I’m tempted to end the post there.
Ship.
Get your freakin’ product out the door.
One of my good buddies,
a talented, talented writer,
has been working on the same manuscript
for three years now.
Her agent asks her
every couple of months
to send something for her to sell
and
many of us have told her
the manuscript is ready to be ‘shipped.’
My buddy continues to tweak.
Ship.
It is scary,
and you risk rejection,
but it is a necessary step
for success.
One of the big benefits
of the mostly online writing group
I belong to
is that these writers challenge my goals.
I’ll write that
my goal is to write 1,000 words.
They’ll push back and say
“I believe in you.
Can’t you do 1,200 words?”
I didn’t think I could do 1,200 words
but damn it, I try
and yes, I usually succeed.
They don’t question my goal.
They question how aggressive
my goal should be.
If you don’t have a group
like this,
you can ask a trusted friend
to fill the same role.
Ask her to bump up your goal
by 5 or 10 percent,
and then ask you the next day
if you achieved it.
Stretch your daily goals.
Every industry thinks their’s is the ‘toughest.’
I’m currently working in the communications industry.
First day on the job,
I was told that everything I knew was shit
and that I’d have a bitch of a time
coming up to speed quickly.
Hmmm…
So I studied my ass off
and proved that I could talk the talk
and add value in the new industry,
while gently introducing them
to ideas from other industries.
(Pro tip – don’t tell them it worked in
another industry
until you’ve proved it works in their’s)
In March’s Men’s Fitness,
rapper and actor
LL Cool J shares his challenges
switching from music to acting.
“There was a time 10 years ago
when there was big backlash
against rappers turning into actors.
My response to that
was to study really hard,
go to acting school,
focus my energy into acting.
And now I”m doing what I’m doing.”
You know that your experience
in another industry will add value
but your new coworkers don’t share that belief.
Be prepared to work your ass off
to prove yourself.
I saw a buddy recently.
I haven’t seen him for a while.
One of the first questions
he asked was
“So are you retired?”
I had told him
decades ago
that I was going to retire
at the age of 35.
I’ll be 40 in a couple of months
and I continue to work the business gigs.
So I failed at my goal.
I hadn’t retired at 35.
However, I know
I’m closer to my goal
than I would have been
if I hadn’t set that aggressive time frame.
Goals are guidelines.
It isn’t the end of the world
that I don’t make the goal
as I originally set it.
What matters most is that
I’m working toward it
and WILL reach it
in some time frame, way, or fashion.
If you’re moving in the right direction,
don’t get discouraged
if you fail to meet your aggressive goals.
Revise them
and re-issue the challenge to yourself.
Next year,
I plan to release at minimum
two stories a month
under one of my pen names.
Two decades ago,
that would have been frowned upon.
I would have been seen
as saturating the market.
Today, there’s no such thing,
at least not in writing.
The consumption is there.
Readers will buy a book a week
from a favorite author.
They are constantly looking for the new
and a book that has been
on the market for a month
is… well… old.
Some authors are playing
by the old rules.
They publish stories
in the same genre
under different names,
and all these names get email
asking why they’re not writing faster.
Look at your market.
Are you putting a ceiling on
the supply you’re offering?
Is this ceiling real
or a figment of the past?
A loved one once said
“She worked damn hard”
would be written
on my grave stone.
I’m not the smartest person.
I don’t have the most talent.
I work hard.
That’s my claim to fame
and it has made all the difference.
Jeff Foxworthy,
comedian and talk show host,
sees the hard work vs talent debate
the same way.
“I look back through the years
and there were a lot of men and women
I worked with
and I would think,
‘Man, are they ever funny,’
but they didn’t necessarily work at it
and a decade later
you’re asking,
‘What ever happened to them?'”
“I’ve been in this for 26 years now,
but if I look back to the people
I started out with,
the Jay Lenos,
the Jerry Seinfelds,
the Adam Sandlers,
even people like Judd Apatow,
the common denominator is,
they all worked at it.
They didn’t all necessarily
continue to be standups,
but they were workers.”
The great thing is…
working hard is controllable.
I decide if I work hard.
I decide if I’ll be a success.
I write 1,000 words every morning.
On paper, using a pen.
Yes, gasp, very low tech.
I type those 1,000 words
into the computer every night.
You may think…
“What a waste of time.
Why doesn’t she use a laptop
and type the words in immediately?”
Because
1) The actual act of writing
frees up a creative part of my brain.
2) I revise my words as I type them in
so I do 2 drafts in one day.
but most of all
3) My paper is disconnected
from the internet.
There is no temptation to check email
or to fact check on wikipedia.
I simply write.
Seth Godin has a great post
on using two electronic devices,
one for working
and one for playing,
and never mixing the two.
That’s another way to disconnect.
Find out your own way to disconnect,
and
use that offline time
for your creative work.
In an interview with Bill Harris,
Jeff Foxworthy, comedian and tv host,
talks about being on time.
“Musicians aren’t real good
about getting up in the morning.
But you know what’s funny is,
the one who are the best at it
are the successful ones.
The George Straits and the Tim McGraws,
they’re the ones who always call on time.
It’s the new guy
who really needs the exposure
that doesn’t call, you know?”
“It makes you think,
‘There’s a reason George Strait is George Strait.’
I’ve always said about show business,
everybody likes the ‘show’ part,
it’s the ‘business’ part that’s hard.
But the successful ones do both.”
Being on time is part of being a professional
and to be successful long-term
in ANY business,
you have to be a professional.
Even America’s most famous redneck
knows that to be true.
In the March/April issue
of The Costco Connection,
Roger Ellerton explains why
you need a clear goal.
“If you don’t have an immediate goal
and you meet a friend who does,
most likely your friend will enlist you
to help him get what he wants.
And you may
(silently or otherwise)
become angry with him
for taking advantage of you,
when in reality you set the stage
for what happened
by not having direction.”
This past weekend,
exactly that happened to me.
A friend asked me to read for her.
She didn’t need me
to provide input on her work.
She simply wanted reassurance
that she was on the right track.
I was tempted to do the reading first
but I had my word count goal
clearly outlined.
I told myself I’d write first
and read second.
I didn’t get to reading
because I finished my writing late at night.
My friend didn’t care.
I did care about my word count.
I would have been irked with myself
and with her
if I hadn’t met it.
Write out your goals
and put those goals first.
I’ve known a certain concept in writing
for years now.
I’ve known it.
I’ve tried to incorporate it in my work.
Yet it wasn’t… there.
Then yesterday,
as I was writing a scene,
it clicked.
I now KNOW this concept.
It went from damn difficult to easy peasy.
When I was studying French,
I knew I had to roll my r’s.
I practiced and practiced and practiced
but I couldn’t.
Then one day,
magically it happened.
I rolled my r’s,
and since then,
rolling my r’s has been easy.
Some readers wonder
why I repeat concepts on Clientk.
THAT is why.
You may think you know a concept
but you may not truly know it.
With repetition and work,
it will come.