The Choice Not To Write Full-Time

Most of my columns have focused on ways to make the transition from whatever you currently do into being a full-time writer. But what if you don’t WANT to be a full-time writer? I’m not talking about not writing full-time because you’re AFRAID to give up the day job, or are in a position where retaining the day job NOW will give you the freedom in three to five years to make the shift.

I’m talking about not WANTING to write full-time.

I compare it to the way I feel about cooking. I love to cook. It’s how I relax. I read cookbooks the way many people read novels. I enjoy some of the shows on the Food Network. I write articles about great restaurants. But every time there’s a competition on the Food Network, I turn the channel. I don’t enjoy those shows. It invades, erases, and removes my enjoyment from the process of cooking because it’s focused on the business of cooking. I’m not interested in the business of cooking. If I went into cooking as a profession, it wouldn’t be fun anymore. Cooking is what I do to decompress from writing. The creativity in cooking supports my writing, and cooking also allows me to relax. I have friends who knit for a living, providing garments for Broadway, film,and television. I play at knitting. I pick up the needles when I feel like it. I’m not committed enough to it to learn enough to get paid for it, and if I had to face those types of deadlines, again, I wouldn’t enjoy it.

For some people, writing is how they relax and decompress from whatever profession they’re in, and if they had to worry about the business end of it all every day, the way so many of the rest of us do, it wouldn’t be fun.

For the purpose of this piece, we are going to talk about three different types of writers, and for ease of writing and reading, I will use the pronoun “he” in the universal sense to cover all genders: The part-time writer, who loves to write, but doesn’t want it to be the way he makes his living; the transitional writer, who is in a line of work but wants to write full-time; and the wanna-be, who talks a lot about wanting to write, but keeps making excuses not to write.

What’s the difference between someone who chooses to write part-time and a wanna-be writer? Focus and passion. The part-time writer loves to write but is also passionate about his current profession, whatever that may be, whether it’s medicine or cooking or accounting or whatever. The part-time writer also has a passion for a good story, not only as a recipient, but as a story teller.

The part-time writer has made that choice out of strength, not fear.

Whenever you make a choice out of fear, it eventually comes back to bite you in the butt. The wanna-be writer who keeps using a job he hates as an excuse not to write because the wanna-be doesn’t really think he is good enough to be a full-time writer will continued to wallow in misery, because choices are made out of fear, not strength. The wanna-be will continue at a hated job until there’s enough self-sabotage to be fired, or until he’s fired when the company folds, or until the person dies. Note that the first two choices are passive, something done TO the worker. The only active choice is dying, and truly, that is the definition of “last resort.”

The part-time writer is excited to sit down at the page, even though it might not be every day. The part-time writer is more dedicated and more focused at each sitting, because the part-time writer wants to be there. The part-time writer is productive, because he knows there’s a limited time and comes to the page mentally prepared to work, without making excuses NOT to write during that time. It’s as important to the schedule as the weekly golf game or the hair cut or the grocery shopping trip. It is integrated into one’s life, and there’s a freedom in not having to count on it to pay the bills. At the same time, there’s a passion for the job that pays the bills. The part-time writer looks forward to getting up in the morning and going to work. Obviously, not every day is bliss, but there’s not that constant inner struggle and self-sabotage that wanna-bes face.

The transitional writer (who will get short shrift in this piece, I’m afraid) may or may not enjoy the current day job, but knows he wants to eventually write full-time. He approaches writing in a more disciplined fashion, treating writing as a second job until he’s in a position to make it his only job. For several years, he may be working full-time at his day job, and, as the writing takes off, put in as many hours on the writing as he does at the day job. Essentially, he’s carrying two full-time careers. But he wants it enough to make it worth it. I’ve done that; you’re tired most of the time. But, in the end, it’s worth it.

Initially, the part-time writer doesn’t have to worry about deadlines. Eventually, if the writer is good enough and actually sends pieces out that get published, he’ll have to make a slight adjustment. Now, he’s on someone else’s schedule, and other people depend on him to hold up his end of the bargain (the contract), so that they can do their jobs and earn their livings. If it’s a large project, the part-time writer either uses vacation time or schedules a sabbatical. Or, he moves into “transitional writer mode” for at least some of the time, treating the writing as a second job. If it’s a smaller project, he has to rearrange his schedule to get it done. The “doing” might not be as much fun as it was before, but the end result makes it worth it.

The part-time writer still takes classes and goes to conferences and networks with writers. However, because he understands the protocols of his own profession, the protocols in the writing profession aren’t quite as foreign. When he asks for advice and receives advice from a professional in the field, he graciously says, “Thank you” and decides on his own time what is useful to him and what isn’t. He doesn’t behave like the wanna-be, who stands there arguing with the pro, wasting everyone’s time and energy. The part-time writer enjoys exploring what the writing profession has to offer, because there’s not a lot of pressure involved, and therefore, not a lot of desperation. He can approach professional writers as a fellow professional in another field. There’s already common ground. There’s not a sense of “You’re published and I’m not, so you OWE me” that’s become so prevalent on forums and in conferences the last few years.

Will the part-time writer ever become a full-time writer? It’s possible. In many cases, it’s even probable. But when that time comes, it is a CHOICE. The part-time writer approaches the needs of the business with the same professional attitude he uses in his own work, but also has freedom because of his enjoyment of his current work. And that will help make whatever CHOICE he makes the right one.

–Devon Ellington publishes under a half a dozen names in both fiction and non-fiction. Visit her blog on the writing life, Ink in My Coffee.

Revision is More Than “Spell Check”

I’m very disturbed by the trend I see from aspiring writers. They vomit out a first draft, run it through spell check, and say, “Oh, I revised it.” And then they send it out.

And wonder why it keeps getting rejected.

First of all, Spell Check and Grammar Check are both filled with errors. You need to read each word and make sure it’s the proper word in the proper context. It is YOUR job to know correct spelling, grammar and sentence structure. Learn it.

Second, if you revise/edit as soon as you’ve finished a draft, you don’t have enough distance and won’t catch mistakes. Unless you’re falling behind on a deadline, put away a short story for 3-5 days and a novel for two weeks to two months before you revisit it for edits and revisions.

Proofread a draft before you give it to your Trusted Readers. We all miss some typos in the drafts. Every time I send something out to my Trusted Readers, I am delighted that I proofread carefully. I get it back and I’m mortified by the amount of typos. However, I tried. Far too often, writers (especially those early in their trajectory) send out unproofed drafts. That’s disrespectful towards your readers. There WILL be mistakes, but try to minimize them.

Revision means taking out what doesn’t work and wrestling with every word in every sentence to make it better. If it doesn’t work and you can’t fix it, get rid of it; if it’s a good idea, it will find its way into another piece. Make sure every scene works, beat to beat, and that every scene is relevant to the overall story. Even a scene that seems like a tangent should actually have a purpose.

Question EVERYTHING, even “and” and “the.” Make sure every word is the best shade of meaning for your vision.

Use active instead of passive as much as possible. I would say 70% of the clients with whom I work overuse passive tense. EVERY time you see a passive phrase (had driven, had gone, was sitting), change it to active (drove, went, sat). Does it work better? Change it! Is there a specific reason for the use of passive in that specific sentence? Keep it. TEST EVERY PHRASE.

Don’t tell me ABOUT what your character experienced. Put me in the middle of it. Give me sensory details. If all you say is, “Rick hit Gail and she went to the hospital”, well, yeah, I’m sorry to hear that, but it doesn’t pull me in. I need to know the details of the confrontation, the sounds, the smells, how Rick attacked, how Gail responded, whether anyone intervened, and how she got to the hospital. Or I’m not going to really care. And I won’t keep reading. Unless I’m being paid to read.

Keep your tense consistent. If you chose to move between past and present, make the reason clear. Make each shift a conscious, logical choice. Try keeping everything in one tense or the other to see if it works better. Few writers can shift tenses in the same piece and it works. And many editors hate it. It’s a valid stylistic choice when it’s a choice, but it still rarely works.

Put the revision away and re-read it a day or two later. Then put it away and re-read again. Keep making tweaks. Before you send it out, give it one final proof.

You will be surprised at how many little glitches you catch. It’s time intensive, but it will allow your manuscript to find its best home sooner rather than later if you take the time to perfect it BEFORE you put it on the Submission-Go-Round.

–Devon Ellington publishes under a half a dozen names in fiction and non-fiction. She writes The Jain Lazarus Adventures , and released her first Middle Grade YA, DIXIE DUST RUMORS, under the Jenny Storm name. Visit Ink in My Coffee, her blog on the writing life.

Career Trajectory

Once you write on a regular basis and start the submission process, you need to take some time and think about your career. Getting a contract puts you into a position of responsibility. Your work creates jobs, and people now rely on your for their paycheck — before your first book even ships. The agent took a chance on you. The editor took a chance on you. The publisher took a chance on you. The marketing department took a chance on you. The bookseller took a chance on you.

You better be ready to deliver.

What does that mean?

You’ve written a book good enough to convince all these different factions to take a chance on you. Now, you’re responsible for dealing honestly and clearly with edits, turning around proofs on time, doing your part in the marketing go-round, and, most importantly, writing.

Hopefully, you already wrote your second book while the first book was out on submission, and you’ve started your third. If you haven’t, you need to stop and think about where writing falls in your life.

There is nothing wrong with “writing on the side” because you enjoy it and it’s something fun whenever you can fit it in. But, once you enter the business realm of publishing, it’s no longer just about you. There’s often more flexibility in epublishing to move deadlines if life gets in the way, but print books run on a very tight schedule. You’ve got several dozen people dependent on when you meet your deadlines, and if you screw up things for the team assigned to your book, it also throws off the whole publishing house and you get a reputation for being unreliable. Unless your book is a huge seller, it will reflect in your next contract, and the possibility of not getting another contract rises. It doesn’t matter that your husband wants you to spend time watching TV or your kid has a cold or the dog needs to go to the vet — you’ve got to get your proofs in on time. If it means pulling an all-nighter here and there because you’re incapable of drawing boundaries with those around you and sticking to them, then that’s what it takes. It’s no longer about you, it’s about the business of putting out a book. It doesn’t matter if the dog ate your homework. You have to turn it in on time anyway.

If you’re not willing to move your writing from something “on the side” to “second job” status once you’re contracted, you might still publish. Occasionally. But you can’t expect a business that counts on reliable production to wait around until you happen to fit them in, and then jump at the chance to do business with you. Writing is a business as much as it is an art form.

If you’ve decided that writing’s place in your life is that of a second job or your only job, you have to look at the big picture, no matter how much you love any individual book. The bulk of marketing is now on the writer’s shoulders now. I disagree with that, and, as you work your way up the contract ladder into higher advances, start thinking about how much time/money the marketing aspect is worth and build that into the advance you or your agent negotiates. The trend that your entire advance should all go into publicity is yet another example of slave wages for writers. Your writing is worth a living wage. Your marketing time and the skills you build as you market are also worth it. Bust your ass to make your early books sell well and then factor in marketing time and materials to future advances. You should be earning a LIVING wage for the work you put in on the keyboard and on the road.

Part of earning a living at the writing trade is the ability to handle multiple projects. It might be a series of freelance projects with quick turnaround times at the same time you’re working on your novel. It might be short stories that tie in to the novel. Whatever it is, figure out the time you’ve got to devote to the writing, and schedule in ALL the necessary projects, so that you attack your career from multiple angles.

Marketing time is figured separately. It must NOT cut into your writing time. If you need extra hours in the day, you need to cut out something not related to writing or marketing. It’s usually a good idea to start with cutting back on TV time. Now that so much marketing is done online, it’s amazing how much you’ll be able to do in the time it takes to watch a one-hour show — which isn’t even an hour anymore, due to commercials. Do NOT do your work in front of the television, or you will make stupid mistakes and hurt your reputation. If it means getting up an hour earlier or going to bed an hour later, then do it. So, you’re tired for a while. You will learn to adapt. Pick 3-4 days in your week where you’ll wake up early or stay up late and devote that time to the writing or marketing.

The other important thing to do is to build in time off. You’ll probably still think about writing and marketing, but it’s important to have down time when you’re not actually in front of the computer. It’s important to go out and live life with family and friends and refill the creative well. Just don’t let that time overrun the writing time.

Decide where you want to be writing-wise in a year, in five years, in ten years. Don’t think of it in terms of how much you want published, because you don’t have control over how long it takes to get a book through the production process. Think in terms of writing, marketing, and positioning yourself so people know you exist and get interested in your work.

Decide on what kinds of writing you want to do. Do you want to use multiple names and experiment in different genres? Do you want to specialize? That’s a very personal decision. Talk to your most trusted writing buddies. Remember that your family, you agent, and your editor will have THEIR agendas in the forefront when you discuss it with them. Your writing buddies, hopefully, will be a more objective sounding board.

Once you contract regularly, output is important. Your agent, editor, and publisher want to make a long-term investment, not have a one-shot wonder. Your part is to keep writing, keep generating good work, and grow from project to project.

You will have to reshuffle the priorities of the day, well, daily. That’s part of it. But if you expect to keep landing contracts, not only is the quality of your writing important, but so is your reliability and your demeanor. If you’re a pleasure to work with and remain professional and reliable, you’ll keep getting hired. If you’re disorganized, full of excuses, and can’t deliver the goods on time, eventually, you’ll work your way back to the roster of the unpublished.

The choice is yours.

–Devon Ellington publishes under a half a dozen names in both fiction and non-fiction. She writes “The Literary Athlete” for THE SCRUFFY DOG REVIEW. Visit her blog, Ink in My Coffee and her main website, www.devonellingtonwork.com

The Spring Issue Is Out!

Read the latest on debut author Kristina Riggle, Scotland’s Treasure and The Literary Athlete.  See it all HERE!

Wrestling with Sentences

The most common mistake I see in my students’ work is the belief that “revision” means you read over the draft and correct a few typos and inconsistencies.

“Revision” means you need to break down every sentence, define its purpose, and either fix it or get rid of it. Read the paragraph out loud, with and without the sentence. If it works without it, cut it. Don’t fall so in love with your own words that you refuse to cut anything.

Those who refuse to cut remain unpublished.

Once you have a string of best sellers, you can throw your weight around, as several well-known writers do, and refuse edits or cuts. They’ve earned enough cash for the publisher to justify it. Until you’re in the same position you’re going to have to learn to cut. Hopefully, as you grow in your writing fluency, you’ll see where cuts are appropriate, and where it’s appropriate to embellish. Sometimes, especially in transitions, writers rush over or skip over important information and jar the reader out of the story.

Again, every sentence has to serve a purpose. Every sentence must serve the paragraph, the chapter, and the overall book. Otherwise, change it or remove it. Keep working at each and every sentence until it fulfills it mission.

That’s different from “killing your darlings”, which to me is a silly concept. You should love your work; however, you have to be able to revise it with the same objectivity as though it was written by someone else. You have to be willing to strip away anything that obscures the context in order to make the book shine. That takes time. If you start revisions immediately after you finish a draft, you won’t see the problems; you can’t. You’re still in the subjective head necessary to create rather than the objective head necessary to revise.

The other biggest problem is the overuse of passive. Readers don’t want to read about what WAS DONE TO the character, or what the character HAD DONE when the readers weren’t around. They want to read what the character DOES. They don’t want to read ABOUT the character’s experience. They want to EXPERIENCE the actions with the character.

As you revise, take out every passive use. If it can’t be replaced with more active phrasing, then put the passive back in. Otherwise, replace it with something active.

If the point of your book is that the character is passive, let’s hope the character grows into activity during the course of the book, and we start to see the growth early and the characters around the passive character are active. Passive voice can (rarely) work throughout a short story. There are few stylists who are good enough to make it work over the course of an entire novel.

Don’t rush your revision process or fall into the fallacy that a single pass will whip it into submission shape. Once you’ve sold a few books, you will probably need fewer drafts. But when you’re starting out, keep at it. You’ll feel it when you hit the right point – and then anything beyond becomes counter-productive and an excuse not to submit.

Trust your story. Trust your characters. And wrestle every sentence so it’s the best it can be (a deliberate use of passive).

--Devon Ellington

Devon Ellington publishes under a half a dozen names in both fiction and non-fiction. She writes The Jain Lazarus Adventures (http://hexbreaker.devonellingtonwork.com), has a YA horse racing mystery releasing this summer, and her plays are produced all over the world. Visit her blog, Ink in My Coffee: http://devonellington.wordpress.com, for more information.

Where’s The Work?

The question comes up both on forums and in individual emails, from people who read the blog and want to freelance. “Where’s the Work?” People are frightened in this economy. And, too many people think that freelance writing is “easy money.”

A few harsh realities:

You need skill, dedication, and common sense. If you don’t have those, get out of the way, because the rest of us who do will flatten you as we go about our work.

Learn your craft. If you can’t spell, can’t figure out the difference between “it’s” and “its”, or “you’re” and “your”, go back and study. Read the style manuals, read Strunk & White. Yeah, you can hire in at content mills, but until you learn your craft, you won’t get any quality work for quality pay. There are thousands of other writers who bother to learn the craft, and they’ll get the work. Editors don’t have the time to teach you how to write. They need to hire people who’ve learned the craft.

If you start working for a mill that pays a percentage of a penny per hundreds of words instead of setting a decent rate in the first place and working your way up, you get a reputation as cheap labor, you don’t improve, and you don’t wind up with clips that will catapult you into the living wage category. So skip the jobs that pay crap. If you need clips for your portfolio find a non-profit about which you are passionate, take them on a pro bono client, and build LEGITIMATE clips that you can actually use to get decently paid work. Pitch ideas to your local newspapers. Yes, newspapers are struggling. They also have to cover everything in the community with one or two reporters. If you job in here and there for a few articles, even at a low rate, you gain legitimate clips that you can use in your portfolio. A low-paid clip from a community newspaper is worth more than a low-paid clip from a fly-by-night web content mill.

Build up a portfolio of clips. Set up a website, or at least a webpage. Skip the blog unless you’ve got something unique to share and are willing to post several times a week, and spend time on other people’s blogs. Print business cards. Create a brochure with information about your services. NOW you’re ready to look for work.

Work is everywhere. There are all kinds of job boards. I am vehemently opposed to paying for listings at “bidding sites.” I know there are people who swear, “I personally know someone who makes six figures from XYZ site” – you notice the person actually making the six figures never admits it, it’s always someone who KNOWS someone – yeah, right. There are writers who swear they’ve gotten some good jobs from these bidding sites. Perhaps they are the exceptions. I believe you can get better work with a little of your own effort.

The boards I prefer are:
Anne Wayman’s About Freelance Writing – she lists jobs three times a week.
Media Bistro – yes, they have free memberships
Poe War
Journalism Jobs
Writer Find
Funds for Writers
Writers’ Weekly

And for out and out inspiration, there’s nothing better than Peter Bowerman’s THE WELL-FED WRITER and his Well-Fed Writer site.

Yes, there are quite a few popular boards that aren’t on the list. That’s because I haven’t found them particularly useful, and several, who constantly talk about decent wages for writers, go ahead and post insultingly low-paid work.

I’ve found some decent stuff on Cragislist, but your B.S. detector needs to be on “high”, and don’t agree to do a free sample. If the client can’t tell from your portfolio if you’re the right fit, move on. Chances are good the “client” plans to disappear after accumulating all the “samples” that comprise the project and they’ll show up, unpaid, in another context. If a potential client asks for a sample, negotiate a rate for it, so you get paid something whether you’re hired for the full project or not.

But the best work you’ll find won’t be on any job board. You find those when you are pro-active. Look around you – everywhere are signs, flyers, brochures, letters, etc, etc. Someone has to write them. Someone gets paid to write them. Why shouldn’t it be you?

Join your local Chamber of Commerce. Bother to attend meetings, meet people, talk and LISTEN to their needs, give out cards. If you pay dues at organizations and don’t show up and participate, then don’t whine about not getting anything out of it. Get to know local business people and learn how to pitch yourself as the best writer for their business that’s come down the pike. Open up the phone book – what businesses and organizations in your area appeal to you? Send them a brochure. Follow up within two weeks. Keep them on a mailing list and drop them a postcard every three or four months.

Keep an eye out for businesses that interest you and then figure out a way to make yourself indispensable to them. Research the organization thoroughly and CREATE a place for your work. Then sell the company on your idea. It’s possible. It takes more work upfront, but, in the long run, you build a legitimate and often loyal client list, are paid a living wage, and every piece on which you work adds to your portfolio. Instead of being a hamster-on-a-web-content-treadmill who can barely pay the bills, you will write your way into picking and choosing the most interesting clients and projects. It takes awhile, but if you’re willing to put in the work and not take the seemingly easy way out, you can build a viable business.

So where’s the work? Everywhere – if you bother to track it down.

–Devon Ellington

Bringing Back the Joy

In spite of the need to hone both your art and your craft, wrestle time to get things done, and stay on top of all the different elements required for successful, sustained publication, it’s important to remember why you started writing in the first place.

Hopefully, you started writing because you love it and it brings you joy.

How do you keep the joy in your work without getting overwhelmed by the business aspects which conspire to keep you perpetually busy?

Believe it or not, a regular writing schedule helps, in the same way that a regular work-out schedule helps. Your body starts to crave it as you approach the time, and you know you’ll feel better when your session is done. Regularly scheduled time is something to which you can look forward, not dread.

Once you’re under contract, whether it’s for a series of books, a series of articles, or simply continued work in the same genre, you can feel the pressure of expectation. Approach each project with your heart as much as your head. Yes, you answer to your agent, editor, and publisher now, and, once the first book hits and you’re working on the subsequent books, they’re always a ghostly presence a little past your left shoulder.

Lose yourself in your settings and your characters the way you did while writing the first book. You started this series FOR YOU as much as for your imagined readers. Now, you actually KNOW some of those readers, and, while it’s fun to imagine how they’ll respond to the new work, remember where that work originated, and stay true to your gut instincts about character and story development. Don’t be afraid to try new things, and get a solid sense of what truly works and truly doesn’t, so that when if a disagreement comes up, you can decide for what to fight and what to let go.

Don’t be afraid of new ideas that have nothing to do with what’s contracted. It’s always good to have a couple of side projects going that aren’t under contract, deadline, or obligation. I call them “projects of the heart” – pieces that I write simply because I want to, and not because I’ve got a market in mind.

That horrifies people who don’t pick up a pen without an eye on the potential paycheck. Let it. I sell more and more frequently than most of them do anyway. And much of what I sell started as “projects from the heart.” They have the passion and emotion and drive that enchants the editor and the reader, whereas sometimes, when there’s a pre-arranged deadline involved, you have to work a little harder to get up that level of passion.

Finally, don’t succumb to the notion that you have to hate your job, especially if your job is writing. It’s okay to love your job (whether it’s writing or anything else). The myth that you must hate your job or it’s not really a profession is perpetuated by miserable cubicle slaves too terrified to take the steps that will change their lives into something wonderful and meaningful. Because they’re afraid, they strike out at anyone with the courage to follow their dreams. Don’t let their words or deeds affect you. Laugh it off and spare a moment to feel some compassion for their cowardice. But don’t fall into their traps. Don’t let them feed on your energy, even if it’s anger or sadness. Your energy should be used to fuel your own work.

Remember what drew you to writing in the first place, and give yourself the opportunity to play within your work.

–Devon Ellington

Time Management

If you expect to be a regularly paid and published writer, one of the most important skills you can develop is solid time management. No matter what your non-writing commitments are, you can schedule time to get the writing done – provided you respect yourself and your work enough to stick to your commitments.

Schedule it. Look at your life and see where regularly scheduled writing time fits in. Get rid of some of the distractions. Set boundaries with friends and family. Treat it like a part-time job. Giving it “second job” status doesn’t take away the joy of the writing process – unless you’re not serious about being a published writer.

Ideally, a section of time –even 15 minutes – every day will help you develop a rhythm to your wring. Sometimes there will be resistance. Push through and keep your commitment. It gets easier, the more you stick to it, just like exercise, or any new habit you want to integrate into your life. If you can’t schedule time every day, try for a 2-3 hour block several times a week. Remember, this is UNINTERRUPTED work time. “Honey, I can’t find my socks” or “Mommy, he’s staring at me” are not acceptable during your writing time. “Go barefoot until I’m done” or “stare back until I’m done” are the only answers. UNTIL I’M DONE. Once you set a boundary, you have to keep it, unless it’s an emergency. Obviously, if your kid falls out of a tree and breaks his arm, you’re going to stop what you’re writing and take him to the hospital.

Life will always get in the way. You have to decide where the writing falls in the overall life. Sometimes, it will move farther down the priority list – if someone in the family is sick, or you have to move, or your kid’s in a play or a concert, that’s something that takes priority.

But if someone expects you to hang out and watch TV during your scheduled writing time – be careful. This person does not have your best writing interests at heart.

Where are the time wasters in your day? We all have them. See what you can cut out without feeling deprived. For me, it’s usually television. There might be particular programs that revs you up; just because someone else gives up television doesn’t mean you have to. But maybe rearrange your viewing time a bit, give up shows you don’t really love and use that as writing time. Just don’t write in front of the television. Your piece will pick up the flavor of whatever you’re watching. Learn to say “no” when people try to get you to do activities with them you don’t enjoy. You’re better of writing.

A “time waster” is different than “percolation time”, which is something that writers need. A time waster is doing something that simply eats up time, but really doesn’t add anything to your day. “Percolation time” is when you sit staring blankly at the wall and it doesn’t look like you’re doing anything, but you’re really figuring out your story.

You can use the time that other people are determined to waste (airport delays, waiting rooms, lines) as percolation time. Train your brain so that you carry your story in the background all the time. Any time that you’ve got a few minutes of downtime, switch into “story mode” and let it percolate. It still looks like you’re standing in line, staring into space. But you’re making use of your time.

And keep pad and paper handy so you don’t lose the idea. Or a small digital recorder, if you can speak your ideas.

It’s important to have hanging out time with friends and family. There’s nothing wrong with turning on mindless television at the end of a long, hard day. But if you regularly shove aside your writing, maybe you need to reassess where writing falls in your life. If you jump at every distraction, every excuse not to write, maybe you don’t really want to write.

There’s nothing wrong with coming to that conclusion. Just because it’s something you occasionally enjoy doesn’t mean it has to be your life’s work. Be honest with yourself about where it fits in your life, and what you want over the long haul. Then manage your time to fit your goals and your dreams.

Remember that writing when you want or when you “get around to it” is a luxury of the unpublished or randomly published. Once you’re under contract, you have to cough up the words, whether it fits into your life or not. If writing is your hobby, good for you. However, if you want to be treated like a professional and paid like a professional, you have to act professionally, and that means getting the writing done.

–Devon Ellington

Development

This word is tossed around a great deal in relation to writing, but what does it actually mean? In prose terms, not in film? It means creating the most complete world for your stories and characters, so that the reader can fully enter it and experience it.

How does one do it? There are as many ways to develop a story as there are writers to write it. However, there are two primary approaches: Before and After.

If you fall into the “Before” category, you sit down before your officially begin your novel or story and write about it. The horrid term “pre-writing” is often applied to this process. We’re writers, we’re supposed to know how to use words. Either we’re writing or we’re not – there’s no “pre” involved. What you’re doing is developing the piece so that when you sit down to actually write it, you don’t worry about facing a blank page. How much development you do before you sit down and write is up to you, and will probably change from piece to piece. You take your starting point, whether it’s character or setting or plot, and build the other elements around it. You make notes of scenes, plot points, back story, setting, and possibly even scraps of dialogue.

When you’re on deadline, or juggling numerous projects, this is an efficient way to work. When you’re on deadline, every moment counts. You don’t have time to stare at a blank page. That’s true when you’re juggling multiple projects, too, but the added bonus of prior development while working on multiple projects is that you won’t forget where you are or where you’re going as you switch from project to project, and, most importantly, you won’t use the individual voice and rhythm of the project when you switch.

The pitfall is getting trapped within your original notes. Early drafts are for experimentation and tangents. Some of the bits that work best will be the ones that appeared in a flash of inspiration during the writing process.

Sometimes, you get an idea and you don’t develop it beforehand. You sit down and write and write and write and write until you fall off your chair and your fingers feel as though they’re permanently curled. When a piece flows, go with it. Don’t worry about going back to fill in bits. You develop it after.

What does that mean? It means putting the finished – not a partial, but a completed draft – away from anywhere from two weeks to two months and working on something completely different. That is the only way to can approach it with an objective enough eye to read it and edit it as though someone else wrote it. If you jump immediately into edits, you’re too close to the material and you will continue to make the same mistakes you did in the first draft and not catch problems.

Once you’ve gotten some distance from the work, you sit down and read it all the way through without interruption. Take notes, but DO NOT start to rewrite then and there. Just take notes, as though you were a Trusted Reader providing a colleague with a critique.

Mull over your notes for awhile, and let the revisions formulate in your brain. Percolation time is just as important for writers as the time spent on the page. Then decide how you want to proceed with development. You don’t HAVE to sit down and start with page one and work your way through. There are literally thousands of exercises out there to unlock character, plot, setting, back story, etc. You can work on the aspects you feel are the weakest first, add scenes, delete scenes, rearrange.

In her book WRITE AWAY!, Elizabeth George talks about the way a book feels as she works on it. It’s true. The more you write, the more you hone your craft, the more you will feel what works and what doesn’t. It’s not egotistical to know that an element of your book works. What you have to make sure is that you have the distance to know what truly works and what is simply an attachment.

Eventually, you will have to start at page one and work your way through the entire book. But each book will dictate its own creation process. Don’t get locked in to a single way of working. Listen to the needs of the book and respond accordingly.

–Devon Ellington

Silence

One of the most important tools a working writer needs to cultivate is silence. Turn off the technology, skip Twitter, get the darned idiot box turned off, make specific choices in the music you play while you work.

Writers work from the inside out (even if they’ve sold their idea before more than a few words are on paper). It is vitally important to have swaths of time to hear nothing but the inner voice. And you may have to fight your way towards all the chatter that’s built up until you can find the quiet.

Before you start howling about “not having time” and “being so busy”, remember that this is part of the gig, and if you want to be a paid, working writer, you will have to make the time to do what’s necessary. There’s plenty of plotting and figuring out you can do while driving or running errands or sitting in a waiting room. But the meat of it, the character motivations and drives, will come out of silence. Lock yourself in the bathroom if you need to and take a long, hot soak in the tub.

Too many people in the modern world are afraid of silence. They’re afraid of what they will find when they look deep within. They are afraid of facing their deepest selves.

Writers must do that. Writers must excavate all facets of the human personality, good, bad, indifferent, frightening, and beautiful, in order to create real, developed characters to whom readers connect.

Silence is one of the most important tools of our craft.

–Devon Ellington