Staying Productive

I'm reading three books right now -- so, to start, the two books that I won't talk about here (as I doubt they really interest many blog visitors) are The Bone Labyrinth by James Rollins and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Force and Motion by Jeffrey Lang.  Both are good so far. :)

The third book is Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus & Sharpen Your Creative Mind, edited by Jocelyn K. Glei.

It's a short, quick read.  I sat down with it and ended up reading half of it on the first day.  The book compiles short essays from leading thinkers on the areas of productivity and creativity.

While many of the essays focus on singular topics that often don't really impact me, there are little nuggets of useful information to be gleaned from almost every essay.

The first two sections (the ones I've read) are entitled "Building a Rock-Solid Routine" and "Finding Focus in a Distracted World," both of which are pretty self-explanatory from the section titles.  I've started the next section, "Taming Your Tools," which is about using email, social media, and computers as tools, rather than feeling obligated to connect with them 24/7 to the detriment of our health, productivity, and creativity.  The next section, which I'm looking forward to the most, is "Sharpening Your Creative Mind."

This book is meant primarily for people who are in a creative profession -- but that can be an "artsy" profession like writing or painting, or it could even be a generic business profession that involves creative thinking (like a marketing coordinator, CEO, or social media managers).

This book was handed to me (by my mom) at an interesting time.  I'm struggling to remain productive.  Like with any profession, the "business-y" side of things has taken over.  I write when I can, but that's in between blogging (here and on my own blog), managing Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, starting up an erotica and erotic romance publisher, hosting blog tours, coordinating author interviews (of authors who want to be featured on my blog), and more.  And that's on top of a full-time day job, a relationship, and something resembling a social life with family and friends.

By the time I'm ready to write, I'm either exhausted or out of time.

I had a super productive weekend earlier this month, where I wrote over 11K words in two days.  However, I haven't written a single word since then.  And that 11K finished off a novella, but I still haven't sent it to my editor, who's waiting for it.

I'm in a period where I feel a little overwhelmed with the writing and business choices I've made.  I've got three erotica pen names, another pen name I'm trying to build in a different genre, and I'm trying to start a publishing business, while working at a full-time job.  Oh, and I'm also still trying to learn the violin and, for a while, I was practicing for 30-60 minutes per day.  (But I haven't touched it in a week now.)

I know it's just a matter of sorting my various tasks into routines and organizing my time better.  I've already figured out that Monday to Wednesday, going to a coffee shop before I go to my day-job is the best time to be productive.  (By Thursday, my morning productivity runs out, and Friday I start earlier and don't have time for a coffee shop.)  I'm there right now, hammering away at this post -- something I wouldn't be able to do at home with my super-cuddly cats that demand attention in the morning.

With yesterday morning dedicated to start-up-publisher-business work and this morning dedicated to writing this post, I'm hoping that tomorrow I'll finally get cracking on the next erotica piece I need to write.  Even then, that's one hour this week.  Not enough time.  I've made a recent decision to reduce/limit social engagements until I can get my routine back in order.  Once that's done, I can work my social life back into my routine.

A lot of this book -- did we all forget this was actually a post about what I was reading? I know I did... oops! -- focusses on making choices to strengthen your creativity and productivity.  One of the nuggets of wisdom I picked up was that creative work should be the first thing you do in the day, which justifies me spending money on a coffee and cookie three times a week at this coffee shop.  If I don't do it in the morning, then I'm not likely to do it in the evening.  And in the section on taming tools, I'm picking up some useful information that I'm hoping will allow me to structure my new publishing business in such a way that I'm not inundated with emails and work -- rather, I can make email and the systems work for me.

Hmm... I just noticed there are two sequels to this book that focus on building a career and building a business.  Based on the strength of this first book, I'll definitely be picking up the sequels (and they might be featured on the next "What I'm Reading" post).



Cameron D. James is a writer of gay erotica and M/M erotic romance; his latest release is Seduced by My Best Friend’s Dad (co-written with Sandra Claire). He lives in Canada, is always crushing on Starbucks baristas, and has two rescue cats. To learn more about Cameron, visit http://www.camerondjames.com.

From No Ideas to Too Many Ideas

Back when I was an unpublished writer, I struggled to come up with ideas. I wrote a sci-fi novel and put it aside, then had a spark of an idea that led to my first erotic romance novel, Autumn Fire. After that sci-fi novel and Autumn Fire, I felt I was out of ideas.

Eventually, I came up with an idea that led to my free short story, Go Deep, and another idea that led to my second erotic romance novel, Silent Hearts. But once those were written and published, I was fresh out of ideas again.

Some time after that, I’m not exactly sure when, the ideas started to flow. But in order for them to flow, I needed a change in my mindset. Up to that point, I’d been thinking of writing as more of an art, something that requires creative vision, intricate plotting, fully realized characters, and a gripping narrative. And, back then, as a relatively inexperienced author, I struggled to write well. (Autumn Fire and Silent Hearts are in desperate need of a rewrite once my contract with my publisher expires.)

But after having written a few things and slowly changing my perspective, the ideas began to flow easier. While writing is and always will be an art, I began to think of it more as a business. In a business, you can’t sit around and wait for ideas to come to you — so I forced myself to become much more proactive in thinking up story ideas. Plus, with having more writing under my belt (and with extensive editing), the process of writing became easier.

That presented me with a new problem — I had far too many ideas, and a lot of them didn’t fit under the “brand” I’d established for Cameron D. James. Under this pen name, I tend to do more narrative-focussed erotica with a touch of romance, whereas some of my story ideas were of the “wham-bam-thank-you-sir” variety with no romance and minimal narrative. Plus, as a gay man, I had this absolutely bizarre curiosity to write straight erotica, which obviously wouldn’t fit under this pen name.

So that led to the creation of a new pen name, one that focussed on straight erotica short stories, but also including some gay erotica short stories (but written from a more straight point of view than what I do with Cameron). After a few months, I was left with a problem — I had some story ideas that didn’t fit Cameron’s brand, nor did they fit the brand I established for the new pen name… so I created a third pen name. This new pen name was explicitly gay and explicitly taboo — it used the same short story formula of my second pen name, but the stories were far dirtier than anything I’d written before and the writing was unapologetically gay.

At this time last year, I had, I think, ten stories published (some were short novels and others were short stories), and that had taken about two years to complete. Now, one year later, I’m sitting at about fifty titles.

Over the past several years, prior to 2015, I’d written maybe 100,000 words per year. It’s a decent output.  In 2015, with the huge bump in productivity, I wrote just over 367,000 words. (About 111,000 of that was my sci-fi novel that I had written years ago — I rewrote it in 2015.  So that means about 256,000 words were smut, and most of that happened in the latter half of 2015.)

Now that 2016 has come around, I have a new problem, although I hesitate to actually label it as a “problem.” I literally have too many ideas floating around in my head. For my Cameron D. James pen name, I have the next three short novels planned out, plus ideas for half a dozen short stories. For my second pen name, the one that does some straight stuff, I have the next ten short stories lined up and have plans for about thirty more. And for my third pen name, the unapologetically gay one, I have maybe the next fifteen planned out.  Oh, and with my sci-fi novel that I’m working on — if I sell it or self-publish it, then I have the next four sequels loosely sketched out… and I’ve got a couple James Rollins-style thrillers rolling around in the back of my head.

I literally have too much going on in my cranium. My writing schedule lately has been about a week and a half on pen name #2 (which is how long it takes me to write a short story lately), a week and a half on pen name #3 (to write another story), and then a week or two on my Cameron D. James pen name. I’m presently working on a short novel and am slowly making my way through it.

My writing productivity used to be much higher. I think I’ve burned out a little bit, as in the fall and winter I was averaging about a story and a half every week, so I’ve slowed down quite a bit. Also, as mentioned several weeks back here on OGAG, I’m in the process of starting up an erotica and erotic romance publishing company — and the amount of set-up and work that goes into this thing before we even open ourselves up to submissions has been overwhelming at times. (It’s part of a larger book services company I’ve started with a friend, so there are a number of other aspects to the business to set up, which is part of the problem.) When-slash-if the business takes off such that I can quit my day job, I expect my writing productivity to spike again.

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be a writer with this amount of productivity and suffering from an overwhelming number of ideas. Actually, never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be writing about people having sex. I can thank being burned out for that — I was in the thick of working on my masters degree and editing my sci-fi novel and I needed a break or I was going to drive myself crazy… so I wrote about sex. And writing about sex, especially with this output I’ve got going, has made me a far stronger writer than I ever thought I could be. This path into erotica writing was the best choice I ever made.

I always thought I’d be one of those authors that has a sci-fi trilogy and then disappears because he has nothing else to write. I thought I’d have my magnum opus and that would be it. I was so wrong.



Cameron D. James is a writer of gay erotica and M/M erotic romance; his latest release is Seduced by My Best Friend’s Dad (co-written with Sandra Claire). He lives in Canada, is always crushing on Starbucks baristas, and has two rescue cats. To learn more about Cameron, visit http://www.camerondjames.com.