#AtoZchallenge Prioritizing the Writer’s Life via a Business Plan

The #AtoZChallenge 2017 Theme at Operation Awesome is the Publishing Journey.

Today's guest post is by Becca Puglisi.
Prioritizing the Writer’s Life via a Business Plan

If I could pick one word to describe how my writing career has turned out, it would probably be unexpected. I started in 2004, composing YA fiction. That was all I ever wanted to write. But when an opportunity arose in 2008 to start a blog with my critique partner and writing soul sister Angela Ackerman, I took the chance. It was the right choice, even though a big chunk of my writing time had to then be devoted to nonfiction, since this would be the focus of our blog. By 2011, our audience had exploded and they were clamoring for a published version of our content; in a very short period of time, I found myself a published nonfiction author. Six years and five books later, I’m not only a nonfiction author but also a speaker and writing coach¬—a happy evolution, but a far cry from where I once envisioned myself.

It’s been an exciting ride but also a crazy one as I’ve tried to figure out where my time and energy should be devoted along the way. This is a question many writers struggle with, particularly in the early years when they’re learning who they are, pinpointing what they want, and defining their personal brands. As your writing career progresses, there’s increased pressure to take on more responsibilities. You’re told to start a blog, get involved in social media, attend conferences, do school visits and book signings—all while honing your craft and writing that all-important next book. These are good ideas that can work toward your goal of becoming a career author. But you can’t possibly do everything. How do you decide where to focus?

When things got squirrely for Angela and me, we knew we needed a roadmap to keep us on track. For us, that ended up being a business plan. I highly recommend it for all writers looking to clarify their career path and direction.

By identifying our areas of focus, setting primary and secondary priorities, and scheduling deadlines for our goals, we had a clear view of where our priorities should lie during the year. And it made decision-making a whole lot easier.

For instance, when we created this plan for 2016, there were a few additional things we had wanted to accomplish. But once we established our areas of focus and started identifying our goals, we realized there simply wasn’t time for everything. So we pushed the less important items to the next year.

I was recently able to use our 2017 business plan to make a decision about speaking at a particular conference. I’ve done quite a few speaking engagements, but this one was an all-day gig, which I’d never done before. I had to really think about it because while I love to speak, and doing so fits perfectly into our Build Writing Coaches Persona area of focus, I was nervous about the time commitment. But I soon realized that this was too good an opportunity to pass up. It also forced me out of my box a little bit, which is almost always a good thing, so I agreed to do it.

These are just two examples of how I was able to use our plan to make decisions that would maximize reward while maintaining focus on what was important for our business. And, honestly, any writer can do this. Here’s how.

1. Formulate A Business Plan. It sounds a little scary, but it’s really pretty straightforward, as you can see in this step-by-step post that Angela wrote for Jane Friedman’s blog. Creating a plan takes a lot of thinking, and staring out the window, and crossing things off and adding new items to your list. But eventually, you’ll end up with a clear picture of where your focus should be for the year.

2. Post It In A Prominent Spot. I have mine tacked to a bulletin board on my office wall. Whenever I receive a request, all I have to do is look up and be reminded of where my priorities should lie.

3. Ask Yourself Question #1: Does this request fit with my goals and areas of focus? If the answer is no, it’s likely that this particular job will not only take you away from where you want to be, it will steal time and energy from the projects that would have helped you accomplish your objectives.

4. Ask Yourself Question #2: Do I have time? Often, opportunities will come along that fit very well into your plan, but they’re time consuming, and saying yes means saying no to a higher priority item. Other times, that new opportunity aligns so perfectly with your business plan that it should become a top priority in place of something on your list.

Case in point from a few years ago: in the last quarter of 2014, Angela and I were on our way to accomplishing all of our goals when Lee Powell, the developer of Scrivener for Windows, contacted us about creating a software application showcasing all of our thesauri and many other tools and resources. Now we found ourselves facing a new opportunity that would require a huge time commitment just to do the research on the front end. But this opportunity tied directly into our second and third areas of focus and looked like it could be the next logical step for our business. So we pushed back the deadlines on the remainder of our goals for that year and even sidelined a few so we could pursue it. As a result, we’re now able to offer writers a comprehensive writing website—One Stop For Writers—in addition to our published books.

5. Don’t Be Afraid To Say Yes. It’s easy to use a business plan as a crutch—an excuse for not taking on an opportunity that scares us or is outside of our comfort zone. Remember that a business plan is meant to be a guideline, not something written in stone. If something comes up that aligns well with your goals and areas of focus, jump on that bandwagon. I can’t tell you how many times in my career it has made more sense for me to say no to potential opportunities. But saying yes was almost always the right answer, and I benefited every time.

6. Don’t Be Afraid To Say No. The writing community is a social and collaborative one, largely because the author’s journey can be so difficult. As a result, we often find ourselves in the position of doing things for friends, acquaintances, and strangers out of a sense of obligation. Never forget that while there are many personal and social benefits to being an author, writing is a business. As a creative, your time is an expense that must be responsibly doled out and carefully accounted for. So if you want to achieve your goals, learn to say no to the things that are counter-productive.

As your writing career progresses and more decisions have to be made, it can be hard to know when an opportunity should be pursued and when it’s simply going to be a distraction. A business plan is a great tool to help you make wise decisions that will keep you on track toward meeting your goals.

BIO:

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling. You can find Becca online at both of these spots, as well as on Facebook and Twitter.

The Art of Letting Go

In preparing for the New Year (Abby is right--the future is coming soon!) I've been thinking about the baggage I'm carrying into it. Not just literal baggage (I'm on a holiday trip as we speak), but the mental baggage too. Often, it can become heavier than we realize, and a lot of times we don't know why we're even carrying it.

It's...so...heavy...

Luckily, unnecessarily heavy baggage allows me an opportunity to assess whether I can let it go.


Elsa definitely had the right idea.  

It got me thinking of things that take my brain energy on a daily basis. Sometimes it's social networking. Other times it's graduate school. But if I'm being honest, most of the drainage comes from my full time librarian job. On my other blog, I've documented some of the library questions I get, ranging anywhere from the mundane to the just plain goofy. (If you'd like more, Mental Floss recently posted some pre-internet questions from the New York Public Library). 

There is a lot I like about my job too. But when I'm able to separate myself from it, strip away what I don't need, it allows me to focus more on my writing and inner sense of well-being, both of which I intend to put front and center in the coming year. To do that, I need to ask myself the following:

1. What am I holding on to, and what makes it important?

2. What will happen if I decide to let go of things that might not be as important as I'm making them?

3. How can I prioritize what's important over the other stuff that isn't?

The first step I took was going dark on my other blog in December. As time goes on, I may be more selective about what I post there, at least until I get enough fiction writing under my belt to support the platform I've built for myself.

The second step I took was making a list of conferences I hope to attend. Google Docs is a great place for to-do lists, and if you need ideas on how to organize and prioritize, Getting Things Done is an excellent book.

Finally, per Abby's advice, I'm setting measurable goals for the coming year. Currently, I'm editing an old project and drafting a new one, and my goal is to have something submittable and polished by the end of 2015.

So what about you? What are you holding on to? Is it helping you? And if not, are you ready to let it go?

Spinning Plates: Writing, Reading, Critiquing, Revising

Picture from this site

Do you ever feel like this guy? 

I do. 

Except in my case, it's more like the plates, symbolic of my priorities, are strewn about the floor in chips and pieces. I'm the least qualified person to talk about writers and priorities, which is probably why I feel drawn to the topic. 

*whispers* I don't even have a set time to write every day. 

That's right. I said it. I'm a lump writer. I write in huge lumps when I 'get the time.'

And I know you're just as busy as I am, if not more so. So how do you do it? I'm looking at you, Kiersten White. And you, Elana Johnson. And you, Blogger buddies.

In our line of work, there's a near constant need to be doing something, whether it's writing, reading, revising, or critiquing for someone else. Each of these activities requires the mind's whole focus, so you can't exactly multi-task like these plate spinners, right? How do you cope with the feeling when you're reading that you should be writing? Or the feeling while you're critiquing that you should be reading? Or the feeling while you're writing that you should be cleaning? Or making dinner? Or calling your mom? 

Seriously. How do you spin all these plates and keep them in the air at the same time? 

Or is it more like this guy who does his level best, but can only keep them all running for a few seconds?

How do you decide what comes first? And what do you do when you don't feel like doing any of it?

Making Every Second Count

Since we are one day away from the middle of NaNo, and I as went from a gorgeous surplus of words to scrambling to catch up to my daily word goals, I started thinking about how I’ve been spending my time. Some days it seems easy to crank out 5,000 words and other days I can barely write 50. So I looked back through my files until I found this little article I wrote a year or two ago on How To Find The Time To Write to see what on earth I used to do to get everything done. It seemed particularly relevant with NaNo goals looming over our heads :)

I have lost track of how many people have asked me how I find the time to write. The answer is easy….I just do. It’s a struggle. It’s not easy. There are some things I have to sacrifice. But it is doable.

The key for finding the time to write, at least for me, is in a little bit of organization and prioritizing. I have been lucky enough for the past couple of years to be able to stay at home full time with my kids, though when I began writing "for real" that wasn't the case. And I am very lucky this year because both of my kids are in school full time. So, I try very hard to make sure I’m not on the computer when my kids are home and awake. Which means once they are home from school during the week, and on the weekends, my time belongs to them.

So, the following are a few things I do to help make sure the time I do have during the day is spent wisely (we’ll talk about how often I really do these things and how often I waste whole days staring off into space relishing the silence another day *coughcough*)

1. Carry a notebook and pen, a recorder, laptop, etc.
One thing I’ve noticed about myself is that even when I’m not writing, I’m writing. Story ideas, conversations between characters, ideas for scenes…these are always running through my head. I tend to get epiphanies when I’m in the shower or doing the dishes. I may not have time in the middle of a load of dishes to rush to my computer and write a scene the moment it occurs to me, but if take a second to jot down a few notes, then I have something to work on when I can sit down at my computer. This both saves me the frustration of trying to remember something I really wanted to include in my book and the precious minutes of think time when I am in front of my screen.

2. Get chores and errands done in a timely manner.
If my husband read this, he'd be laughing so hard he'd be choking. Our house usually looks like a small nuclear device went off in at least one part of it. But hey, I try. Most of the time :D This is something I struggle with, but if I can get my household chores and errands completed early in the day, then whatever spare moments present themselves can be used to write. I can concentrate on my story instead of feeling guilty that I should be doing dishes or laundry instead.

3. Treat it like a job.
Author Rosellen Brown spelled it out perfectly. She said:

It’s a job. It’s not a hobby. You don’t write the way you build a model airplane. You have to sit down and work, to schedule you time and stick to it. Even it it’s just for an hour or so each day, you have to get a babysitter and find the time. If you’re going to make writing succeed you have to approach it as a job.

Just like a “real” job, writing is not always fun. It’s work. It’s HARD work. Editing, critiquing, rewriting, researching, replotting…this stuff all takes time and can sometimes get downright tedious. This is why treating writing like a job can really be helpful. You don’t always like your job, but you still have to do it. Approach your writing like you’d approach your job. Just Do It! Agatha Christie said:

Write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you are writing, and aren’t writing particularly well.

It is not always important WHAT you write – that is what editing is for. What is important is that you sit down and DO IT. Butt to chair, fingers to keyboard (or pen to paper). When you least feel like writing is when you need to do it the most.

In an effort to do this, I do two things.

• Make a writing schedule.
My children get on the bus at 8:00 and get home at 3:55 (this is the first year they are both in school full time and I’ve just got to say, even though I do occasionally miss their adorable little faces during the day…..it’s HEAVEN to have my days to myself again :D) So, I try to do my housework/puttering/what have you in the morning so that by 10:00, I can be at my computer, ready to work. Some days are spent writing blog posts, answering emails, doing editing work for my brother’s company or anything else I need to work on, but for the most part, I am doing something productive by 10 am. I will squeeze in writing any other time I can, but I schedule my set writing hours while my kids are out of the house or asleep. Fridays through Sundays I try to write for at least an hour after everyone has gone to bed.

• Set goals.
In addition to having my scheduled writing time, I set a word count goal for each day. My goal is to write 1000 words a day (or edit 10 pages or a chapter or finish one section in my NF proposal – just some sort of solid goal). Sometimes I am on a roll and can get that done in half an hour, and sometimes I will write for two hours and only get 500 words out. Sometimes I meet my goal, sometimes not, and sometimes I exceed it. I can almost always get 1000 words written in about an hour – which means an hour and 1000 words a day, five to seven days a week, and I’ve got a finished novel (first draft) in three months. Regardless, it gives me something to shoot for. You can set your goal higher or lower, depending on the time you have available, but give yourself some sort of objective to aim for.

4. Prioritize your activities

We all have spare moments in the day. What we do with those moments is what is important. If you truly want to find the time to write, you have to be willing to sacrifice. I have a lot of television shows that I love. I love to read. I play the piano and cross-stitch. I have children that want to play with their mommy (although I would like to note that time with my children is NOT something I sacrifice in order to write…most days…I have definite Mother Fail days, but I try :) ).

This is where having a writing schedule really helps. My writing time is scheduled while my kids are at school or in bed. That means when my kids come home, I can play with them, do some chores, spend some time in the afternoons reading a good book (if I am lucky enough to have the time), and watch my favorite shows in the evening. And I can spend my time doing this because I know I have already met my writing goal for the day.

If you work full time, you can try and squeeze in some writing time on your lunch break, or wake up a little early or go to bed a little later in order to get your writing time in. It IS possible to find moments to write, no matter what your schedule is….but sometimes it requires a bit of sacrifice. I wrote my first novel while going to school full time to get my master’s degree, working part time, with 2 kids under 2 – it was ridiculous, I never slept, but I did it. If you really want to do it, you’ll do it. Plain and simple.

During the summer when my kids are not in school, I tend to DVR whatever shows I want to watch and write in the evenings after they’ve gone to bed. I'll also do this on normal days and watch my shows while folding laundry - multitasking at its best LOL Or I’ll write in the afternoons instead of reading or playing piano, or choosing some other activity. And very often (because Real Life has a funny way of intervening and throwing all my well-made plans out the window) I sacrifice sleep in order to write.

When I was finishing my first novel, I was waking up at 4:30 in the morning and going to bed at midnight because the only time I could sit down and write, uninterrupted, was when my family was asleep. That is not something I could keep up indefinitely, but in a pinch, I am willing to sacrifice a little sleep in order to write.

Now, let’s face it, Real Life is going to get in the way sometimes. It’s going to laugh at your carefully crafted schedule and stomp all over it, probably on a daily basis. But it shouldn’t matter. If you want to write, write. Find the time. Eat dinner a little faster and use the three minutes you saved scarfing your meal to write a few lines. Carry a recorder around and dictate your book while you vacuum. Scribble on Kleenexes while you wait at the doctor’s with your sick child (just be careful not to use said Kleenex for said sick child’s nose). The time is there…you just have to find it and use it.

Author Kenneth Atchity said:

Every human being has exactly the same amount of time, and yet consider the output of Robert Louis Stevenson, John Peabody Harrington, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury,William Goldman, Neil Simon, Joyce Carol Oates, Agatha Christie and John Gardner. How did they accomplish what they have? They weren’t deflected from their priorities by activities of lesser importance. The work continues, even though everything else may have to give. They know that their greatest resource is themselves. Wasting time is wasting themselves. When people ask them, “Where do you find the time?” they wonder, “Where do you lose it?”

When do you write? What are some things you do to make sure you can get your writing time in?