet using my phone.

From dropping the kids at school until noon or 1 pm, my time belongs to the business. This is when I will do accounting, email, shipping, book layout, etc.

From noon or 1 pm until picking up the kids from school is my writing time and/or relaxation time. It is the space in the day reserved for my things.

From picking up kids from school until dinner I am primarily taking care of kids and house. However there is likely to be some business and/or writing mixed in if the kids are occupied. It is not focused project time and I am not allowed to bury myself in my office for hours. Gardening is a good thing to put here.

Dinner to kid bedtime belongs to the Children.

Kid bedtime to my bedtime I can do final rounds of internet checking, writing, reading, etc.

It feels like a good and sensible schedule. I suspect it will be less than a week before I’m blurring the lines again. I’ll probably have a good reason, like the last rush to get EPD off to the printer. All it takes is for a kid to get sick to land parenting stuff in my business hours. Then it feels fair that business spill into family hours because Stuff Must Get Done. In short order I expect it all to be mish-moshed together again, but it is a lovely schedule and I shall endeavor to make it real.

Email and Me

By / March 24, 2011 / 1 Comment

The email box lurks
red flags pointed at my eyes
Click. I am elsewhere.

I have a mixed relationship with email these days. I love it and it exhausts me. The problem is not spam. Google is quite good at filtering out the complete garbage. Most of the emails I actually see are ones full of useful and/or interesting things. The problem is that there are so many emails and the polite thing to do is to answer all of them. Which I really want to do. I want to give every single email a full, complete, considered answer. This is why so many of them sit in my mailbox for weeks on end. I keep trying to find a space to craft the right answer. Alternately, the emails sit because they have tasks attached. The email to say “here is your contract” is quite simple to write, but it requires me to first have created a contract, which is quite complex and thinky. “I’d love to do lunch” is easy to say, but then requires me to consult our schedules to see when such an event could actually happen. So the emails sit. They sit because they matter to me and I want to get them right. Of course they also generate waves of guilt. The more messages I have waiting the more guilt I feel. I don’t like to have people waiting on me. Logically I know these people are not sitting at their mailboxes feeling disappointed that I have not replied yet, but it feels that way.

My email box has filters. Messages are automatically shunted into folders based on where they came from. This system became critically necessary as Facebook, Twitter, and my blog all email me to tell me things. Usually they are happy things “Someone followed you!” “You have a comment!” Other times they are annoying things “Did you know that this friend of yours is also friends with this other friend of yours and they played the same game today?” Facebook is a little bit like that kid who doesn’t have a full deck of social clues, but who is dying for attention. And yet sometimes Facebook tells me things I need to know. “Book signing next week for that cool person you like!” Quarantining each message source lets me address them when I’m ready to instead of constantly being bombarded in my inbox. It helps.

I also filter according to roles. All of the Schlock mail goes through me first and it has its own folder. I answer the basic stuff and pass along to Howard the happy stuff and the complicated stuff. Conventions also get their own folder. This is particularly critical when I’m helping coordinate multiple convention appearances simultaneously. It is rather embarrassing to email the wrong guest liaison with a question that doesn’t apply. Right now I’m helping coordinate eight different convention appearances, six of which will take place between now and August. Tags and folders help me keep it all straight. Then of course, there are the emails relating to book printing. In order to answer emails about book printing I have to think like an accountant and scheduler. In order to answer convention emails I have to think like a scheduler and talent wrangler. In order to answer the Schlock emails I have to think like a business manager, a customer support rep, and an archival expert. Switching gears makes my head spin a bit.

The system I’ve got works more or less. Every so often I have to add new filters or create new tags/folders. When the box fills up and threatens to overwhelm me with guilt, I somehow muster the energy to plow through dozens of different emails in a single morning. This morning needs to be that morning, which is naturally why I just spent thirty minutes writing a post about answering email instead. Avoidance and I are familiar friends though we don’t like to admit it. Time to go answer email.

Contemplating the next three days

By / February 16, 2011

Tomorrow morning I get to put on my professional clothes and go to LTUE. I’m excited to see friends and visit with other creative people. I’m looking forward to all of the panels in which I’ll get to participate. My brain is fairly bubbling with points I feel are important for the various panels. It is all good stuff that I am happy about.

However, there is also a voice in my brain which counts the cost. In order to go on Thursday, I had to arrange for one neighbor to pick up my kids from school and drop them at another neighbor’s house. My teenage daughter has been tasked with catching a ride home from a friend. I’ll need to plan an easy microwavable dinner for my teens to feed to my younger ones. I need to spend most of today on preparatory work both for the family needs and preparations for the sales table that Howard and I will run at the event.

On Friday I’m skipping LTUE because it is the day to discuss with my son’s counselor about scheduling his classes for next year. Except I may run down to LTUE just for lunch to visit, but I have to be back home in time to pick up kids from school. All day Friday I will have an awareness that people I love to be around are having fun while I’m not there.

Saturday I’ve arranged with a third neighbor to take my younger kids for most of the day. At dinner time they’ll come home and my teenagers will babysit for the rest of the evening. I expect to get at least two phone calls from kids which will interrupt conversations or dinner. Saturday night I will be happy and socially exhausted. I’ll want to be very introverted, but my kids will be ready to latch on to me and demand attention. The house will probably be messy. There will be crankiness. In the whole process I will have inconvenienced 8 people to cover things that I usually do.

For the next three days I will be split between family and business. I will swap between parent and professional. In some ways it is much easier when I hand off my kids and don’t see them at all for the duration of an event. Then I can pack away the home and family parts of myself. On the other hand it is really nice to have kids to hug each evening. They remind me that I have an importance and value which is completely separate from my professional successes and failures. I like coming home and having everything be normal.

Being split is getting easier. Each year the kids are older and thus less unsettled by me being absent. I can depend upon the older ones to help with the younger ones, who need much less helping than they used to. I know it is better, but it is still hard. For the next three days I will not be as good a parent as I could be because I’ll be conserving energy for LTUE. Since parenting is a primary focus most of the time, the lapse will not cause any long-term harm, but it definitely creates internal stress for me. Contemplating the stress, some small part of me whispers that it might be better to skip the symposium.

All I can do is evaluate events on a case-by-case basis. LTUE will be good. It always is.