When your day is shorter than your to-do-list.

What robs you of your time to write.

My intentions to stay on track are great or that’s what I like to tell myself. Time management is a balance. A precise schedule that holds everything together. But there are days when no matter what I did, nothing worked out and these days would run into weeks. I had to find out what was robbing me of my time, so I made a list.

What took up time in my day.

Work, eating, cleaning, feeding animals, laundry, email, blogs and sleep. By the time I got home, cleaned up, ate and worked on e-mails I was exhausted. In my head, I had hours during the day to write. Why wasn’t it working out in my real life?

I found an article and it talked about writing out a time log. Spend a few days and jot down everything you do.  It worked out great and showed me how I was wasting so much time.  So I decided to share.

Preparing and writing your time log

You don't need to keep writing a time log permanently. It is sufficient to do it for 3-7 days.  When you write a time log, make sure you don't miss even the minor activities. Don't let your time wasters hide there. Take a sheet of paper and divide it into columns listed below.

• Time
• Activities
• Scheduled
• Interrupted
• Urgent
• People (involved)

Then continue with activities you would normally do that day. On the way, update your time log. Do it either every time you switch to a new activity or at some short time intervals, like 10-20 minutes. Add entries to your "Time" and "Activities" column, and try to put marks like "Yes" or "No" in the "Scheduled", "Interrupted", and "Urgent" columns. Where relevant, make short notes on what people you spend time with too.

 When you have your time log written, you can move to the most important part, the analysis. Review your records and try to get answers to the following questions.

• What percentage of your time is spent in each of the different areas of your life? How is it divided between Work, Business, Family, Recreational, writing?
• What percentage of your activities are important?
• Are urgent?
• What people you spend more time with?
• What percentage of your activities go as planned?
• What are main interruptions?

Then think of possible adjustments and action steps. For example:

• Are there any activities you can cut back on?
• Is there anything you can delegate or simplify?
• Can you save time by grouping related tasks, like shopping?

Once you see everything you do on paper, it will amaze you on how you can add a little more time to your writing.

My time is better spent now on getting my book ready for its release.

If I knew then 

YA. To be released late 2014 through Black Opal Books.

Angel dreamed of a life of freedom. One filled with love that didn't come with a price.  She hid the pain until Jax entered her life. Can he give her what she needs to let go of the past or will he leave her with a bigger challenge that will change her future?

Angel fought to keep her family safe from the evil that threatened to destroy her. She made sure she was always the one in front of her sisters when her Mother yielded her wrath. Keeping the danger that surrounded them a secret.To lessen the blow she lived a lie that everyone believed, except for one. He was her only source of happiness until one day he was gone. With nothing left, and no one to turn to she must outrun her past, and overcome the secret that she fights to hide, before her Mother destroys everything she has left to hold on to.

Rescued from the Dark

Published through Black Opal Books

BLURB:

What if you woke up from a nightmare, trapped in a world of darkness, with no memory of how you got there? Rescued from the Dark is a passionate, gripping story about FBI agent, Jason Michaels, confronting his duty to his country, and struggling with his feelings for a woman with no memory of their love.

Undercover Agent,Jason Michaels, infiltrates the terrorist cell and risks everything, even his life, to save the FBI intern who stole his heart, then walked away. Once Mercy wakes from her coma Jason struggles with the fact that she does not remember what happened, but anguishes with the idea that she believes their unborn child belongs to her ex. Jason soon realizes the terrorists vow to get her back to claim their secrets locked in her memory, no matter what the cost. In a race against time, Jason and Mercy struggle to fight their attraction, and put their differences aside, as they launch a manhunt to save their country and each other.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BFYANMK 

B&N:  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rescued-from-the-dark-lynda-kaye-frazier/1114500674?ean=2940016369129

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/285303

KOBO: http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Rescued-from-the-Dark/book-mS6P9bqlx0ifOjztxuBrmg/page1.html?s=BNbii4WZ40uUHUgelR46hg&r=1

ARe: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-rescuedfromthedark-1061653-152.html

            BOB: http://www.blackopalbooks.com

Lynda Kaye Frazier

http://lyndafrazier.blogspot.com

www.lyndakayefrazier.com

Facebook- Lynda Kaye Frazier- Author

Twitter- lynda_kaye

Writing is my passion, Reading is my Love.

Feng Shui Your Writing, Part 1

Welcome to my next 3-part series, Feng Shui Your Writing!

When I decided to take the leap into fiction writing, I soon realized I had to organize my writing space, my writing time, and my writing mind. It was around that time that I first stumbled over the art of Feng Shui. I found the principles so useful that I not only credit them with helping me land my first sale (a short story sold to FUTURES magazine), but sparked a long-standing life practice that I use on a daily basis.

Over the next three months, I’ll be talking about some ways this ancient Chinese practice can enrich and streamline your writing career (if not life as a whole). Today I’ll give a brief description of Feng Shui and the nine areas encompassed by it, along with giving details on applying Feng Shui techniques to the first three zones. Parts 2 and 3 will go on to help you organize and optimize the remaining six zones, by which time you could have applied the principles to your office, desk, or even entire home for the ultimate in repetitive reinforcement to enhance your creative flow.

Feng Shui: What is It?

My simplistic, Cliffs Notes answer is this: Feng Shui involves the strategic placement of items within a space to help achieve balance in nine essential areas of life. “Item” placement can mean everything from furnishings and accessories to the use of color, the elements, and light. In short, it is the belief that anything within/on a space (a home, single room, desktop, etc.) can either become an obstacle that blocks “chi,” or the energy that flows around and through us, or an enhancement that helps move positive, healthy energy.

How does it work? There are varying debates on this, some highly metaphysical, others very practical (such as replacing burned out light bulbs to enhance knowledge). For the purposes of this blog series I won’t be discussing the mysticism or lore behind Feng Shui, nor can I offer more than a rudimentary knowledge. But I can tell you that I have seen amazing results in using it. For now, let’s skip the “how” and jump right into the “how-to.”


The nine areas/zones of Feng Shui are:


Career
Knowledge
Family
Wealth
Fame/Reputation
Marriage/Romantic Relationships
Creativity/Children
Helpful People/Travel
Health (in the center)

This octagon, called a Ba-Gua, serves as a sort of map to be used in the space you will be working with. The Career line of the Ba-Gua faces North, and in traditional Feng Shui special compasses are used to find exact placement. In the modern practice that I use, however, positioning is done easily by considering the wall with the entry door as North. (If you want to apply Feng Shui to a smaller area, such as a desk, North is considered the edge of the desk farthest from you when you’re sitting behind it.)

In other words, if you had a printout of the Ba-Gua in the exact size of the space (stretched to fit as needed), you would align the Career edge of the octagon with the door or far edge of your desk. Let’s say you’re standing in the middle of the home office where you do your writing. Face the door and mentally apply the Ba-Gua. The wall in front of you is the Career zone, and the wall behind is the Fame zone. Your Family area is the right hand wall, and the Children/Creativity zone is the left. The corners represent the corner areas on the map, and you are standing in the Health zone, right in the middle. To apply Feng Shui techniques, it is important to understand which “zone” you are making changes to, what that zone affects, and what elements and colors help or hinder in that area. I use a 3-step process to tackle and streamline each zone that involves streamlining, removing “hindering” elements , and adding the “helper” elements.

Now that we’ve got the basic map covered, let’s move onto this month’s zones.

1. Career
The Career area is naturally important to a writer because it affects job prospects, which can include sales to publishers. On the Ba-Gua, you’ll notice that the color associated with this zone is black, and the element listed is Water.

First: Declutter! Take a look at the front wall. What do you see? Is there clutter? Stuff hiding behind the door? Cobwebs? Your first trick is to clear all clutter from this wall and around the door, and give it a good dusting. Clutter blocks chi and stifles creativity. Plus it’s just darn unpleasant.

Second: Fix what’s broken. Burned out light bulbs, any chipped or damaged items on display or in use, etc. Broken junk=broken chi, so fix it right away or get rid of it. Next, keeping in mind that the natural helper element for this zone is Water, you’ll want to move items representing its opposing element, Fire. This means candles, the color red, triangular shapes (triangles represent flame). If you have a fireplace on this wall, you can’t move it, but you can “cure” it by applying enough of the helper element to balance or negate the opposing effect.

Third: Add your enhancements. Black (and dark blue) is representative of the Water element, so include this color in the decor. Add a water feature. A fountain with a rotating ball is very useful here, as it represents a constant movement of positive energy in terms of “turning over” book product—finishing stories, turnaround time on submissions, avoiding holdups on releases, etc. Other “Water” features can include water balls (snowglobes), round shapes, aquariums, and pictures or paintings of water (moving water is better than still water in areas where you are trying to move chi, and calm waters like ponds are good in areas you prefer a calming effect). If you need to “cure” a fireplace here, add a large painting of moving water over the mantle, use black or blue colors to subdue the effect, or do what I did in one house—stick a fountain inside the fireplace.


2. Knowledge
The Knowledge area comes into play when you are seeking information, such as researching your next book, markets, promotional venues, etc. Black, blue, and green are the color associations, and like all the corner areas, does not have a natural element.

To enhance your Knowledge area, use the 1-2-3 approach again, and place special emphasis on lighting in this corner. You’ve heard the terms “Lighting the path to the answer” and “The light bulb came on, and I finally got it.” If there is no lighting in this corner, add some. When bulbs burn out, replace them immediately. Candles can also be used here, but their light tends to be less bright and helpful than a good fixture. Also, this is the optimal location for books and/or television. Consider live (or good quality silk) plants in this corner as your green accent. Plants produce oxygen and help detoxify our environment.



3. Family
The Family area, while important for self-explanatory reasons, may not immediately strike you as a zone that affects your writing career. However, since the support of our family is vital, and disharmony within the family dynamic can negatively impact our ability to focus on writing, this area is definitely not one to overlook. The color associated with this zone is green, and the natural element is Wood.

While using the 1-2-3 method here, watch out for Fire and Metal elements, which are destructive to Wood. (Fire burns, Metal (axe) chops.) Wood furniture is the best choice. Pictures of your family are obvious choices, as are plants. I have a triple stalk of bamboo in a green ceramic vase enhancing my Family zone. If there is disharmony among family members, check for candles, triangular shapes, or other Fire associations in the Family zone of your house and in each individual room.


Now that you’ve got these three zones optimized, you’ll want to keep them “activated” on a regular basis for the greatest ongoing effect. Activating a zone can be as simple as chasing away the dust bunnies, putting out a vase of fresh flowers, lighting candles (in appropriate zones), or using aromatherapy. I have a routine of “activating” each of my zones once per week. So next Monday, dust your Career area and shake up those snowglobes or burn some incense. Tuesday, clean the Knowledge zone and light some candles. Wednesday, dust the Family zone and light some incense or add diffuser reeds for fragrance.

Next month, we’ll focus on Wealth, Fame, and Relationship zones (three things that definitely go together for my romance writing career!) . Meanwhile, I hope you’ve enjoyed this basic introduction to Feng Shui. if you have any Feng Shui stories or questions, please post them in the comments. Here’s to positive writer chi!

Managing your time

Writing can be an all-consuming activity. If you're like most writers, you find an idea or scene or character that really grips you, and you can't wait to start writing.

I started writing my first novel in this mindset. I just couldn't wait to get going. I read on the internet and decided to do an Excel worksheet that would break my story up into scenes. But when I started to actually type it out, I thought, "Oh, this is marvelous! I could go in so many directions here! Who cares about the scene-by-scene thing - I wrote it, and I can ignore it if I want! Yeah, not such a great idea.

What happened was that by the time I was done with the monster of a novel, it was a mess of characters, plots and subplots. I knew whom I wanted the heroine and the hero to be, but I got so caught up in the lives of the other characters that I wanted to give them all "full" stories, too. So everyone ended up telling their own story, my heroine was in there shouting to receive attention in the mix, and my poor hero didn't get very much attention at all.

So, you might be asking yourself, what exactly is the point here? Well, ladies (and gentlemen), here is the biggest tip I can ever give you: once you have a idea of where you want your story go, who the main characters and secondary characters are (see my previous post about character charts), PLOT OUT EVERY SCENE. I'm not shouting, I promise, but I really do want to get your attention. Put down each major scene, from the beginning to the end. When you're writing, you might decide to change minor things, or move a scene to another part of the story, but don't completely diverge from your original outline.

Currently, I have my second novel plotted out into scenes. The novel is being told by two different characters, so it can get confusing. So what I did was, I wrote down the scenes that each character would have, as the story progresses. I outlined each character with a different color, so I could see at once who was going to do what. Just a small word of caution: don't jumble your points of view because you could really, really confuse your reader. In my case, each character gets a chapter or two to tell her story, and then it switches to the other character. In other words, my readers will have a chance to really immerse themselves in each character's vastly different lives.

My second novel has been going fantastically well so far. I'm about 1/3 of the way done, and it's progressing much faster, and much less confusingly than my first novel. I can already tell this one will be a lot easier to edit.

Anyway, thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any tips on how to organize your book before you start typing it out.

Adriana