Showing posts with label indesign. Show all posts
Showing posts with label indesign. Show all posts

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Millions of things to do so little time

Pretty sure I forgot to post a monkey this week.
I've not blogged in a couple days because I've been so scattered going this way and that way, I've not been able to focus on one task at a time. Here's what I've needed/wanted to do the last few days.

  • Edit a 2k12 video
  • Study and play with Adobe Creative Cloud
  • Consolidate my bills
  • Write book reviews
  • Look for some contract work to make some extra money
  • Practice my new Photoshop and InDesign skills
  • Work on my rewrite
  • Work on gathering more agents to query
  • Clean my house
  • Mow my lawn
  • Weed my gardens
  • Spray my blackberry bushes
  • Pick up the box of books I ordered
  • Clean out my inbox
  • Probably some other crap I'm not remembering.

Instead of any of those things, this is what I worked on last night:




And just saw someone gave me a dislike!! >:(
Oh well. Chaos isn't for everyone.

Okay, I'm going to try to maybe do one of those things *points above*. Enjoy your Thursday night.

Monday, August 6, 2012

Always Learning

If there is one thing I always try to do, it's to keep educating myself on things that interest me. These things will normally help me in my day job and my writing life.

This week for instance, I'm taking a two day class. One day I'm doing Photoshop, one day InDesign. If you're at all familiar with those programs, you'll know  they're from Adobe and they can be quite complicated. The classes are actually  meant to be five days in all, but since I know a bit about both, I've compressed them into two. The place I take them gives you good support after the fact, DVD, web stuff, books, 6 months of access to the videos. So I figured it would be cool.

I'm really trying to learn design and web stuff for my work to make their print ads and website look awesome. It's a slow process, but I think I'm doing a good job.

I do the same with my job as an author. And truly, many of these courses I take for my day job I can apply to my writing job as well. I like to create some of my own designs. I've done (and am currently redoing) my Never Eighteen site for instance.

But it doesn't stop there.

The business of writing is a learning process.

Number one, we can always become better. It's one of the pieces of advice I always give. Always strive to be better. We will never be perfect so there is always room for improvement.

Learn to thicken your skin. You'll need it.

I'd tell you more, but I've already said it at Writer's Digest. Chuck Sambuchino was kind enought to host me on his Guide to Literary Agents. Find out about the Seven Things I've Learned So Far.

Even though I know I've learned a lot along the way, and I continue to educate myself, I still have a long way to go.

My Dad. He's awesome.

John Messina, Personal Injury Attorney

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