Useful Tools for the Self-Employed Author

As a self-employed author and freelance copywriter, one of the biggest (and most important) things I have struggled with is the paperwork. Whether it is accounting, invoicing, or just keeping track of my projects, I find it boring, frustrating, and time consuming.

But thank goodness for smart people inventing things. I have discovered a few tools that have come to my rescue on more than one occasion while also saving me time and money. 

Let's talk about money first.

Quickbooks. More specifically, Quickbooks - Self-Employed. It's a godsend. It helps you track income and expenses, while helping you calculate taxes on a month-to-month basis. It even allows you to pay your taxes throughout the year, rather than doing one big money dump in April. ~$10/month. I traded it for Netflix in my budget. Worth it.

Osmosis. A word which refers to the tendency of fluids to pass through semipermeable membranes... well, anyway, Osmosis is also a platform which allows for an easier and more effective communication with clients. It allows you to draw up professional-looking proposals, create questionnaires to get whatever information you need, keep track of communications with your client throughout the project, and a few other things. It's at least worth a free trial - check it out. ~$20/month

Google Docs. I'm actually surprised at how many people don't use Google Docs, at least for word  docs and basic spreadsheets. It makes it possible for multiple people to look at, write, and change things on the same document at the same time. There are options for track changing and commenting, and best of all, I can access it anywhere, any time. On my computer at home, at my parents' house, on my phone... plus there's plenty of storage space and it's free. ~$0/month

I'd love to hear about some other tools you use to do paperwork. I'm always looking for ways to make my process more efficient and my life a little easier. Comment if you have any suggestions!

Time Travel Is Possible

This is me when I was a munchkin. TIME TRAVEL. If I went back, my past self from this picture probably wouldn't recognize my current self though.

We all know time travel is possible because we do it all the time. Right now I am slowly making my way into the future. Fascinating, eh? You can also get to the future by traveling close to the speed of light for a bit and then stopping again. Just ask the brilliant Brian Cox.

Traveling to the past, on the other hand, is a little different. Of course, Futurama says it's possible. It happens in Family Guy every other episode. Let's not forget about Doctor Who and a dozen other shows! Don't get me started on the books about time travel.

But until we figure out how to build the appropriate technology, it's going to be rather difficult to go back and chat with ourselves (paradox, anyone?), have coffee with our imagined idols (I don't drink coffee, but, Marie Curie would be my idol, or Carl Sagan or Douglas Adams), or kill Hitler. What we can do, however, is leave messages from our past selves to our future selves, reminding us who we were, what we were like, and what stupid things we did as youths.

We can also look at old drafts of old novels (cringe) and see where we started. This is an excellent self-esteem building exercise. "My books might not be perfect now, but look at what I used to write!"

Anyway, I have one of those for you today. Below is a scrap I dug out of my archives, the very first words written for The Wounded World. None of these words exist in the published version, but here they are in their full glory for your reading pleasure and my own mild embarassment.

If it's a rainy day where you are, I highly recommending digging through some old files and finding something you wrote years ago--a letter, an essay, a journal--and remember where you came from.

With no further ado... Wounded World -- Draft 1:

It was the mirror that did it. I had a broken piece of the world and as I twiddled it between my fingers it slipped and cut my finger and round spheres of blood flew into the earth like red rain. The mirror dripped too, but only two droplets, and they quickly disappeared amidst the shower fed by my veins. I made no sound, but watched; and soon, the dry grass and dusty red earth swallowed it up like a thirsty sponge and all I could see was a stain where my blood had pierced the ground. But my finger kept bleeding.

When I looked at the sky I noticed that the clouds had gobbled up the blue and the leaves on the trees were upside down, bowing in worship to the power of the wind. Somewhere I knew, though I couldn’t see where, ants scurried to build levies around the doors to their home. The air ached to spread its moisture on every living thing and every dead thing. I was still living.

Soon my hair clung to my face and my shirt, and my shirt clung to my back. Droplets of water streamed down my forehead and nose and into my eyes and mouth. I didn’t move, but held my finger higher and watched as the blood mixed with the water to make a bloody rain, a union of allied liquids, the ones that make life. A sprinkling of blood spattered my jeans, and the rain washed it into strange shapes and circles.

Then I saw the man. He was the one that pulled me from that world into this one. The reason he did so, was not because I was special, for I am not, nor because I was pretty, because I am not, nor because I was the only living creature around, for I wasn’t, but because I was bleeding. I grabbed the mirror piece before I left. I figured it could be useful. Or deadly.

Winging and Springing and Unicorn Sheep

The birds are back, as my cats would be eager to tell you. They now spend hours every day staring out the window plotting the eventual demise of every blue jay, chickadee, and squirrel to venture across the deck. This is the nature of spring, I guess: cats imagining dead birds.

In the mean time, I'm sitting here... writing new books! In fact, I'm thrilled to announce that next month I will be releasing a children's book: Rutherford the Unicorn Sheep Goes to the Beach!

Some of you may have followed me a few years back when I wrote the photo blog, The Misadventures of Rutherford the Unicorn Sheep. He is back in bookform with his best friend Wilfred the Walnut Skunk, and ready to go hang out by the ocean. Check out his old adventures, or follow him on Facebook.

While I finish preparing Rutherford and friends for publication, I am working on two more novels in the Sagittan Chronicles series, so stay tuned.

I also have promised my Social Media Guru to write more blog posts, so you can follow more of my doings here. And in May, I will be restarting my newletter, so if you haven't yet, you can sign up here!

Since it is Monday, I want to leave you with this:

At least it's not winter any more!

Sleeping Beauty Awakes Only 162 Million Miles From Prince

This July we get to see Pluto. And I don't mean the blurry, pixelated images we're used to--I mean we get so see Pluto in it's full glory. The New Horizons spacecraft left Earth 9 years ago, waking up in December about 2.9 billion miles from home. 9 years is a long time, so let's hope a stray asteroid doesn't knock out the Pluto lens on New Horizons' camera.

Photo courtesy of Nasa

The pictures we have of Pluto so far are taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and look something like this-->

They're cool, but not that helpful for the layman interested in learning about the dwarf planet. But with New Horizon's arrival to the Kuiper Belt portion of space, all of that is about to change. 

Despite the fact that we haven't yet had a good look at Pluto, we still know quite a bit about it.

• Pluto is the largest object in the Kuiper belt.
• Sometimes Pluto's orbit brings it closer to the sun than Neptune.
• It takes 5.5 hours for light from the sun to reach Pluto.
• Pluto and its neighbor Charon might be in a binary dwarf planet system (we're waiting on the official definition of binary dwarf planets), but currently it is just a moon.
• Pluto is about 33% smaller than Earth's moon.
• The atmosphere on Pluto is slowly being pushed out into space by solar winds. If it were closer to the sun, it would look like Pluto had a tail, similar to a comet.

New Horizons' arrival marks the first time an Earth space craft has ever visited Pluto (jury's out on alien space craft). Hal Weaver of John Hopkins University put it simply: "We can't wait to turn Pluto into a real world, instead of just a little pixelated blob."

This Sunday, January 25, New Horizons began to take photos. The first picture back from the far reaches of our solar system depicts Pluto and its moon (or binary planet), Charon. It looks like this: 

Again, NASA takes sweet photos.

And at the speed of 8 miles per second, New Horizons will move closer and closer until it is only 7,700 miles away from Pluto. That is incredibly close! Think of the Earth as seen from the moon.

Earth as seen from the Moon. Photo by NASA.

It's amazing, but still pretty far off. The moon is located 238,855 miles from Earth.

On the other hand, take a look at this photo taken by Apollo 4, only 10,000 miles from Earth:

Photo taken 1967 by Apollo 4. Check out all these other cool space pics too.

Stunning.

And that is how close we will be able to see Pluto--but more clearly! We have better cameras and better technology, and the only thing that separates us from Pluto is 3 billion miles. Well,  less than 162 million now. 

One way or the other, I'm looking forward to July, when New Horizons comes in kissing distance from Pluto, before rushing past to go visit other interesting objects in the Kuiper belt. Photos, information, and excitement--who knows what we'll discover?

Personally, I'm just hoping for aliens. 

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The Slowest Month of the Year: Get the Cupcake

I don't know if anyone has noticed, but January is the slowest month of the year. Post lots of vacation time, post family fun, post presents and yummy food, all that remains is the unending darkness of January. I love the snow, I love the rain, but I also miss the sun.

Despite January being the slowest month of the year, it is also (as it turns out) the one that has the potential to be the most productive for me. Painfully productive, perhaps, but still productive nonetheless.

I think being motivated is a struggle for anyone. When a project is new and fresh and exciting, motivation is easy, but once it gets into the second mile, it becomes drudgerous. Menial. Dull.  

I have a few strategies that I use to keep myself moving forward, but there is one concept that I play on repeat in my brain: 

It might sound lame, but I have dozens of variations to keep myself engaged: 

• Just keep trudging
• One step at a time
• One thing at a time
• Every thing you did is one thing you don't have to do now; every thing you do now is one thing you don't have to do later
• One foot in front of the other
• and the ever polite, KEEP GOING YOU LAZY GOOD-FOR-NOTHING BUM

I also sometimes use sticker charts, or guilt myself into working, or starve myself into working. Calendars with blocks of time designed for writing or marketing help. I listen to the songs my brother writes, I read work by someone who inspires me, I even sometimes read the pieces I've written that I love. At my worst I recruit my friends and family to help. "Refuse to talk to me until I finish X. Can I have a treat if I do Y? Please berate me until I start working again."  

When I'm feeling like being kind to myself, I give myself the quiet reminder that I actually like the work I am procrastinating on, and the fact that I don't want to do it is silly and wrong. This works surprisingly often.

And it seems, that despite January being a dark, lonely, depressing month (with exciting moments filled with beautiful snow and interesting weather), I manage to get the cupcake. 

I don't actually know if that is a cupcake or not, but it looks like one so I'm going to go with it. At very least, it's a Corgi Cupcake, right?

Let me know in the comments if you have any other strategies for getting the cupcake, moving forward, and not giving up! I'm always looking to add to my sleeve of tricks.