by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
One of the most difficult parts of being a parent writer is getting started.
Our kids demand so much time. When they’re young, they require supervision at all times, and they need things constantly, and they demand attention at every turn. The only break in sight, hopefully, is nap time (not so if you have twins).
[Tweet “Kids are not an easy undertaking. Neither is a career when you have kids.”]
But the question we have to ask ourselves is this: What is the world losing if I am not pursing my writing dream?
And another, like it: What is my family losing if I do not pursue my writing dream?
I’ll tell you what the answer looked like for me. I was losing, daily, pieces of myself. I found myself stuck in a job I hated, because I was under-appreciated and, frankly, taken advantage of, because it didn’t pay squat and it demanded much more than it gave. Besides all that, all I really wanted to be doing was creating my own creative content and pursuing a career that involved poetry and novels and essays on my own platforms. But we had five kids at the time, and it was impossible to find time to pursue anything at all. I hadn’t written in four years, and I didn’t know if I still had it in me, all those stories that had waited once upon a time.
Something that should bring us comfort as parent writers is that no matter how long you’ve been out of writing, you don’t ever lose it. It’s true that practice makes you better, and if you’re working daily on your writing, you’re going to always get better at it. But when you step away from writing for a season—or four years of seasons, like I did—it doesn’t mean you’ve lost all your skill or creativity or stories. We can feel afraid that it might, but it’s a lie. We’ll be as good as we’ve ever been, and we’ll only get better with time.
One night, I told my husband that I needed to sit down and talk things out for a while. He’s a gracious man, so, of course, he agreed. I told him that I felt like I was shriveling up inside myself, like I was not doing what I was made to do. I was made to write. I was made to create. I was made to show the world what lived inside. I loved journalism—it’s probably what gave me the greatest insight into human nature and empathy, not to mention fostering discipline and the ability to make a deadline and keep it—but it was not exactly the dream I carried in my heart. I wanted to be an author. And so we carved out fifteen minutes a day when I could sit and write about whatever my heart wanted. I wrote about family values and, later, turned those early journals into books.
The point is, I had to start at fifteen minutes. I did not have the luxury of time that many writers have, where they could spend days on end simply writing to their hearts’ content. I had to carve out time, and it was not enough time, but it was a start. I was working. I was consistent. I was growing.
We all have to start somewhere. It could be five minutes of writing time, snuck in while the kids are sleeping. It could be fifteen minutes of time when the kids are having “Daddy time” and we’re locked in your room scribbling or typing as fast as we possibly can. It could be whole afternoons of putting fingers to keys and cranking out more words than we’ve ever seen in a whole year. It doesn’t matter what it looks like. Every minute is progress.
People ask me all the time how I got started as a parent writer. Usually this is based on the simple fact that I have six kids. It seems like an impossibility with one kid, let alone six. Mostly because writing expects a commitment, and how does anybody keep a commitment with kids? It’s not easy, but if we really want to get started, we’re going to have to do it. We’re going to have to mark that nap time as time we’re pursuing our passion instead of sleeping ourselves. We’re going to have to engage in a conversation with our spouse about a time that might work for both of us. We’re going to have to commit.
After the staring, it looks different for everyone. There’s no right way to do this writing thing. I start my mornings writing. Others end their days writing. It doesn’t really matter. We have to find what works for us and our family, and we have to do it consistently, over and over and over again. We’ll meet resistance, sure, and sometimes the baby will be sick and sometimes there are other commitments, but if we want to make this writing thing a career kind of thing, we’re going to have to first start. There will always be something else to do—laundry, dishes, playing out back, cooking. That’s not going to go away just because we decide to write. But we’re going to have to prioritize and ask for help and then we’re going to have to sit down and forget it all and create.
Some first steps for getting started as a parent writer:
Step 1: Have a conversation with your spouse.
One of the most important parts of a successful marriage is good communication. Spouses who find a safe place to talk to each other honestly and openly are spouses who will find even greater commitment and trust. Engage in a conversation with your spouse about the ways you’ve been feeling, what you want to do, who you want to be.
If you don’t have a spouse, have a conversation with your children. Tell them you want to start a career as a writer, and you’re going to need them to stay in their beds for at least fifteen minutes after they’re put to bed. If they need something after that, you’ll be able to deal with their needs. Let them know how important it is for you to pursue this dream. Tell them your stories. Invite them in.
Step 2: Get time scheduled on the calendar.
It’s not going to happen if it’s not scheduled. I’m a big proponent for writing everything down on a calendar. This will help, too, if or when the spouse forgets that you’ve agreed upon this particular time as your writing time. It’s there on the calendar. Make a sign for your bedroom door. Let your kids know it’s writing time.
Step 3: Resist resistance so the writing becomes a habit.
Don’t worry if you have trouble the first few times you try. It’s going to take a while to make this writing time a habit. You will meet all kinds of resistance—chores that actually beg you to do them, computer problems, a blank head space. Resistance will do all it can to keep you from creating. If you have trouble getting started, write about your day.
[Tweet “The simple habit of writing will virtually eliminate “writer’s block.””]
Step 4: Plan an editorial schedule.
Once you’ve gotten used to creating, planning an editorial schedule will help you make the best use of your time. I used to think this wasn’t allowing me to be “creative” enough, but I’ve learned in my years of writing that knowing what I’m going to write before I sit down to write it helps the subconscious roll that topic around in ways we can’t even explain. Planning a schedule reinforces your commitment and lets writing know you’re in it for the long haul.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
Using time wisely is an important part of a writing career when it comes to being a parent writer who creates in all the margins. And it can seem almost impossible, because it’s hard to know what a day will hold in its hands until you’re actually there.
But it’s possible to use our time wisely.
We’ve talked about goal setting, and we’ve talked about making a daily schedule. Both of these will help us use our time more wisely, but there is one more step we must take before we will see the most efficient use of our time.
For me, that step looks like a hard-copy to-do list. I used to be a reporter, so I have all kinds of old reporter notebooks that I use to write down everything I need to do each day, in the order in which it should be done. For others this could look like a task app, where they can write down the steps that will get them to their goal.
It’s all well and good to make goals, but if we don’t separate the steps necessary to meet those goals, we’ll never reach them. It’s all well and good to make a schedule, but if we don’t know what to do with that schedule, we’re not going to use it the way it should be used.
So the next step in increasing our productivity is working backwards from our goals. What do we need to accomplish each month in order to reach our goals? What do we need to accomplish in each week? What do we need to accomplish each day?
I make a list of everything. I make a list of all the submissions I’ll make. I make a list of all the projects I want to work on. And then I assign each of those steps a particular day that makes sense.
Some people don’t like to divide out their days like this, because they think it’s too constrictive, but I would argue that if we don’t have our days scheduled with activities that will move us farther along toward our goals, then we’re not going to get anywhere. We’re just going to be spinning our wheels.
[Tweet “To-do lists might seem old-fashioned. But they keep me right on track to reach my goals.”]
When we wake in the morning without a plan for the day, we can feel aimless. We’ll most likely end up saying, “Well, I’ll just write on whatever today,” and then we’ll spend all our writing time trying to figure out what we “feel” like writing, and before we know it, we’ve wasted our 15 minutes on wondering and figuring instead of putting pen to paper. We have to first have the structure, the box of a day, to then deviate from that box if we so wish.
[Tweet “Using time wisely is more than just committing. It’s also about making the plan to facilitate it.”]
Every day, before I go about my day, I look at my to-do list. I don’t have it memorized, by any means. There are too many lines on it. I write everything: read this, write that, send an email here. I write my week’s daily to-do list on the Friday before, after a meeting with my husband about what might be happening that has the potential to change what I’m hoping to accomplish (it’s good to be prepared instead of blindsided, though, of course, we can’t be prepared for everything).
Using time wisely also means that we minimize the distractions. Those distractions can come from a variety of places. It can be our children bursting into our room when they think they want us and our sitter or partner didn’t catch them in time. It can be things like social media, where the pings of notifications will knock us out of flow. Some of my biggest distractions are when essays are picked up by Scary Mommy or Huff Post. I constantly check the shares to see how it’s doing and whether I have any comments. Using our time wisely means we are working to eliminate, or at least minimize, all the extraneous noise.
As parent writers, we don’t have as much time to work on our writing as our counterparts might, which means we have to be using our time wisely. We don’t have the luxury of messing around on the Internet for a little bit of the morning, because all our time is sacred and precious. We will learn to work better and more productively because of our time constraints, but for a while they can feel like impossible chains we need to break before we can bust out as a legitimate authors. If only we had more time. If only we had more freedom to play around a little. If only.
If only never gets us anywhere. Planning and minimizing distractions does.
How to use time wisely:
1. Know exactly what it is that you need to do when you sit down to do it.
Like I said, I keep a very detailed to-do list, and I schedule out all the tasks that need doing in my day. When I know exactly what I’m working on before I even sit down to work on it, I’m much more likely to get right to it, instead of caving to a distraction on the Internet.
2. Minimize distractions.
There are all kinds of apps out there that allow you to block the Internet and other distractions. Put your phone on do not disturb. Close out your browsers. Just sit down with your page and your story. Distracting ourselves can be a great way to procrastinate, but when we’re parent writers and don’t have a whole lot of time to work with in the first place, we’re not going to be able to afford procrastination. There is no I’ll-do-it-later for parent writers. It just doesn’t get done.
3. Re-evaluate goals.
When we set a goal to achieve, many times we’ll find that we’re much more likely to do the work necessary to achieve it if we’re constantly checking in with it. Don’t make goals and tuck them away until the end of the year. Bring them out periodically and see how you’re doing. Set your word counts by them. Schedule your projects on the calendar based on how much time you’d like to spend doing them. Evaluate.
4. Group like items together.
I’ve talked about this before. Keeping like items together helps us maximize the time we have. There is the business section of our writing career, which includes marketing and emails and submissions, and then there is the creative side of our writing career, and those aspects require different parts of our brain, for the most part (though everything about our business needs to be creative, too). It can feel jolting for a brain to go from writing a weekly newsletter to writing a fantasy series. If it’s possible to group like items together, we should try to do it. We’ll be able to get much more mileage out of our time. Look at your schedule as if it’s a giant puzzle, except with time, analyzing what might fit where, and then constantly experiment. If you notice you’re not logging as many words as you’d like to, see if something can be adjusted so that you are, in fact, writing enough words.
Using our time wisely is imperative as a parent writer. We will never be able to have the career we want to have if we don’t master the art of productivity. We must do this work.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
In the life of a parent writer, schedule is everything. You are taking care of your children and dealing with job responsibilities and taking care of the home responsibilities on the side. Where is the time to write?
And then, if your schedule opens up more, because you finally get to quit the day job and just work on your writing like you always dreamed, how do you ensure that you’re using your time wisely?
The secret is schedule.
My days are very well structured, from the morning to the evening. Our household runs on a tight schedule, because it leaves less room for other things, like 3-year-old twins tearing down the walls around us, and kids function better when there’s a predictable schedule in place. We know what time we’re going to eat and what time we’re going to have Silent Reading and what time we’re going to call for lights out. This makes some of us in the household (myself included) pretty dependent on this schedule and a little irritable when something unexpectedly knocks events out of whack (there are drawbacks to everything).
Our schedules can be more fluid, if that’s what works for us. But if we want to reach the goals we’ve set for ourselves, we’re going to have to carve out time in the schedule. Knowing when you’re going to work on what, whether today is a nonfiction or a fiction day (if you write both—and if you have a blog, you’re going to have to write both) gives our productivity a helpful boost. It’s beneficial to know when it’s time to create all that social media micro content and when it’s time to shift into an editing frame of mind. It helps to know when we’re going to work on that rough draft and when we’ll have the time to brainstorm some blog topics.
For my scheduling, I do a thing called batching. This means putting like things together. I write all my blogs for the week on one day. I write all my rough draft fiction on one day. I do all my editing on one day. I write finals on several days, but always together. I juggle several different projects at a time, shifting between fiction and nonfiction, producing content for a video show, creating all my social media content. I work much faster when I can knock it all out at once, instead of a little here and a little there.
I work hard on my schedule. I started the new year with a pretty rigorous one in place. When I realized I hadn’t built enough margin into that schedule, I adjusted.
[Tweet “Creating a writing schedule doesn’t mean we’re bound to it forever. It’s a framework.”]
A framework will make us more productive.
(Sound familiar? It’s the same with goals.)
My schedule happens in blocks of 90 minutes. I’ve found that I work best in 90-minute blocks, because I can focus for that 90 minutes, close out everything that will distract me, take a quick break and ease right into the next 90-minute block.
I schedule my blog posts, I schedule the topics I’m going to write about, I schedule which books I’ll be working on each week and their deadlines. I even schedule my reading.
Setting up a schedule helps our brain maximize the time it has. When we’re given only a small block of time to create, we don’t want to be wondering about what it is we’re going to create. That takes time. If those pieces are already in place, we can get right to work during the window where our kids are (hopefully) napping.
Creating a schedule isn’t rocket science, and it’s not something that will look the same from person to person. I spend time revising my schedule whenever it feels like it’s too aggressive or I’ve missed something somewhere. Some of it is trial and error, because I don’t know what it’s going to be like grouping two particular activities together, and if it doesn’t seem to work, I’ll revise the schedule, and then I’ll revise again, until I have it exactly right and I’m producing as much as I can with the time I have.
How to make your own schedule:
Step 1: Look at all the time you have.
Write out all the blocks of time you have. I try to work in 90-minute increments and then take a quick break for water, but not everybody has the kind of time I have to write. That’s okay. Write out the time you do have, and organize your time into blocks. Maybe it’s half an hour here or 45-minutes there or just 15 minutes somewhere else. Write them all down. Some of those small blocks we won’t be able to fill with work, of course, because maybe it’s the very time our kids come home from school and we always want to be available to greet them. But use all the blocks you have and write them all down.
Step 2: List everything you’d like to accomplish in a week.
This would be things like publishing blog posts or writing a particular number of words on a story you’re working on (consulting our goals will be helpful for this step.). It would also be things like writing and sending email newsletters and creating social media content for your business. All the tasks that you have in a week that are important for a writing business need to be listed out. The point of this is that sometimes our expectations don’t match our time. Writing everything out helps us prioritize when our time is short.
Step 3: Match what you’d like to accomplish with your blocks of time, as if you’re putting together a puzzle.
This is my favorite part. Sometimes we’ll end with a deficit of time. That means we have to take away some of the tasks until our time opens up a little. Sometimes we’ll end with a deficit of tasks, in which case we can either schedule more tasks for ourselves or we can do what every writer should be doing—read. Or we can choose to rest, which is just as powerful.
Step 4: Don’t be afraid to adjust the schedule.
Sure, it takes time to adjust, but we’re saving time in the long run, because we’ll have a detailed schedule that will help us be the most productive we can possibly be. It’s important that we understand that making a schedule (even if we do it in pen), doesn’t mean it’s an always-and-forever schedule. We can constantly adjust to accommodate what it is we’d really like to do in a week. We’re going to eventually finish that book. What then? Have a plan.
Sometimes life will demand more from us, and we’ll have to sacrifice a bit of work time. Sometimes our children will demand more from us. Sometimes our day job will demand more, and we’ll have to sit and create while our kids are participating in family movie night without us for a season, because someone’s waiting on revisions. Don’t be afraid to play around with the schedule and adjust to the seasons of life.
Having a schedule at all will positively affect your focus and your productivity. It’s one of the simplest things we can do to set our writing career in forward motion.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
Writers have very sedentary jobs. When we’re not sitting down reading, we’re sitting down writing or editing a manuscript or working on pitch materials or compiling a book. If we wanted, we could sit here in the same place, forever.
But all that sitting isn’t good for a body.
I tend to be a pretty healthy person. I enjoy eating well and working out, and it’s easy for me to schedule that exercising time on my calendar every day. I walk my boys to school every morning. I do interval training. I eat mostly paleo, because my body has little ability to process carbs.
But the writing was a problem.
Last last year I found that sitting for four hours every day was really getting to me. I couldn’t figure out a way to do anything differently until I discovered the beauty of standing desks.
Standing desks allow a writer to stand for whatever period of time they’re writing or working on a computer. I don’t use my desk when I’m writing by hand, which is only during my morning journal time, because I write so much faster if I’m typing, but I use it any time I use my computer, which is five hours a day.
Now. Standing for five hours a day doesn’t sound possible when you haven’t been standing for an hour. So I have to tell you that I didn’t start out standing for five hours. I stood for an hour, and then I stood for two, and then three and then four and then, finally, five. And some days, when I wake up with a back ache because one of the kids landing his jump-off-the-couch wrong on my back, I don’t stand for the full five hours. The point is to stand for the majority of our writing time instead of remaining sedentary.
A change like this doesn’t have to be expensive. You just have to get creative. I don’t actually have a standing desk. I set up a makeshift one one my bedroom dresser. I stacked a few Writer’s Market books on top of each other, until the computer sat at a height that was comfortable, and called that my standing desk.
What I love about a standing desk is that when I’m stuck on a plot line or I can’t think of a word I need for this particular phrase, I just bounce on my toes a little, or I step back from the computer screen, and I figure things out that way. Sometimes I’ll accidentally look at myself in the mirror (which is a little startling. Do my eyes really look that crazy when I’m concentrating?), because, like I said, my standing desk is really a dresser stacked with books.
For writers, a standing desk will increase our word count, because there is a proven link between physical activities and the inner working of our brains. I’ve measured this phenomenon. I produce about 20 percent more words (especially the rough draft kind) when I’m standing.
Not only that, but a standing desk is beneficial to our health. While it may seem like standing for all that time couldn’t be exactly healthy for you, if you’re wearing the right shoes (I wear my bright pink running shoes with adequate arch support), and you’re moving around a little (I walk in place sometimes or dance to the music coming through my Pandora station), then you’re actually burning calories while you’re writing. How cool is that?
For a while, I had a bum knee, an old injury from high school volleyball that flared up with the weeks of rain Texas had. I had to take a few days off of standing and, instead, sit in my blue wing chair. I didn’t produce nearly as many words when I was sitting. And my brain felt all tied up, because there was no movement happening.
Standing while creating makes it happen faster, more easily, and also makes it better. I’ve seen this in my own practice.
A new year always results in people making resolutions to stay healthier, and sometimes, when we’re pressed for time like parent writers often are, it’s hard to find time to fit in something as “unnecessary” as exercise and healthy practices, but we will be better writers if we keep ourselves healthy. As we’re taking care of ourselves, we can better take care of our children, and then we can better take care of our work.
It’s at least worth a try.
Some ways to get healthier as a writer:
1. Set up your own standing desk.
It doesn’t have to be something you spend a whole lot of money on, but it does have to be something that doesn’t hurt your eyes and neck and back. My husband once set up a standing desk on a treadmill, using some old lumber, so he could walk while he was writing. This is all I needed for my standing desk:
(Picture)
2. Take half an hour every day to do something physical.
You could go for a walk or play a game of kickball with your kids (Someone once said that if you play like children, you won’t ever have to do another workout in your life. It’s true. My kids play hard.). You could do an actual workout. I practice interval training and weight lifting, mixed with some anaerobic and aerobic activity. I also walk my kids half a mile to their school. Sometimes I got out on a long run to clear my head.
One of the best way to get our brains working is to do a workout. The brain responds surprisingly when we get moving. Not only does exercise benefit our writing, but it also boosts our immune system. Fewer sick days off means more days writing.
3. Write on the go.
While you’re out for a walk, or even running (if you can manage—I never could do it well while running. Too many hills in this part of the country.), speak your words into your voice recorder. Turn them into essays or chapters. This will increase your word count considerably.
4. Drink water. Eat.
This may seem like a crazy one to put on a list like this, because how can we live without drinking water and eating, silly woman? But the truth is, sometimes I get so involved in my writing that I completely forgot to drink water and eat. My kids eat lunch pretty early, and I”m not usually hungry while they’re eating, and so then it gets to nap time and I get started with some of my writing, and before I know it, it’s time for dinner and I never even had lunch. Same with the water thing. I keep a Klean Kanteen next to me at all times. I try to drink three of them a day.
5. Read while on the run.
When I’m running or walking, I’ll listen to podcasts about the craft or I’ll read audio books. This is a great way to pass the time and let our subconscious minds gather what they need in order to write better. My husband also got a blu tooth speaker that is water proof, so we can listen to whatever we’d like in the shower, too. When we’re parent writers, we have to squeeze every single minute out of our lives. Reading and learning always make us better writers, which means that time is never wasted.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
Floating about aimlessly in the world of writer and author is not an effective way to build a career. One cannot simply say, “Whatever happens will happen,” because then nothing will, in fact, happen.
I know. I used to be that writer.
I thought making goals and holding myself to them meant that I absolutely had to do them, that there was no room for steering in a different direction if I so decided I needed a different focus. I thought that marking down “eight rough draft manuscripts” on a year’s calendar meant I absolutely had to do them or I was a failure. Goals felt like a cage rather than a wide open door.
And then I realized that goals are not set-in-stone things but more guideposts-along-the-road things. Which meant that if I didn’t make goals at all, I was not going anywhere. I existed like that for a while, blogging on a book that I’ve released recently, but I wasn’t really going anywhere. I didn’t have any direction. I didn’t have clear-cut goals. I didn’t have much vision beyond this one small thing.
So now, every year, I spend the last week of the old year and the first week of the new year making a plan, listing out all my goals, piecing together my time, because as a parent writer there is a limited amount of it. I estimate how long it will take me to do certain projects, and I map out the year. I have a direction, and that doesn’t mean my direction can’t change somewhere along the way, but it means that I have a framework for what my year will look like. How I move around within that framework is entirely up to me.
I make word count goals. I make novel goals. I make goals for everything I need to learn (and there are so many things), and I make goals for how many books I’ll read and what types of books I’ll read and what each month will hopefully teach me. I make goals for how I’d like to see my business grow and what sorts of things I’d like to streamline and how I can possibly reach all of my goals. I set goals for goals. I have direction. I have a plan. I have the velocity that will move my career forward.
Sometimes it can feel like making these goals will only set us up for disappointment if we can’t, for some reason or another, meet them by the year’s end. I like to shoot high in my goals (I overshot my last book release by about 20 copies—it didn’t do as well as I had hoped it would), but that doesn’t mean I’ve failed if I don’t actually meet them. Any progress toward goals is a win. If we are constantly working toward our goals, we can’t help but move forward in our career.
If we want to move forward in our writing career, we’re going to have to lay out some goals. Because goals give us direction, which gives us focus.
A writer without focus will be lost in the great, fathomless sea of What Should I Write.
What goals do for us as writers is they help us analyze where it is we want to go in our writing career. When we say we want to deliver eight rough draft manuscripts at the end of a year, we know that we’re going to have to schedule out the time it will take to get them done. If we only say that we’ll write however many rough drafts we may get around to, we’re probably not going to write any of them.
Making goals concrete can help us plan out our year and schedule deadlines so that we have the best chance of achieving all it is we want to achieve. Each goal can then have tangible steps, and we can break them down as far as we want to (this might be harder for the not-planners among us), with action steps for each month and each week and each day.
If goals change halfway through the year because another opportunity plops in our lap, that’s okay. There’s nothing written in stone that says we have to do what we originally said we’d do. We can massage our goals at any point, if we find it takes us longer to write those rough drafts than we originally planned, or if another book comes knocking, insisting that this is the right time for it to be written. Those things happen. What goals do is provide a framework of intention around our year. We are less likely to drift off-shore if we have a framework for our year.
In addition to goals every year, I choose a word for my business. This has its roots in my family’s practice of choosing a word that provides the framework for our year (this year’s family word is Play. Such a great one. We are even going to explore how to play in our work.).
My business word for this year is actually two words: Forward motion.
This phrase means a lot to me. For a while I’ve been feeling like I’m standing still, like there is nothing much happening, like I’ve done all I can and I can do nothing more, and now I have to wait for people to come and get me. But that’s not really true. There are thousands of little tweaks I can make to my content and my web pages and my blog that would make all of them more effective, and this year that’s what I’m going to be working on in between my writing times. I’ve also got a manuscript out with an agent that’s been out with her for months now, and I’m going to get it back out there in the next few weeks. I have more manuscripts to pitch, and I’m ready to move forward in the traditional publishing game. Not only that, but I’ll be self-publishing some fiction I’ve been working on for a year now.
Regardless of all that, everything I do this year that is geared toward my business will be analyzed through those words: Forward motion. If I don’t think a particular activity is going to result in forward motion, then it’s not going to make my list of things to do.
There are so many things we can do out there as writers. There are social media platforms we need to make appearances on, and there are responsibilities we have for blogging, and we can get caught up in it all. And then we find that we’ve gotten so far from the time we had to write that we have absolutely nothing left. I don’t want to be there. I want to be moving forward, not standing still.
My top three learning goals are:
1. Photography—so I can offer better pictures of my own on all of my blog platforms and social media pages.
2. Using social media well—this has been a goal for a while. I’ve slowly been making progress.
3. Graphic design basics—I rely a whole lot on my husband for graphic design, and he’s a busy man. So I’d like to learn more about the basics so I can do social media posts that are graphically pleasing. I will NOT, however, be attempting book cover design. Ever.
My biggest goal this year is to grow my business without sacrificing my family.
Other goals include:
Turning all rough draft manuscripts into final drafts (there are eight roughs right now)
Sending at least 10 manuscripts out to agents this year
Doing slight revisions on final manuscripts (there are three finals right now that need slight work)
Writing rough drafts for nine manuscripts
Turning three blog collections into books
Releasing the first season of Fairendale (kid-lit fantasy)
Releasing a free brainstorming course for This Writer Life
Starting a weekly humor show for Crash Test Parents
Writing a 365 days of poetry book
I don’t know if I’ll get around to every single one of these goals, but everything I do will be done with these goals in mind.
If you’re struggling with making your own business goals for your writing career, here are some suggestions to get you started.
1. Decide what it is you want to do most in your career this year.
Do you want to write books? Learn more about something? Publish a book? In order to start making tangible goals, you first have to know what it is you want to do in the first place. List all the things you want to do, and know that you probably won’t be able to get to them all. Rank them in order of importance and then build a plan around them.
2. Pick between one and three things you’d like to learn.
One of the best things we can do for our writing career is to learn something new. It can be about the craft of writing. It can be about writing headlines or effective blogs. It can be about the business of writing or the psychology of influencing people or how to brand yourself. It can be learning more about social media and how to have an effective presence on your handles. There is always an abundance of new things we can learn if we’re intentional about them.
3. Adjust your schedule according to what your top goals are.
I would suggest only having between three and four overarching goals. I have several more than that because I’m an overachiever, but that’s not really ideal. (You can also increase the number of goals as you get to know yourself. I’ve been writing full-time now for a year, so I know what my weekly production is like. That helps me make even more specific goals.) On the other hand, sometimes having a goal that seems way out there in the realm of impossibility is just enough motivation to help us almost make it. Don’t be afraid of large, seemingly impossible goals. If we write it down, we’re more likely to reach it.
4. Share your goals with someone else.
One of the most helpful things we can do for ourselves when we are setting goals is to share them with someone else. It creates accountability, and some of us need a whole lot of accountability. My husband and I always talk about our business goals, not only because we work really closely together but also because it helps having a spouse on the other end of it. We can ask each other daily or weekly about our goals, and we can see how far we have to get there or how close we actually are. Not to mention, it boosts our confidence to have a person we love who is interested and invested in what we’re doing.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
That internal editor can be a big problem.
In November, I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time, and I was so excited about the possibility of writing a novel in one sitting. Or maybe a few sittings.
I write pretty fast already, and I’m fortunate to have much more time to write than I used to have, but I still have to sandwich my writing around different points of time during the day, and I knew that I would have to use my time wisely in order to finish the book. I had a Sabbath week scheduled in the month of November, so my goal was to finish the story by Nov. 15 and be done with it, and then maybe even work on another novel the week after so I could finish the crime thriller I’m working on, too.
And then I started the NaNoWriMo book, and I already had everything completely brainstormed and mapped out, because that’s just the way I work best, and suddenly, after I was well into the flow and entering the world with my characters, my internal editor came waltzing in and yelling, “THIS IS BAD. OH MY GOSH, THIS IS SO BAD. IT’S A TRAIN WRECK. NO ONE IS GOING TO READ THIS. NO ONE IS GOING TO WANT TO READ THIS. YOU SHOULD JUST GIVE UP. YOU ARE NO WRITER.”
And then that little voice morphed into the voice of my creative writing teacher from college, a pompous man who didn’t like me because he thought I was too “melodramatic” (the same thing my father had called me once upon a time). “THESE CHARACTERS ARE TERRIBLE,” he said. “NO ONE IS EVER GOING TO WANT TO READ THIS. YOU SHOULD JUST GIVE UP. YOU ARE NO WRITER. YOU WILL NEVER BE A WRITER.”
It’s crazy how quickly it can happen, and a whole writing session is hijacked by an imaginary person.
It wasn’t really hijacked for me, because I’m used to these voices coming around. And I’ve trained myself in something that is guaranteed to help you write faster and smarter, and when you’re a parent writer who’s trying to write in the margins, like I did for years, this will make all he difference in the world:
You have to silence the inner critic.
The way to do it is through practice, ignoring the inner critic when it doesn’t matter and listening to it when it does.
Wait. Listening to it?
Here’s the thing: The inner critic has NOTHING valuable to say to you in the first draft of a story. That first draft is just for getting the story out. The second draft is for making it all pretty and neat. (Or maybe a third or fourth draft, if it takes you a few.)
But sometimes the inner critic can be helpful. Oftentimes it’s not, but sometimes, in the revision process, it can have some good things to say if we’re willing to listen. Sometimes what it says about a character feeling two-dimensional means we need to do some revision work there. Sometimes when it says our plot is a little thin we can take another look and add some higher stakes.
But we shouldn’t ever listen to the critic when we’re in the first draft stage. We have to say, instead, “Leave me be.”
The best way to do that is to keep practicing, to keep writing, to keep setting a story down just as fast as we possibly can, because what also happens to this inner critic is that the faster we’re writing, the more chance we’ll have of outrunning it. (This means my first draft is usually full of grammar and punctuation mistakes, because I’m just trying to write as fast as I can.)
The inner critic usually comes to see me in the very beginning when I’m unsure, or when I’m trying to do something quickly, when I’m fully focused and he tries to steal that focus. I don’t like to play his game, because it’s just not helpful at this point.
Sometimes that inner critic can sound like old teachers or people who didn’t believe in us—or don’t believe in us still—and sometimes they sound a whole lot like ourselves.
The abuse mine was hurling sounded a little like this:
You are not equipped to write this story. It’s too big for you.
You really think you can get into the mindset of a boy? These characters will be completely hollow.
What do you know about autism?
What do you know of little boys? (Yeah, sometimes that voice can say some pretty ridiculous things.)
Who do you think you are?
That last one. It’s a killer. Because who do we think we are? Did we really think we were writers? Did we really think we could craft a story as big as this one? Did we really think people would care?
Well, yes we are. Yes, we can. Yes, they will.
Our first draft is what Anne Lamott calls a “shitty first draft.” We’ll use subsequent drafts to shape it into something good and beautiful, and WE HAVE NO PRESSURE FOR THE FIRST DRAFT.
No pressure. Just write. Write it all down without considering any of it.
And after the writing is done, listen.
Here are some ways to silence the internal editor:
1. Set a timer for 15 minutes. Do a writing sprint.
When we’re writing fast, we don’t have to worry about the internal editor, because the thing about writing fast is that it’s just a partnership between our fingers, our brains and the story. Our internal editors can’t possibly keep up with us once we get rolling, because the faster we write, the more imperfect our story will be, and the more we’re okay with that, the softer that voice will grow. Because what the internal editor really wants is perfection. And we’re never going to get that in the first draft. I was just telling someone the other day that I’ll find all kinds of silly mistakes in my first drafts. Things like the wrong use of their or there (I made a near-perfect score on my college GSP, a grammar, spelling and punctuation test required for a degree in journalism.).
2. Try, try and try again.
We have to keep trying, no matter how loud that voice gets. We have to keep practicing. Nothing gets easier without practice, and the same is true for silencing the internal editor. If we’re not going to practice defying his words, then we’re never going to get any better. If we’re not going to try to write anyway, then this editor will plague us always.
3. Have a plan.
Sometimes it helps to have a plan for the story, even if you know some things will change in the actual writing of it. Sometimes I sit down to write essays and it just pours out of me, and I don’t really need a plan. Sometimes I have to go by my plan or I feel like I have nothing valuable to say. Don’t be afraid to make a plan. Just because we make a plan doesn’t mean we are bound by it. We can deviate as much as we want. But sometimes the plan can silence an internal editor, because even if this one scene isn’t all that great, we just have to remember the end to know that it’s all going to turn out okay.
4. Remember that the internal editor will always try to come around.
It’s not that practice makes the internal editor go away. It’s just that the more we ignore his voice, the softer that voice gets. And that’s what helps us in the end. Because the less effective he will be, the less he will try to be effective. We will get better at ignoring him and outrunning him, but every now and then, perhaps when we’re tackling something we’ve never tackled before, we can be sure that he’ll come back around to plague us, and then we’ll have to figure it all out again. But it does get easier every time.
5. Let go of the need to produce perfect art on the first try.
On any try, really. Because we will always find something we could improve about our manuscript, and if we’re just waiting for ourselves to come out with that perfect product, then we are going to be waiting forever. You should see some of my first drafts. I keep all of my journals, but someone someday is going to find them, when I’m long gone, and they’re going to be like, Wow. This is really bad. But I still keep them around, because they’re helpful for assessing how far I’ve come in my career.
There is value in imperfection. The internal editor likes to tell us there isn’t, but he’s lying. Free yourself from perfection, and you free yourself to write.
