Heroic Leigh

Social media is a very popular topic these days. Especially the uses it has in marketing and PR. One thing the previous generation has had to learn is to share more. The days of everything being done behind closed doors are coming to an end. People want to know what’s happening in the organizations they have invested in. Even the Freedom of Information Act shows this, in that people can now inquire into most everything done by the leaders of the US.

For the most part, this is a good thing. However, because of this change, along with the internet so readily connecting everyone, many kids are growing up with the belief that they can (and maybe should) share everything with everyone. The internet allows everyone to be in the spotlight for a moment or two and most people love attention, so it leads to everyone taking part. Blogs, videos, pictures, storefronts. Everyone is putting themselves out there for all to see (and judge).

While a certain amount of sharing can be good for mental health and personal relationships; too much can be detrimental to business relationships.

If you are just getting out of high school or college, this is very important to consider as you begin seeking a job. If you Google yourself, what do you find? Anything embarrassing? Anything that may sour a potential employer’s opinion of you? If so you may want to spend some time cleaning up your online presence.

Facebook’s new privacy controls can be a great tool. You can keep your photos, but only share them with specific people. This is a great way to keep those party photos and share them without compromising your professional image.

A good rule of thumb to follow is this: what would your grandmother think if she saw it? If you wouldn’t share it with her, you probably don’t want to risk a potential employer seeing it.

Sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and personal blogs or portfolios can go a long way in helping you land the job of your dreams. At the same time, they could also kill your chances.

Do you over share? What can you do to fix it? I’ll be the first to admit that I can be guilty of it, but I am trying to better myself.

Being yourself is a difficult thing. However, it is very important; both for social and mental health. I pride myself on having learned this early on, but in my desire to please people, I often slip on applying it in day-to-day life.

In popular media, it is common to see parents tell their children to “just be [themselves],” but the truth of it is that this is an ideal. My mother once told me that I should change myself to make friends. Smartly, I informed her that anyone who could not accept me for who I am was not worth my time.

Unfortunately, actually putting this into practice has taken a good number of years. Humans are a social creature. We don’t just crave contact with others; we need it. So sometimes, rather than putting in the time and effort to find worthwhile people, we will change small things to adapt to others.

Those small things eventually add up and can trouble not only your valid and healthy relationships, but also affect your self-esteem. My own has become very low at times. I have taught myself to near always appear confident (almost to the point of seeming egotistical), but in those quiet moments alone, I tend to over-think and feel.

So for the new year, I have decided I need to put myself first more. Not to the point of being completely self-centered, but to improve my mental health and my interactions with others.

I want a drama-free life. I know this will involve cutting a few people out, or at least cutting back on interactions with them. This makes me sad, but it’s a co-dependency and nearly abusive to my psyche.

No longer will I stand for people disrespecting me. Especially in my own home. I need to stand up for myself more, rather than putting my needs to the side just to appease others.

That’s my plan for this new decade. To think of myself a little more. To be a little selfish sometimes. We all deserve to be happy. If your friends truly care, they’ll support you in such a venture. Good interactions are worth so much more than many bad ones. Quality over quantity.

Since NaNoWriMo wrapped up, I’ve found myself struggling to put the proverbial pen to the proverbial page. I feel like a terrible person for the writing projects that have fallen apart on me, but it is a learning lesson. I’ve known many people to hit this point after the frenzy of NaNoWriMo. Now I know for the future.

A couple of days until Christmas and the spirit has not really hit me this year. I did some decorating around the house, but that’s largely due to my love of creating things to put up in our house. Most years I resist the Christmas spirit and it locks me into its grasp nonetheless. This year I was open to it, but it never came. The only explanation I have is perhaps working throughout the holidays is what did it.

Last night we had a few good friends over for a new Christmas tradition: PHaGE. Power Hour and Gift Exchange. You need six people for it to work out perfectly. Everyone brings two gifts for everyone else and during Power Hour (which must be done with Christmas music!), everyone takes turns opening gifts. It balances out to a gift every minute. This is good for people who can’t always handle a full power hour, as every five minutes they get to skip a shot to open a gift.

As we’re all struggling monetarily, we kept a low threshold for gifts (Dollar Store and handmade gifts were recommended) as really, the ultimate point of the party was to simply enjoy being able to open gifts and watch others open gifts. It was a great success, I feel (and the others have agreed!).

I bought some silly little things for people at the “five and dime” and made little clay creatures. I forgot to photograph them, but I’ll nab a picture of at least the husband’s, as it’s still hung upon the tree. (He commented: “I looked at those every day for a week and could not even imagine what you were doing!” re: pre-painted creatures)

The gifts I received:

The poster was one my husband says he’s seen a number of times at the record shop we go to. The inspiration for it is the collection of cranes in the corner of our living room. We’ll get a frame for the poster (likely next Tuesday or Wednesday) and hang it near the cranes. It can be our little Japanese-inspired corner.

My parents got us a few things as well. After telling them that the husband likes westerns, they got him the special edition set for How the West Was Won. I got some scrapbooking paper (not that I do any scrapbooking, but it works for so many things!) and a calendar. We also got some new pots and pans. Hooray!

Now that I am facing the new year… I want to set some goals for myself. Not resolutions, since we know those never work. Goals. I want to sit down and finish my NaNo novel, as well as edit it. They offer everyone who won a free proof copy: I want to take advantage of that! I also want to get a few good contracts for writing done by summer.

I’d add things like losing weight and the like, but I know that will never happen.

The Paper Place is doing an AMAZING contest that has me super excited. You can win more origami paper than you can shake a stick at.

Click the image above to go check it out!

I suppose my journey really began back towards the beginning of summer, when I began brainstorming over things like this blog and the online comic I wish to start. At the time, it was a lot of wishes and dreams, but it’s steadily been growing into more of a reality.

For years, I’ve encountered, seen, or read about people that had landed their dream job. How happy they were and how well everything had worked out. In all of those situations, they either didn’t know how it happened or it “all just fell into place.” So here I’ve been, waiting and hoping the same would happen to me, all the while going from job to job, hating the commute and the hours (I enjoy my current job, company, and coworkers: I hate the schedule).

Fortunately, I’m not very patient. I got tired of waiting for that door to open for me. Utilizing sites like Twitter, as well as people I know, I began networking. I thank the powers that be for the explosion of Social Media. In person, I can be shy and socially awkward, but online I’m able to shine through written word.

Honestly, I’m not sure I remember where it even started, but I soon found people like Miss Destructo, Trey Pennington, and “The Brand Builder“ (Olivier Blanchard). Things have been growing from there and even now, the only person I’ll immediately follow regardless of other interest is someone from here in Greenville, SC. I like banding together with local people; I get better, quicker updates on what’s going on (especially with Amy Wood there!) than I would otherwise.

It was thanks to this that I found the Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson Technology Council (GSATC) and Linking the Upstate. Both of these groups are doing amazing things in enabling people in the region to connect with one another. I’m meeting people that I otherwise would have never had a chance to and learning so much.

This past Thursday I was given the unique opportunity to “tweetcast” a bootcamp run by Keith Lescher (and hosted by Linking the Upstate at the lovely Loom in Simpsonville, SC) called Prospect & Flourish. Keith is an intelligent and charismatic man. He put networking in such a way that even someone like me who has always struggled with it can understand and utilize.

Thanks to these two groups and attending things like the bootcamp, I have begun to build my network of contacts. It’s exciting and daunting at the same time. Because it’s just beginning as a career, I still have to keep my day job, so I foresee a lot of hard work ahead. I will be tired, overworked, and I imagine have a number of days where I feel like I’ve got the world on my shoulders. I feel optimistic, however, that it will be worth it.

The whole experience has been enlightening on so many levels. It’s taught me the benefits of hard work and dedication. True dedication. I feel invigorated, if often exhausted from everything.

So if you have a dream: go for it. Even if it seems almost impossible, it’s worth trying. If you fail, you won’t be any worse off.

Let’s get something straight: I have only “won” NaNo once. Some may think that this doesn’t qualify me to provide advise. Personally, I think that it makes me even more qualified. I know what doesn’t work.

Remember, NaNoWriMo breaks everything you’ve ever been taught in that quantity is better than quality. Despite what naysayers might tell you (“They’re promoting crappy writing!”), this is a good thing. Most of us have a very strong internal editor that causes us to stress and fret and worry over every little detail, so we get caught up in a chapter, a paragraph, a sentence, or even a word. NaNo teaches you better than your third grade teacher to do a rough draft. That’s it. We’re not expecting you to wake up on December 1st and start submitting to publishers. Write that first draft, then sit back and take your time making it perfect.

If you make mistakes? Leave them be. Unless it’s right where you’re at, it’s better left for editing. If you go back too much, you risk getting caught up in fixing all of your mistakes and lose precious writing time. Some things are simple: a basic find+fix to change Bob to George is easy, but if your talking walrus suddenly goes from speaking French to Tagalog, you might want to wait.

Take notes as you go along. This will help avoid having to go back and change things. My favorite program for NaNo, Q10 has this wonderful feature for notes. You type ‘..’ on a new line and follow it up with the note you need to provide. Perhaps something like a plot thread you need to pick up later, or a special event/date that was mentioned. Later on, you can open up your notes and view them all in one listing. And it doesn’t count in your word count, so you won’t be getting “false numbers” as it were.

It really helps you notate something and keep going, without having to stop and find a pen that works.

If you get 20,000 words in and realize you hate your story or you’ve written yourself into a corner, don’t give up. Start writing at a different point, or write from another character’s point of view… Heck, just cause a random deus ex machina to keep it going. I can’t tell you how much I regret scrapping things during the first few years. I would get 25,000 words in on week 2 and give up. Starting over, let me tell you, is next to impossible. Instead of 2,000 words a day, you end up trying to write 4,000 or more. It’s stressful and disappointing.

Speaking of stress? Don’t. NaNo is meant to be for fun. No one (except yourself) is expecting you to cross that finish line. They’d love it if you did and they’ll cheer for you the whole way, but if you have to give in on November 28th because work made you crazy, or your child got sick? No one’s going to blame you for it. In fact, from my experience, other wrimos will support you all the more for at least trying in the midst of all that insanity!

Carry a notebook. You never know when inspiration will hit and it sucks to be unable to take advantage of it. Typing up pages of handwritten notes may be unappealing, but it’s worth it in the long wrong if it means keeping up with ideas and word count. If you don’t like a large notebook, check out Moleskine for a hardy, nice notebook (my husband and I swear by them) or the small, flip-notebooks that B&N sells now. Those have metal cases and a pen included. They are a bit pricey, though, so beware.

Attend write-ins! From 2001-2003, I was living in Maryland, where they did not have a ML. This meant no write-ins and for me? No novel. From 2004-2006, I attended a few write-ins, but not enough. I generally got a lot of writing done at them and the camaraderie of fellow wrimos made the experience all the more enjoyable. The first time I “won” NaNo was in 2007, when I was going to as many write-ins as I could. It helped so much and I met a lot of really great people.

Things that have helped me:

• Q10: I know I mentioned this already, but I want to talk more on it. Q10 is, in their own words: “a powerful, but simple text editor.” It operates full-screen (so no distractions!) and is highly customizable. You can keep a total word count running, as well as a word count for the current session (good for word wars!). I also like being able to modify the background and foreground (text) colors, because black-on-white hurts my eyes after a while. Plus, I really love the typewriter sound it has.
• Music: Music is the soundtrack to my life, so why not my novel, too? I have a playlist just for writing at home. On the go, I use Pandora, which goes from good to amazing once you’ve created a few stations and “trained” them.
• Word Goals: I know a lot of people who set a goal to write 2, or 3 hours a day for NaNo. If this works for you, great. If not, try setting a word goal instead. 1,667 words a day will get you to 50k by November 30th. With that in mind, I set a goal of 2,000 a day. If I pass that, great, but if I miss a few one day, I can still be a bit ahead. This also means if I write a lot in a notebook while out at dinner, I’m not “wasting” time by typing it up later on.

Seriously, though. Have fun. Write a book, write a series of short stories, write some Winnie the Pooh fanfiction. The sky’s the limit. Some people even write non-fiction for NaNo. The goal here is to write and have fun doing it.

For years, I have doubted my ability to work from home. Home was always a sanctuary. A place to play, relax, and sleep. Being something of a workaholic, I knew it would hold too many distractions. Even when I was working for Clear Channel and would have to handle server emergencies from home, I struggled with it. Too many distractions to be had.

However, since I started trying to ensure that wherever I lived I would have my own office/workspace; working from home has become a lot easier. Now, especially, I find it vital as I try to launch my career as a freelance writer and get a book series not only written, but published.

The blue gift bag serves as a good place for my winter weather accessories.

When creating a workspace, you need to understand that distractions will happen. It’s silly (and unrealistic) to think that you can work for long periods of time without getting distracted even once. Yes, there are people out there who manage it, but they are few and far between. I need a distraction from time to time, so my workspace also has my bookshelves, a television, and video games. Amusingly enough, with the distractions so easily at hand, I find myself going after them less. It plays off of that tendency I have to want what I can’t have.

Bookshelves are good for organizing and showing off smaller knicknacks.

While my workspace isn’t yet perfect, it works. I want a new desk (preferably a corner setup) so that I can give my husband his desk back. I need another bookshelf. I also need more storage so that I don’t simply have a stack of bins.

The lanterns give a good ambient light in the evenings.

I also make sure to keep the room clean and tidy up at least once a week. This helps me immensely. I can handle a messy bedroom or even a kitchen, but I can’t work properly in a messy office. If you want ideas or more on the concept of a clean workspace, check out Unclutterer. They have a wonderful website and often showcase good workspaces and good products to help organize.

Those plastic bins found at Walmart and Target are especially convenient. They come in a number of sizes and their narrow footprint, low cost, and wheels make them excellent for those of us who are of a crafty persuasion. The one I have is used for my knitting and jewelery-making supplies.

Good lighting and decor are also key. You don’t want too much decor that your walls become cluttered and distracting, but you want to enjoy being in your office. Now that I’ve begun putting up some pictures and some of my husband’s paintings, I enjoy being in the room even more. It’s a comfortable place to hang out and work.

Casper models the couch.

What’s your workspace? What have you found that helps your creativity and organization?

I’ve always been a bit of a haphazard writer. I just leap right in and damn with the planning or note-taking. I’ll go back and fix inconsistencies later! I also tend to edit on the fly as well. But judging by the fact that I’ve only ever finished one book (that will never see the light of day if I can help it), this method has not worked for me. I imagine it does for some, but when I sat down to edit that novel and found glaring issues in timeline and plot, I decided it just wouldn’t work. It worked to prove that I do have the ability to finish a book, but it won’t do for something I do want to publish someday.

As such, I’m trying a different method now. I’m fleshing out plot, back story, regional information, character bios, and even (*gasp*) timelines. It was initially an experiment (and honestly a way to procrastinate while still feeling productive), but it’s turned out to be a very successful one. I have a ton of information and a better idea of how I want my story to go and what will happen than I ever have. I now have a clear goal and a kind of map on how to get there, instead of just diving in headfirst.

That method usually nets me anywhere from 2 to 5 chapters before I run into problems and give up. So many stories have been left unfinished because of this exact issue. After many nights of writing, I would end up staring at a flashing cursor, wondering where to go next and having no clue. I would walk away to take a break, but that frustration would lead to me never coming back.

Fortunately, here I am with a clear goal in mind and a detailed itinerary to get me there. I will write the series that I have been plotting out for approximately 10 years now. Today I sat down and consolidated all my notes from the past decade and as I look over it, I know I’m on to something. Not only do I have the information I need for a novel- I have the information for a trilogy.

Most exciting (to me, at least) is that it’s not just a trilogy. I have an entire world planned out and so many stories to tell. Initially, however, it’s just a trilogy. We’ll see how that goes. I have no doubts that I can get this written and published. It’s an odd sense to feel such pride and accomplishment when I don’t yet have something to show for it. Even so, I feel it and it’s a good feeling.

I won’t start the actual writing yet. I need to prepare for NaNoWriMo as well and I won’t be writing anything for the trilogy for NaNo. Instead, I will be writing a back story. Something that remains within the world and will help with my story. Something that may be worthwhile in the end.

This was a very self-serving post, but a blog — by its very nature — is self-serving.

Current pic of me

Welcome to Heroic-Leigh.com (or TwilightDreams.net for the old school). The rebirth of my personal website has been long overdue and I’m immensely happy to be able to return to a web presence beyond that I have on various social media websites (such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook).

The primary intent of this website is to serve as my presence while I get myself properly into the world of writing. I feel it can best serve a person if they have someplace to point prospective clients, as well as a place to post samples and work they wish to share. This will be my place.

Why Heroic Leigh?

Well, I wanted a name that was catchy and would keep peoples’ attention. The variations of ‘Leigh Green’ in a domain were all taken and I felt that perverting it too much would lose me amongst the rest. A personal motto of mine (both for the truth it speaks and the amusement it brings) has for a long while been, I’m like a superhero with no powers or motivation. And at one time, I was going to make my website with a superhero theme. While I’ve stepped away from that design idea, I’ve kept the general concept.

Heroic Leigh. It rolls off the tongue and it (I hope) inspires thoughts of my capabilities and what I can promise you in my work. While I’m using a somewhat standard template right now, I do have intentions upon hiring someone to give me something more custom fit in the future. I just didn’t wish to procrastinate and make excuses any longer.

Who am I?

Attempting to sum up who I am in a single post would be a daunting task, so I won’t. Who I am as it relates to this website and you is a writer. A freelance writer at that. While most of my experience is in technical writing, I am also available to ghost write, author ebooks, and other variations of creative (fiction and non-fiction) writing that you may need.

My graphical skills are adequate for what would be needed and while I am brushing up on them to enhance my portfolio, they’re not what I ultimately intend to market in myself. I am a writer, plain and simple. It’s what I do, it’s what I love, and it’s what I intend to make a living doing.

My business card

If what you need is someone who has a good grasp of the English language and a vast imagination, then here I am, ready and waiting. Check out the Contact page to get further information on how you can reach me.

Statement of intent:

And lately, I just want to make something clear. This blog isn’t just to market myself out to potential clients. It’s also to share my thoughts, amusements, and creativity with the world around me. If the internet isn’t able to provide me a way to share with everyone who passes my way in this digital universe, why even bother?

It might be insightful, it might be genius, or it might be plain silly. I understand that not everyone will like everything I share, but that isn’t the point. The point is to make my place and mark in this world.