Every so often in writer circles, there is talk about goal-setting and success and word-count and other such lofty things. I repeatedly hear writers moan, “My word count is too low.” “I need a kick in the pants.” “THIS month it’ll be different and I’ll write a NaNo length manuscript.” (NaNo refers to the National Novel Writing Month held every year in November; more information at their website.) What these goals fail to do is offer a workable way to achievement. They’re not bad goals, exactly, just ineffective ones. Why?
The secret lies in why we don’t write more. The common misconception is that we don’t write because we’re lazy, or because we’re doing other things, or because that other person got there first and there’s just no use, or because all the good stories have been told and there’s no space for us and our stories. The reason is rarely because we are physically incapable of writing.
I’d like to tell you an anecdote. A professional friend of mine, under deadline for a novel (and her novels are over one hundred thousand words each), became very ill. After hospitalization, she returned home and was given the wrong medication. She nearly died. Her ability to sit up at a desk at all was gone. She could not type. She could hardly see the monitor in front of her face.
What did she do?
She typed that novel, word by painful word, with one finger. Tap. Tap. Tap.
If that doesn’t blow any excuse out of the water, I don’t know what will.
What’s the lesson there? When we have large projects in front of us, the only way to accomplish them is by one bite at a time. One does not eat a chicken by stuffing the whole thing in one’s mouth. One has a nibble at a drumstick. A bite of wing. One eats the chicken, slowly, swallowing each bite before going on to the next one. So, too, with writing a novel. One does not sit down in one sitting and write a novel (unless under rare circumstances). To have sustainable growth, one gets into the habit of writing a small amount, each day, which add up to a completed manuscript.
Next time you have the opportunity to make a large goal, why not try taking a step back and set a small one instead? Maybe, “I’ll write 3 pages a day.” Or, “I’ll write 1,000 words a day.” Or even, “I’ll write 3 pages today.” See if that unlocks some of your potential and gets you onto the page. That way, at the end of the month, you won’t be one of the writers who laments, “Wow, I had such high hopes for this month but… [fill in the blank].”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Write on!
A Haiku for the Day
The Train
Chill steel, weathered wood
Tracks lead both north and southward
A whistle – distant
Play Time – An Invaluable Resource for the Busy Person
“How are you?” people ask. Those more in-the-know folks question whether or not I’ve been writing.
I’m happy to answer lately that I am well and the writing is finally flowing again. It took a major event for me, leaving a lucrative job with a good team, but I feel free now to express myself.
I see things in a different light, as if there’s more clarity. And tasks are welcome hurdles instead of insurmountable leaps.
Why couldn’t I face the paying job in the same way? I think it’s because I didn’t give myself time to play.
Whatever you do, and however you meet your finances, I wish for you the ability to play. Please give yourself over to chances at random acts of joy.
Busy with projects that suffered while I worked full-time, I welcome stories of what you might do with much needed free time. Please share and hopefully find helpful hints from our busy members as to how you might achieve your goals.
Cherish your time, as I cherish your commentary. It’s something I learned from Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” and happily share with you.
Writer Wednesday: Business Cards – Do You Need Them?
At a recent writing group meeting, one of the members asked me, “Do I need to get business cards?” It’s a good question, and it deserves a good answer. And that answer is not, necessarily, “Yes.”
The first question to ask ourselves is, “Do I want business cards?” If the answer is, “Yes,” then my answer is, “Then go get them.” If we really want them, then why not get them? That would imply there’s something wrong with having them, or a worry that we might not be important enough to have them. That’s nothing to be concerned with, because there’s nothing bad that will happen if we have a business card. There are no Business Card Police that will come and arrest we if we have one.
The next question to ask ourselves is, “Why do I want business cards?” What do we want to use them for? This leads to a philosophical question, what is a business card to be used for? It’s something we can give to others so they can contact us. The minimum we’d have on a card is our name and either a phone number or an email address, or maybe just a website. But it’s unlikely we’d give someone a card with no way to contact us and just a pretty picture and a quote (though if that’s what we want on our cards, then go for it).
Once we know why we want them, for networking or to promote ourselves, the next question is easier: “What do I want on my business cards?” Here are the obvious ones:
1. Our name
2. How to contact us (be it a phone or an email address)
Here’s the less obvious string attached to those two questions: do we want to protect our “real” identity and use a pen name? If we want to protect our identity and don’t yet want to do the work required to launch a pen name, then it’s perfectly permissible to put only our first name on the card. Be prepared for folks to be curious, but all we need to tell them is “This is what I’m comfortable sharing on a business card right now.” Most folks will accept that answer. Using whatever name they were given when they met us will lessen confusion. If we go by “Bob,” then using our internet handle of “Wicked Dog 41” will confuse people. Putting “Bob” and then “wickeddog41@yahoo” works, but make sure that folks can figure out who the heck gave them the card. Otherwise, it loses its effectiveness as a way for them to contact us – which is the whole point of the card to begin with.
The less obvious question is a little trickier: “What else do I want on my business cards?” These can include:
1. Our website, if we have one
2. Our blog(s)
3. Our Facebook or Facebook page (if we do this, get a unique username and use that instead of the alphabet soup Facebook uses in the beginning)
4. Our Twitter name or names
5. Our LinkedIn profile
6. Any other online presence that we’re part of
7. A description of who we are an what we do; for example, “Writer,” “Author,” “Creative Designer,” “Web Programmer,” etc.
8. Some folks I’ve seen use #7 as an opportunity to put something funny or offbeat, such as “Cat Wrangler” or, simply, “Geek.” If that fits with the image we’re trying to project, then by all means, put that too.
The next question is, “What happens if I have these cool cards and then change my mind about what’s on them?” No problem. We can print up just a few cards, if we decide to do them ourselves with templates from Avery or another similar provider; we can also get cards from somewhere like Vista Print and that’s only 250. Worst case scenario, they go into a drawer or we get creative about changing them (handwriting the changes or even printing up labels to paste over the parts that have changed).
And the big question: “What if I’m not published yet? Can I still have cards?” Of COURSE we can. What’s the purpose of a business card? So people can contact us. We will make friends and connections on the journey to being published, and presumably, those folks would like to continue to contact us. Giving them a way to do so just makes good sense socially – otherwise we have to handwrite it, and maybe on the back of one of THEIR cards (how embarrassing, no?) Plus, if our handwriting is out of practice because of all the internet usage and typing that we do these days, it’s probably safer to give them a nicely-prepared card rather than an illegible scrawl.
There’s no reason not to get ourselves business cards and, with a little thought, we can have fun and create a card that reflects ourselves and becomes part of the entire presentation of ourselves. Like resumes, clothing, websites, and blogs, they are simply a reflection of ourselves to the world. The more thought we put into how we want to do that, the better.
So, the next logical question, now that we’ve cleared out the “why’s,” is “How do we get business cards?” The next thing to decide is, “Do we want to do them ourselves, or buy them?” We’ll take them one at a time.
If we want to make them ourselves, we can use Microsoft Word or a similar program, or something like Adobe InDesign. I’m going to make the assumption that Word is the software most of us have available, so I’ll explain how to use it. Inside Word, there are templates for Labels; inside that list are a number of pre-made templates for popular business card manufacturers. The ones I use are Avery; 3M and other manufacturers have them as well. Under older versions of word, go to the “Tools” menu to get to the label function; under the new version go to the “Mailings” tab and click on Labels.
The labels you purchase will have a number associated with them; find that number in the list and select it. Create a new document and edit it from there. We can add graphics or fancy type if we want to; however, remember that it’s more important that it’s legible than fancy. If we use a fancy font for the name, then make sure we use a simple font for the email addresses, phone numbers, etc. Make sure the person to whom we give the card can easily get a hold of us.
If we prefer to buy cards, a great place to start is Vistaprint. If we keep our eyes peeled, Vistaprint runs regular specials for 250 cards for free. They offer a number of color schemes and graphics. There’s less flexibility than doing your own designs, but they offer a good way of designing the cards and coming up with a quality product. If we choose to, we can also load up our own graphics instead of using the free templates; doing that will cost a little more can simplify the process.
Whatever we ultimately decide, remember that all of this is to support our writing process. As we make contacts in the industry, and make new friends, business cards can help us build our network. The more thought we put into that, the better off we are. Don’t be afraid to experiment and change cards as time goes on. Nothing is set in stone; it’s okay to have trial runs. After all, the card is simply a tool to facilitate communication.
Have fun!
A Haiku for the Day
Summer’s Harbinger
Frozen, wings beat fast
The hummingbird has returned
Tasting sweet flowers
A Haiku For The Day
A Windy Spring Day
Leaves and branches dance
Every plant twists and bows
Wood creaks and seeds fall
Haiku and You
By no stretch of the imagination do I consider myself a major poet. I dabble at bringing images into a snapshot focus through the art of haiku. It’s not even something I do very often.
Today I read something disheartening from a blogger I admire. A British fan of all things Japanese, she goes by the moniker Haikugirl. In this post she talks about a haiku workshop that made me realize that there are far more rules to it than I knew. Her own experience involved a criticism that I found undeserved.
This makes me wonder if I’ll continue pursuing this art form. Should I forge on even if I’m doing it wrong according to the experts? My inner critic says no but I think that’s the wrong answer. I hope the childlike artist inside me finds another haiku she determines worth sharing.
And speaking of sharing, here is the post I reference:
Catching the Blossom with a Haiku
I hope you’ll read her post. I’d also like to know your opinion on the subject. In the meantime, happy writing!
Monday Morning
Jackie heard the child’s voice before he saw her a thin high call that cut through his coffee and newspaper, straight past his earbuds and Morning Edition. Pulling the left bud free, he waited a moment.
Damn kid didn’t appear. “Crap.”
He stuffed his paper and his iPod into his satchel and rose, joints popping. Every time, every time he came to park, he got interrupted.
“Maxie!” The cry came again and this time, he saw the girl. Thin and dark-haired, she had tear tracks dried to her face. She was as big as a minute and twice as cute, but unhappy as hell. How the hell was Jackie supposed to help? And who the hell was Maxie?
He squatted down so he didn’t loom over her. “Lose something, sweetie?”
She glared at him, all suspicion and mistrust packed into a four-year-old frame. Five, tops. “My cat got out.”
He sighed. One of those mornings. Figured. He’d just gotten to the Op-Ed page, too. “What’s she look like?”
“He!”
Jackie blinked. “Pardon?”
“Maxie’s a boy!”
Her aqua jumper had smudges of dirt and a grass stain on it, but she seemed clean enough. All fresh dirt, anyway. “How about I help you?”
“I’m not to talk to strangers!”
Modern kids. “Do you have a quarter?”
“What for?”
“Well, if you pay me a quarter, I’ll help you. Then we won’t be strangers. You’ll be my boss.”
She narrowed her eyes, considering. He waited, not rising, though his knee ached like a sore tooth from the position. Finally, she nodded. “All right.”
They wound their way deeper into the park and found the cat cowering under a bush. He spit when he saw Jackie, but Jackie sighed and dropped his glamour for a moment. The cat blinked and then walked out from the bush, calm as you please.
After he saw them both back to his bench, he sat down again.
Ah, mornings. Coffee never tasted so good. He put his earbuds back in, fired up NPR, and paged through to the Op Eds. Now if he could just find a naughty child, he’d finally get some breakfast.
Writer Wednesday: Daily Maintenance
As my daily round brings me back to the first Wednesday of the month, I find that the post I intended to write has evolved. Originally I wanted to discuss writing conferences, since the RT Booklovers Convention is here in Chicago this year. While that is a fabulous thing and I’ll write about it in other places, today I wanted to downshift and return to home base. It’s easy to forget, in all the fuss and bother, that the daily round is a daily round, not a line, and that the things we thought completed come around again and again. And not just laundry or dishes.
I’ve been working with Julia Cameron’s book Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance and find that, as is usual for Cameron’s work, many of her ideas resonate with me. In particular, one passage jumped off the page at me: “I must write. I must walk. I must pray. I must content myself with small amounts of progress. Above all, I must not binge on drama and despair.”*
As I talk with other writers and creative people, I find that many of the folks who I talk to assume that creatives must be able to do what they do just because of who they are, because they are creative, and not because of concrete, grounding behaviors that they must invest effort, time and care on an ongoing basis. In addition, the thought process seems to progress to the idea that if we, ourselves, cannot do that kind of thing – prodigious art creation without any real grounding – then we must not be “real” artists.
This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Regular creative output is like any other kind of output, be it legal briefs, laying bricks, or cooking and cleaning for a family of adults and children and pets. It takes energy, effort, and consistency; it also requires rest and recharge for the creator unless one wants to have an ugly breakdown. And sometimes, despite our best efforts, we end up at breakdown anyway.
What is the lesson there?
I think it’s just as Cameron says, above. There are several simple things that, done daily, help us stay on track. It’s like Curly says in the movie City Slickers: you have to find your One Thing (see below). You have to respect your own process enough to know what works for you, and if you don’t know, then you need to find it. I suspect, though, that you probably already know a few of them: get enough sleep, eat clean, write daily, etc. Whatever your “things” are, respect them and do them. It’s the only way I know of to get to where you’re going.
Write On!
*Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance, by Julia Cameron; Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, New York; 2006; page 40
Resisting the Critic
Inspired to write this moments ago, I recognized an attack by the inner critic. I’m sure anyone reading this knows what I’m talking about. I gratefully say that “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron makes these insidious traps easier to recognize and combat.
In my case, my wandering mind wondered if I should continue writing a particular theme on another website. After all, I don’t have all that many readers or reviewers. Maybe it’s time to veer away from that particular character.
And that’s when my thoughts froze in realization that the skeptical and cranky critic in my mind was on the loose. As I’m gently reminded again and again by friends from this very blog, Story is God. Thank you, A. Catherine Noon, for sharing that particular, poignant phrase.
After all, who am I really writing for? Myself. It’s a creative urge that gives great pleasure and satisfaction. What else ultimately matters? Sure, it’s nice to know others appreciate what I’ve penned. In this information age, though, I should be grateful for any kind of niche in which to be found.
That’s not criticism of my writing, it’s simple fact. I find myself with limited time to read and a subsequently small list of writers which I faithfully follow. One can only wonder, out of all the blogging and twittering going on, how much time others lend to reading any fiction at all.
So that returns me to what’s important – following my muse. I really just need to be grateful I hear this calling at all considering the dry spell of which I’ve lamented in previous posts. Recalling how much joy has been garnered from material I’ve never even shared with the public, I feel darn lucky at the moment.
I hope sharing my brief battle with the critic will enable you to dip into your creative well for the sheer, childlike enjoyment of the process. Happy creating!