Category Archives: The Writing Life

Prioritization is the Key in 2014

The Writing Life No Comments

A guest post by Scott Eder.

As we boldly step forth into a new year, it seems only natural to reflect on the past to plan for the future. 2013 marked a huge milestone for me—the sale and publication of my debut novel, Knight of Flame. It was an amazing experience awash in Awesome sauce. From the editing to the cover art to the initial promotion to the… all of it really, I loved the whole affair. Too much, really. From writing blogs and interviews for virtual book tours, answering comments, and researching new places to write blogs and interview, I let the process consume me and lost valuable writing time greasing the promotion machine. Happily, I might add. It was a choice I made. Everything’s a choice. Now I have to make up for lost time.

Social media is a drug, and I became an addict. “Did I just get a new review? Did someone just add KOF to her to-be read list? Oooh, I got mentioned in a tweet!” Each and every screen refresh brought something new. Even the angry chibi version of Dean Wesley Smith (see the red pound sign on his cheek?) in the back of my brain shouting that the best promotion is my next book didn’t pull me out.

You know what woke me up? Hearing Ryan Seacrest count down to the New Year and knowing that I hadn’t finished my next book. Crap.

So here we are. 2014. I have a lot to do. I’m not going to bore you with my laundry list of projects and how I’m going to get them done. Suffice it to say, I have a lot of work on my plate. What I want to stress is priority. Set your daily priority and stick to it. Here are my priorities:

1. Family—first and foremost. Without them, nothing else is possible. Nothing else matters.

2. Writing—develop new opportunities.

  • Write new words.
  • Edit old words.
  • Outline next story.

3. Promotion—expand reach of author brand.

  • Blogging: new content for Mad Muncle’s Forge, occasional guest blogs.
  • Interviews: radio, blogs.
  • Social media: simple posts to show I’m alive.

Promotion has to be a far distant third. The writing has to get done. I’m not trying to build a promotional career, but one in writing. And that cannot happen unless I write. Simple, right?

Right. But setting out a bulleted list and making a bold statement doesn’t change behavior. I could say that rhinos fly, but that doesn’t make it so. Words stated, even with the best intentions, are only words… not actions.

So I took action:

  • I moved. A new year needed a new view. For me, it just meant moving my writing spot to a different part of my house, but it’s somewhere new, somewhere different.
  • I set measurable writing objectives. Establishing goals helps guide the workday, and sets the tone for a sense of accomplishment. While it doesn’t ensure progress, it helps lead the way.
  • I restricted my use of social media. Other than a quick check of email and social media during breakfast, I don’t touch it until after I hit my daily writing objectives.

Simple changes, but ones that have had a positive effect so far. When struggling with bad habits or productivity, make minor adjustments in your work habits before going crazy. Even a small change can make a big difference.

Guest Writer Bio:
knights_elemntSince he was a kid, Scott wanted to be an author. Through the years, fantastic tales of nobility and strife, honor, and chaos dominated his thoughts. After twenty years mired in the corporate machine, he broke free to bring those stories to life. Scott lives with his wife and two children on the west coast of Florida. Check out Knight of Flame on Scott’s Website www.scotteder.net.

Mini-Resolutions

The Writing Life No Comments

A guest post by James Orrin.

34742346Every year, millions of people make New Year’s resolutions in an attempt to change something about their lives, alter the course of their futures. Unfortunately, most don’t succeed. I recently read some statistics that suggested that only about eight percent of those who make resolutions accomplish their goals with consistency, year after year. Sadly, until last year I fit neatly into the failing side of those numbers.

Why? Because change is difficult, especially the broad, life-altering change that New Year’s resolutions often entail. It’s easy to talk about change, but once you’ve begun, it can feel like a giant boulder standing in your path, discouraging all forward progress.

So how do you deal with a giant boulder? You break it into smaller pieces.

When most people make a resolution, myself included, there is a distinct pattern of vagueness to what they want to accomplish. Exercise more. Eat healthier. Read more. Write more. Travel more. Usually, that’s as far as it’s taken, but I think that’s the reason I fail—I haven’t completely thought out my goals. I need to break them into more manageable chunks and ask myself a lot of questions, not unlike brainstorming a new story concept.

Here’s an example from my life. Last year, one of my goals was to attend more writing conventions. This sounds simple, but there are a lot of steps to take in order to make it happen. I need to decide which conventions I want to attend, arrange time off work, budget money from each paycheck for my trips, purchase registration, and then book hotels and flights. It’s easy to lose track of your goal if you haven’t thought it through, and then, as the first convention approaches, you realize that maybe you haven’t budgeted properly and now you can’t afford it.

I also need to ask myself why I want to attend more conventions, what I hope to gain from it. The most obvious and important answer is to network. As a new writer, my greatest assets are other writers. Not only can other writers help me accomplish my goals, I’ve also been surprised at how much I can learn while helping writer friends accomplish their goals.

So I want to network at conventions. This means I’ll need to consider how to network. How will I meet other writers? How will I conduct myself with them? How will I keep in touch with them after the convention is over? As a natural introvert and anti-social person, these are very important questions to answer for myself.

Once I had answers to all of these questions, I was able to create mini-resolutions, each one a step along the path to my greater goal. When taken individually, each was fairly easy, and made me feel as though I was making progress. And by doing this with all of my goals last year, I was successful with most of them—which was more than I could say for previous years.

I’m doing it again this year. I’ve taken each of my hopes and goals for 2014 and broken them into mini-resolutions. If you find yourself falling short of your goals year after year, professional or personal, I suggest doing the same. I’ve found it to be tremendously helpful.

Guest Writer Bio:
James Orrin lives in Northern Arizona, where the unique blend of landscapes fuels his imagination and passion for writing fantasy and science fiction. His personal website is www.jamesorrin.com.

Planning for Success

Business Craft & Skills Goals Motivation Nathan Barra Publishing Superstars Writing Seminars 2 Comments

My generation was raised to believe in the power of goals. I was taught that goals set at the beginning of an endeavor would allow me to achieve success. In promising myself that I would do a thing, it would happen. Even though I always had the best of intentions, I would often fail to meet my goals anyways.

Eventually, I realized that the problem was that I was only setting goals, not making plans. Goals are objectives, indicators of intent. Plans are action, a path for execution. Without having both, nothing will ever be accomplished. Over the years, I realized that my goals need to be SMART to be effective.

Goals are Specific. Any goal you set has to be specific enough that you can intelligently plan for success. A popular New Year’s resolution is to lose weight and get in shape. But how much weight do you want to lose? How do you define “in shape?” Establish exactly how many pounds you want to lose, or by how many inches you want your waist to shrink. Give yourself a specific BMI number you want to drop below. Establish some task you cannot accomplish now that will be your landmark for “being in shape.”

Goals are Measurable. Though specificity defines the endpoint, measurability ensures that you can accurately and regularly track your progress and take corrective action. The entire thought behind behavioral-based management is that by measuring and changing people’s actions, we can reach objectives. It is important to avoid goals that are succeed/fail in nature. If such objectives must be set, it is important that we can accurately measure progress in time to make a difference in the success of the goal.

Goals are Actionable. As a part of behavioral-based management, SMART goals must be under the influence of the person trying to achieve the goal. For instance, I have absolutely no control over my company’s stock price, so trying to set that goal would be unreasonable for me. However, the CEO of my company might very well have that goal. The difference is that his actions could have a direct effect on the stock price for the company, where mine do not. When considering actionable goals, I ask myself, “Are there steps that I can take that will directly influence the results?”

Goals are Realistic. The whole point of the goal is to make some improvement in your life, so a goal that cannot be attained is functionally useless. This is often the most difficult aspect of a SMART goal, as it requires not only introspection and self-awareness, but knowledge of one’s environment and competition. Honesty is truly important in setting realistic goals. Goals should always be challenging, but they should be attainable or else you have failed before you even started.

Goals are Time bound. Like everything else, goals have an end. Even if you accomplish your goal, if that accomplishment is not well timed, it’ll be either less effective or entirely ineffective. When setting your goal, it is essential to look at what timing you will need to be effective, and build that timing into your goal.

Because I believe in SMART goals, I will go ahead and take a risk. I am going to broadcast my writer’s goals for 2014. I am also going to ask y’all to help me keep accountable. My email address is Nathan[at]NathanBarra[dot]com. Feel free to email me at any time, ask about how my goals are going, tell me about your own goals, or even just chat.

OBJECTIVE: Make progress towards becoming a professional writer.

Though this goal is not SMART, it isn’t really a goal either. It is the overarching objective each of my goals will be designed to support.

GOAL #1 (blogging): Write and publish 52 Monday posts for In Brief, at least 10 Fictorians posts, and have a Thursday’s Thoughts online every Thursday in 2014.

I have found that though blogging takes a lot of my time, it also has many benefits. Writing and editing so frequently has had a positive effect on my prose. I have met many wonderful people through my blogging. I spend more time now thinking about my craft and seeking out resources to improve my skills than I have ever had before. Most importantly, it keeps me writing even when I am so busy that I barely sleep.

My plan for this goal is to try to establish a queue at least one month out, but still treat every week as if my queue is empty.

GOAL #2 (novels): Polish my manuscript to be ready to be shopped to editors and agents by 30-Aug-14.

This goal suffers most and specificity. What is a polished manuscript? Unfortunately, after much thought, I have not found a way to quantify this goal. The most important thing, however, is its timeliness. There are two major industry focused conventions in the fall at which I want to start shopping the book. To do this, the book needs to be finished and ready to be sent out into the world by the above-mentioned date.

The plan is to let the books settle until the end of the month, giving time for my last beta readers to get back to me. Then, I will finish my structural edits by 26-Mar-14, and my line edits by 25-May-14. With that timeframe, I can find a proofreader or line editor, and finish the manuscript reasonably by 09-Aug-14. This might seem like a long stretch of time, but I work on-call. That means, I might work more than 120 hours a calendar week, for 10 days, and then have 5 days off to rest and recuperate. For me, with the blogging, this schedule will be challenging. But, where’s the fun in easy?

GOAL #3 (submitting): Submit at least 4 independent works to publication markets by 31-Dec-14.

The only way for me to become a professional author is to get over my fear of rejection and learn to let go of a completed work. Blogging has helped a great deal with that. Now, I need to start asking for people to pay me for my efforts. Note, that because of how this goal is worded, submitting my novel to any number of sources only counts once.

My plan is to submit twice (Q3 2014 & Q1 2015) to Writers of the Future, shop my book and submit a piece of flash fiction or a short story to a magazine or anthology.

GOAL #4 (professional networking): Attend at least 3 conferences with some sort of writing/writing business aspect by 31-Dec-14.

This goal wasn’t one that I would’ve considered in 2013. Back then, I didn’t realize how important it was both professionally, and personally, for me to get out and meet people in the industry. Not only are they business contacts, but they are my friends and support structure.

The plan is to attend Superstars Writing Seminar in February, the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writer’s conference in September, and World Fantasy Con in November.

My goals have been stated and written down, and so I am accountable for their success. But, I also have a plan, a SMART plan. The only thing to do now is follow my plan and succeed.

Sophie’s Convention

Conventions Superstars Writing Seminars The Writing Life No Comments

A guest post by Kim May.

34890898Every year, I’m forced to make my very own Sophie’s choice. Except instead of choosing which child has to die, I have to choose which seminars, workshops, or conventions I’m going to attend. As much as I’d like to, I don’t have the vacation time or energy to attend them all. Not to mention that my meager travel budget can’t accommodate it. But they all have something unique to offer. Some, like Clarion, can be life-changing, while others like the Superstars Writing Seminar, have so much to offer that I’d be crazy not to go. WorldCon is enormous fun, and there are enough craft workshops to make my head spin.

So which one gets to live and which one gets to be taken out back like Old Yeller?

I don’t know if I’d ever be able to choose if it weren’t for a mentor’s advice. His advice was to consider what would be of the most benefit to my career at this stage. So where is my career? I’m still getting my name out there and trying to make my first sale. I’m also still mastering the craft (I suspect I’ll be striving for perfection the rest of my life, but that’s a discussion for another day). This means I need something that’s going to help me move forward.

Going back to a favorite workshop or convention is all well and good, but if all I’m getting out of it is renewing old contacts, something that I don’t have to do in person, then it’s in my best interests to go elsewhere. Even if a workshop updated its course materials, the majority would still be a review for me. If I need a review, and I often do, I can look at my notes. They’re free.

With this in mind, I can look at what each has to offer and make my choice. Like Sophie, I do harbor some regret that I can’t have them all. However, I can rest assured that my choice is the right one. Besides, just because it’s not wise for me to revisit doesn’t mean I can’t ever go back. Who knows, maybe in a few years I’ll be asked to come back to one of them as an instructor. Until then, I’ll have to make the grave in the backyard a little deeper and keep enough ordinance on hand to double-tap the desires that I can’t fulfill this year.

Guest Writer Bio:
Kim MayKim May writes sci-fi and fantasy but has been known to pen a gothic poem or two. She works at an independent bookstore and dog/house sits on the side. A native Oregonian, she lives with her geriatric cat, Spud, and spends as much of her free time as she can with family and friends. She recently won The Named Lands Poetry Contest. If you would like to find out what she’s working on, please visit her blog.