Looking ahead …

I have looked back on 2006 and talked about SMART goals. Now it’s time for me to look ahead and set some SMART goals for 2007.

First, I plan to improve two areas that were disappointing this year.

As I said in Rebooting and the Fourth Commandment, I plan to keep the Sabbath and not work on Sunday. Although reducing the amount of time I work may seem an unusual goal, as most of the time we make goals to do more, for me it’s important. The main purpose of my life is to honor, worship, and serve God, and disobeying one of His commandments goes against that purpose. And from a practical perspective, a day of mental and spiritual refreshment each week will make me more productive during the days I am working.

The work project that was pushed down lower on the priority list this year than I would like is Your Information Center. I originally came into this business as an employee, then a business partner, then about a year and a half ago, I took over as managing partner as well as publisher and editor-in-chief. Although I have had outstanding help from some very talented and dedicated writers and editors, I have the primary responsibility for marketing and management, including the Web site. We publish easy-to-read-and-understand, concise e-booklets on a variety of topics. Each e-booklet gives the basic information you need plus excellent resources on the Internet and in the library if you want to dig deeper. Our mission is to provide what you want to know, when you want to know it.

My goal is to create Web pages and upload about a dozen more products by the end of March. Then I intend to develop and implement a marketing plan by the end of June. I’d like to accomplish this sooner, but to make this goal attainable (one of the key elements of a SMART goal), I have to realize that the majority of my time must be devoted to my freelance projects. Your Information Center is not yet profitable, and I can’t afford to reduce my freelance income. Also, I have ongoing commitments and really enjoy working with my clients.

Several of my business clients have work for me on a regular basis, and they have come to expect a fast turn-around time. My mission is to make my clients’ lives easier and their projects successful, and availability and speed are important.

I am also working with several authors on book projects:

* Editing a self-help book based on Christian/Biblical principles.

* Editing a book written by a psychiatrist for depression patients to use as an educational and self-help adjunct to medical treatment. 

* Compiling a book that is a combination of memoir, family history, and motivation, including poetry.

* Editing an inspirational book based the author’s personal Christian journey.

* Editing Adam’s Daughters: Book 2 in the Westward Sagas.

Two prospective clients have scheduled appointments with me in the next couple of weeks to discuss books, so I may have more book projects starting soon.

In addition to working with my regular business clients and editing books for authors, I am scheduled to edit a doctoral dissertation in a few months, and I am working on content for three Web sites. With several other projects pending, I expect to stay as busy as I have been, though when I work on a project is dictated by the client’s timing, not my own. In fact, I often find myself gently (I hope!) nagging clients to meet deadlines.

And this is the year I expect Dream or Destiny, a romantic suspense novel I wrote several years ago, to be published.

Volunteering is important to me, and I will continue the work I do for my church on its Web site, bulletins, and newsletter. Also, I will serve on the committee for the EPIC New Voices writing competition for middle school and high school students. I’m committee chair this year and will do the job again if asked.

And I won’t forget family. I’m a night owl who doesn’t do mornings, so I work in the afternoons, evenings, and into the night. But I’ll take two breaks each night (in addition to a dinner break) to spend time with my husband. Writers in an e-mail group I belong to recently had a discussion about the holidays taking time away from writing. Several people complained that they had to give up precious writing time for family get-togethers and holiday preparations. Then one woman put things into perspective - she said she would love to be giving up writing time to spend with her husband and her brother this Christmas. Both have died, and she has plenty of time to write but she’d rather be with her loved ones. I will remind myself of this when I think I have so much to do that I can’t possibly take time away from work. I will spend time with my husband daily and talk to my sister and my brother at least once a week.

Well, that’s far more than you want to know about my goals for 2007. But I hope I’ve helped you think about your own goals and priorities in the coming year … and in your life.

And I hope you’ll give me a gentle nudge if you see me getting off-track!

Happy New Year! May 2007 be a year of joy and blessings for you and your loved ones.

[tags]writing, goals, resolutions, Lillie Ammann, Adam’s Daughters, Westward Sagas, As Shadows Fall, EPIC, New Voices, All Saints Anglican Church, Your Information Center[/tags]

SMART Goals

As the New Year approaches, many of us are thinking about making resolutions or setting goals.

New Year’s resolutions are often cliches - lose weight, save money, give up smoking or other bad habit - and just as often broken and forgotten early in the year. However, setting goals and making plans at the beginning of the year can be a positive experience.

To achieve your dreams, you must set SMART goals. You can read about several variations of SMART goals and get more detailed advice on goal-setting at these sites: GetMotivation.com, Goal Setting Guide, Human Resources About.com, Nine Quick Learning Strategies for Success, Top Achievement, and many more.

Briefly, SMART goals are:

S = specific: “complete the first draft of a 50,000 word mystery novel” rather than “write a book”

M = measurable: “write 15 minutes every day” rather than “write more”

A = attainable: ”get an agent to represent Book Title” rather than “sell Book Title to a major publisher, receive a $100,000 advance, and make #1 on the New York Times bestseller list”

R = relevant: “join a business organization to meet prospective clients for my freelance writing business” rather than “join the country club because my relatives think I should” 

T = tangible: “write an outline for a series of articles on subject” rather than “come up with ideas about subject”

Note: Some version of SMART goals assign the word “actionable” to the letter A, the word “motivational” to the letter M, the word “realistic” to the letter R, and/or the word “timely/time-bound” or “trackable” to the letter T. There are plenty of other words that would be effective in describing successful goals, as well, but the main point is to set goals that will help you achieve your dream - whatever that is.

[tags]goals, smart[/tags]

Looking back …

I hope you are taking a little time to review the past year and look ahead to the new one. As I look back on 2006, several things stand out.

On the personal side, I’m thankful that my husband had successful surgery to remove a melanoma and two heart procedures that have dramatically improved his health.

Although I had to quit driving during the year because of a seizure problem, I’m thankful that I can still get to church most of the time and that I can still volunteer with Internet and writing projects. I maintain contact with many wonderful friends and associates through the Internet.

On the professional side, some of my most exciting editing projects this year include:

The Last Boat Out: Memoirs of a Triumphant Vietnamese-American Family - this husband-wife memoir has not only been praised by reviewers but it is also a finalist in the EPPIE contest.

Spring House: Book 1 in the Westward Sagas - this historically accurate novel has received a number of outstanding reviews.

As Shadows Fall: People of the Frozen Earth Book 2 will be going out to reviewers soon and will be published early in 2007. You can read the first chapter at GASLight Publishing. It’s a sequel to The New Day Dawns: People of the Frozen Earth Book 1, which has been out a couple of years but is still garnering new and great reviews.

Although we’re still looking for an agent or publisher, Re-Deal: A Miss Guided Adventure is getting positive feedback, and I expect to share exciting news about it soon.

A couple of clients now have earned their doctoral degrees, and I hope that my editing their dissertations helped them achieve their success.

And my business clients keep me in steady work: writing business proposals; editing letters, manuals, and other documents; creating and maintaining Web sites; compiling and editing newsletters and blogs; and preparing and reviewing written materials of all kinds. The variety provides many opportunities for learning, and the clients themselves are all delightful to work with.

The only disadvantage of all the wonderful freelance projects I’ve been working on is that I haven’t had time to devote to Your Information Center. There are several more excellent e-books that needed to be put online, and promotion of the site has been almost non-existent. So one of my goals in the coming year is to create sales pages and upload the remaining products and to start a marketing campaign. utstanding writers and editors have put in an incredible amount of time to create these easy-to-read-and-understand e-booklets that are practical guides for living. Now I have to make sure people know about these great resources.

Rebooting and the Fourth Commandment

Do you ever have to reboot your computer? Something goes wrong, a program crashes, the system locks up … You may experience a moment of panic. You wonder if important data has been lost. Will you have to start a big project all over again? Is the computer damaged?

Then you click the restart button, the system reboots, and - at least most of the time - your data (the majority of it, anyway) is still there.

Most of us probably expect to reboot our computers from time to time, just as most of us who are Christians or Jews believe in the Ten Commandments. Even people of other religious faiths (or none) often respect the Ten Commandments as the basis of our legal system.  Just about everybody agrees with the admonitions against murder, theft, and lying, but some of the other commandments are less widely obeyed.

Perhaps the most neglected is the fourth commandment: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” (Exodus 20:8-11, NIV)

I confess that this is hard for me, a lifelong workaholic. Working from home adds to the temptation - when I had to drive several miles to my office, the temptation to work on Sundays and holidays was easier to resist. But now my office is just a few steps away, and I find myself “just going to take a quick peek at e-mail” … and ending up working for hours.

This year, I took four whole days off for Christmas. Okay, I did check e-mail a few times, but I did no more than delete spam and respond to a couple of clients to tell them I would get back to them when I returned to work on Wednesday.

Taking time away from work and stress reboots our internal “computers” - our souls and spirits. Writers (or anyone) can be more effective after mental and spiritual refreshment. From a practical point of view, then, taking time off work is valuable. We can think more clearly and work faster and better when we aren’t stressed and exhausted from endless work. So honoring the Sabbath is beneficial even if you do it for purely selfish reasons.

But the real meaning of honoring the Sabbath is honoring God. Michael Medved has a Townhall column on this subject, in which he talks about two aspects of observing the Sabbath: “remembering” (positive - observance and celebration) and “guarding” (negative - avoidance of certain behaviors). He writes, ”The key purpose of both “remembering” and “guarding” (of both positive and negative observances) is to make the Sabbath “holy” - to consecrate the day to God, and to set it aside as different from all other days.”

A Christian writer friend commented the other day that in our society today “Sunday is just like every other day of the week.” When I was growing up, the stores were closed on Sunday, and the only people who went to work were those - like hospital employees and policemen - who were involved in critical jobs that affected safety and health. Now businesses are open every day and conferences and similar events are often scheduled on weekends.

But just because society doesn’t honor the Sabbath doesn’t mean I have to follow the ways of the world. St. Paul tells us in Romans 12:2: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is -his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

As I look ahead to the New Year, I intend to observe the fourth commandment and “remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.”

[tags]Sabbath, Ten Commandments[/tags]

Christmas Stories

In this busy holiday season, it’s easy to get distracted with shopping, parties, cooking …

In addition to my regular devotions, I find reading Dr. Ralph Wilson’s Christmas stories and articles a good way to focus on the real meaning of Christmas. He has several inspiring and thought-provoking stories written from the perspective of Mary and Joseph as well as the innkeeper, shepherds, and others involved in the Nativity.  

Hark, the Herald Angels Sing: The Gospel in Charles Wesley’s Christmas Carol is a short Bible study on a favorite Christmas carol.

May you take time to refresh your spirit and worship the Lord during this holy season, and may you and your loved ones have a blessed and joyous Christmas.

Interesting study

Here’s an interesting study from the Heritage Foundation: Why Religion Matters Even More: The Impact of Religious Practice on Social Stability.

Patrick F. Fagan, William H. G. FitzGerald Research Fellow in Family and Cultural Issues, writes: “The practice of religion is a powerful antidote to many of our nation’s pressing social problems, many of which have reached historically high proportions.”

The report demonstrates that regular religious practice positively affects a multitude of social issues, including marriage and family relations; mental and physical health; drug, tobacco, and alcohol use; educational attainment; and happiness and well-being.

Last Boat Out: EPPIE Finalist!

The finalists in the prestigious EPPIE Awards, aka “the Oscars for e-books,” have just been announced.

The Last Boat Out: Memoirs of a Triumphant Vietnamese-American Family is a finalist in the category Nonfiction: General.

Congratulations to the authors - Truong-Nhu Dinh and Tran Thi Truong Nga, to the translators - Truong-Nhu Kenny and Ton-Nu Phuong-Thao, and to the publisher - GASLight Publishing, LLC!

I’m very proud to have edited this book for the Truong family and GASLight. Maintaining the two authors’ unique voices while making the book easily readable for American readers proved to be a challenge that I loved meeting.

Dr. Vu H. Pham, Director of the Smithsonian Institution Vietnamese American Heritage Project, said about this book: “The dual male-female voices of this book provide nuanced texture to this already rich Vietnamese American story.” 

You can read more reviews on the Last Boat Out Web site.

If you haven’t read this wonderful book, you can order it as an e-book or a trade paperback. You’ll be touched, inspired, and entertained.

2/1/08: This book is now out-of-print.

Gifts for readers

Are you looking for the perfect Christmas gift for a loved one? If you’re shopping for a reader, there’s no better gift than books! Check out the booksellers and directories listed on my Web site to find great books from independent publishers, both electronic and print. Many of the listings include excerpts to give you an idea of what the story is about - and maybe get you hooked so you want to read the book yourself.

I’ve also updated my Web site pages described in previous posts: Sites for Readers and Free Stories and E-Books. You can find book reviews and author interviews and all sorts of fun things for readers. The readers on your gift list will enjoy these sites as much as you do.

And if you’d like to make some room on your bookshelves for more reading material, you can find a great new home for your paperbacks through Operation Paperback. This nonprofit organization collects books for deployed military personnel. Their slogan is “Recycled Reading for Our Troops.” 

[tags]writing, books[/tags]

GodSpeaks

You may have heard about the billboard campaign several years ago that had messages signed “God.” The sayings were short and to the point.

The campaign was run again recently with new sayings, and the billboards can be seen at GodSpeaks. Well worth a visit!

Brave Kids!

Voice of the Martyrs’ Kids of Courage profiles young children and teens who have faced persecution for their faith. These are amazing stories of faith and courage. My prayer is that I could be as bold as these kids in similar circumstances.

Next Page »