I’m surprised at how many people have already signed up to try a streak, and there are a few retired streaks and one active streak going on with professional writers that are stunning that will be listed. It’s going to be a fun way for all of us to keep track and push ourselves a little.

But today, on this last post of the year and the last post in this series of posts about setting goals, I wanted to go over some of the basics one more time and give you a few more tricks that not only work for a beginning year goal, but when you are starting back up after life gets in the way.

So, basics first. Real quick. And if you have questions, go back and reread the earlier posts where I talked about some of this. And if the question doesn’t get answered, feel free to e-mail me.

Find Your Dream. That’s first. Look way out and ask yourself what you would love to be doing in ten or fifteen years. Don’t be afraid to dream big.

Figure a Smaller Five Year Dream. This can still be out of your control, but should be a step toward making the larger Dream. For example, sell five novels in five years. Out of your control, which makes it a dream, but still something to work toward.

Set Your Yearly Goal. This goal should be structured to get you to your Dream in five years and be in your control completely. For example, if you want to sell five novels, you should write and mail about three a year. You might sell more with that number, but at least you are giving yourself a fair shot and not putting all the eggs in one basket. This yearly goal will still seem like a huge elephant to you. So go to the next step.

Set Your Weekly Writing, Mailing, and Learning Goals. This is where your focus needs to be all the time. Just one week, and better yet just one day. Once you do the math and set these goals, working with the time you have available, working with time you will miss, working with family and jobs and everything else. Plan to miss at times and always have a plan to start fresh on the beginning of the next week. Every week is a fresh start. Be realistic, but don’t be afraid to push a little.

In the example above, three books a year is three pages per day. If you can’t write every day, figure 6 pages per writing day and miss half the year. Remember to work in time to mail (not in your writing time) and structure in ways to learn storytelling craft as you go along. Always keep learning, all the time, and the writing as you go along will just get better and better.

Remember, don’t let yourself think too much about the big dream. Stay focused on the week, on the day. That’s the key.

So, now to a few tricks that might help with tomorrow. Or any start-up day.

Trick one. Plan out ahead what you are going to work on. And Write it Down! I don’t mean outline, I just mean know what story or novel you plan to work on. And have two or three out ahead of you. Example: Tomorrow I plan to work on X-Novel. Chapter 10. Friday I plan to work on X-Novel, finish Chapter 10 and start Chapter 11. And so on. If you have three or four writing sessions out ahead planned, it will cut down on the panic of “What am I going to Write About?”

Trick two. Have a back-up project to work on. And have it written down on a back-up list. Example: I plan to work on Chapter Ten of X-Novel, but for some reason, that’s just not coming, so my back up is to work on Y-Short Story about (blank). There is no such thing as writer’s block, but there is “project block” so be ready to move to a new project and fire at a moment’s notice. The moment you do that, the pressure on the other project will ease, your subconscious mind will figure out what was stopping you, and you can go back to it later. But always have two or three projects ready to switch to. The legend was that Asimov used to have a number of typewriters where he could move from typewriter to typewriter when one project got stuck. I never saw it, but what I knew about him and after being around him a number of times, I wouldn’t doubt that legend.

Trick three. Set an emergency back-up time each day for writing. For example, you plan on a writing session between 7 and 9 in the evening, but alas, family gets in the way and you’re going to miss. Nope. Your back up for the day is after the family goes to bed, you’ll stay up and get the minimum pages cranked out. That way when you wake up the next day, you’ll feel amazingly good about overcoming a life issue and still getting your pages done. Again, this time is emergency time only. But it will really help you keep up a great attitude along the way.

Trick four. Set up a “report into” person. Or persons or group or something. Ideally this is every day or every other day or at worst every week. The streak page here is a “report in” page every month. But set up another writer friend, a family member, someone, to report in to. Knowing that you have to do this will drive you even more. We all hate making excuses and missing, so knowing we’re going to have to do that is a key element in the early years of this craft. It will drive you to write in your emergency time more than not.

After time, as you become a professional, you have trained yourself enough to drop this, but early on, it helps a great deal. And when anyone is really pushing on a project, it helps as well. I often set this up with other writer friends, and have one going now with a friend as I start this new year.

Reporting in is one of the most powerful tools in structuring new habits, which is what many of you are doing with your writing.

So, here we go into a fresh new year. It has lots of promise and fun as well as tough times and life issues. The country is bouncing along the bottom in a lot of areas, jobs are tough, money is tight. But we have a new year full of promise, a new President with new promise coming in. Eventually the snow will melt, the weather clear, and the economy turn around. Now is the time to start fresh on the writing as well, no matter where you are at in your career.

Look out ahead, find your real dream, find the goals that can get you to the dream, break it down into a week and then only a day. And focus on that day. Only that day. Build something, write something fresh and new that one day.

And then the next day build something fresh and new that day. One day at a time.

And have fun. Writing fiction is a great job. It really isn’t work at all, and anyone who claims it is has lost a screw. I get paid money to sit alone in a room and make shit up. I have no boss, no dress code, no commute. I have a cat sitting on the back of my chair and another beside me as I type. I live in a compound overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

I have my issues, yes, and I’ve worked hard and long to get here. And so can you. If you start tomorrow. And focus on only one day at a time.

And have fun.

Cheers, Dean

Almost done with this series of posts since we have only a few days until 2009. I’ll be writing other blog topics in the coming months, both here and as a guest blogger on Novelist Inc.’s website. Even though I am not a member, I have done one for them about being a ghost writer, and will do another about how to write a novel fast, mostly because a comment I mentioned in the ghost writing blog. I said to be a good ghost, you have to be able to easily do a novel in way under three weeks. That sentence tended to shock a few writers out there, so I’m going to show them how.

Any of you following these last series of posts this month know the answer, of course. Math and numbers.

If you have any writing questions or just comments, feel free to e-mail me, since the comments here are turned off.

There are lots and lots of topics left to cover about goals, including how to stay healthy while trying to hit your goals. But I’ll space those along in the coming months here. But for tonight, I want to start something that I hope will last for years and years and years.

This started the other night when Kris said, “You need to watch this piece on the national news.” She played me this coverage of a runner who had been running at least one mile every day for over 40 years, the longest known streak for any runner.

She wanted me to see the news piece because I’ve been working toward an exercise goal now for a few years and am finally down to near starting running weight. I ran a marathon in my 30th year (around my 30th birthday) and wanted to run a marathon again around my 60th birthday, coming up in a year and a half. I decided to do this while very, very heavy a few years back, so I couldn’t even start running at that point for fear of injury. I have since dropped over 40 pounds just getting ready to start toward this. Kris thought that the idea of starting a running streak would be something that would work for me. And to be honest, it does. Although, the first few weeks will be real interesting I’m sure. <g> I’ll keep you informed how it goes.

But back a bunch of blog posts (you have read all the ones coming up to this, haven’t you?), I mentioned three tricks writers use to develop good writing routines and habits. Tricks that drive you day after day in March and May and August to the computer. One was setting up a streak. Remember reading that? If not, scroll down and find that blog about keeping going on a goal.

Back to the news article about running for a moment. In the article, they talked about an organization called The United States Running Streak Association, Inc. Their web site is www.runeveryday.com

From what I can tell, the sole reason for this organization is to keep track of people’s running streaks around the world.

So, starting right now, here on this web site, I’m going to keep track of writing streaks for anyone who wants to report in. I’m going to follow the pattern of the runners in setting this up.

Here are the rules and I will post them on the page labeled Streak.

— An Active Streak is defined as at least two pages of original fiction (500 words) every day for at least 30 days and continuing. (Original fiction, not rewriting, not nonfiction.)

— A Retired Streak is defined as a streak of at least two pages of original fiction (500 words) every day lasting longer than thirty days and then stopped for one reason or another.

— An Active Weekly Streak is defined as a streak of at least 14 pages of original fiction in a week, from Monday morning at 12:01 A.M. to Sunday night at Midnight.

— A Retired Weekly Streak is defined as a streak of at least 14 pages of original fiction in a week, from Monday morning at 12:01 A.M. to Sunday night at Midnight and then stopped for one reason or another.

On the fifth of each month, anyone who has reported to me a writing streak will be listed.

I will update the page every month on the 5th, starting January 5th for those who already have a streak going past 30 days, and February 5th for those who want to start a streak on January 1st, 2009. The page will be updated on the 5th of the month every month after that. (5th allows everyone five days to report in.)

If you get a streak going and then miss, you can start a new streak, so there will be a permanent retired streak record of what you did and after thirty days you will have a new streak going.

Example: You start a streak on January 1st and write until May 17th, when you miss. You would have had an Active Streak up to that point and an Active Weekly Streak. Then after May 17th a Retired Streak of 136 days.

If you started a new Active Streak on May 18th, by July 1st you would have 42 day new Active Streak started. Your name and record would be on both Retired and Active lists. No limit on number of Retired Streaks you can have on the retired list.

Also, if the week you missed you still managed to do 14 pages, you would still have an Active Weekly Streak going. If you did not manage at least 14 original new pages in the week you missed, then you would have a Retired Weekly Streak on that list and start a new Active Weekly Streak.

So, here’s how all that would look on July 1st on the list. (assuming I only missed one day on May 17th and still got the 14 pages done for the week.

Active Streak List

Dean Wesley Smith… 42 Days.

Retired Streak List

Dean Wesley Smith… 136 Days.

Active Weekly List

Dean Wesley Smith…26 Weeks

Keep track of total pages as well, since at the end of the year I’ll have a master list for the number of pages written total for the year if you want to report that as well.

This will not be for everyone. So check in with yourself before thinking of trying this. And your active life might not allow such a every day streak to happen, but it might allow you to be on the Active Weekly Streak list, which is why I have included that as well.

Why do this? Why report this on my web site with others?

Weight loss programs, and many other self-help programs have discovered that one of the most powerful tools in helping people keep going is simply Reporting In. That concept is a powerful motivator and something that can drive you to the computer day after day. You tell me you want to be on the list and I’ll put your name down on the starting up list with no days. Knowing you have to report in at the end of the month will help you stay at the computer and typing new, original fiction.

And after all, staying at the computer, setting up time to write, working on new storytelling craft issues, and mailing your fiction is what this is all about. Use the Race points to keep track of how much you have in the mail (and I might ask for them from time to time) and this reporting in to keep you sitting down through the hard days.

I’m in. If nothing else, you all can watch me fire along. I am horrid at being consistent, but this year I’m going to give it a try, and if it works, keep on for a long time to come.

If you want to join me, just e-mail me and I’ll add your name to the list. And if you already have a streak going, let me know as well. And you can have your name removed from the lists at any time. No problem.
Have a great writing year. It’s going to be fun.

Cheers, Dean

I received a bunch of e-mail this week reminding me I promised to talk about craft in combination with goals. I was kind of hoping you would all forget, since this is a tough topic. Ahh, well. Here goes.

But first… I also had a great quote sent to me.

“You miss one hundred percent of the shots you never take.” Wayne Gretzky.

Yup. Pretty much sums up everything Heinlein said and what I’ve been rambling on about here for thousands of words. Take each writing session, each day, each week as a shot and fire, then reload and fire again the next week, the next day, the next session. It all adds up, but unless you do it, nothing will happen, and that’s a guarantee.

Okay, craft goals.

First off, let me define what I mean by craft by stating a negative. “I do not think pretty sentences are craft.” Or put another way, also in the negative. “Writing a pretty sentence is not being a storyteller.”

But that brings about one of the great problems with beginning writers becoming professional storytellers. In the beginning, we all focus on how to write pretty sentences, give a sentence the correct grammar and structure, make everything match some style manual somewhere. You got to learn it, so take a few English classes and learn it.

Then, take your copy of Strunk and White, walk to the window, open the window, and toss the book into a snow drift. Once you learn the English language basics, which I will assume that almost all of you reading this have done, then it’s time to focus on an entire different set of craft issues. Storytelling craft issues.

Beginning writer workshops often focus on grammar and pretty sentences. If that’s the focus of your workshop, run to the door and into the street, even if there’s traffic. You’ll be safer. A workshop like that is worthless to becoming a published fiction writer. In every workshop I have ever been in, I would not allow anyone to say “On page six, you have a misplaced comma.” If you like that kind of writing, my suggestion is quit trying to become a professional storyteller and become a copy editor. The industry always needs good copy editors. (Just don’t try to rewrite a real storyteller.)

And for heaven’s sake, turn off your grammar checker on your computer. You want a computer programmer telling you how to write and getting in the way of your creative process? Worst invention ever for a fiction writer. Worst. Period. Kills all voice, all personal style, and everything that makes your writing unique. If you’ve been using that grammar checker and getting form rejections, I just may have found the problem for you. Your stories are dull and all sound just like every other beginning writer’s story. Fatal problem. Turn it off, and if it won’t turn off, get a new word processing program that will allow you to turn it off. And spell check at the end of a story. Don’t leave that on either. Just gets in the way of the creative flow.

So, back to quality writing. No one gives a crap if you can write a pretty sentence in commercial fiction. What they care about is can you make your characters come alive, can you make the reader keep reading into the middle of the night, can you make a reader cry, can you make them laugh, and do both when you want, do you have voice, style, story structure, and so on? Pretty sentences just get in the way of most of that.

When someone calls a writer a “good writer” they are not talking about how many pretty sentences per page they have, they are talking about their stories and how they come alive.

Think it through if you’re having trouble with this. If every writer wrote exactly perfect Chicago Book of Style grammar, then every character would sound exactly the same, would talk exactly the same, and everyone in every book would speak in perfect English. Oh, yuck. Boring!

So, what craft issues would I suggest you all practice? Well, there are hundreds and hundreds.

Back when I was writing a lot of media novels, including Star Trek and other media books, I could never really start each book unless I had something to practice in that book. I considered all those media books practice, every one of them, and I had a blast in almost every practice session. On one book toward the end of my media days, I was having problems starting and Kris asked me, “What are you practicing this book?” I hadn’t set my practice goal for the book, and the moment I did, I fired right along on the novel.

For example, one book I decided I needed a lot of work on cliff hangers, so I studied what makes a good cliff hanger, how the end of the chapter only forms part of the hook, while the grounding of the reader in the opening of the next chapter is the second key to a good cliff hanger. I learned the types, the styles of cliff hangers, and then spent an entire book practicing them, using an event cliff hanger one chapter, a dialog cliff hanger the next, a scene jump cliff hanger the next. I got to the end of the book and decided I really didn’t know cliff hangers that well yet, so I spent the next two books working on cliff hangers again. For some reason, all the reviews on those books said they really “moved” and “were hard to put down.”

Now understand, I only had one practice focus for each book and I never told anyone what it was. I learned as a golf professional a long time ago that if you’re going to practice something, focus on only that and leave the rest of the game alone for the moment. One thing at a time. That’s key to good practice.

Another example: Early on I got tired of people telling me in my short fiction that I wasn’t writing thick enough, so Nina Kiriki Hoffman and I challenged each other to have all five senses in every two pages of every short story we wrote. Wow, did that challenge bring our characters and fiction alive. I kept that challenge up for two years and every so often go back and do it on a new story. I did it on one media novel as well. It was a very food-focused book.

Another example: Later on in my short fiction life, I got tired of people telling me I needed more setting. So I started one story with nothing but setting, no character, for five pages, basically making the setting a character. Yup, one of my best stories. I worked on that focus of practice for months and dozens of stories and then on five different novels. I am good at setting now if and when the story needs it.

So what to practice? Well, listen to those around you when they talk about your fiction, listen between the lines when your first reader tells you to fix something.

If your reader says, “The book slowed down here and here…” Or, “I skimmed through this part and this part.” Guess what? You need to practice grounding the reader with setting, with sensory details, and you need to practice pacing a great deal, and cliff hangers. Just a simple comment like that from a first reader will clue you in on a half dozen areas you are weak on.

ON THE NEXT STORY is where you practice that, focus on one of the areas only. Just one.

If editors are sending you only forms, then what does that tell you that you need to practice? Duh, openings. If you have a dull opening, no editor reads on and thus will not send anything but a form, so practice grounding the reader solidly. Read hundreds of other writer’s openings and see how they did it, type the good ones into your computer to see what their words look like on your screen and in manuscript format. Practice openings until you start getting letters from editors saying “They liked your premise or they read to the end.”

Figure out what to practice by the feedback you get from readers.

One thing to remember is that you can’t fix a flawed story. Think of an old tire with a tube. You can put a patch on it, maybe, to get it by, but you can’t fix it. The patch will still show. The problem is in the story, so best thing you can do is learn you have the problem, and make sure you practice making that problem go away in the next story. And the next, and the next, until you don’t worry about it any more at all. Other new problems will pop up.

So my suggestion in these writing sessions you are setting up is figure out what you need to practice first and do that on the next project or two. Read how-to books on the subject (not in your writing time), how other professional writers do it, and just pay attention to that one area when working on the novel or the story. Let everything else just be natural. Only one practice point per project. And stay with it for as many projects as it takes until you have it solid.

And if by now you don’t like the idea of the word “Practice” in relationship to your writing, if you still think every word is golden, if you don’t believe Heinlein’s Rules apply to you, then you might want to think about finding a new dream. You have no hope of becoming a long term professional writer, because of all long term professional writers I have ever talked with, or read books about, they all have a few things in common. They all believe in working to get better with every story and they all write and release. They know how to practice, to get better, and they always look to the next story, when finished with the current one.

So, only a couple more posts in this series, then we all fire into the new year. It’s going to be a fun one.

Cheers, Dean

One week before the new year fires up a fresh start. Actually, if you have read all the previous posts about goals, you should be thinking that the beginning of every week fires up a fresh start. Keep everything always starting over, remember, that way when you miss, you just start over and all is fresh, with a short term goal for that week.

And then those goals add right up by the end of the year. Got all that figured, right? Read all the previous posts on goals? Do so before going any farther on this one, otherwise this will sound very confusing at times.

I got a bunch of questions from the last two posts about agents and editors. Agents work for writers, they are employees of writers, they do not buy books. If you keep that firmly in mind, you will be in good shape in the long run. If you sell a book, you must have an agent in the mix, but you do not need an agent to sell a book. And that’s all I’m saying on that topic.

Which leads me right into the next main topic concerning goals.

Fear.

Yup, fear is a huge monster sitting in your office, between your ears, and will make you do really, really stupid things unless you can clear it out every so often and think clearly.

So where does fear come into writing and publishing and aiming at your long term dreams? Simply everywhere. Fear has the focused goal to stop you. And it will, all the time, in many, many ways.

No real logical place to start talking about fear in writing, since it is in all aspects of writing and the business, so I’m just going to toss out examples at random and see where this all leads.

Example: You are excited about your book or story idea, have spent a few weeks being successful at your goals of getting to your writing, and then one day you wake up and the book seems like crap, you are convinced you are wasting your time, and that you should start something fresh. Fear got you. Fear of trusting your writing, fear of finishing something, fear of failure, fear of ridicule when someone reads it, and so on. Fear comes out like this: “You’re not good enough. What makes you think you could ever write at a national level? Or even finish something as big as a novel?”

Bam, you’re going to find reasons to miss a session, miss your weekly goal, and at that point months will go by because you let the fear voice win.

You can’t even get past Heinlein’s Rule #1. You must write. But this fear has stopped you and at the end of 2009 you will be very disappointed with yourself.

Example: You stop on a project because it’s garbage and start another one, and then again and again. You’re hitting all your weekly page goals, but never finishing anything and mailing it. Why? Fear.

On this one, Heinlein’s Rule #2 plays big. You have this deep fear of being laughed at, that your writing isn’t good enough, that people will stop you and your writing, so it’s just easier to stop yourself.

Example: But you get past that all right, and finish a novel. Great. It’s an event, right, it’s important because it took you a lot of time to write it, right? (Read the previous posts <g>) Nope, it’s just a story, but you need, you MUST rewrite it, polish it, make it PERFECT. Right?

Why? Because of fear, that’s why. The rewriting myth is just fear based and that’s why it’s so deep.

Heinlein’s Rule #3 is only rewrite to editorial demand. So, you have to have the courage, the trust in your own ability. You spell check it, give it to a first reader, only fix what they say needs fixing, and then mail it to editors.

No editor will come to your house and shoot you if you don’t give them a perfect book that is perfect for their line and has every word perfect. Nope, never happens, no matter what beginning writers think. The ugly truth is that editors can barely remember all the writers’ names they buy from, let alone the thousands of books they glance at and don’t take. No one remembers out there unless you do something stupid like insult them. You act like a professional, send them a book, and if it doesn’t fit what they are looking for, they will reject it and that’s it. They won’t remember you or even think about you. Nothing all to be afraid of because you have it on many other editor’s desks, remember? One of them will show good taste and buy it eventually.

But this fear that everything you write must be perfect is a killer. No story is perfect, no book is perfect. Doesn’t happen. And who would be the person to say it was perfect anyway? A book I love by an author I love to read is hated by my friends who think it’s the worst thing written. Nothing is ever perfect, folks. Sorry to break that bubble.

So Heinlein’s Rule #3 shouts directly at this fear.

Example: Book is done, sitting on your desk, you’re pounding along on a new one, meeting your page goals just fine and dandy, and months go by and the first book sits there. I personally know of writers who have up to a dozen books just sitting, not in the mail to anyone. Why? Yup, you guessed it. Fear.

This breaking of Heinlein’s Rule #4 comes about like this: I don’t have the time right now to mail it, I need to do “market research” before I can mail it, I don’t feel that good about that book, and so on and so on. I’ve heard them all and said a bunch of them myself.

This is the place that I fall down at times. I tend to write stories and novels and then not mail them. Now, granted, every novel I have finished is now in the mail to editors in one form or another. But not every short story. In fact, I would guess I have a good dozen new stories that have never been mailed, or only mailed once or twice. That’s getting fixed with my new challenge to myself. But why do I do that? Why do other writers do that? Fear, plain and simple. I have no issue with Heinlein’s first three rules, but rule #4 and #5 are where my focus must be this next year.

The other night, sitting around a wonderful dinner with four other professional writers, I made a comment about how hard Heinlein’s Rules are to follow and my wife, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, turned to me and said simply, “I have always followed them and still do.”

And, of course, she was the most successful writer sitting at the table. Damn, how many times do I have to shove back this fear issue for myself and climb back into the game? It seems, all the time.

So watch for the fear in these goals. It will stop you at one stage or another, or maybe at a bunch of places along the way through the year. It comes in sideways, it’s triggered sometimes by friends and family, but most of the time it is just a simple twisting in the stomach that makes you stop doing what you know is right and do something else, often without thinking about it.

And I have a hunch that just reading this post twisted a lot of stomachs out there, not because the writing sucked, but because I said something that hit home and that you don’t agree with it. Fine to not agree with these rantings, fine to do something else with your writing. No problem by me. But make sure you are acting from a clear reason that works for you, not from simple fear.

Fear. It really is the elephant in the room that you have to eat one bite at a time.

Cheers, Dean

Please go read the other posts on goals before reading this one if you want me to make a lick of sense at all. Even then it’s questionable.

I got no new questions on anything this week, that I remember, that is, but I did get lots and lots of good comments about how writers are setting up their goals. Thanks, glad these things are helping a little.

But now to the hard part. It’s fairly simple to take your dream and break it down into bite-sized pieces, to make the huge elephant something that can be swallowed, to extend that awful metaphor a little too far. But (extending it even farther) how do you keep biting and chewing in March, or May, or August?

The problem with year-end motivation and goal setting is that it often doesn’t last past the first month or two. Life just gets in the way and things change and the sun comes out and the snow melts and suddenly there are other things just a little more important at the moment. Rejections make it worse. Months go by and suddenly you realize you have fallen off your goals, so you get down on yourself and then just swear you’ll get back to it, but of course, you never do. Not really, not with any real energy until December rolls around again.

That sound familiar? Yup, to me too. Been there, done that, bought that tee-shirt so many times I have closets full of them.

So, now, here before the year starts, what can you do to make sure to keep climbing back onto the goals when you have a miss, when life just comes up and stops you cold for a week or two? Doing that is what makes a professional writer out of you, and doing that will make you very happy when you get to December 2009 and look back and realize you have hit most of your goals and are that much closer to your dream.

Back to the point that every writer is different, so with this problem, every writer seems to function differently.

First, I’ll try to outline reasons that just keep writers writing day after day, month after month, year after year, then try to give you all a few tricks.

ADDICTION.

Frighteningly enough, that’s a major reason many writers just keep pounding along. It’s their addiction, or they have used it in replacement for other not-so-healthy addictions. If you have an addictive personality, start working writing into an addiction, one that just makes you cranky if you miss it for even a single day. Man, at times I wish I had this addiction. It makes life so much easier for those who have it to get lots of work done. But it makes it much harder for those around them, however, just as any addiction does.

MONEY.

Stunningly enough and hard to believe for those of you who have bought into the myth that there is no money in fiction writing, fiction writers make a lot of money, and many of us write for money as well as love. So if you have a really crappy job that you hate, pound the keys harder with the idea that for every hour you work on your writing is one hour closer to getting out of the crappy job.

This was my motivation for years and still is in part. Now understand, I have a five year degree in Architecture and went to three years of law school, but I stayed bartending after all that higher education (much to the disgust of my family and many friends). Why did I bartend instead of going and becoming a professional? Because cleaning up someone’s puke at 2 in the morning made me go home that night and pound the keys. I often would get home at 3 in the morning and write until 5, then get back up and write all afternoon until I had to go back to the bar. I lived in a crappy small apartment so that I had very few bills and I spent every free moment thinking about writing and working on my writing, and every spare penny to go to conferences to listen to professional writers. (Also understand at this point I was well into my late-thirties and already had two marriages behind me. I looked like a loser to just about anyone in the real world, which was a ton of pressure as well.)

Yet somehow, through all the pressure, I had the belief that if I wrote hard enough, long enough, and fast enough, I could make my living writing fiction and get out of that bar. My last day of bartending was over twenty years ago now.

NATURAL BORN STORY TELLER MEETS THE MUSE.

Most long term professionals I know have made themselves into natural story tellers. The key is we all LOVE story. We love telling stories, we eat up just about any story put in front of us, and if we had to write a laundry list, it would come out with a plot and a character in trouble. Often that nasty thing that beginning writers call “The Muse” snaps us and makes us write something we didn’t have planned to write. Those are fun stories or books. Romance writers call them Books of the Heart. Often these books will drive a writer harder and longer than any other. The problem is, they don’t often last, and you can’t bring that feeling of fun and desire up with every project, so it isn’t something to be counted on. When it hits, run with it, but don’t plan on it hitting you or you’ll be spending a lot of time in coffee shops talking with other want-to-be writers. Real professional writers sit down and write even when they feel they have nothing to write and no desire to sit there.

IT’S A JOB.

This is sort of like the money part, but not really. Some writers I know can just treat writing like a job and go to it every day with a real job structure, even when the job might not make them any money in the near future. This job attitude is a good one and works well for those of us who were brought up middle class with a work ethic. But there are no easy tricks I can give you to make this switch turn on in your head.

The key with this one is having a good, fair, but hard boss. Yup, the boss is you, and you have to be hard on yourself. The attitude is this: If I would call in sick at a real job and talk to my boss, then I can have the day off of writing. But if I would go to my real world corporate job, then I can’t take the day off of writing. The boss would get angry. And since you are the boss of your own writing job, you need to be firm, yet fair.

This works for me at times, but then other times I just say “Screw it” and don’t show up for work for months at a time. But, of course, I had that attitude about real world jobs as well, so my writing is no different.

Now notice, none of these mention writing because it’s your dream. Every writer has that and it just isn’t enough, sadly, to maintain long term commitment to this business.

So, to some tricks. These are basic tricks to keep you going for a time. If you are lucky, your writing will turn into an addiction, or a drive to make a living, or a job attitude. But to get it there, you have to set down the patterns and these tricks help set that up and get you back on track when life gets in the way.

Trick #1. Challenge.

The challenge has to be for something that matters, that has feedback loops, and is short in duration.

Nina Kiriki Hoffman and I challenged each other to write, finish, and mail one new story per week and we made missing hurt with having to buy the other a dinner and lots of grief. For us, this challenge lasted for years and helped us both set some patterns in our writing and get a lot of stories in the mail and sold.

Notice that the challenge with Nina hit all three of the goals I talked about in the last post. That’s the best kind of challenge. So if you do set up a challenge with someone, or with your family, make it hurt if you miss. Make it so that you wake up worrying about missing. Then you got yourself something that will drive you to the computer on the really hard days and help set up the patterns.

Trick #2. Keeping track of how much you have in the mail on editor’s desks.

Now I came up with a system to do this back in the early 1980’s and it ended up being called “The Race.” It’s an easy number system that gives instant feedback, hits all three goals mentioned last post and is sort of fun as well.

The Race is against yourself, of course.

— You give yourself one point for every different short story you have in the mail.

— You give yourself 3 points for every chapter and outline you have in the mail on an editor’s desk. (Just three points per book, no matter how many editors you send it to at once.)

— You give yourself eight points for every full manuscript you have on an editor’s desk. (Again, max of 8 points per book no matter how many editors are reading it at once.)

When the story or book sells and you get the check, you drop the points. Note I said “Get the Check.” A sale, a contract can often fall through, but once paid, it counts and you lose the points.

Stunning how much fun this silly score-keeping system is. I keep track of mine every week and on one of the writer’s boards of writers who have attended the workshops here, there is even a web site that keeps track for people. It is also always stunning how the writers with the most points make the most sales. Always happens for some reason.

So building your “Race Points” can work as a nifty way to keep track, and also, when a story comes back with a rejection, to keep the point you must put it back in the mail. This “Race” helps with most of Heinlein’s Rules.

Trick #3. Getting a streak going.

Now, this works for those writers who have the ability to be very consistent in life. I’ve known writers who hit two pages per day, 365 days a year (yes, holidays, sick days, birthdays) and kept it going for years and years. Of course, the writers who did this also mailed what they wrote and they are well published authors now. I personally find this stunning and amazing and I admire those who can do it. Loren Coleman challenged me to try this last May, at least one page per day, and I made it one month without an issue, then just sort of went “Yup, I can do that.” And I stopped.

So if you can get a streak going of some sort, it makes a lot of natural pressure to not break the streak. This is like a person trying to stop drinking. You have to take it one day at a time and count the days since you last fell off. This works. Fred Pohl, of course, is known that for decades and decades he did four pages per day, 365 days a year, without a miss. I admire that man a great deal, both for his writing, his long career, and his ability to do that every day. He’s in his 90’s now and still going at it. Stunning.

So, as you set up your goals for 2009, take a look at a few of these tricks, or write me with one of your own, and get that as a firm goal as you start. It will help you keep focused on making it through the hard months and to a place in December 2009 when you look back and are happy with your year.

Cheers, Dean

As normal with all these posts this month, make sure you have read them before digging into this one, otherwise I’m going to sound more like an idiot than I already do, since I refer back to those previous posts with just about everything at this point.

So now, if you are getting serious about this writing thing for the coming year, you’ve figured out your writing speed. You have figured out how much time you can carve out of a day or a week regularly. You know about how many words/pages you can write in a normal writing hour. Then you have gone and looked at your long term dream and worked backwards from there to a weekly writing goal. A realistic goal, one that will not only allow you to make it happen, but will advance your movement by the end of the year toward your dream.

That far, right?

“Getting serious.” I guess I have to talk about that for a few paragraphs and then move on. “Getting Serious” is a term used in writing when a professional writer looks back at years and says, “It was at that point that I got serious.” That means that they made the time to write, set goals, and switched from a writer who always wanted to write but could never find the time to a writer who made the time, set targets, and followed Heinlein’s Rules in one fashion or another on the path to making the dream come true.

My big turning point, as I have talked about before, was January 1st, 1982, where I went from writing two stories a year and sometimes mailing them to writing and finishing and mailing one short story a week. I got serious. I can’t help you much on the decision to get serious, and all these “goal” blogs are aimed at are writers who are going to make the “Get Serious” jump, or writers who already have made the jump and are just looking for tricks to keep going into the new year.

Let me put it this way. You look back from December 31st, 2009 and you finished only a few short stories and didn’t mail much of anything and couldn’t get that novel done, you’re not serious about attaining any writing dream. But you set some goals now toward making your dream down the road, and come close to those goals, you are serious and have made the jump.

So now to marketing goals.

I’ve gotten a bunch of questions from people over the last two weeks about marketing. It seems the dream that almost everyone has is to get published, to sell books or stories, and that means you have to mail them. But yet writer after writer will finish a book, then just not mail it, or mail it to three agents and give up.

Trust me, you won’t attain any dream by doing that. So combined with the page production goals (the most important part) is Heinlein’s Rule #4 and #5. You have to mail your work to someone who will buy it and publish it. (Agents do not write checks or publish anything, as a point I wanted to make and then drop.)
How to mail a book to someone who will buy it? Well, to be honest, it’s tough. Kris and I spend an entire week teaching writers how to market their work and we have two of those marketing workshops left before we wind down this round of teaching. One in March, one in May, and if you can make one of those, write me for information. Basic information is under workshops here on this site. (Don’t expect us to do another one after May. Not happening. Sorry.)

So, it’s not going to be possible to tackle a weeks’ worth of work here, to teach anyone how to write a good query letter here, or a good cover letter, or a good proposal. All that takes that evil word: Practice. And some hands-on training, which is why Kris and I do those marketing workshops.

For a short story per week challenge, the marketing is easy. Mail the story to an editor and keep it in the mail until it sells. But for novels, this part tends to freeze up writers.

Let me back up first for a moment and talk about why writers freeze up at this marketing point.

Book as Event.

Writers can produce a short story in a few hours, a few days, maybe a week. It isn’t an event getting it done and it’s easy to just fire into the mail to an editor. Not much of a big deal for most writers. And short stories appear in a magazine and then are gone, replaced quickly by the next issue of the magazine. No event, no one treats them like events, including the writer.

But books seem to take on a life of their own. To a writer, the myths built up around writing a novel are hundreds of years old, have deep roots in all of us, and in many ways affect how we approach the writing of a book.

English professors, bless their hearts, dig into the “meaning” of a book, how “important” the book was by the author, how layers of this or that were put into the book. Oh, my, any young writer after that will think “I can’t write a novel, I don’t know how to do any of that.” But what the professor never says is that’s not how the writer wrote it, and chances are didn’t see 90% of what the professors are pointing out and would be surprised that it was even in the book. (Not kidding.)

All this builds up to “book as event” on the writing side, which freezes anyone. It is the biggest elephant of them all to try to eat.

I had a couple people stunned that I could type in a title and then just fire on a novel, with no idea at all where I was going. If you feel the same way, you may have this “event” issue even deeper than you realize.

A novel is just a story. Sure, it’s longer, sure it has more characters, sure in Western Literature, it has a certain structure, just like humans all have bones that give us a certain structure. But we all know the structure, we all have read thousands of books, watched thousands of movies. We all know story structure deep down inside.

We are story tellers, not “book as event” writers.

How else does this “Book as Event” kill writers? You finish a book, it’s taken three months, six months, most of a year, whatever. That’s a vast amount of time spent so, of course, it’s MORE IMPORTANT because you spent more time on it. Uhhh, no, it’s just longer. Nothing more.

But because you think it’s IMPORTANT, you have to rewrite it, of course, right? Ignoring Heinlein’s Rules because he’s dead and what did he know anyway. My novel is IMPORTANT and I had better make it good before I mail it.

Yup, and there you go, down that rat hole. Writers don’t know their own work, wouldn’t know if something was working if it slapped them. Give the book to a trusted first reader, only fix what they suggest that you agree with, then mail it and start the next one. Let the editors decide if it is worth their time or not. Trust your work.

This business is a numbers game, remember? I said Editors above. Note the “s” on the end of that word?

So what happens on the other end, on the editor’s end. Well, to them, these books are events as well, as they should be on their side of the contract. Books take a vast amount of time, energy, numbers of people, and money to take from manuscript and get to the shelves. The publisher risks upwards of a hundred thousand bucks on your small paperback original, so of course they look at the book as event. They have to.

And you, the young writer, goes out and listens to editors talk about books, as you should. And this book as event feeling comes back with you into your office. And the thinking goes like this: “If they are going to spend so much time and energy on my book, my baby, my masterpiece, then maybe I had better spend more time on it also, rewrite it a couple of times because I wrote it fast.”

And thus “book as event” death right at that moment to a real creative person. Creation comes from deep within each of us. Our voice, that thing editors say they look for, can only come out when you are pounding away in a creative state. Voice, in rewriting, gets toned down because you, the writer, can’t see your own voice. “Polishing” takes off the rough edges and makes your book dull and just like every other “polished” novel out there.

So when setting marketing goals, the first thing you have to do, and the hardest, is trust your skill, trust your writing, and just write it and mail it. Let the editors decide if what you have done is an event or not, worth their time.

In other words, you have to somehow, in some way, take “Book as Event” thinking out of your mind. You tell stories. Short ones, long ones, doesn’t matter. It’s just a story.

So to nuts and bolts on setting marketing goals, as much as I can in this place.

Short story: Finish and mail to one editor, keep it in the mail when it comes back. Write the next story and repeat.

Novel: Finish and mail to ten editors. Keep it in the mail when one rejects it. Write the next novel and repeat.

Warning again: The process of writing a book has nothing to do with the final product of a book. So never tell them you cranked it off in six weeks and didn’t rewrite it, just like you should never tell a short story editor it took you one evening to write the story they are using for their cover. Novel editors are going to be spending a year with your book, working and fighting to get it into print. Let them believe you spent the same amount of time on the other side of the process, even though every good editor out there knows better.

Back to a reminder from a previous post when it comes to setting marketing goals. Marketing is not writing. Research is not writing. Researching editors is not writing.

Keep your production goals outside of your marketing goals. You must have duel goals.

But let me say this clearly right now. If your goal is to write a novel this next year, your goal should also be to market the novel this next year. Two goals.

And get used to rejection. There is nothing you can do to keep it from happening. It means nothing. Keep your rejection slips and letters for tax proof you are making a consistent effort at making money. Count your rejections. Rejoice at the personal ones because a busy editor took time with your manuscript to give you a personal one. When you get a form letter back, just shrug and say, “Guess it didn’t work for them. Their loss.” And then mail the thing back out again.

Short story only one editor at a time.

Novels, keep the novel on a number of editor’s desks at once.

Your marketing goal will be tied to your dream and your production goal. Securely tied. You can’t make the dream of selling and publishing without marketing.

And somehow, go learn how to write a good query letter, a good proposal. Make that a goal too. GOAL #3 for those of you counting. <g>

For years I watched really good writers get books rejected and couldn’t figure out why. Then we started the novel workshops and had the authors attending, all selling short fiction writers, send in proposals with their novels and query letters.

Kris and I were stunned. The novels were great but all the query letters and proposals sucked. The novels were damned good, but no editor was ever going to see the book, no agent look at the book, because the author was hiding their good work behind a crappy presentation.

That would be like going into a job interview half dressed and smelling like dead fish. No one would hire you. Bad proposals, bad query letters are exactly the same issue. They are your job interview, your books job interview to become an event in some publishing house.

Make it a goal to learn how to write good ones. But learning that is not writing, so keep it away from your writing time.

You are a story teller. Learn how to write stories by sitting down regularly. That’s goal #1. Learn how to present your stories in a good way. That’s goal #2. Submit your stories to people who will buy them. That’s goal #3.

Now, go back and look at your schedule and figure out where, each week, you can learn one more detail on the second two goals. Just one detail on goal #2 and #3 per week along with the production of new pages. Yes, the other two goals take time, but you can work the time in. Yes, it takes time to write a query letter, but once a good one is done for a book, you pretty much got it for that book. Research of editors takes time, but there might be five minutes here, or a quick stop in a book store to research a book line.

All three goals need to move forward at the same time. And honestly, all three are fun. Writing is the most fun, but sending out your work and getting paid for it has its rewards as well.

Cheers, Dean

Please read or reread the previous posts on goals before jumping into this one. They are all building, I hope.

The last post got into a lot of detail with examples, with luck trying to show you how to set the goal that fits what you are aiming at with your writing. The key is to really know what you want from your writing. Let me say this simply:

No writer is like any other writer.

Thus, when you hear some writer giving you some hard, fast rule about writing, some firm statement about how to write, about craft, you should run away. No rules, just what’s right for you and the story you are writing. I can’t tell you how many questions I answer about silly rules like “You can’t use first person.” or “Editors hate such-and-such.”

Now granted, there are some pretty solid business rules that fit almost everyone, but when it comes to producing pages, there are only patterns and how the brain works and that’s where you have to be honest with yourself. Every writer is different. Every writer looks at story and the production of story differently. So take my examples, take my suggestions, and warp them to fit who you are. They are just examples and suggestions. Not rules. Okay, we clear on that?

For example: One of the biggest myths in all of writing is that writing fast equals writing poorly and writing slowly equals writing better. Maybe for some, chances are no. The brain and your voice comes out when you clear the critical voice out. But some writers write slow. Not many long-term professional writers, granted, but some writers who sell do write very, very slowly. I honestly think they just take a lot of naps and do house chores. <g> But there are no fast rules. Try fast, try slow, and see which sells.

Try everything once or twice. Someone says “You shouldn’t write first person” write your next few stories or novels in first person. Why not? Works for Meg Cabot and James Patterson and many others. <g>

And then if something you try doesn’t work, try something different, try a new way, try a new math with a new set of goals. I shake my head at writers who say, “Oh, I can’t do it that way?” 99.99% of the time they have never tired it, but since they have been doing it another way, they just think they can’t do something different. What I find interesting is that when beginning writers say that to me. What I always want to ask (but never do) “Are you selling stories the way you are doing it now?” Of course, the answer is no, but no chance they will change, try something new, and I know for a fact those writers will likely not make it.

I titled this post “Avoiding Goal Failure” simply to get your attention. The simple truth is you can’t avoid it. You will fail, that’s a fact.

All of us fail all the time. Get used to it and get over it. Writing is a series of linked failures and no story is perfect. Rejections are constant, the feeling of writing crap is pretty constant for most of us. Failure, at least in our heads, is always there. Always, no matter how many books we sell or awards we get.

Being around a lot of very successful authors over the years, I’ve always been amazed at how all of us are not happy with where we are at. We almost always think that in one way or another we’re failing. We’re not getting enough money or readers or that book of the heart didn’t sell or I got bad reviews or… or… or… The list is endless, trust me.

So what makes us, the long term pros, different from the beginning writer or the writer who has sold three books and then gives up when the selling of the 4th book gets tough?

Long term pros just keep going.

Something inside of all of us know, in one way or another, that failure is normal, that down-turns in careers are normal, that rejections are normal, and we just keep going. We have somehow trained that into our thinking when it comes to writing and it’s very deep.

Besides, we love telling stories, sitting alone playing in made-up worlds, living lives of characters we are creating. Oh, trust me, even with the failure, it’s a great job.

So, when you set these goals, prepare for failure at the same time. That’s why I worked hard to show that you have to build in the time for missing writing days, the time for just having a bad day, the time for being sick. And so on.

Now, let me make a suggestion to you, one that Kris and I follow.

Taking in story is important (movies and other books), research is important, plotting the next book is important, dealing with business and editors and contracts and page proofs is all important. But it’s not writing.

Sorry, let me say that again. It’s not writing.

Writing is sitting down and putting new words on the page. My suggestion to you is keep the line right there and things will get very simple for you in your goal setting.

So, let’s use my example from the previous post.

Dream: To sell five novels in five years. (You have four years to do this, since publishing and submissions works so slowly. And yes, I am ignoring two book contracts which means you only have to write one book to sell two.)

Figure to sell five, you had better write at least ten or twelve to start off with. So you need to try to produce three books per year.

Math works to 1,250 words per page each writing session (about 1 1/2 to 2 hours) 216 days of the year. Lots of days to miss and have off.

I got two different questions about “How do I make time to outline and get ready to write the next book?”

My suggestion. “Not in any of your writing time.”

Writing is putting new words on the page. If you feel you must outline every book, then try this: Type in a title, type the first sentence, and then the next and the next and just see where it goes. Why not? Afraid of failing? Have you ever tried it that way?

I have often written entire novels that way, and I have written entire novels from extremely detailed and long proposals and outlines as well. Both methods work fine for me, although I have to admit that when I don’t have a clue where the book and the characters are going, it gets exciting at times. And I always find myself on those books waking up in the middle of the night with ideas, or standing in the shower while the water gets cold while I work out a plot point. Those are fun books, but they are not the only way I write books. I have learned that each book is different and thus I never try to force a book into a certain method of writing.

So, if you are looking for excuses to not write, research and outlining are great ones. They feel like they are important, they feel like they need to be done, but the dishes need to be done as well. Just excuses.

Set your WRITING goals. All else works around the production of new pages.

You can’t avoid failure on these goals, so build it into the goal schedule.

Here is one final detail to think about.

Your goal for this next year is to write X-Number of pages, words, books, whatever you figure out. Think of yourself sitting down for a few minutes on New Year’s Eve, one year from now, and looking back at the year.

How will you feel if you hit your goal or went past it? Great, right? And full of energy to keep going.
How will you feel if you fell way short, spent all the time plotting and researching and didn’t get the pages done? Like crap, right? Discouraged.

So now, as you set your goal for 2009, be real, plan for failure, plan for missed time, and plan that if you do hit your goal, it will take you a large step toward your dream.

When you find that you have missed a week or so, remember how you will feel on December 31st if you give up. Then do as long term professional writers have trained themselves to do. Get back to work.

Plan for failure, but plan more for success. You won’t remember all the small failures and misses on December 31st next year if you hit your goal. Trust me on that.

Questions, fire them to me. Next topics are dealing with the real world, dealing with marketing, dealing with learning as you set the goals and get ready for a new year.

Cheers, Dean

Please read the previous posts on goals before trying to wade through this one. I’m going to be doing math and writers, for the most part, hate math. And they hate reality as well, but that’s a topic for a post a little later on in this series.

Done reading or rereading them? Good, time to get to some solid goals and how to set them. I’m going to do some posts on how to maintain a goal you have set, but for the moment, these posts are still in the basics of trying to set a goal that fits for you. You have questions to answer. Try not to talk too loudly when you do.

Actually, writing your personal answers to some of these questions down is a good thing. Writing it down, even on a yellow legal pad, makes them a little more real in your mind. Back to the writers hating reality issue.

Step one: What’s your Big Dream? (Really big dream, like New York Times #1 Bestseller for forty books in a row. That sort of thing.) Chances are this dream is not at all in your control, but it’s a good distant target, like a walking trip from LA to New York. You know New York is way off in the distance and a long ways away, more steps than you want to think about, but at least you know which direction to head in. Otherwise you might end up in Mexico, way off the target. So write down the Big Dream first.

Step Two: Where do you want to be in five years with your writing? This question is going to take some thought. And some reality (that issue again). Aim real but high. Make the Dream seem out of reach for a short five years. Again, notice I’m still talking dreams instead of goals. Dreams are often things out of your control, like selling a novel, but they help aim you, and help you determine what you need to do.

For example, if your dream is to have sold ten novels in five years, then you know you have to write 15 to 20 novels at least in that time and you have to learn how to submit them and keep them in the mail like Heinlein’s Rules. Otherwise the dream is not possible. So Big Dreams and Five Year Dreams are ways to define the road you want to walk.

If your dream is to be recognized as a major literary writer in Five to Ten Years, then you need to get to the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshops, and do other things focused in that direction and have other targets for your mailing and what you write. Again, the big dream aims the goals. For the examples below and from here on out, I will assume you want to be a commercial writer, selling novels to New York. Nothing wrong at all with other goals, and you can use my examples to set your own if you want to go other directions with your writing. But for the examples, it’s commercial writing.

Step Three. Take the Five Year Dream and figure out, as I did in the example, what you need to finish in one year to have a chance of hitting that Five Year Dream. Only on this step, keep everything you write down completely in your control.

For example, you can’t control “selling or publishing” a book, but you can control writing and mailing a book. And you can control how much you learn, how much time you spend writing, so on. (I will do future posts on how to keep learning and the goals around that.)

Example: Five Year Dream is to sell five novels. That is a very real dream and very possible. And the number does not overwhelm most writers with myth issues. So let’s use five books sold in five years as a major example now.

Take the five books and figure that to sell them in five years (and you haven’t sold a novel before), you better plan on writing and submitting 10 to 12 books. (And remember, the books you write the last year will not have time to sell, so you only have four actual years in this challenge to sell five within five years.)

So, to have any chance at all at hitting this example goal, the yearly goal needs to be to write 3 books per year. (Here comes the thundering elephant.) I can hear you say THREE BOOKS A YEAR! Crap, only Dean can do that.

Nah, that’s writing slow for me. Remember the math from a previous post? You did read the previous posts, didn’t you?

So, Step Four: Figure out how much your yearly goal is in pages per day. Do the math for whatever goal you set.

Now back to the Major Example: Three books a year is simply 750 words (3 manuscript pages) per day for 360 days in a year. So a person needs to write 1,250 words per writing day to make up for the missed days and vacation and sickness and stuff. If you write a very slow 250 words in 1/2 hour, then to do this example, you would need to spend 2 1/2 hours on a writing day. But if you can type, as most of us can, 250 words in about 10-15 minutes, then you have to carve out about 1 1/4 hour to hit your word count.

See how that works?

Look at it this way. Three novels in this Major Example are around 270,000 words. Divide that number by 1,250 words per writing session. You get 216 days of writing sessions. That leaves 149 days off, about three and a half months of misses.

Nifty how the math works, isn’t it. Sort of strips all the excuses away.

So you figured the five year dream, worked it back to how many books a year, then worked it down to a word count per day or writing session. Maybe get two writing sessions on a certain day of the week that allows you a little extra time in your schedule.

So, here comes the goals.

Step Five: (Write this down and show your family.) Figure out one week only.

That’s right, you figured out earlier what time you can carve out in a week. Your focus from now on is only one week at a time and hitting the goal that week.

Back to the Major Example: Five writing sessions carved out of a week that gets 1,250 words done each session. That’s this example’s goal. Period. One week only, with the intent to make the second week the same goal, and so on. But for the moment, the goal is only think of one week at a time.

If you get ahead of your goal on a week and write more pages, forget it and reset the goal for only one week the second week. If you miss your goal one week, don’t worry, you have lots of extra time built in. Simply focus on the week ahead. Sunday to Sunday. Monday Morning to Monday Morning. Whatever works for your schedule.

And celebrate a little when you hit your goal for a week. One week is something that all of us can focus on and keep in our minds. Just one week. Miss, start over the next week, no big deal.

So, let’s keep going and answer the logical question for the Major Example: What do you do when you finish a book since in the Major Example you must write three per year and mail them?

My suggestion is this: When you finish the first draft of the book, schedule the next week off and celebrate. (Don’t worry, extra time built in, remember?) Then the week after that the goal is to fix the problems left in the book, spell check it, and get it to your first reader. That’s the goal that week. The “fix” draft. If you cycle and fix stuff as you write every day as you go along, then skip this week and just spell check the book and give it to your first reader. Remember Heinlein’s 3rd Rule?

Third week after finishing a book, get back on writing with the next book, while the first reader reads the book. Get the next book started, get the pages done, get right back on the weekly schedule. (I’ll talk about the mailing issues later.)

That’s what I would do. But I can’t tell you how many dozens and dozens of times I finished a book one day, mailed it, and fired on the next book the next day.

A summary. Figure out the Big Dream and write it down. Figure out the Five Year Dream and write it down. Work backwards from the five year dream to figure out what needs to actually be done in one year. Then do the math and figure out how much needs to be written, your time available, and how fast you are. Then focus on only the week ahead, starting January 1st.

Do not look at the big goal, don’t look at the yearly goal. Just stay focused on the weekly goal. And make sure you have lots and lots of time extra worked in, as I did in the Major Example. You will miss weeks. You can’t let that stop you. Just focus on making it the next week. And then the next. That’s how words add up, books get written, and writers are made. One day, one week at a time.

Keep the elephants a long way from your writing. They will stop you cold.

Questions at this point just e-mail me. I will get to how to set goals on learning as you go. And how to set goals about marketing as you go. Those are separate from the writing, since they don’t matter if you are not producing pages and practicing.

Have fun doing the math. Keep it real. Makes life easier.

Cheers, Dean

Okay, if you haven’t already done so, go read the previous three posts on goals. Or maybe reread them again, since these posts are building.

If you have followed the previous posts, you know how much time you can carve out of your daily life and you know how long it takes you to write a simple manuscript page of 250 words. Right? And you have the big goal in mind, the big dream. Right?

So what next?

Answer: Numbers.

Publishing is a numbers game, all the way through Heinlein’s Rules. A simple numbers game.

For example, to finish one book a year, you should write two pages per day and then not worry about missing a bunch of days to get to the 360 pages of a 90,000 word book. Numbers.

When submitting books or stories to editors, you can’t control what they think of your book, if they have an opening in their list, if their sales department didn’t get on board, if they just bought something like it six months earlier. But you can control the number of editors you mail the book to. You can control the number of chances your story or book has to sell. You can control the number of different books you mail to different editors. Numbers.

So, with numbers in mind, let’s look at Heinlein’s Business Rules again to set some goals.

Rule 1: You must Write.

If your large goal is to be a professional writer, or just sell regularly, you have to do this. If you hate writing, why are you thinking of doing this? You should love writing, telling stories, having people read your stories. Otherwise, find another job.

“But I just can’t find the time.” Those words come out of your mouth and you are doomed. That simple sentence is the excuse of the masses and what separates a real writer from a want-to-be. You have figured out where you can carve out time, you have your family ready for the carving of the time. When that carved time comes each day, each week, you sit down and type. It doesn’t have to be good. Just type. “Dare to be bad.” as my close friend Nina Kiriki Hoffman said to me once.

She was right. It takes a lot more courage to sit and type and fail (because it’s practice anyway) than it does to not type. So carve the time each day out of your life, park your butt in the chair, and type.

Numbers:

Write one page per day for 360 days to finish one book.

Write two pages per day for 360 days to finish two books in a year.

Write three pages per day for 360 days to finish three books in a year.

Write four pages per day for 360 days to finish four books in a year.

(If you can’t hit writing every day, then cut the number of days in half to give yourself half the year off and divide the book numbers in half. For example, write 4 pages for 180 days in a year to finish two books in a year.)

Rule #2: You must finish what you write.

If you keep typing and carve the time, you will finish what you write. This rule really gets hit with the Dare to Be Bad courage issue. If you don’t finish, you don’t fail, right? Nope, you fail worse. No one likes a quitter. Don’t finish story after story and you are nothing more than a fearful quitter. Blunt but true. Sorry. And this rule is really mixed up with the next rule for most quitters.

Rule #3. You must not rewrite unless to editorial demand.

This rule hits right at the heart of a huge myth, so large most writers never get past it, and thus fail. Rewriting is a forced process, not in creative voice, but in critical voice, and often leads to the failure of Rule #2 and worse yet, really crappy, dull stories because all the voice and life are taken out for safety sake.

The myth is that a story must always be rewritten until it’s good, right? Snort. How the hell, as a new writer, do you have a clue if a story is good or not? I’ve written a hundred novels and far more short stories and been an editor for decades. I can tell you what’s wrong with your story, but I don’t have a clue when it comes to my own stories. Not clue one.

So remember this simple statement (which you won’t but try <g>). Writers are the worst judges of their own work.

I learned this by selling a lot of poems back in the 1970’s to some really top literary markets before I stopped mailing my poems out. I would always in a submission send one poem that I thought was my best, that I had really worked on, that I thought was “art” and one poem I thought was all right, not great but good enough, and one toss-off poem I thought was silly, had spent no time on, and didn’t care about. I always sold the toss-off poems, never the “good” ones. Those “good” ones are still in my files, I still think they are good, but hundreds of editors of major magazines didn’t. They liked my toss-off stuff. Stuff that I had not rewritten to death.

Here’s how many professional writers I know do it. We do three drafts. Very simple, we do a pounding first draft, racing through the story, making notes or going back and changing any detail that needs to be fixed as you race in a white hot heat through the story. If you make notes, go back after you finish the book and add in only the notes. Everything done in creative mode.

Spell check your manuscript as draft #2. (You should always have your spell checker and grammar checker turned off while writing. Computer people do not know how to write. Trust me.)

Third draft, give the book to your trusted first reader, fix the mistakes and problems they found, and then mail it to editors and start the next book the next day.

Or you can have real courage and do it like Harlan Ellison has done many, many, many times with many award-winning stories. Sit in a store window with just an idea someone handed you, or a simple word, and write a story on a manual typewriter, ripping the pages out of the machine and taping them to the window so the people standing outside can read them.

Rule #4. Mail the story to an editor who will buy it.

With books, you can go to many editors, with short stories only one at a time. But always mail your work to someone who can write you a check. Agents can not write you a check. You can hire one after you get a book offer and should hire one at that time to help with the terms and the contract and a thousand other things. Only editors and publishers can write you a check for your work, so focus on them. (If your first thought reading this was “But…” you are in deep trouble right here.)

Here comes the problem with Dare to be bad. And also the problem with not knowing the quality of your own work. When you finish a book or story, you will think it sucks. You must have the courage to mail it and then work to mail the next story better. You honestly don’t know if the story sucks or not. Just mail it and let an editor decide.

In the master’s class, we had the writers attending bring three stories well disguised with pen names and different fonts and everything. One story was a story they thought was one of their best, one was all right, and one story they thought was their worst. And they could NOT tell anyone any of the pen names. Then, along with the stories they wrote at the workshop, we tossed them all into a tub and made them put an anthology together. Upwards of over 100 different stories to pick from, and they couldn’t pick any of their own. They had to do a table of contents and then give that table of contents to everyone.

The shocked look on people’s faces was wonderful. What happened was that their “best” stories seldom sold, but everyone in the room sold their “worst” story many times. And most of those writers didn’t even have those stories in the mail because they thought they were so bad. Writers just don’t have a clue what’s good or bad in their own work, thus you have to have the courage to just mail it.

Rule #5. Keep it in the mail until someone buys it.

The numbers of this are simple. The more editors you let see your work, the more your chances of selling your work. Publishing is ripe with stories of a major bestseller selling after 30 or 40 or 50 rejections or more. Not kidding. You get discouraged because one editor, or three editors said “Sorry” to your story, get over it quickly. Rejection and sales are a numbers game.

During Babe Ruth’s years of playing ball, who struck out the most? He did, of course. If he had been afraid of striking out, we wouldn’t know his name now. Same goes with publishing and rejections. I have thousands, and I do mean thousands of rejections and I still get them all the time. No big deal, part of the numbers game of mailing your work to editors. You have to keep it out there.

So, when thinking of setting these goals, also set goals regarding keeping your work in the mail. That’s a goal you can control. And I will talk about methods of setting these goals, both page count and novels in the mail goal in a new post coming up shortly.

But for now, think about what you want in your large goal and try to find just an extra thirty minutes a week above what you have already carved out in time.

And one more thing. Start working on the attitude that you don’t know if you write a good story or not. You’re just going to do your best and then release it for others to determine if it is good or not.

One last truism that applies to the rules above. “The quality of a book or story has nothing to do with the quality or the experience the writer had while writing it.”

Stick that on a sign over your computer right along with “Dare to be Bad” and you should be a good step toward starting these goals and getting your attitude in the right place to keep going after the month of January is finished.

More soon.

Cheers, Dean

(Before you read this, read the previous two posts on goals.)

About a month ago I got a phone call from a wonderful women who works at our small city water department. She had been informed by the water meter reader that we had an unusually high usage and more than likely, we had a leak somewhere.

Talk about eating an elephant. How do you find a leak in two buildings served by the water, in ninety feet of lawn covering a water pipe, under a concrete slab where one pipe ran, and then, worst of all, down a steep hill for about eighty feet through trees and brush to the street below.

Somewhere in all that was a leak. So I took a deep breath and started with just one detail at a time, like a big book, one page at a time.

I did the standard first steps, checking to make sure toilets weren’t leaking with dye, checking under the buildings, all the simple things, including walking the yard looking for soft spots. (Not highly likely, since our ground is all sand and water would go right down.)

Nothing. So I turned the water off at the top of the hill, made sure nothing was getting to the house, then went down the hill and looked at the meter. Still spinning.

The leak was in an eighty foot run two feet down through deep brush, some tall trees, and a thirty foot drop. I remember standing there and thinking that was impossible.

The size of the elephant just stopped me cold. So I called for help (something you really can’t do when writing). The guy I called said it would cost me a number with a comma in it for his guys to dig up that run and just lay new pipe, much simpler than trying to find the old leak. Then it would cost me a bunch more for a plumber to hook it up on both ends of the new run. Ughh. Suddenly tackling the elephant seemed like a better idea.

So, not wanting to write checks with commas just yet, I got a young friend of mine to help and we started digging down at the street by the water meter.

One shovel full of sand at a time.

I kept thinking it was like writing a novel. One shovel full, one page. I did not allow myself to look up at that impossible hill of brush and trees. (At least not very often. )

We dug out the entire meter, and about four feet of old metal pipe until it vanished under a huge tree stump. Clearly when the pipe was put in originally, the trees were very small.

So, I gave up on that end for the moment and we went to the top of the hill.

Just like writing a novel. I often do false starts on books, toss them and fire again. So we went to the top of the hill and dug out the shut-off valve there, one shovel full at a time.

Slowly the pile of sand grew (like completed pages) and the task at hand made progress. No leak at the valve, so we started following now plastic pipe down the hill, figuring that where ever the plastic joined the metal was a likely place to find the leak.

As it turned out, we got lucky about six feet along the run, where the plastic black pipe went directly at a large tree. The roots of the large tree had warped the pipe into such a shape that it had finally just split. Plumber is coming tomorrow and it won’t even be a check with three digits to fix. Very simple.

What I thought was going to be a novel’s length of work turned out to be a short story’s worth. Yeah!

But I was willing, day after day, to go out there and just move a few more shovel fulls of sand, work my way down that hill, cutting roots and facing the challenges of the project, until I found that leak. Just like I write a novel, one page at a time, facing the challenges, getting it done.

Interesting how knowing how to write novels can help in a real world situation.

And the other way around. Look at your life. Figure out which tasks you do that take time over days and months. Quilting and knitting are good examples of tasks that take the same type of drive and small detail to add up to a larger product in the end.

Construction of any sort is the same way.

Cooking a good meal is also the same thing.

A simple round of golf is also the same. One shot advances you forward, then the next and the next until you have moved to a finished goal.

Life is full of examples that are exactly the same as writing a book or a story. So when I talk about these goals, setting small detail goals, doing the math, just think of all the things you do in the real world that work on the same process. It makes this writing thing seem a lot less scary.

And a lot more fun than digging up old pipe to find a water leak.

Cheers, Dean