Sunday Smatterings: Architects versus Designers

Happy Sunday! Yes, you’re seeing that right. The Friday blog wasn’t ready in time, so I pulled it, and thought I’d send it in the regular Sunday spot. Do you prefer Sunday mornings for these missives? Friday will always be my business day, it just works better, but I’ve discovered that if I’m to post a blog in a timely manner on Friday, I have to start thinking about it Wednesday and write it Thursday and guess what? That sort of defeats the purpose of business Fridays…

I’ve had crazy dreams this week, all of which were lucid. Crazy enough I’ve been considering sending one or two into This Jungian Life. I don’t know that I enjoy the dreams where, amid the action, I’m saying to myself, oh, you must remember this, it’s a great story; this is a new series concept; oh wow, this could be a super cool movie...

I am a visual person—a visual learner, thinker, writer. My characters’ conversations play out as small movie reels in my head. It’s not too much of a leap to understand that translates to my subconscious, too. It’s an architecture thing—the way the stories build, word by word, is clear as the noon sun to me. 

You’d think my brain would be overflowing with ideas when it comes to design. But when I try to envision a look, a placement, a color scheme, there’s nothing—black space. I am an architect, not a designer. A builder, not a guilder. They are two very different disciplines. Complementary, by necessity, but different. 

This inability to design traverses my entire landscape. I am a not-so-great photographer.  Drawing anything more complicated than a box, an arrow, or a piece of holly is simply beyond me. Friends kindly lend their expertise when it comes to styling bookshelves and furniture placement.

So when we get to designing artwork on books, you can imagine how challenging that is for me. I have a hard time conceptualizing what a cover should look like, so I rely on a cadre of highly talented artists to guide me. I need them to crawl inside my brain and tease out what I’m trying to explain, which can be challenging for everyone. I know what works the moment I see it, but explaining how to get there is not my forte. What I do know is what I don’t like. Which, I suppose, is a talent of sorts, too. 

Regardless, all this to say, Rachel and I have spent a couple of days this week with our fantastic artist working on the cover for MASTER OF SHADOWS. It is gorgeous. I can’t wait to share.

Also, it’s been a decent writing week. I’m now deep into the third act on this Taylor book, though I hit a wall Thursday and ended up having to have a conversation about the plot with my friend Jayne Ann Krentz (her new book, LIGHTNING IN A MIRROR, released this week, you should grab it!) Some fun action is happening, and while I don’t quite see the end, in the next couple of weeks, I’m hoping I’ll be unfolding my lucky Harvard T-shirt for the last day stretch. Wish me luck!

Onward!

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Links 🔗

(Yes, you read that right, too.) Here are some stories I dug this week:

Inside a Dying Japanese Town Obsessed With Aliens 

Colleen Hoover Did It Her Way

Finding Joy Through Art at the End of the World in ‘Station Eleven’

Our Kinder, Gentler, Nobody-Moves-Out Divorce

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Reads 📚

I’m deep into WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART’S BLOOD now and finished an incredible book coming out in late summer called COMPLICIT. And a TBR shoutout: I also have THE PERFECT FAMILY by Robyn Harding in the queue. 

What are you reading this weekend?

Bohemian Like You

So yours truly went down a rabbit hole this morning listening to some music with the lyrics playing on the screen. I never write to songs with lyrics, but I was doing a Joss Walker newsletter and needed to reference the wonderful Garbage song “I”m Only Happy When It Rains” and the next thing I knew, I was hitting forward on a mixed soundtrack looking for lyrics of songs I adored. I know there are plenty of programs that do this, I just hadn’t seen it before. It’s quite handy if you, like me, tend to screw up lyrics. I’m the WORST. (Though I will give mad props to an old boyfriend who thought Tin Roof, Rusted in the B-52s classic “Love Shack" was Henry! Rest. Still makes me laugh.)

I listened to the fabulous “Bohemian Like You” by the Dandy Warhols, and then of course decided to try “Bohemian Rhapsody” which has many lines I never get right. I mean, I had no idea that A - it was Bismillah, nor that B - Bismilliah means “In the name of God” in Arabic. So. A rabbit hole in which I learned something. Winning.

Easy come, easy go, will you let me go?

Bismillah! No, we will not let you go

(Let him go!)

Bismillah! We will not let you go

(Let him go!)

Anyway. That brings me to titles. Soooo many of my titles have their roots in song lyrics. That’s always been my go-to resource to title my projects. Get inspired by a song, write down a lyric, twist it around, and boom goes the dynamite. 

I do believe we’ve settled on a title for the 2023 standalone, and I love it, so yay, and interestingly, it is NOT a lyric. at all. It was actually a lament. I’ll be able to share it soon. Double yay.

But now I am now toying with two titles for the new Taylor book. I love them both. My agent loves them both. One is a play on a lyric from Les Miserables, and one is the working title I’ve had for this book from day one. They are both good. So don’t be surprised if I end up polling y’all to see what you think.

I wrote a lot this week. I had my all is lost, I need to put this book away, I will never finish, it’s terrible moment Wednesday night, and lo, yesterday I got to blow something up, and I was telling Mr. E, and boom—I saw what I needed to do. Fingers crossed it works. And since I’m on deadline for this Taylor book, it’s time for me to get back to the day job and move on to her world for the rest of the day.  

Friday Reads 📚

From my teetering TBR comes a highly anticipated read from Andrea Bartz, whose last novel I experienced, THE HERD, blew me away. I loved this cover, too. Vibrant and sassy. Have you read this one yet?

2021 Annual Review

This year’s annual review will look very different from years past. I’ve made several changes to my systems, and I’ve let go of many metrics that used to be important to me in favor of a broader sense of satisfaction with my output for the year. I’ve spent a lot of time over the holidays being very honest with myself about the things I put value on and the things I don’t. And while there is an annual review written in which I go very deep into my specifics for the year, the things that worked and didn’t, the numbers, the nitty-gritty of what I accomplished, what went right and what went wrong, and what I plan to do in 2022, I’ve decided those details aren’t vital to this particular post anymore. The specifics aren’t what you come for, anyway, I suspect. 

So here’s the topline takeaway. Because of a thousand reasons and more, I had a lower-than-usual word count year, and I’m resolved to increase that number next year. I did read a lot, though not nearly enough books of my choosing. I swapped out most of my day-to-day business email for Trello, stepping away from the hyperactive hive mind workflow into a better project management system, so it’s impossible to measure that aspect of non-fiction. That falls into the “metrics I no longer track” category. I didn’t achieve all I set out to, but I did finish 11 out of the 14 projects I’d planned. Not perfect, but not terrible, either.

Looking back on 2021 - The Year of Content (and Content)

It’s been a long time coming, but the level of contentment I feel in both my life and my career is off the charts. The work I’ve done over the past several years to revamp my world has paid off. Now it’s time to focus on new work, letting the words flow instead of trying to force them, walking away when the work is done. My approach to the Year of Content is four-fold: Reading for enjoyment, exercising for wellness, living with humility, and creating with intention, as the world slowly returns to its normal axis. 

So how did I do?

You know the saying, “Man plans, God laughs?” That sums up my goal setting and achievement for 2021. The written content was slimmer than usual, my focus was shot, the distractions were enormous. Almost insurmountable. This is my lowest word count year since 2009, when I started tracking my annual numbers. Physical resistance was very high after the great ankle incident, and trust me when I say painkillers, four months of twice-weekly rehab, and creativity do not mix. But I managed to get the standalone edited and sent off during that awful time, then buckled down in the Fall and wrote half of a new Taylor novel. I also published 6 titles, both new and reprints, from Two Tales.

The year had many positive moments. Launching the Joss Walker brand. Meeting and subsequently working with R.L. Perez. Hiring the wonderful folks of Aurora Publicity to help with the back-end of the business. Finishing what I believe is one of my best pieces of work to date, a profoundly emotional and exciting thriller. Getting Two Tales established and learning the indie publishing world. Discovering the joys of a stormy ASMR room to help me focus. Creating a regular and sustained exercise habit. Getting off social media and back into my own head.

Though I didn’t write as much as I wanted, I wrote/co-wrote enough to release three new novels over the next 13 months, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Nitty Gritty: AKA Nerdology

2021 Total Words: 251,267
Fiction Total: 145,000
Non-Fiction Total: 106,267
Fiction Percentage: 58%
Books Read: 91
Creative Projects as J.T. Ellison: 6
Creative Projects as Joss Walker: 4

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The Year Ahead:  2022, The Year of Choice

I approached my creative planning differently this year, as well. While I’m doing all the usuals: breaking my projects out in a quarterly plan, scheduling my deadlines, etc., I’m keeping the specifics internal this year. But I will share my two overarching, non-negotiable goals for the year that supersede everything else.

• I want to write more. 

• I want to spend less time on things that take me away from that goal.

I’ve done a deep dive into what choice means to me, creatively and personally. This year’s choices must be in service to the two goals I stated above. On the front-end, looking ahead, this feels a bit selfish, but that’s what will have to happen to achieve what I need to going forward, both this year and into the next decade of my career. I have a LOT of things I want to write for you, both as J.T. and as Joss, and that means outside of A WORD ON WORDS and the new “Behind the Pen” series I’m doing with Jayne Ann Krentz for Poisoned Pen Bookstore, I’m going to be saying no to other things that come at me this year. And I’m going to try very hard not to create internal distractions—pursuing projects that aren’t necessarily in line with these goals. 

I’m very much looking forward to this non-creative sabbatical. I’m sticking with my Fridays-only social media, which feels like a great compromise (and hey, I like talking with people online!), and the remainder of the week will be focused on the deep work creative time I need to get the word counts up and the projects into your hands faster. We’ll see how it goes!

I’d love to hear what your plans are for 2022!

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For the past several years, I’ve been doing annual reviews of my life and work, based on the format from Chris Guillebeau’s wonderful Annual Review on his blog, The Art of Non-Conformity. Chris’s system is exceptionally detailed, more so than I really need, but the gist is there. It’s a great system for those of us who are self-employed and want to do an assessment of our work for the year. Here’s the link to the actual post. Go on over there and take a read. I’ll wait. 

And if you're interested, here are the links to my previous annual reviews for 2009 (Too Damn Much), 2010 (Evolution), 2011 (Depth), 2012 (Simplicity), 2013 (Pencil), 2014 (Making Do), 2015 (No), 2016, (Lent), 2017 (Flow), 2018 (Joy), 2019 (Enough), and 2020 (Content).