#RightWhereIAm ~ Why this matters

April 3, 2017

#RightWhereIAm ~ Why this matters

This Month’s Writing Update

Thank you for being here with me. Know it means a lot that you’re taking the time to read this email.

I’ve not shared this with anyone yet but it’s particularly exciting to announce that on Saturday morning, at 6:30 a.m., I wrapped up my #ShittyFirstDraft of my 43 chapter summaries. I woke up before 4:00 a.m. to get it done so I could send it to my professor at The Fifth Semester and get her feedback before our trip to New York City next month.

It stands at 12,455 and 53 pages in length. For those who are wondering, it took me approximately 25 hours to write and do a first round of edits on those chapters. I have no idea if that’s fast or slow or what. I just know that it felt like a long time to me.

I’ve also been thinking a lot this month about why this book matters so much to me and wondering if going the memoir route is a good idea. I’ve also been thinking a lot about what it means to feel like I belong here (and “here” can be here in my house, Chicago, the United States). And if not here, where?

#RightWhereIAm

I don’t know if Chicago will be my forever home or not. But as I was writing my chapter summaries, I paused and thought to myself, I’m pretty happy #RightWhereIAm for right now. I loved that idea – right where I am. It’s a double entendre and so fitting that I made it my tentative book title. I created the hashtag to remind me if I post anything on social media that it’s ok to feel good about where I am right now. It may not be where I want to be later in life, but it’s ok for right now. We’ll see where the future takes us.

If you’re so inclined, use the hashtag. I’d love to see where you are right now!

Time Management

Time is at a premium for most of us and while this isn’t an article on time management, per se, it is about how to be a better organizer (which, for me, means less wasted time trying to find stuff). Check it out here. I love the idea of having a junk drawer! I’m still working on dialing down the visual diet and possibly imposing a digital diet.

Podcasts

I’ve been listening to podcasts now for several months and really diggin’ them. One recent find, through someone who’d reached out to me on Twitter because she’d seen an article I’d written about writing programs to help women and girls find their voice, is Women Transcend. Although she only has about a dozen segments, I binged-listened to all of them this week and I feel like it’s a nice continuation to my Women’s Studies classes from my college days.

I’ve been mining my friends to learn which podcasts they love so I can add more to my playlist. I’d love to hear your favorites! Please email me to let me know what you tune into regularly.

Know of anyone who'd like to receive these kinds of emails? Please forward this one to them or encourage them to sign up for the e-newsletter here. The next e-newsletter will reveal the winner of the book giveaway so stay tuned. If you're a subscriber of the newsletter, you're automatically entered. Make sure to open the email so you can see if you're the winner!
Until next time, 

~Megy

PS - please don't forget to share your favorite podcasts with me! I'm going to be writing a blog post with my favorites and would love to include yours.

Announcing a New Chapter on Spring Equinox

Many people like to make resolutions on New Year's Day. I tend to think of a Word of the Year and focus on making that my goal. This year's word of the year, thirsty, has to do with me starting a new chapter in my life: author.

My son and I enjoying some quiet time at the Secret Garden in Larnaca, Cyprus, in August 2016.

Some of you may know that my family and I landed in the United States as refugees thanks to my American passport. It's a story I've been wanting to tell for decades but I never really figured out how to tell it. Then, as I sat listening to Ann Garvin speak at the 2016 Chicago Writers Conference about The Fifth Semester, a writing residency program that helps writers shape their book ideas, I had my "aha" moment. The next day I emailed Ann wanting to learn more. I knew I needed to do this program. Then I got cold feet.

I know Ann knew I was nervous so she reached out to check on me. I didn't have a fully-fleshed out book idea, I told her. She said don't worry. We're here to help you figure it out. I don't need to do it alone. That's when I booked it. I needed to write this book. Either as non-fiction or fiction, but I needed to write it.

The first part of the program would take place the first week of January, in Chicago. Thirsty became my word of the year because I wanted to quench my thirst and figure out some stuff that needed to be answered and this book would help me get those answers. I entered that Chicago loft in Logan Square and met my fellow writing comrades and roommates for the next four days where we'd be sequestered and focus solely on our book ideas. It was magical, cathartic and powerful. 

Over the next four months, we'll be working one-on-one with our professor/instructor. I'm working with Erin Celello, author of two novels and an Assistant Professor of Writing for the University of Wisconsin system. Erin has been an amazing professor. Knowing how challenging this book will be for me to write, she's been both empathic and encouraging. Her feedback on my book proposal draft has been nothing short of motivating. 

Right now I'm in the middle of writing out my chapter summaries and realizing I need to re-work some of my chapters. This is a much harder process than I initially thought since I'm basically outlining the book. Some parts don't make sense and some chapters could be removed. As I'm writing out the summaries, I'm remembering other details I've long since stored away in my memory bank and that's always fun to remember. 

The reason I'm starting to work on my blog is because I want to share my process with you and invite you to share feedback with me. For those who know me personally or professionally, what would you like to see in this book? What kinds of books do you read? 

Before I wrap up this post, I wanted to give a shout out to my husband, Matthew Krecun, who has been encouraging me to work on this book for more than a decade. He's been there for me for my entire adult life and without his encouragement, I don't think I'd ever have made this leap. And huge gratitude to my writing tribe: Kate Silver, Debbie Carlson, Cindy Kuzma, Kari Lyderson, Dawn Reiss, Kelly James, Claire Zulkey and Hilary Shenfeld. Finally, to Mare Swallow and the team at the Chicago Writers Conference for having Ann present at the conference last September.

Cheers, friends. Thank you for the positive encouragement so far. It's been nothing short of remarkable and I'm excited to share this journey with you.

~Megy

Setting and Meeting Goals: Hitting It Out of the Park

Earlier this year I mentioned that I worked with a business coach to help me fine-tune my goals for 2016. While I've always been very self-motivated, I felt that I needed an outside perspective to help me identify opportunities where I didn't necessarily see them anymore and figure out what I needed to set aside to make room for new opportunities.

Fast forward to almost the end of the year and I'm proud to say this was, by far, my most successful business year. Why? Because I focused.

Each year that I've worked, either for a corporation or running my own business, I've developed a business plan for myself. I cannot sit still. I feel like there is so much to do, see, and experience, that I want to go see, do and experience. I want to learn new things, challenge myself, and meet new people. I want to tinker with problems, brainstorm solutions, and figure out ways to make things better or get the word out about something neat or important. My problem wasn't that I wasn't good at what I was doing, it was that I wanted to do too much in a short amount of time. 

Andrea King Collier, my coach and friend, is a great listener and was able to hone in on this issue almost immediately. When I showed her my "goal" list in December, I'm pretty sure she thought I was nuts. We talked through each and every one of those goals and she reminded me that I didn't need to complete everything in one year and to choose my top five. 

TOP 5 GOALS

Once we determined my top 5 goals for 2016, and shelve the rest for 2017 or 2018, it feels like my plate was empty. How could I only focus on 5, I thought? I'd get so bored and quickly! But Andrea persisted. By just focusing on those 5, I'd be able to actually complete them and hit it out of the park. 

So whenever an opportunity for a new writing assignment came my way, or a new client wanted to work with me on marketing, communications or PR work, I went back to my 5 goals. Did this opportunity fit with any of those goals? If not, I declined the opportunity.

And, that, my friends, is how I ended up making this my best business year ever: by declining opportunities. Or, more accurately, the wrong opportunities.

2017 GOALS

I'm currently working on my goals for 2017 and while they're not quite yet finalized, my big goal for next year is to work on a book. It's been on my Goals List for years and I think I'm at a point in my life that I'm ready to embrace the project and process and see where it takes me. I'm going to be working with someone to help me through this process (because I strongly believe in surrounding myself with the best in the business and learn from them) and we begin in earnest the first week of January. Perfect.

As I look toward the last month of the year and wrapping up some client projects and writing assignments, I can't help but take a moment to think about all of the people who played a part in helping me get where I am today. I plan to reach out to them in December to thank them.

Sometimes this year feels like a blur because it went so fast, but it still felt great.

Did you meet the goals you set for yourself and your work this year? What do you feel you did well and what do you plan to do to improve in 2017? 

Commitment and Focus: 2016's Goals

Writing out my goals at the beginning of the year has allowed me to stay focused. Before I accept or consider a new client or project, I look back at my goals and ask whether working on this project will help me get closer to meeting my 2016 goals.

One of the things I committed myself to doing this year was to focus on my five “top goals”. We all talk about things we want to accomplish in addition to our regular commitments, whether it’s work with our clients, regular assignments from our editors or our involvement with the community. The reality is that we’re already busy so how do we gain the bandwidth to add yet another things to our already-overloaded “to do” list? We can’t – unless we plan for it and make time for it.

Last year was such a professionally and personally-rewarding year for me. I stretched, reached and proved to myself that I had what it took to make things happen. Things that I’d be working on for years finally seemed to fall into place. I don’t believe in luck. I believe that things happen when you plan for them. Maybe not immediately but eventually, when you work at it, they do.

In December, I decided to hire a business coach to help me synthesize and focus my goals for 2016. She helped me realize that I don’t need to do everything in 12 months. Rather than 9 goals, we pulled them back to 5 goals. The others would be pushed to the following year. Notice I didn’t abandon them – we just put them on the backburner (she calls it the parking lot) so we could focus on just 5 for this year.

Then she pushed me further and asked me to put together a timeline with action steps for each goal. What would I do this week, she asked, to push along each of my goals to fruition? Did I need to reach out to someone for more information? Did I need to read a media outlet in greater detail because I wanted to secure a byline in that outlet? Who might be able to help me achieve my goal? Did I need to attend a new conference to meet people who might be helpful in meeting my goal?

None of her ideas or prompts is revolutionary but having that out-of-my-circle feedback has been invaluable. My coach and I don’t have a professional or personal relationship outside of a network of female writers. I reached out to her because she’s planning a conference I’m seriously considering attending and she mentioned that if I needed help with my goals, she offers coaching services. I knew her work and respected her as a professional writer and I wanted to talk to someone who I admired and didn’t have any agenda outside of helping me hone my focus.

Since I don’t work in a traditional office, I have to find ways to grow outside of getting just receiving general feedback from clients or editors. I invest in myself through classes and professional conferences. A friend and I started a monthly writers accountability group. I’m very active in professional associations.

Through it all, though, I still wanted to talk to someone who didn’t know me or my work well and could be objective. Am I insane to think I could crack into any of my 13 “bucket list” publications? What do I need to think about and to my book proposal so it can shine and find the right publisher?

The Benefits of Outside Perspective

One of my goals for this year was to formalize my own marketing services. In addition to my now wildly-popular 52-Week Marketing Monday Checklist for Independent Retailers Subscription, I’m offering one-on-one coaching to small businesses interested in incorporating a robust marketing plan to their business plan. 

The idea behind this goal came about after several retailers asked me to help them craft their own marketing plan because it wasn’t financially feasible for them to hire a marketing and PR consultant like me.

Having an outside perspective isn’t just smart, it makes good business sense. Rather than constantly being “busy” doing things we feel we should be doing, working with someone outside of your daily grind helps them see what’s blocking you from moving ahead and also gives you a different perspective as well as ideas on what we can done better.

Now, every Sunday evening, I open my Passion Planner, review my week ahead and PLAN FOR IT with my goals in mind. I also schedule time on my planner to specifically work on my goals. I don’t work on all of my goals every day or even every week, but they follow me week by week so I can be reminded of them and I schedule things I can do to help push my goals in the forward direction.

How do you focus and commit to the goals you want to meet this year?

What Do You Want To Happen in 2016?

Many of us take time at the end of each calendar year to reflect on what we've accomplished this year, what we didn't and what we hope to do differently over the course of the next 12 months. I welcome the quiet time that often accompanies the end of December to reflect.

2015 was a good year for me. Personally and professionally. I worked with some really dynamic clients whose work I admired and respected and I saw my byline in new media outlets including the Chicago Tribune, Sierra magazine, Forbes, Fortune and The Atlantic's CityLab. More importantly, I was reported on stories that I felt really needed to be told, including why we're seeing adult diseases appearing more regularly among children and why homeless youth need storage lockers. 

Not all stories were so heavy. I really enjoyed pitching and writing a piece on the fine art gracing the tables at fine dining restaurants like Alinea or why Chicago's statues have suddenly found their voice. 

On the client side, I enjoyed working with producers at WTTW Chicago Tonight to share the story of a talented Chinese papercutting artist whose work now appears at Chicago's Field Museum and Minnesota Public Radio to discuss how the state is faring compared to other Midwest states when it comes to clean energy, among other placements.

Suffice to say, my success is sharing the stories of others, whether it's through my clients whose work and stories need to be told or through my writing for magazines, newspapers or online media outlets.

But all of this doesn't just happen. And most of us know this. Nonetheless, most of us are not willing to put in the work that needs to be done in advance to lay the groundwork for this success to happens. This is why I love the tools I use on a daily basis to keep my focused on the end goal. 

We all have our preferences and while I love technology, I found that I work best with my paper planner. I like to see things on paper. I love the visceral feeling of opening my planner at the beginning of my day, writing in it, crossing things out, highlighting what's important, tracking my progress and then shutting it at the end of the day.

Which leads me to my question: What Do You Want to Happen in 2016. Notice I didn't write want to see happen. Because we can't see it...we need to DO it. We need to make it happen and in order for something to happen, we need a plan. In order for IT to happen in 2016, you need to make it happen.

I'm working with a coach right now to help me make some of the things I've outlined for myself to happen in 2016 actually happen. She and I are going through each and every item with a fine tooth comb to see what NEEDS to get on paper as action steps so I can make happen what I want to happen in 2016.

I have lofty goals for 2016. She's made me cull back some of them, putting them on 2017's calendar. I realize she's right and while I don't want to give up on those goals, I see how in order for my 2016 goals to be successful, I can't spread myself too thin. I need room to breathe and be open to things that may come up that I didn't expect. I also want to enjoy the process.

So as we start the first work week of 2016 tomorrow, I want you to really ask yourself: 

What Do You Want to Happen in 2016?

And, more importantly, what are you doing every day, week and month to make that happen? 

Share your goals with me in the comments section. Let's hold ourselves accountable. 

Cheers to a beautiful and passion-filled 2016!

~Megy

Practice Makes You a Stronger Writer

Whether using a brush, microphone or computer, creative people know that the more we practice our craft, the stronger our work becomes. Photo taken by Megy Karydes. 

It's the beginning of another week and I'm feeling on fire. Ever feel like the groundwork you've been laying over several years are finally starting to come to fruition? 

Being a writer sometimes feels like a no-sum game. Except it isn't. And when things happen, we're tempted to say it's luck. Except it isn't. It's weeks, months, years  of solid work and commitment.

I often get asked by aspiring writers how to break it into this business. I'm honest with them and sometimes that's not what they want to hear.

Like any creative field, writing is hard. It's emotionally draining at times, often demanding and sometimes fruitless. But like any creative field, or anything we put our minds to, the more one practices her craft, the better she'll become. 

For some of us, writing is something we gain immense pleasure. I love reporting. I love writing about people and their stories, some of whom have never told their story to a writer. That's exciting and I'm humbled by how open some people are when I interview them.

This morning I filed a story with one of my "bucket-list" media outlets. Initial feedback from my editor was solid and she commented on my reporting work. That makes me happy because I worked hard on this piece and the reporting wasn't easy.