by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life, This Writer Life Featured
I have a full manuscript out with a couple of agents. I’ve been waiting two months to hear from them, whether or not they want the manuscript or will pass so I can try submitting to someone else. I’m getting impatient. Every day I check some of the agents I follow on Twitter to see what kind of books they’re tweeting that they want to see, and every day I see something that sounds perfect for this book I’ve written. That’s out with agents. Sitting in limbo.
So then one of them tweeted about a literary middle grade novel written in verse—which is exactly what mine is—and I thought, this is too good a chance to pass up, because most agents don’t want to see novels in verse, and here was one calling for that exact submission. So I put all my submission materials together and sent it all flying across the Internet, mentioning that I’d seen his tweet and I hoped my manuscript was what he was looking for.
Not even 24 hours later, he emailed his rejection.
It knocked the breath out of me. It really did. Because he had tweeted what he wanted, and I thought I was giving him exactly that, because this novel is GREAT, and it’s interesting and it’s got the potential to change some lives in the literary sense.
And because my book was exactly the genre, exactly the format, exactly the description of what he wanted I let myself believe that his rejection meant that something was wrong with the writing mechanics. Maybe I hadn’t done as good a job as I thought communicating and crafting my story. Maybe the writing fell flat. Maybe it was really terrible, and here I was thinking it had a chance.
Except I know that none of that is true. I know it, because in seven query letters sent out, I’ve had four full manuscript requests, which has NEVER happened with any of my other stories. I know the writing is good. I know the story is great. I know the main character is lovable and quirky and mysterious and everything a lead character should be. So why did this guy pass on it so quickly?
Well, there are a lot of answers to that.
Rejection is hard. So many times we can take it so personally. Agents say “it’s just not right for my list right now,” and what we hear is, “You’re just not a good enough writer for my list.” Agents say “I don’t believe this is a good fit,” and we hear, “I don’t believe you’re a good fit.” Agents say “I’m going to have to pass,” and we hear, “It’s not any good.”
But what I’ve learned more surely from this experience is that some people will love what we write and some just won’t. There’s nothing we can do about that. If we try to please them all, we’d never have a book.
All rejection really means is that our project is not right for that one person. It doesn’t mean (necessarily) that it will never be right for anyone, ever. It doesn’t mean that we will never get traction with the project we poured ourselves into for an entire year. It doesn’t mean we have written for nothing.
Many factors influence whether or not an agent accepts a project or passes on it. Sometimes they have a similar project already in the queue, and they know it would be hard to sell two of them back-to-back. Sometimes they don’t connect well with the story, for personal reasons. Sometimes they’re looking for a very specific kind of book and yours just happens to be off by one tiny little detail.
Sometimes they don’t have the contacts that would sell your novel in the most efficient way, and even though they recognize it’s good, they’ll pass because they want you to get the best sale. Agents understand that at the heart of a publishing career is a good connection between an agent, a writer and a publishing house. If they think they can’t sell the project in a way that’s most beneficial to the writer (which will most benefit them, too), they’ll pass.
These are all the things you don’t see in a rejection letter, because agents are busy and inundated with submissions every hour of every day. There’s no way to know who would be a perfect fit and who wouldn’t without trying.
We at least have to try. That’s what I did, and even though I got an almost immediate rejection and sat in a tailspin for a couple of hours, unable to even write, eventually I lifted my head and got back to work.
Rejection will not stop me. It shouldn’t stop any of us. We are writers, first and foremost. Of course we will keep writing.
So let’s pick ourselves back up. Let’s brush off the dirt that got on our knees. Let’s keep writing.
Here’s how to see rejection for what it’s worth:
1. Remember that you are not your work.
We can become so tied to our work that it begins to feel like it’s a vital part of us. We will never have an objective viewpoint if our work is part of us. So we have to separate ourselves from it and send it out into the world without any expectation for how it will be received. Easier said than done, I know.
It’s a precarious balance when we’re writers, because the writing that holds more of us will always be better, and yet we still have to fight for this separation so we don’t take rejection too personally and close up shop forever. We should always try again.
2. Listen to the rejections.
If all the agents who send you a rejection include a note about something similar in your story that made them stop reading or showed them the project wasn’t right for them, listen. Chances are, even if you choose to self-publish that particular book, your readers will probably feel the same (because agents are, at their simplest, just readers).
That doesn’t mean we should listen to all the words in a rejection letter. Most of the rejections for my adult literary novel had to do with it being a novel in verse. If I took it out of verse, they could sell it better, they said. They didn’t have the right contacts for it, but it was beautiful writing. The story was fantastic, but they would need prose, not verse.
I decided to self-publish, because I don’t like the idea of someone telling me no one wants to read an adult novel in verse. I like proving people wrong. But mostly because taking the novel out of verse would change it in ways that wouldn’t suit it, in my opinion. (This project hasn’t published yet, by the way. I’m sitting on it for a while.)
3. Keep all your rejections, but don’t dwell on them.
Sometimes agents might include a little caveat like, “If you ever have anything else to submit, let me know and I’d love to take a look at it.” Phrases like these are golden, because they mean the agent really liked your writing, but the project simply wasn’t right for them. So keep all those rejections for the next time you have a project you’d like to submit, and you already have a much more targeted list.
4. Go have a glass of wine.
Celebrate that you were brave enough to try.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
Is it better to self-publish or traditionally publish? Well, the answer is both. But it depends on the project.
Here’s a guide for the pros and cons of publishing, as far as what I know today.
1. The book release.
In traditional publishing, someone else takes care of the book release. With self-publishing, it’s all up to us.
This is a big one, for me. Right now I’ve released three books, and each of them probably took a total of about 15 additional hours to complete, beyond the writing part. Those hours were spent on things like fine-editing, laying out the books on a page (because they included pictures), getting them uploaded in all markets (which I’m still working on). If we’re not great with the technical side of the equation (I’m not!), self-publishing can seem daunting.
It’s not easy learning all that needs to be learned in order to self-publish. It’s also not quick. It’s an investment of our time, in our business. Our first few releases will take much longer than the ones that come later, because the learning curve is pretty high. But once we learn it, publishing will get much easier.
Of course, with traditional publishing, we don’t have to worry about learning any aspects of publishing, because someone else does it for us.
2. Book elements.
With self-publishing, we have more control over all the elements of our book. This would be anything from the revision process to the way the cover looks. In traditional publishing, we don’t get to pick things like who we want to design the front cover of our book. I can’t go to an agent or an editor and say, “Hey, my husband designs book covers, and I’d really like him to design this one.” Nope. They have their own people in mind.
But I can do that when I’m in charge of all aspects of book publishing.
Now, the downside to this is that if something is off—if the cover isn’t perfect but we think it looks great (because we don’t really have much expertise in design), we won’t know except by sales that just aren’t there. If there’s a typo in our book, it’s up to us. It’s not up to an editor at a publishing house.
That can feel like a lot of pressure.
When I was about to publish my books, I had a really hard time releasing them. I sat on them for weeks, because it was just so scary to release something on my own, without the benefit of having lots of eyes (agents, editors, book designers) who may have found a glaring mistake that I missed after looking it over a hundred times. Unfortunately, readers are not as forgiving when it comes to book errors if you’re a self-published author. They’re much more forgiving if you’re a traditionally published author, because they know it’s probably not your fault.
So if you’re going to self publish, the manuscript should be as close to perfect as it’s ever going to get.
3. The revision process.
In self-publishing, we have full control over the revision process. This can be a good thing. Who wants to spend years and years on a book, only to hear that someone thinks it would sell better if we took it out of first-person point of view? On the other hand, what if that information is correct, and we don’t have someone telling us?
As self-publishers, we have much more control over the revision process of our manuscript, but we also lose that contact with other people who really do know what they’re talking about. A middle grade novel I wrote is currently in the revision process with an agent, because she noticed something that could have added depth to the book. And she was right. I’m so glad she pointed it out. If I were just self-publishing the book, I might have missed adding that layer of significant meaning to my book.
And every time I get a revision request for a manuscript, I learn something new that I can apply to my self-published titles as well (which is why I enjoy being a hybrid author).
4. Marketing.
Unfortunately, there’s not much difference here between self-publishing and traditional publishing. Publishers no longer take care of advertising and marketing for their published authors, so you’re on the hook for building your own platform, either way.
5. Distribution.
Book sellers (the non-virtual kind) will not acquire your book unless you’re published through a traditional publisher. If you’re self-published, you can get those titles online as ebooks (and also pay to have them sent to people who might want to have a hard copy—but your margin of profit is much smaller on those), but you will never see them on the shelves of a book store or in a library. Even a self-published ebook that does well will not be offered in a library’s database until it’s been traditionally published.
Some people think that bookstores will be gone in the future, and we’ll just be buying books online, so maybe this doesn’t even matter. I like to think bookstores will be sticking around, and I want to have at least a few of my books on their shelves. So I’ll keep trying for traditional publishing.
6. The representation process.
This process can take a really long time. Years for some projects. Sometimes this is enough of a negative in itself. To research agents who might like my book, and produce a query letter and ready the manuscript for submission and write a synopsis probably took about 20 hours start to finish. I’m not guaranteed a return for those hours like I am if I just self-publish. And then it’s a waiting game from there. I’ve been sitting on my middle grade novel since January, still waiting to hear if two different agents want it.
7. The feeling of accomplishment.
I’d say this is the same for both. While it’s really encouraging to have someone interested in your book, to let you now that it’s not just you who thinks it’s pretty awesome, it’s also very satisfying to see your book in print and know that you did it ALL. So, either way, it’s a win.
8. Let’s not forget money.
As a self-published author, I get to keep much more of my profit (when I’m not giving books away for free). I can also give book away for free, if I choose to. In traditional publishing, you’ll get an advance (a sum of money that will “pay” for the writing of your book—usually not much if you’re a first-time author). After that advance, you won’t get any money until the publishing house recoups the publishing and distribution costs. So it could be a long time before you see any money from that. And even if you start making sales money again, the publishing house takes a cut, and so does your agent.
Of course you don’t get to keep all the money from self-publishing either—about 70 percent of the price of your book, because places like Amazon and Barnes & Noble have to pay to have your books displayed and included in search engines. But what you make, percentage-wise, is much more than you’d make publishing traditionally (only about 3-5 percent).
Now it’s up to you to decide: self-publish or traditionally publish?
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
Who can resist a face like this?
Every Tuesday, on my to-do list, I have a 30-minute block that says, “Fold laundry.” This is valuable work time I’m spending separating laundry so my kids can put their piles away. Every single week I have to do it, because when you have kids, laundry never, ever stops.
The problem is, it’s time I could be cranking out 1,000 more words on my computer, and I miss it. I mis sit every single time.
This week, the laundry pile was larger, because I just changed our my 5-year-old’s clothes, because he grew out of the old size, so there were hand-me-downs that needed washing and sorted. I ended up spending 45 minutes separating piles.
And when I finally made it back to my computer, cutting the cords of home-demands, I couldn’t help but think, “Something needs to be done about this.”
It’s not easy balancing life and work and home. Because my work is creative, there are so many times I have an idea kicking around in my head, and what I really want to be doing is fleshing it out, brainstorming how it might possibly work and putting it on my production schedule in a place that might make the most sense, but kids need to be fed lunch and read stories and put down for naps, and there’s just not any extra time.
Sometimes that idea living in my brain can make my vision dark and gray, like I can’t really be happy until it comes out on the page. Sometimes it just makes me walk distracted, so I fill up cups of water for the boys and leave them on a counter instead of a table, where they’re sitting. Sometimes it means I’m not really listening to my children or staying full present or engaging in conversation or play, because there’s something else pulling my mind away.
This can be frustrating. But the truth is, when we are artists, we are always working. Always. Even in the moments when we are caring for our kids, our eyes are still open to the realities of life, to the potential for story—a conversation here, a scene there—to the conversations we’re having and the feelings we’re feeling and the experiences we might be able to use later.
At first I tried fighting this. Because I wanted to stay completely present for my children when it was my turn to care for them. Because I wanted to stay fully present with my work when it was time to work. But it wasn’t ever easy to separate myself from my art or from my children.
I’ve thought long and hard about balance in the life of a writer parent. I’ve tried to figure out an exact definition or possibilities for what it might look like or how balance might be achieved, but what I’m coming to understand is that I cannot be the kind of mom my kids need if I’m separating myself from my art at certain times and from them at others times.
I see it like this: My children are like roots, grounding me to the earth of my life. My art is like a root, too, wrapping and twisting and growing all up under and around and inside the roots that are my children. Those roots are all connected, and they don’t look perfectly orderly or perfectly distinguished one from another, but they do look perfectly beautiful.
But because they’re wrapped all around each other, if I try to pull up one of them, they all suffer.
This balance is a complicated one. And that’s okay. There are seasons when our art needs more water than our children. There are other seasons when our children need more water than our art. But they cannot ever be fully separated.
Still, if I’m honest, there is a guilt that comes crawling to me on its knees, trying to whisper in my ear that I’m not doing enough to let my kids know I love them, and I’m not doing enough to make sure my art is perfect and wonderful and life-changing, and some days I can bend too far beneath its words.
So what does work and family balance look like?
Well, sometimes it looks like inviting our family into our work, because there are days we just can’t get the work off our minds. Sometimes it looks like walking our kids to the park and forgetting that work altogether, because what we’ll see and hear on that half-mile trek informs who we are, which informs what kind of art we produce on any particular day. Sometimes it looks like working an extra hour at night while a spouse takes the kids swimming.
The other day, I sat down with my boys and drew out a new work schedule while they worked on their summer projects, picture books they’re illustrating. I was helping them, but I was also helping myself. I told them I was working out a new schedule, and they came over periodically to see what that meant, and then went right back to their art projects. They drew for 45 minutes, all of us sharing in valuable creating time.
It was not wasted time. We were creating together. We were helping each other along in our separate pursuits. Something I don’t often remember, in the guilt of the moment, is that when our kids see us creating, they get to learn what it takes to pursue a passion—the hard work, the hits-at-a-moment’s-notice inspiration, the moments when we do something unexpected because creativity just hijacked our time.
What works for me won’t always work for you, but here are a few suggestions for finding balance in work and family life:
1. Enter into creating with your kids. One of our projects this summer is creating picture books. My three older boys told a short version of a story, I wrote it in picture book form, and they’re illustration 15-30 pages we’ll transform into a picture book. This helps me practice writing picture books, and it also helps me share the wonder of art (and publishing) with my children. We get to collaborate and sharpen each other in our work together (because kids have so much to teach us about creativity).
2. Make sure you get into the habit of rest. Resting is necessary in art. Our wells can run dry if we’re not filling them. I take weekly Sabbaths every seventh week, when I try to learn something new or just read books or spend more one-on-one time with my children. We do puzzles together. We play trampoline dodgeball out back. We sew and draw and paint and sing and dance.
3. Don’t even try to keep up with it all. The demands can be great in a household like mine. I don’t even try to keep up anymore. I used to want a clean and tidy house, but now I just settle for tidy. I vacuum every week, but I dust about every month. I haven’t scrubbed the baseboards in you don’t want to know how long, because who has the time? There just aren’t enough hours in the day to spend them scrubbing something that will just get dirty again in a day of living with children. One of these days, my boys will do all of that, and we’ll have a whole work force living in our home. But for now, we just live with it.
4. Invite kids into the home stuff, too. Our boys are responsible for doing after-dinner chores. The 5-year-old even knows how to take out the trash. They wipe the table, clean the countertops, sweep the floor and do the dishes (with supervision…they like those knives that are waiting to go in the dishwasher a little too much). We shouldn’t be afraid to ask our kids for help, because when they’re out on their own (which we don’t like to think about when they’re young), they’ll have to learn how to balance life and home and art, too. We’re just giving them practice.
5. Communicate your needs. Creating art and living with a family create so many needs for communication. When those seasons come around where you just have too much on your plate, communicate that to your family. No one wants to live with a stressed-out parent, and they’ll probably be willing to help with something, whether it’s writing with you in the evenings or doing chores so you have more time to write or reading in the library until you come out of your room in the mornings and tell them it’s time to get breakfast on the table.
Balancing our work and home lives isn’t easy, but it’s definitely not impossible. We simply have to work at it, like everything else.
And it’s in our best interest that we do.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
We live in a new day and age when it comes to publishing. We can publish at the click of a button now (well, as long as we do all the work beforehand). It’s really never been easier.
We no longer have to go through agents or editors at publishing houses or wait to hear whether our book idea has market potential, because we get to define that market in the first place.
In some ways, this is good. In others, it’s a little scary.
I recently shopped out a middle grade novel to six agents I specifically hand-picked, because I read that they were interested in a novel like mine. Four of them asked for the full manuscript. Two turned down representation because they didn’t have the right contacts for it but said they’d be surprised if I didn’t find representation.
I sent a full edited version to an agent at the beginning of June, and I’m still waiting to hear her verdict: will she represent, or will she pass?
It’s been three months since the first letter I sent. In that time I’ve almost finished two more middle grade novels (for two different series), put together two books I decided to sell on my own and started work on two additional projects.
I say all this to say that the traditional publishing world is a world that takes time. Even after gaining representation for a project (which could take years), an agent then has to sell the manuscript to an interested editor at a publishing house. This could take a year. Then an editor may or may not (most likely yes) have suggestions for revisions, which could take another year, or at least several months.
After that, once it’s on a publishing schedule, it might take another year to go to print, because there are many other factors that go into print publishing, like book art, layout, and fine editing.
While all that is happening, the author is hoping that no other publishing houses come out with a similar novel that might make sales tank.
One might think this is all the more reason just to bypass traditional publishing and focus on self-publishing. And we certainly have more freedom in self-publishing. I’ve got an adult novel I’ve written in poetry that I’ve been pitching to different agents for seven months. No one will take it, even though they call the writing “beautiful”—because it’s a novel written in poetry. It’s different. It’s not standard best-seller material. Publishing is, after all, a business. That one will be self-published (just as soon as I can find the time to get it ready).
But, still, it has always been my dream to publish something the traditional way.
Why? some might say.
Well, the answer isn’t really simple for me. I’ve always dreamed of my book on shelves. And the only way you’re going to get a book on the shelves of bookstores like Barnes & Noble or the local library is by going through a traditional publisher.
I want my book in as many hands as can get it, because I believe in the story.
I believe in the adult novel, too. But after seven months of work, I know I won’t be getting representation for it, at least not without changing it significantly (namely, taking it out of verse). So I’ll take matters into my own hands and release it on my own. And maybe that means it won’t see as many hands, but eventually the right people will discover it.
For me, this debate—to publish traditionally or to self-publish—is not really a debate at all. Mostly because I want to be a hybrid author. I want to publish some works in the traditional world and others in the self-publishing world. I want to grow my audience with authentic people who actually look forward to a new release from me, whether it’s a self-published release or a traditionally published release.
The point is that I’ll keep trying to gain representation for some and I’ll go straight to self-publishing for others. The traditional market is exactly that—traditional. It doesn’t often accept cutting-edge fiction or nonfiction, so when we’re writing work that falls into that category, it’s probably just better to save our time.
Because this is, after all, a business, and the only way we can build a writing business is by constantly writing and constantly releasing. It’s hard to constantly release when the only method of release is a system that takes years to get through.
As writers who do the work, it’s smart to diversify.
Here are some questions I ask myself before considering traditional publishing or self-publishing.
1. Do I want this story to stay as-is, or would I be okay with some revision requests (sometimes very major ones)?
This is the question I asked when I received about 20 personal rejection letter (not the form ones) for my adult novel written in verse. Many said they’d take another look at it if I decided to take it out of poetry and add another 10,000 or so words. I thought about this for a while. Months. But I had another novel on deck, so, instead, I tried sending that one out and got some great response.
When it was time to revisit the adult novel, I didn’t feel like changing it at all. So I added it to my list of self-published titles, to be published soon.
2. Is this a story that I feel could withstand the long waiting period of traditional publishing?
This is sometimes a more important question for nonfiction than it is for fiction. I considered sending out a project where I did a whole year of examining family values and wrote in a diary-like fashion. Really, what it amounts to is nearly 300 essays about the family values we examined for a year. But I don’t know if that story will be able to withstand the publication schedule, because who knows how long this “trend” of intentional parenting will last? So I’ll be releasing that one as a 13-book series, beginning in November—on my own.
Some nonfiction will withstand the publication schedule because the projects are a little ahead of their time. This question helps sort out the waiting time for me.
3. Could I gain enough support through my own store than through a publisher’s store?
Some stories (like series) are much easier to sell as self-published authors. With series, there’s a natural lead-in to the other stories. But sometimes I don’t want to write series. Sometimes I just want to write a stand-alone novel (the middle grade one out with agents right now is a stand-alone).
Self-published authors have a much harder time selling their stand-alone novels, because they don’t exist in what’s called a funnel (a natural funnel to more sales). We can create funnels for them, but I didn’t want to do that with this one. Because of that, I most likely wouldn’t be able generate great sales as a self-published author.
So I continue to wait.
For writers, this debate can get pretty complicated. Some say self-publishing is the only way. Some say traditional publishing is the only way. But I don’t think it has to be one or the other. There are definite advantage to both processes (I’ll share those in next week’s post).
It’s worth it to ask ourselves which would be better, not for all our projects, but for one project at a time.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life, This Writer Life Featured
I’ve had some trouble getting a handle on my schedule lately.
Part of it is because my boys are al home for the summer, so the time I normally have to work while they’re in school is virtually nonexistent. I still have large chunks of writing time, because my husband and I trade off kid-watching shifts so both of us can do our creative work, but I haven’t been maximizing the time in the most efficient way.
I write a crazy amount of content for all my blogs every week. Most of the blogging takes a total of three days (or workable hours for those days—which is about four hours a day). That’s a huge amount of time.
But I’ve been breaking up those blog writings into all five days of available work time. Which didn’t seem very efficient.
When we’re parents, we’re not often given huge amounts of time to write, which means we need to do whatever it takes to maximize our time. I didn’t want to just be producing content for my weekly posts. I wanted to also be getting somewhere on a couple of the books I have in the works, and just having four hours at the end of the week was not cutting it.
So I decided to reevaluate my time.
I looked at where I was spending time and what all I was doing each week to see if I could group like things together (like a blog day and a newsletter day and a “pitching stories” day).
And then I tried an experiment.
Here’s a sample of what my schedule looked like:
12:30-1:45 p.m.: Write story roughs
1:45-2 p.m.: Post on social media (platform work)
2-2:30 p.m.: Write Messy Monday post
2:30-3 p.m.: Submit Huff Post blog
3-4 p.m.: Write/schedule This Writer Life blog
4-5 p.m.: Write/schedule Crash Test Parents blog
5-5:30 p.m.: Read.
I had the highest word count I’d ever logged in a week (nearly 25,000 words).
It was much more efficient than my old schedule.
I’m a proponent for working in whatever time you have, even the short bursts, which is what I used to do before my time opened up a little more. I believe we can train ourselves to work in those short bursts and in the margins of time we have as parents.
But when our time does open up, why wouldn’t we wan to reevaluate and see if we could streamline our time so it’s most efficient for the season we’re in?
Schedules are critically important to write, because if we don’t have writing time scheduled, chances are we aren’t going to get it done. So much can come in the way of our writing—kids who need something that’s not necessary right this minute, other people asking us to do things for them (especially if we work from home when a spouse is at home), phone calls or social media that could wait until later, when we’re not so pressed for time.
My old schedule also left little room for margin. So when something unexpected did happen—a boy interrupting and I’d get thrown off what I was saying in the final draft of an essay—I would run over the scheduled time for that particular writing. And because everything was lined back-to-back (to ensure the most efficient use of time), ending a task late meant I would start the next task late.
So I worked in some margin. (Generally it doesn’t take me a whole hour to write an essay. Maybe 50 minutes, which left an extra 10 minutes for the unexpected.)
When we find a schedule we like, reevaluation is not the first thing we think about doing. But it’s a practice we should work in, because every season of life changes. Our schedules need to be fluid to keep up with those ever-changing seasons.
When my boys go back to school, my time will feel a little more like mine, again, and the schedule will shift accordingly.
Here are some questions we can ask ourselves in the evaluating of our schedules:
1. Am I wasting any time?
Sometimes we don’t like to admit to this one. I know I don’t. But the truth is, sometimes a story feels really hard for now. Sometimes I need to take it back to the drawing board or let it sit. Evaluating those things help us assess where we might be pushing something that doesn’t want to be pushed just yet.
Other places we waste our time tends to be social media or the Internet. My husband likes to watch YouTube videos. The problem is, one video leads to another, and pretty soon you’ve wasted half an hour just watching videos.
The way I combat this tendency is to schedule “break” time and set a timer. The rest of the time, I focus only on work and close out all my Internet tabs.
My time is too precious to spend it clicking the next most interesting thing that comes along.
2. Is what I’m doing working?
This was the question I had to ask when I noticed how spread out my weekly blogs were. An hour here, an hour there, and I didn’t have any large chunks where I could just be writing my fiction stories. So I grouped all those blogs together, and now I have large chunks for fiction writing. I get to write my way into a state of flow and just stay there a while.
The thought behind my original disjointed schedule was that I didn’t want to become stale on those weekly blogs, so I needed to spread them out all on different days. But they’re all so different, written in different character and tone, that there wasn’t any danger that they would start sounding like each other.
It’s always important to reevaluate what’s working and what’s not. I do this at the end of every week, by comparing my word count and thinking back through the week to see where I could have been more efficient. If we want our writing to become more than just a hobby, it’s a good practice to have.
3. What could I do differently that might result in a larger word count?
I hadn’t really been paying attention to word counts until fairly recently. I usually write everything by hand, so I don’t tend to write all that fast when it comes to rough drafts.
I went back and calculated word counts for the week where my schedule was not as streamlined as it was this week, and the word count was about 7,000 words lower. That’s a pretty significant amount—enough to make me realize that I needed to do something to increase it.
Grouping like writings together had a significant impact on how many words I could turn out in a week, and that was helpful to see. I will continuously experiment to see what might result in the largest word counts (and not just word counts—but also the best kind of writing. Because large word counts doesn’t always mean good word counts.).
As parents with limited writing time, it’s necessary for us to continue streamlining our schedules and figuring out what works best for us in the season we’re in. Seasons change, and our schedules should, too.
Don’t be afraid to experiment. Don’t be afraid to streamline and change things up just because it’s worked for you all this time. You might just find that changing things up significantly increases your production.
But you’ll never know until you evaluate.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
Lately I’ve been reading Write. Publish. Repeat. by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant, guys who started a podcast called The Self-Publishing Podcast several years ago. These guys are legitimate. They produce a crazy amount of content every year—mostly fiction, but some nonfiction—with word counts in the millions.
In their book, they talk about producing a new episode (they release some of their books like TV episodes—one a week—which is a model I’d like to be trying out soon) every week. Each episode is about 20,000 or 30,000 words.
Each week they’re writing 20,000 to 30,000 words, getting those words into format they can sell, publicizing it, and then launching it to sell.
Let me just say: I can’t even imagine doing that.
Each week I’m lucky to log 25,000 words in rough draft form and another 10,000 or so in final draft form (and that if I’m REALLY lucky and the kids don’t interrupt me even once). I’m lucky to spend a little time compressing something into an actual book I could sell. I’m lucky if I have the slightest amount of time to work on a book description or back matter.
So, of course, lately I’ve been comparing my output to their output and feeling a little discouraged. Will I ever get there? How can I be more efficient? Why can’t I do that, too?
They have a successful indie publishing business, and they produce a crazy amount of product, but what if my not-so-crazy amount of product means that I won’t have a successful indie publishing career?
Platt and Truant talk about the importance of creating funnels, which really means leading one book into another, like with book series or something that will naturally lead readers into another book. They say you shouldn’t launch a book until you have two.
Problem is it takes me six months to write a book. So a year’s worth of work (if I’m lucky) and I can’t even get a book in my store?
Well, here’s the thing, though: comparison isn’t helpful or our own, specific situation.
Sure, these guys are producing an insane amount of content every year, but that doesn’t mean I have to do it exactly like them to run a successful indie business. They’re not even saying that. In fact, they explicitly say in the beginning pages of their book that it’s not a training manual; it’s a this-is-how-I-did-it manual.
They log incredible word counts every week, but that doesn’t mean I have to log the same word count in order to be taken seriously as an author.
Sometimes I catch myself thinking, There’s no way I’ll be able to do that. It’s true for now. But there may be a day I’ll be able to do it, when kids are older and need me less. That day is not today. I don’t have the margin to write for long hours of the day. I will have to take what I can get, because I’m not giving up.
Sometimes we can see these comparisons and think we’re just not trying hard enough or we just don’t have what it takes or we should just quit before we get our hopes up, because obviously we’re lacking something that they have.
Comparison can stop us right in our tracks.
The truth is, writer careers take all different sizes and shapes. Some people can release a 30,000-word book every week. Some people can release a 70,000-word book in a year. It’s all legitimate.
Some writers have kids (lots of them). Other choose not to have kids or family or anything that might distract them from the end goal. It doesn’t mean that either of us is wrong or less or more of a writer.
We can never see ourselves clearly if we’re looking through comparison eyes. We need to take off those lenses that say we should do it that way exactly, like that person, or else…
Or else we’re not going to see success.
Or else they’ll never take us seriously.
Or else our writing won’t be esteemed.
The world wouldn’t be a very interesting place if we all looked the same. The writing world wouldn’t be a very interesting place if all our writing careers looked the same.
So we must do what we can do and let the work rest in our effort for today.
Here are some ways to stop comparison in its tracks instead of letting it stop us:
1. Keep a log of how many words you write each day and celebrate when the word count goes up. Don’t look at others’ word counts. Just look at your own and make yourself better day by day. One word at a time.
2. Start a journal of everything you accomplish each day. At the end of the year, look back on the list and remember. Remember how productive you were. Remember how much you enjoyed it. Remember how exciting it was to build your writer career and how humbling it is that you get to do this.
3. Assess your expectations. Sometimes our expectations, when they’re not aligned with reality, are what can make us look around at other people, because we want either affirmation that we’re on the right path or we want to know if we should set a different goal for ourselves. Make your goals and remember that they’re fluid, not set in stone. And then give it your best effort because you think it’s right, not because someone else’s career told you it was right.
The beauty of building a writing business is that we get to make the rules. We get to work toward our own goals.
Don’t let comparison kill what momentum you already have.
Let me say it again: Don’t let comparison kill what momentum you already have.
(This post is just as much for me as everyone else. I’ll be reading it as often as I need to. I hope you will, too.)
