Crafting Your Literary Life Part IV: Do It

The most important thing you can do as a working writer is to write. The words don’t show up and march across the pages all by themselves, even with a ghostwriter. Somebody has to sit down and put them there.

That someone damn well better be you.

I mentioned “time management” in a previous post, and have ranted and raved about this often in the last few years. Time management is the single most important skill for you to acquire as a writer. In this day and age of writers being expected to do ¾ of the publishers’ and marketing peoples’ jobs as well as their own, you better be able to turn out a darned good piece of writing under deadline and then go off and do all the marketing crap you have to do in order to get another contract and start the process all over again.

But you’ll never get even the first contract if you don’t sit your butt in that chair and write it.

And finish it before you send it out; not dash off a few chapters, start pitching, and then not be able to follow through with a complete, polished manuscript by return mail.

Yes, the people to whom you send it will sit on it. You won’t hear back the next day, or even the next month. If you haven’t heard back after four months (or whatever the specific guidelines say), follow up. Just because someone claims interest doesn’t mean you have to tie up the manuscript for years. But I’m getting ahead of myself. That rant is for another day.

In the meantime, you work on your next piece, and your next, and your next. You enter contests, write short stories, do interviews, write just about anything you can to polish your craft and build up your credits. This does not mean working for free. If there’s a publication, such as a lit mag, that doesn’t pay, and you really want to be a part of it, absolutely go for it. But when someone tells you to write 200 keyword articles in a week for $1 per article, you tell them what they can do with those keywords and you walk away.

It’s about prioritizing, and deciding which projects will give you the best satisfaction and from which you will learn the most. That’s not always the highest paying job, but the one that is the most satisfying. Every time you accept a project, you have to realign your priorities and make it all fit.

Which means you can’t be bothered with writer’s block. Writer’s block, in my experience, is how you sabotage yourself, get in your own way, and wreck your career before it’s completely taken off. If you commit to a deadline, you meet it. My father used to say that the only excuse for breaking your word is death, preferably your own. Your contract, your deadline, is your word. Don’t cheapen it by spending your time watching TV or surfing the net or hanging out instead of writing.

You’ll need to do some of that to replenish the creative well, but break down your deadlines into daily quotas, and only allow yourself the R&R once your quota is met. You’ll find you get more done and then you can take a day off when you want to go and play – and still get everything done.

But get your butt in that chair and do the writing. Even if you write a simple journal entry of a few sentences, keep those muscles working by writing almost every day. We’re all entitled to the occasional day off, and need it. But missing one day turns into two turns into ten, and suddenly you’re back to being a wanna-be writer instead of an actual one.

Let every project be a chance to expand, to learn something about the craft and yourself. Let every project be a new adventure.

But sit down and DO it.

–Devon Ellington