Remabulous

nanowrimo has taken my ability to type

many apologies for the continued silence on remabulous, here. my attention has admittedly been elsewhere. between trying to churn out a novel, some exciting new developments for remabulous, and a prolific e-mail campaign with a certain fellow from my past, my fingers cry for mercy whenever i think of typing posts here.

but november will soon be over. in the meantime, things to be excited about:

• my new system that lets people book sessions online on their own time. i highly recommend this to entrepreneurs without staff who offer services. (no more back and forth e-mails trying to find a time that works for both of you.) and the basic package is free! check out gen book here.
• remabulous has a real live ad! for those of you who love bust magazine like i do, check out the fabulous holiday edition and notice the remabulous ad in the back section. my designer, suzie mckig, is my hero and did such a great job with the ad. there will also be a button on the website, so check us out!
• am also very happy to report that my creative coma appears to be ending. several of my photographs will appear in a group show in mar vista at peach tree pottery's holiday show this december! please join me at the opening on december 1st 3-7 pm at peach tree, which is on boise off of venice in mar vista.
• being featured on the blog "the millions." thanks much to my writing teacher, edan lepucki, for including me in her piece about nanowrimo.

other than that, i am spent. anyone else having trouble with the time change this year? i often find myself wanting to crawl into bed by about 9pm. not that i am such a night owl anymore, but this is ridiculous.

am off to boston tomorrow for thanksgiving. i look forward to a change of scene and will report more from there, as the typing fingers allow.

happy thanksgiving to all!

nanowrimo has taken all my word count

i have been submerged, for the last ten days on and off, in nanowrimo. a crazed quest to write a novel in one month, 1667 words a day. i was ahead in the beginning, now i am behind. but as always, i am delighted to be in the process. here are the top ten character shifts you can expect to undergo while participating in nanowrimo:

cnn's thoughts on home office write-offs

Milda was kind enough to send me another article from cnn, this one highlighting tax write-offs for those who work from home.

I have discovered that there is a lot to be written off, but as the article states, it is very important to be clear what you are writing off and why. make notes on receipts- who you ate with for business meals and what you talked about, for example. it is easy to do as you go, but a nightmare to do at the end. i also learned from an accountant recently that the IRS can figure out the age of ink. alarming, but kind of cool in a csi way, when you think about it.

the moral: get a tax person. i have a great one, stacey winkler, if anyone is looking. she works with people anywhere in the country, so non-californians may contact her as well. also, know that tax law is far more interpretive and flexible than you realize. i had never thought of it as a creative pursuit until i began talking about it with stacey and with conscious bookkeeping. i had hoped there were simple yes/no rules on deduction and so on, but there aren't. you need to be able to back up your choices. while this is nice, in that we get to feel like adults, it is scary in that we need to act like them: having good records and not just a paper bag of slips.

save yourself the agony and get a tax person/accountant now. and read the cnn article for inspiration.

if you have everything clarified, i swear bookkeeping is fun- i am delighted to be reconciling my accounts today, buoyed by the excitement of a conscious bookkeeping weekend last weekend. you can be too...

ps: nanowrimo word count: 2005 words pre-cafe-write-in this afternoon. keep on going everybody!

the joy of a ridiculous goal...

november has become my favorite month of the year. why? because a goodly number of crazy people- a number that gets more goodly every year, especially thanks to my preaching- undertake the unthinkable: 50,000 words. one month. a novel. brilliant.

last year was my first go, thanks to milda, who told me about it just days before. possibly only two days before. i was new to l.a., lost, and unemployed. the job market was not promising and i still wanted to be part of it. the terrible novel i wrote that year was a life-altering event. "if i can write a terrible novel," i thought, "i might be able to do anything."

if there is a goal you are scared of and putting off for later, sign up for nanowrimo. right now. it's still the first day. write 1667 words of a novel. repeat tomorrow and every day for the rest of the month. then you see how scared you are of that goal once you've got a draft of a book in your hand.

you'll see.

image: vickykc via flickr, possibly the most prepared nanowrimoer i have ever seen. congrats on the amazing set-up.

i'm off to plow ahead. happy noveling!

repotting: a new life model?

in my internet wanderings, i discovered yet another business book- this seems to be a favorite topic of mine... it is called repotting: 10 steps for redesigning your life. i know nothing more about this book than the title and that it is out novemeber 2, but i love it already as an idea. watching my mentor and teacher, bari tessler, work her magic in a workshop and several lectures this past weekend, i think i am moving towards a new pot.

this may be the way entrepreneurs need to think about expanding their business.