This is my story the past few weeks…
I’m writing every day, many hours per day.
I’m reading and researching every day.
I have several contracts to fulfill, which is pleasant.
(Story continues below…)
This is me most evenings.
A darkened room, five minutes of reading for fun, and then blessed sleep.
(Story continues below…)
I have learned the difference finally.
I’m not busy on social media.
But I’m producing thousands of words these days.
I’m just missing three things.
(Story finishes below.)
Have you ever had the experience of driving a car which suddenly–and for no apparent reason–accelerates? Applying the brakes has no effect.
It sometimes happens with certain defects in cars, and while the driver can see the accident about to happen, he is powerless to do anything about it.
Many writers feel like their lives have the same “defect.” Symptoms can include lethargy, tiredness after a full night’s sleep, depression or free-floating anxiety without a specific cause, and spaciness. A writer with an unintentional accelerated pace of life has precious little time for the reflection and quiet “head space” needed for creating.
Does the description of this syndrome sound familiar to you?
The ever increasing pace of life is called the “acceleration syndrome,” and it is causing a global epidemic of hurry sickness. One of the symptoms is the dizzying speed at which we live and the amount of living we are forcing into our lives…Many “solutions” offered, such as time management and learning to delegate and prioritize, are having the opposite effect. They are actually increasing the pace of life, creating a time squeeze in which we are encouraged to cram even more into an hour. They only aggravate the problem we are supposed to be addressing.
What’s a writer to do?
It’s covered in one of the “dirty dozen” chapters that Caroline Leaf talks about in her book Who Switched Off My Brain (the chapter called “Toxic Schedules.”) There’s also a one-minute video segment you can watch on the topic. I highly recommend all her books. They have helped me tremendously with “detoxing” over the past two years.
Unlike the driver of a car stuck in unintentional acceleration, you CAN do something about your speeded-up life. And if you want to enjoy your writing life, you will probably need to.
Four areas are essential to your success in 2015, according to Randy Ingermanson. Consider his four factors below when making this year’s writing goals. Don’t set goals that only target areas where you’re already successful. Instead, ask yourself, “Am I strong–or at least growing–in each of these four areas?” They’re all necessary. If one area is weak or missing, make a change. Add it to your goal list for 2015.
If you want to manage a successful writing career, then you need to know what makes a writer successful.
I’ve been thinking about this for more than 25 years, and here is my current best understanding of success.
Success is the product of four crucial factors, and we can write them very roughly as an equation:
Success = (Target audience size) x Quality x Discoverability x Production
Note that those are multiplication signs. If you fail in any one of them, then you are going to fail as a writer, because zero times anything is zero.
If you do moderately well in each one of them, then you should be pretty successful. If you are outstanding in each of them, then your name is James Patterson.
Let’s look at each of these factors:
Your Target Audience is the set of people whom you intend to be delighted by the kind of novel you’re writing.
Don’t waste time trying to identify your Target Audience by demographics—age, gender, social status, etc. For most novels, demographic information is useless.
What matters is psychographics—the emotional hot buttons that your novel is going to push. Your Target Audience is the set of people who like having those particular hot buttons pushed.
It really is as simple as that. The purpose of fiction is to give your reader a Powerful Emotional Experience. (I invented this phrase for the very first talk I ever gave on fiction writing, back in the fall of 2000. I have never changed my mind about this. The Powerful Emotional Experience is the reason your reader reads. It needs to be the reason you write.)
Now the question is how many people are in your Target Audience? You can’t know this exactly, but you know perfectly well if you are pushing the emotional hot buttons of a large group or a small group.
Everybody seems to have a different definition of quality.
For example, if you Google around, you’ll discover that a number of reviewers believe that Dan Brown, the author of The DaVinci Code, is a low-quality writer.
Reviewers will tell you that Brown uses words poorly, has an agenda, and is a terrible researcher. And on and on.
So why is Dan Brown so successful?
Quality is in the eye of the beholder. And that, I think, is the key to understanding Brown’s success. If you’re a writer, your Target Audience’s definition of quality is the one that matters.
I define “quality” to mean “how well do you delight your Target Audience?”
It’s a simple fact that Dan Brown has a large Target Audience and his books delight them. He punches the set of emotive hot buttons that they want punched.
That is high quality writing. Readers don’t read mainly for beautiful writing. They don’t read mainly for an authorial agenda (although if they like the agenda, then it’s actually a plus.) They don’t read mainly for great research.
Readers read for a Powerful Emotional Experience. The more powerful it is, the higher the perceived quality of the writing.
For the record, I’m not in Dan Brown’s Target Audience. But it’s obvious that he’s making that audience happy. Dan is a high-quality writer. Ditto for James Patterson, who knows exactly what his readers want and delivers it.
Discoverability means how easy it is for your Target Audience to discover your work.
The number of books published in the whole history of the human race is about 130 million.
Your book is one of that 130 million. How easy are you to find?
There are many ways to increase your discoverability, and I can’t possibly cover them all here.
I’ll just make one key point. The best methods of discoverability are the ones that require the least resources from you. You have limited time, energy, and money.
If you spend all your time, energy, and money on methods that don’t make you very discoverable, then you’re going to fail.
Some authors complain that the deck is stacked against new writers. An established best-selling author could publish his laundry list and sell zillions of copies.
This is true because Discoverability is forever. Once you’ve been discovered by a potential reader, you can’t be undiscovered.
If a reader is in your Target Audience and you’ve given her a high Quality read, then you’re on her list for a long time. A lifetime, if you continue delivering the goods.
If a reader isn’t in your Target Audience or you give her low Quality, then you’re off her list, probably forever.
So Discoverability only matters once you’ve begun delivering Quality to a good-sized Target Audience. Bear this in mind when you try to plan your life.
Production is the number of books you write per year.
All other things being equal, the more books you write, the more success you’ll have.
Dan Brown writes a book every few years and each one is a sky-rocket.
James Patterson writes a book every few weeks and each one is a sky-rocket.
That’s why James is the #1 selling author in the world in this century. Production matters.
In recent years, I’ve seen a trend among indie authors to focus on Production. It’s good to be productive, and it’s something I’m trying to improve on, but in my opinion, this comes last, after you’ve clearly identified your Target Audience, got your Quality up to snuff, and found a way to make Discoverability happen.
Once those are all in your pocket, then you’ll be earning some money and you can cut back from the day job to focus on ramping up Production.
Nobody can predict the future, and all plans are going to smash head-on into reality. Still, it’s better to plan than not plan.
In mapping out your future, remember that the main thing is to focus on the main thing. And there are four main things:
Those are the things I think about as I plan my writing career.
Happy New Year!I don’t know what it is about having a CLEAN calendar, but it gives most people the urge to begin something new.
Proof is well documented, though, that new year’s goals and resolutions rarely last through January. I’m convinced that much of the cause is lack of careful thought beforehand.
If your December was nuts and you had little time for quiet reflection before New Year’s Day, then I highly recommend that you take a whole week (or longer) to ponder some questions. Even better, journal answers to the questions below. Pour out everything that comes to mind.
And be honest. No one else needs to see your answers. Write down how you truly feel, not what you think “real writers” should feel.
After you’ve thoroughly answered the questions (maybe after several writing stints), go back through your entries. Underline or highlight your Aha! moments of insight. These insights are what will help you set goals that you can actually meet. (Example: in your journaling, you might discover that you wrote very little for months because it hurts to sit. One of your writing-supportive goals, therefore, might be exercising to eliminate the hip pain or building a treadmill desk, like I did.)
Not all writing goals focus on writing, I’ve found. There are many writing-related and non-writing goals you will find helpful to your writing success this year. For example, your most important writing goal might be setting boundaries with a family member who manages to control most of your time and energy–and keep you from writing.
Take plenty of time to journal answers to these questions:
When you have the answers to these questions, you are well on your way to setting goals that you’ll actually meet this year. If you’re willing, please share a goal (either writing or writing-related) you hope to achieve in 2015.
Beginning the new year is much like writing a new book. We have an idea, and we’re working out the details. There’s excitement, high hopes, blank pages, and a sense that anything can happen. This could be our best year ever! This
could be our breakout (or “break in”) year! This could well be our year where we reach escape velocity.
But…
Are you afraid to get your hopes up? Do you remember past years–maybe many past years–where you also had high hopes, but not much resulted from it?
This happens especially when you’ve tried hard. You’ve learned how to set goals. You’ve written them down because you’ve had it drilled into your head that writing goals down can almost make them magically happen! You’ve joined challenges, signed up for writing prompts, found accountability partners, become active in critique groups…you’ve “been there, done that.”
And yet, despite producing some good writing and making headway on your Internet presence and perhaps selling some and speaking some, 2014 fell far short of your goal list. In fact, you may have fallen short on lists from the last five years.
At the beginning of December, when I took time off from the blog, one of the things I did was go through 2014 and analyze why I succeeded with some things and failed with others. I kept backing up and asking myself, “What caused this?” I asked over and over, repeating the question for each failed goal, until I got to the bottom of it. [This would prove to be invaluable in my 2015 planning later.]
Here’s an example:
So my 2015 goals don’t center around solving the problem of “don’t get sick–take more vitamins, go for a walk.” Instead I found ways to stay offline or lock myself offline, had talks with a couple of people about how much I could be available, and learned how to discern which responsibilities belonged to whom, and then only deal with my own. All of those issues contributed to not finishing that novel during the free time I had in 2014. I plan to finish it this year.
I decided this year that I would look for help from someone who had their act together more than I did! I signed up (with a 30-day money back guarantee) for Michael Hyatt’s“Your Best Year Ever” program. It’s certainly what I wanted (to have my best year ever), and with the three novel deadlines I have so far this year, I absolutely have to be more productive.
The program is a five-step process for creating goals, including motivation and accountability for achieving the steps. I won’t know if it works for a while yet, nor am I promoting his program. But I’ve had too many years in a row where I only accomplished about half my goals. I want and need this year to be different.
When I signed up for the program, it came with several freebies that I have found just as useful as the program itself. One was a video and workbook on “morning rituals,” specifics on how to set up your days for success. Another extremely valuable idea was a video/workbook plan for finding your “push goal.” A push goal is one that influences all your other goals and makes them much more likely to be accomplished.
If you want to have a different kind of writing year, you will need to do some things differently. What will they be?
Maybe, like me, you want some personal coaching in setting up goals this time, in the hope that you’ll accomplish most (or all) of them this year. Other writers do it! Why not you and me?
Maybe you write very clear goals already, are already 100% motivated, but lack support. Your first goal may be to find a writing group, online or in your hometown library or bookstore.
Maybe, like one very successful writing friend of mine, you feel your need is more focus if you’re to attain your goals. She’s reading books on focus to find ideas. Another writer is changing genres and feels a real need for intensive study again in order to succeed in his goals.
Whatever your goals for 2015, take time now to figure out (1) why you didn’t meet some of your goals last year, and (2) what specific thing you need in order to boost your chances that 2015 will be a lot more productive.
Then aggressively hunt for a suitable solution, make it a priority, and set yourself up for huge success. Happy writing in 2015!
Deadlines, and funerals, and a computer virus…oh my! It’s been one of those weeks!
(Photo courtesy of http://the-english-spot.blogspot.com/2009/11/cartoon-idiom-to-be-swamped.html)
It’s the weekend, and I’m more tired than I’ve been in a good long while. And with the holidays coming, I’ve plotted my deadlines and weekly/daily writing “must do” lists on a giant calendar.
And something’s got to give. I won’t make my deadlines if it doesn’t.
One thing that is going to be put on hold is this blog. I’ll be back when the calendar turns to 2015, but I need the next five weeks to just hunker down and write. I may not be on social media much until then either.
So…Happy Thanksgiving! Have a blessed Christmas. And Have a Happy (Writing) New Year!
I love having deadlines. I really do. It means money will be coming in for my daily writing, as long as I meet those deadlines. But when overlapping deadlines meet Thanksgiving and Christmas (and all the dinners, shopping, cards and company that go with it), I feel my internal panic button set to go off.
Missing the holiday fun isn’t an option to me. I love the family get-togethers, the grandkids’ Christmas concerts, and the church events. I’ve already streamlined cards and shopping over the years.
Even so, I look at my calendar on the one hand, and how much revision still needs to be done on the other hand–and GULP.
It’s been a few years since I had multiple contracts to juggle, but I’m no stranger to the panic that can hit a writer at ANY time. If this applies to you–or just being able to write at all during the holidays–I’ll direct you to some easy solutions. [Yes, it’s true. When I’m stuck these days, I read my own blog or writing books to help myself “remember” what I already know will work.]
Just re-reading my posts defused my inner panic button. I remember! Mini habits…easy starting…daily success… Bring on the holidays!
[This is a repeat post because I’m out of town. I think the message is one we need to be reminded of.]
You’ve often heard the phrase “you are your own worst enemy.” Does this apply to you when trying to create a writing life you love? It certainly applies to me!
How does this enemy within keep you from moving ahead with your writing dreams? By telling you lies. Some are bold-faced lies. Some are wrapped in soft wool. Some lies ridicule you, while others sound downright comforting. What do all these voices in your head have in common?
They’re instruments of self-sabotage. They convince you to give up.
There are many voices inside your head. You must listen and decide who’s doing the talking at any particular moment. Some voices are easy to recognize; some are so subtle you’ll be shocked. First, you have the…
It whispers words like “What makes you think you have anything interesting to say?” “You’re no good.” “That junk will never sell.” “You’re actually going to show that story to somebody?” The Inner Critic beats you down with criticism. Sometimes this voice bears a remarkable similarity to that of your mother, your spouse, or your junior high English teacher.
As Julia Cameron says in The Artist’s Way at Work, creativity requires a sense of inner safety, something like a fortress. “In order to have one, you must disarm the snipers, traitors and enemies that may have infiltrated your psyche.”
I spent years fighting my Inner Critic’s voice with positive affirmations and gritted teeth. “Oh, yes, I can!” was my motto. In time, my Inner Critic was quieted, only speaking out when I got an unexpected rejection or bad review. Yet I still wasn’t creating the writing life I dreamed of. Something was holding me back. It took me a long time to realize I still had voices in my head, because the tone and words had changed.
Do any of the following voices live inside your head and keep you from fully pursuing your writing dreams? Listen and see.
This voice sounds so adult, so sensible. It tells you to grow up, to get your head out of the clouds and your feet back on the ground. “You’re neglecting your children (or your job),” says this voice. “Look at your messy kitchen (or yard or garage).” “You have no business hiring someone else to mow the lawn so you can write!” “You’d better walk the poor dog first.”
Guilt is piled on by this voice, and you crumble under its weight. You put your writing dream on the back burner until a time when you’re less burdened by responsibility.
This voice is snide and cryptic. It slaps your hand when you try to crawl out of the box that is your life and declare yourself a writer. “Who do you think you are?” this voice asks. “You’ll make a fool of yourself!”
Doubt and low self-worth take these statements as the truth, and that of course only serves to further lower your self-esteem. Cowering, you crawl back in the box and close the lid on your dreams.
(The rest of the article on self-sabotage (which also includes the voices of fear, compassion, and procrastination) is here. It’s from the “Creating the Writing Life You Love” section of my Writer’s First Aid: Getting Organized, Getting Inspired, and Sticking to It.
Several years ago, when I took on a two-year writing project, I knew that something had to give. I already was spending my life constantly trying to squeeze out five more spare minutes. To make the deadline, something (or several somethings) in my schedule would have to be weeded out.
“Where’s the dead wood in your life?” a writing friend asked me. “What can be cut?”
Nothing, I thought. It’s all important stuff. I had a couple of weekly writing jobs, I held offices in a couple organizations, and I led a couple small church groups. Some of the responsibilities had been mine for years, and they all seemed important.
I was clueless about what to cut–until I heard a pastor talking about this very dilemma. And this was the bottom line: if the activity has run its course and you no longer enjoy or even want to be doing it, you may want to weed it out. In other words, he said,
“If the horse has been dead ten years, dismount.”
I started over. I looked at my commitments again and made a list of my paid and unpaid jobs. Which job or position that once was fun and satisfying and productive was now just an unproductive time drain? Which things had run their course? Which lifeless “horse” was I still trying to make gallop? Where should I “dismount”?
This wasn’t as difficult to spot as I expected. Some of our time drains are just habits we’ve had for years. Or they’re community or school obligations we took on for a year or two, and somehow they turned into life-time commitments. Some things we used to be so enthusiastic about, but now we resent the time it takes.
Take a close look at your stable of horses. If you have trouble finding time to write–if your schedule is truly too full–I hope you will dismount a couple of dead horses so that you have time to ride a new one!
And if you have difficulty deciding what needs to go, I highly recommend a book I read this year. It’s Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. It will help you get rid of the dead wood now, plus develop a lifestyle where you don’t add in commitments or activities until you take something out first to make room.
Many of us are too busy to enjoy the very full lives we have. Chances are, if you want a writing life too, something will have to go. Don’t wait. If you’re trying to ride a dead horse (or several!), DISMOUNT!
Imagine for a moment that you are flying to an exotic island. An hour or so into the flight the pilot announces over the intercom, “I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is our radio is out and our navigational equipment is damaged. The good news is we have a tail wind, so wherever we’re going, we’ll get there at a rate of six hundred miles an hour.”
(from Calm My Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow)
In your writing career, are you like the passengers on the good news/bad news plane ride? Are you barreling ahead at a lightning pace, but your radio is out and your navigation system is damaged? Are you traveling at 600 mph in your writing, but leaving the direction to chance and gut feelings?
These days, with the emphasis on the “platform” expected of writers, this is an easy mistake to fall into. We are told by marketing experts that we need to have a website and a blog (with up-to-the-minute search engine optimization), podcasts, teleseminars, and newsletters. We also need to be “seen” on social networks (like Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn) and quickly gain thousands of “friends” and “followers.” We need to read dozens of other writers’ blogs and leave links back to our websites. Doing even half of this takes hours every day, leaving you with the feeling that you’re zipping along through cyberspace at lightning speeds.
But what about your writing time? Are you flinging yourself out there to build a platform without a functioning navigation system? Do you know where you’re headed–and why?
If you try to jump on every bandwagon that comes along, you’ll continually rush, rush and wonder at the end of the day if you accomplished anything. You will miss valuable hours to study your craft, read books in your area of interest, and WRITE.
Be sure, if you’re building a platform, that each leg of it supports what you want to do as a writer. For example, with this blog and my newsletter, my overall goal is to help other writers. I announce blog posts (mine and others I’ve found helpful) on Twitter and Facebook. I don’t do all the other stuff. There’s no time–not if I also write.
I spend 4-5 hours most weeks on platform building. It’s more the first of the month due to writing the newsletter. I know many writers who are so caught up in social marketing that they have almost ZERO time to read and write. Whenever I ask them if the merry-go-round is worth it, I have NEVER had someone say “yes.” They always say, “I sure hope it will pay off someday.”
Listen to all the marketing advice out there, but don’t jump on every bandwagon. Evaluate each idea, determine if it’s something that would fit the purpose of your writing, and still leave you enough time to write.
You don’t want to get to the end of your writing days and realize you’re clear off course. Chart your own course and determinedly stick to it.