Archive for the Category ◊ By the Book ◊

08 Jul 2011 Writer on the Side: Small Bouts of Research
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Have you found that often you’ll sit down to write and it’s only when you’ve written the first sentence that you realize that in order to carry on, there’s a whole crapload of research you need to do first? You need to read up on something in order to write a scene correctly or there’s some missing element without which you can’t go on? So instead of writing, like you had originally planned, you wind up researching, something you could easily have done on your lunch break or in the ten minutes you had before a meeting or right before bed when you were too tired to write but not tired to read.

“This is a perfect activity to accomplish during your lunch hour,” writes Bryan Cohen in Writer on the Side. “There are plenty of employees that use this time to surf the Web regardless, so you may as well do some background work on your book. Be prepared for this, by putting some bookmarks to research sites on your Internet Favorites and take out a few pertinent books from the library that will aid in your quest.”

This to me, was by far the most helpful tip in the book. I have about five books that I need to read through to finish the research for my own and I always end up leaving scenes incomplete because I haven’t managed to get around to that. So now, instead of reading a novel before bed, I quickly read a chapter for research and make notes instead. Or during those nights when I’m suffering from insomnia, instead of posting on Twitter and Facebook, I read a couple of chapters on my Kindle for iPhone. And during the day, I sometimes find that it’s difficult to just get started writing when you’re in the middle of something else and only have a few spare minutes. That’s when I’ve started doing five, ten, fifteen minutes of research, instead of spending that time on Facebook or Twitter or other people’s blogs.

My final thoughts on the book: It’s a very short 50-page book, giving the impression that the focus would strictly be on actually find the time to write and doing so productively as someone with a full-time job and full life and family. But there’s quite a bit about having a healthy body and healthy mind in here, too, that was quite unexpected. All in all, I’ve picked up some helpful tips from this book that I’ll be using to finish not just one, but two of my books.

07 Jul 2011 Writer on the Side: Blocking Out Time
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I’ve been more a word-count goal sort of person, but following the advice in Bryan Cohen’s book Writing on the Side, I decided to maybe set hourly goals instead. I will work on the book for a minimum of an hour each day, that’s all, and whether I write 300 words or 3,000 words is immaterial. The idea is to spend every day on the book, even if lack in word count productivity. Then, even if I’ve had a bad day and only written a few hundred words, I’ve still put in my hour and so there’s no need to beat myself up about it. I’ve still achieved my goals. And achieving goals makes me feel much better about returning to a project the next day.

Bryan has small tips for what to do when you’ve blocked out time, such as keeping healthy snacks handy or getting away from the house, that may or may not work for you. I tend to get distracted if I’m eating and I’m quite happy in the house, so those tips aren’t for me, but having that dedicated time makes a massive difference. You could get it out first thing in the morning or wait until the end of the day after all work is finished, as I do.

I’ve been doing this for a few days now and it actually works. I set a half hour timer, write or research or do whatever I need to do to keep the book moving forward (even if it’s just re-arranging the order of the scenes) and then I take a ten-minute break and set another timer for half an hour. I don’t worry about word count, which means that some days all I’ve done is reread what I already have and make a few changes, and some days I’ve written 1,000+ words.

Two months of this and I’ll have finished this book working just an hour a day. It’s that easy? Who knew?

06 Jul 2011 Writer on the Side: Giving up Caffeine
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In Writer on the Side, Bryan Cohen advises that you give up your morning coffee or tea because while you think you’re perking yourself up for the day, you’re only temporarily giving yourself a boost, which will be followed by a crash. He writes, “When I quite coffee and caffeine in general, I had a tough few months of staying awake in the morning. But eventually, my natural mechanisms kicked back into place and I felt clearer than I ever did during my caffeine phase. I felt natural and healthy and most importantly, I felt more creative. In order to tap into your natural creativity, you’ve got to keep it real.”

In any other circumstance, I wouldn’t have listened to this advice at all. Am I really supposed to wake up and not have tea first thing in the morning? Does Bryan not know that my husband brings me tea in bed because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to get up and that I gulp it down in one go, drag myself to the kitchen and make another one even before I’ve showered? No caffeine! Who does this guy think he is?

But of course, I got pregnant and on doctor’s orders, had to give up my daily eight cups of tea and was allowed at most one cup a day, if that. Initially, I was having such terrible withdrawals, leading to week-long migraines and horrendous nausea that my doctor actually had to put me back on two or three cups a day saying she couldn’t risk me getting sick and losing more weight. But I knew I had to cut down, so I gave up my morning tea and only had a cup when I could feel the stirrings of a migraine coming on. The more I waited, the later it seemed, those stirrings came. I’ve had several days now when I’ve not needed tea until 3 p.m. And I never ever thought I’d say this, but it actually keeps me fresher and more alive, as if all that tea was weighing me down.

Bryan 1, Tea 0.

Is giving up caffeine going to help me in writing more? I don’t know, but I guess feeling more awake and alive is certainly a good first step in getting there.

05 Jul 2011 By the Book: Writer on the Side by Bryan Cohen
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You know that 100,000-word piece-of-crap first draft of a memoir that I wrote last year that I said would need a complete start-from-scratch rewrite if I ever intended to sell it? Well, last year I mentioned it in passing to someone in publishing, who got really excited about it and said that she wanted to be the first person to see it and that she’d get it in the hands of top New York agents and editors if I sent her the complete manuscript once done.

Well, now one London agent has expressed interest in reading it and another has already offered to represent it (and once again, I’d only mentioned it in passing because obviously, I haven’t rewritten it yet) if I would only… say it with me… get off my ass and finish it (or the book proposal).

I’ve got a crazy schedule in the next few months and I’m going to finish the damn novel if it kills me, so it was around the time I was wondering how I was going to fit this project into my schedule when I got a fortuitous e-mail from Bryan Cohen, author of Writer on the Side, wondering if I’d review his book on the blog.

I took a quick glance and realized that this is just perfect! This is a book for people with full-time jobs and full lives who’re wondering how to fit writing into their days. It’s not so difficult, says Cohen, if you just learn to block out time and use it fruitfully. He promises to show techniques in the book that will help even the busiest of people to find some time each day to work on their writing projects. Maybe his book could help me work on my memoir while I get all my other writing done and still have a family life? Worth a try.

I e-mailed him back immediately and asked if he wouldn’t mind if I actually used the book and then reported on how I’d done with it for the By the Book section. Bryan graciously agreed, and so here we are.

I’ve been using the book for the last two weeks and over the next week, I’m going to report on some of the techniques Bryan suggests and whether or not they’ve been working for me.

Stay tuned to see how much I’ve written since I started reading Bryan’s book. And if you’d like to join me, get your own copy here.

24 Jun 2010 The Snail Tales, Day 7 (the final contest)
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On the final day of the challenge, I want to talk about delegation. I’m not very good at it– I am a one-woman business after all– and the idea of letting someone be in charge of something that could directly impact my career is not only alien to me, it’s threatening. What if they mess it up? What if there’s something they’ve missed? What if, what if, what if?

I won’t lie– I’ve thought about expanding this one-woman business into a one woman plus one business. That is, hiring a wannabe journalist as an assistant, teaching him or her the tricks of the trade, and getting help while this person finds the way to freelancedom. I’ve had a few people write to me and volunteer as well, but so far, it’s been a if-I-can-come-across-the-right-person thing, rather than a proactive let-me-find-this-right-person thing.

Anyhow, Christine’s got me thinking about delegation. “Make a list of the top ten things you know someone else could do,” she says. “Call it your list of won’t dos. Think of people in your circle who might help you complete these tasks because they’re better at them than you. It is a misperception to think you have to do everything yourself.”

I have been trying to simplify. I gave up using credit cards because keeping a tab on the monthly expenses, billing, etc, became too tiresome, and I was (and have always been) happy just spending what I have in my pocket. My accounting unit has been outsourced to my mother, who loves playing with numbers and doesn’t mind checking on my financial health regularly. And I speak to my dad and my husband regularly about stories, because I know they’re better informed than I am about the current affairs in the country and the world, and tapping into the vast reservoir of knowledge that they both share can only help me.

So I’m not beyond asking for help, but maybe in the day-to-day, I could ask for it more often. Not because I don’t have the time, because there are some things others can do better than I. And that’s the hardest lesson to learn for a perfectionist like me.

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I’m working with The Power of Slow: 101 Ways to Save time in Our 24/7 World by Christine Louise Hohlbaum. Check out Christine’s blog at http://powerofslow.wordpress.com/

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Today’s your final chance to win a copy of Christine’s book. Leave a comment below telling me the one thing about your business that you would like to outsource. Entries close on the 26th, 6 p.m. GMT, and I’ll announce the winner on the 27th.

23 Jun 2010 The Snail Tales, Day 6 (one more contest)
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Technology is supposed to help us, right? Make things easier, let us do our work faster, make life less complicated? How then did I end up with almost 300 feeds on my RSS readers, which cumulatively pull over 2,500 news stories a day? I don’t care who you are, and how many hours you have in a day, no one can read that much!

I can’t get rid of my feeds, if that’s what you’re about to suggest, because they bring news from all the corners of the world to me. The little corners that no one notices, which make for really good stories that no one’s bothering to tell. So the only thing I could do was to streamline the process of receiving them and figuring out a certain time in the day to get through them. I give myself one or two hours each day to read through as many as I can, I delete the rest.

“Eliminate the feeds going into your e-mail inbox to avoid distraction,” writes Christine. “That way, when you read your feeds, it is the only activity you are doing instead of attempting to manage different scraps of unrelated data at once.”

I’ve been experimenting with dozens of RSS feed readers, and until recently, didn’t find one I liked. A couple of months ago, though, I came across NetNewsWire and I have to say, I absolutely love it.

It’s not about shunning technology, it’s about getting the right tools. Now that this one is sorted, on to the next.

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I’m working with The Power of Slow: 101 Ways to Save time in Our 24/7 World by Christine Louise Hohlbaum. Check out Christine’s blog at http://powerofslow.wordpress.com/

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For today’s contest, I’m offering up three of my successful queries that sold to the New York Times, Global Post, and TIME magazine.

To win them, share your favorite writing tool with us in the comments below. Entries close June 25, 6 p.m. GMT. I’ll announce a winner on the 26th.

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