Juggling Life And The Pursuit Of Dreams by Candee Fick

I've always been fascinated by jugglers, especially those who can take a bite out of an apple while maintaining the blur of flying objects. But despite detailed instructions, I still can't juggle even two balls at the same time. Yet, I am expert at juggling life, including chronic fatigue and a special needs child, and the pursuit of my writing dream.

Here are a few tips for successful juggling.

1. Start small. Most instructions for juggling start with one ball and have you toss it back and forth for hours before ever adding a second ball or thinking about a third.

The same is true with life. I first learned this lesson over ten years ago after being diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. I could realistically only handle small tasks in short increments, so I gave myself permission to only get a few things done each day until I could eventually add more responsibilities. As a writer trying to juggle creating, editing, critiquing, marketing, and social media, the same principle applies. Consistently write 100 or 200 words a day before trying for bigger goals. Master one social media account before adding another.

2. Expect to drop balls. Even the experts drop things, especially in private when they're rehearsing a new act. Does a juggler quit? No. They just pick it up and start again.

In life and writing, there will be days where supper didn't get thawed out in time or you get a call from the child's teacher or your proposal was rejected. Cry. Groan. Pray. Then pick up the pieces and keep on going. Tomorrow is a new day with fresh mercies from the hand of God.

3. Trust the rhythm. The best juggling acts are those where the performer also keeps up a steady banter with the audience. How? By trusting the rhythm. After hours of practice, their body simply knows where to be in order to handle the cascading balls.

There is power in familiar routines like putting your keys in the same place every day, so take those small steps from point #1 and create habits. For example, by tossing a load into the washer before packing lunches, it is ready for the dryer when I head out with the carpool ... and ready to fold when I return. I take a half hour on Saturday to schedule social media updates for the week and then spend just fifteen minutes a day adding a few new pins, a relevant retweet, and interacting on Facebook. By trusting the routines, I know certain things will get done consistently.

4. Keep your focus on one thing at a time. Watch a juggler's eyes and you'll discover that they focus on one spot directly in front of them as each airborne object flies by. There are balls in each hand, some leaving, and some arriving ... but the juggler focuses on only one ball at a time.

My to-do list gets overwhelming, but once my day gets into motion, I try to focus on one thing at a time. Word counts accumulate during the quiet morning hours while the kids are at school followed by day job tasks once the creative well dwindles. A quick nap, then home, family, and social media after school, and catch-ups once the younger kids are in bed. Like juggling, I focus on the highest priority at the moment.

5. Stay relaxed. A juggler in proper position keeps their arms relaxed, only makes small movements, and certainly does not chase frantically after out-of-control objects. If a routine is falling apart, they stop, take a deep breath, gather their stuff, and then start again.

When my life gets out of control—and with a special needs hormonal teenaged daughter with autistic characteristics, it happens often!—I too can stop, take a deep breath, pray for wisdom, accept God's peace, and then carry on.

What about you? How well do you juggle? What's your secret to keeping multiple projects and responsibilities going at once?

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I gave myself permission to only get a few things done each day. Click to Tweet

Stop, take a breath, pray for wisdom, accept God's peace & carry on. Click to Tweet

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Candee Fick is a busy football coach's wife and mother to three including one with a rare genetic syndrome. In addition to her day job summarizing asbestos depositions for an industrial hygiene company, she is pursuing her dream of someday writing full-time. While she has self-published a book for parents with special needs kids and several devotionals, she continues to hone her fiction craft. As a member of ACFW, she was the Genesis runner-up in women's fiction in 2009 and a Genesis semi-finalist in 2011.

You can find Candee's blog, Encouragement For The Journey, at www.CandeeFick.com. 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/Author.Candee.Fick 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/CandeeFick 

Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/CandeeFick 

Making Lemonade: Parents Transforming Special Needs

 When life gives you lemons, how you approach, process, and transform them makes all the difference. Especially for parents facing the sour experiences of raising a child with developmental, behavioral, and/or health needs. Mirroring the steps of a recipe for making lemonade, this book covers the pucker reaction, emotional juicing process, adding sugar, watering down with life, stirring in a pitcher of support, chilling, sipping, and sharing. It incorporates practical strategies from a Christian worldview and the emotional stories of parents, including the author, busy in the kitchen of life.

Christmas Release 2013 Series: Christmas in Shades of Gray by Tina Pinson

Tina Pinson

Hey everyone, Annette here. I hope you're finding time to read this holiday season. After all, writers are readers, right? Question for you: if a book came out containing similar words to your title, long after you'd titled your work (but before its release), would you change your title? Read on to learn about this author's decision on that very topic. Please welcome, Tina Pinson. 

An interview 

with Tina Pinson

How did this project take shape?

I call Christmas in Shades of Gray my off beat Christmas Carol. It mirrors several places of my father-in-law's life. (Of course I took some writer's liberties as well.) He had cancer and checked himself out of the hospital unbeknownst to the doctors. Plus many other things, but when he started telling about seeing cowboy fights in the hallway, and later told how he had accepted God after 73 years, I began to think of the battle it was for him to trust God and perhaps the spiritual battle behind it as well. For years he ran from God, told people he didn't need to be saved, he knew where he was going. He was hard man until he finally turned to God. When he went back to the hospital, he just wanted to talk to his family, tell them he loved them and God loved them too. 

Please share some themes of your story.

Spiritual warfare, salvation, redemption, forgiveness, and family are all a part of the story. 

What makes your project stand out from other Christmas titles?

Well, as I said, it's an offbeat Christmas Carol, or perhaps I should say an “onbeat” one because it shows the real meaning behind Christmas. The main character, David, is lying in a VA hospital, dying at Christmastime. Before he dies, he wants the opportunity to talk to his children and tell them about the Lord so they don't waste years like he did running from God. So he can see them again in eternity. And if he should die before he has the chance, he prays God will reach his children. A being arrives and asks, "What have you done in your life that merits God answering your prayer?" and begins to take David on a journey of his life and that of his children for the answer. 

Tell us one interesting fact about your book.

This is written about my father-in-law’s life. Some of it, as I already said, I took liberties with, but many aspects come from his life. For example he was a moonshine runner and then a lawman and at the time, he found the moonshiners were more honest than the cops. As they say, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

What’s next for you as an author?

Right now, I am editing the fourth book in the Shadow Series, This Shadowed Land. I have a few other projects I'm working on, including two titles based during the Civil War. Finding Middle C is a look at finding the music in life while in the midst of tragedy, and From Hell to Eternity is a look at Andersonville. I released Black Rain, a novella and prequel about a family who works and lives in the coal fields during the Civil War. I hope to get the continuing story, Winds Across the Rockies, which takes the family to the silver mines of Colorado, published as well. I am working on a speculative fiction complete with clones, gene mutation, and time travel, plus several other things.

What else would you like to share about this project?  

I wrote Christmas in Shades of Gray after my father-in-law died of cancer back in 2004 and was pushing to get it edited and released. When 50 Shades of Grey appeared on the market, I at first cringed and considered changing the name of my story. But as you can see, I didn't.

Thanks for addressing that as I’m sure SW readers might be curious. Thanks for visiting, Tina! 

~~~~~

Christmas in Shades of Gray released from Desert Breeze Publishing, November 29, 2013.

It's Christmastime. David Pareman lies in his hospital bed, dying. The staff visits him, as does a drug induced cowboy and yellow-eyed monster—so he believes. But not his children. He fears he'll die

Christmas in Shades of Gray

alone without a chance to share his heart.

When Arion, a stranger with vast knowledge of David's life and a shroud of mystery over his own, comes to visit, David thinks he's from the newspaper. He learns otherwise. Soon David is tripping through his past in search of the answer to a soul-searing question. "What in your life merits God answering your prayer?"

Through his past and those of his children he hopes to reach, David finds little to balance the scales against him. He believes he's no good, with nothing of merit that would make God want to help in him. Then he remembers the truth of Christmas and the love the Father sent to earth.

~~~~~

Tina Pinson resides in Mesa, Arizona with her husband of thirty-plus years, Danny. They have three sons, and seven grandchildren. She has been writing poetry, songs, and stories for over thirty years. She loves to doodle and garden, and she prays her stories will transport you to worlds beyond, touching your spirit and giving you insight into yourself and God. 

Connect with Tina here:

Tina's Blog

Twitter:@Tina_Pinson

Facebook-- https://www.facebook.com/TinaEPinsonAuthor

Pinterest http://pinterest.com/tinapinson/

Time for Christmas by Jerusha Agen

Jerusha Agen

It’s the holiday season! We recently enjoyed Thanksgiving and all the yummy food that traditionally accompanies that day. Now Christmas is fast approaching. The image of what we want the season to look like and what we experience don’t always match. Author Jerusha Agen offers encouragement for this special—and sometimes stressful—time of year. ~ Dawn

Time for Christmas

It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. It’s Christmas!

I love Christmas. It is by far my favorite holiday and time of the year. But, if you’re like me, the holiday season can end up also being the most stressful time of the year. I can easily get so caught up in my must-be-done-by-Christmas task list that I miss enjoying the celebration of the season. While this scenario probably sounds familiar to any average American, I think the situation can be worse for writers.

Since we writers work at home and are well-known to have a “flexible” schedule, we often need to battle the public’s false assumptions. The idea that we don’t have a “real job” or actually work can be pervasive. Even supportive family members and friends can unintentionally take advantage of our variable work schedule and availability by expecting us to postpone our writing time for their needs.

At Christmastime, this juggling act of balancing a flexible writing schedule with the other demands of life can feel like I’ve added about ten more balls. Inevitably, I end up dropping some of those balls, and, most often, it’s the writing balls that go first. Perhaps more than the “normals” with their office jobs, we writers get to add guilt and frustration to our stress during the holidays, since our work time is so easily cut (by ourselves or others) from the schedule of Christmas activities and preparations.

Yet, when I take a look at the non-writing balls I’m still keeping up in the air at Christmastime, I wonder if they’re really the wrong ones to hold on to. While we writers do important work and need to guard our writing time if we are to complete our manuscripts and keep our careers healthy, our jobs do give us certain advantages. One of them is the flexibility that can get us in trouble, but can also be an invaluable gift.

No, we aren’t chained to an office away from home, and we don’t have to punch the clock anywhere else. We can actually plan ahead, adjust our schedules, work more on non-holiday occasions so that we can allow ourselves time off during the holiday season. For you writers who have far more energy than I can ever imagine and manage to write while holding down a different day job, cutting yourselves some slack and lowering expectations for December writing productivity might be advisable. Why, you may ask, should you be this flexible with your important work?

Because your loved ones won’t cherish the memory of the Christmas that you eked out your Pulitzer-winning novel or the holiday season you sucked candy canes behind the computer while you pulled your hair out over your work-in-progress. In all honesty, neither will you. We’ll all hold dear the special moments of baking cookies, decorating the tree, Christmas shopping, visiting with family, and celebrating our Savior’s birth with the world.

This Christmas season, let’s be guilt-free and embrace the flexibility of our profession by making time to create those memories that will carry even greater impact than our written words.

Do you have tips for stress-free holidays? Care to share a favorite Christmas tradition or memory? Or maybe you know how to write and enjoy Christmas at the same time? Please share!

Tweetables:

It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. Time for Christmas by Jerusha Agen. Click to tweet.

Can you be guilt-free and enjoy the holidays? Time for Christmas by Jerusha Agen. Click to tweet.

Embrace the flexibility of your writing profession and create memories. Time for Christmas. Click to tweet.

EXTRA!

The chapter Jerusha wrote for the Christmas novella, A Ruby Christmas, is posted (for free reading) on her publisher’s site: http://writeintegrity.blogspot.com/

This Shadow

This Shadow

(Book Two in the Sisters Redeemed Series)

She’s famous for her upbeat outlook. Then the world goes black.

Oriana Sanders is always happy. And why shouldn’t she be? She enjoys a close relationship with God and a purpose-filled career teaching troubled kids. She even has the potential for romance in her sister’s friend, Nicanor, whose dark good looks and brooding manner make him an intriguing project for Oriana.

Oriana’s attempts to reach Nicanor with the joy of the Lord are brought to a halt when a confrontation with her student’s drug-dealing brother ends in tragedy. Facing darkness she has never known, can Oriana learn to forgive the unforgivable and find her way through the shadows to the light?

Jerusha Agen is a lifelong lover of story—a passion that has led her to a B.A. in English and a highly varied career. In addition to authoring the Sisters Redeemed Series, Jerusha co-authored the novellas A Ruby Christmas and A Dozen Apologies (releasing with Write Integrity Press, February 2014). Jerusha is also a screenwriter, and several of her original scripts have been produced as films. In addition, Jerusha is a film critic, with reviews featured at the website, www.RedeemerReviews.com.

To learn more or connect with Jerusha, please visit the following sites:

www.SDGwords.com  (my author website)

www.RedeemerReviews.com  (my film review website)

https://twitter.com/sdgwords  (to follow me on Twitter)

https://www.facebook.com/JerushaAgenSdgWords  (to follow me on Facebook: Jerusha Agen – SDG Words)