Daily Tao ☯ 5.5.17

So I’m feeling way under the weather today, which is terrible timing, considering I have to get on a plane in two days. It’s not going to be serious—I almost always get sick the moment I finish a book. It’s my body’s way of saying “HEY! You’ve been really mean to me lately, making me sit in one place and think so hard, so na-ne-na-ne-boo-boo, see how you like this.” 

I mention this not to gain sympathy (though should you want to send tea, I’m not averse) but because Amy and I did a brief staff meeting today, and the ideas were flying fast and furious. She said, for someone who feels like crap, you’re FULL of good ideas today.

So I explained. You see, I’m used to this feeling of ick toward the end of a major project. I’ve actually finished more books than I care to admit while sick. Instead of it stopping me, I find it expands my mind, in a way. The crazy endings to my books? Very often the product of me not feeling well but sitting down to work anyway. Cool things happen, it seems. My preconceived parameters are pushed aside, and I just let it flow. 

It’s a weird part of my process, but a part nonetheless. The takeaway? My creativity is sometimes enhanced when my physical body is trying to shut down. Your mileage may vary. 

Research started today on vampires…. This is going to be a LOT of fun!

Sweet dreams! Oh, and since we might clinch the second round tonight… Go Preds!

On Finishing What We Start, and Other Writerly Myths

This first appeared on Women Writers. If you don't follow their awesomeness, go do it right now!

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I often joke with friends that if you don’t finish what you start, you’ll end up with a trail of half-eaten sandwiches around the house.

I don’t remember where I first heard this analogy for unfinished work, but it’s such a vivid image that it’s stuck with me all these years. Can you imagine how messy your home would be if every discarded idea lay on the floor, cluttering up your space?

I know for me, it would mean trudging through mounds of detritus, some tiny specks of dust, some true dust bunnies. Others would be larger, mean and angry, like broken furniture, all sharp and crooked, just waiting to catch my leg and leave a deep gash.

We don’t want that.

So I’m careful with what I entertain. When I have what I think is a solid idea, I open a Scrivener file, give it a title, and create a book journal. This journal is important: I use it to explain what the thought is about and why I’m writing it down. Manifestation is a powerful thing—I don’t do this unless I feel like the idea has real legs. I save this new project to a folder called—quite originally, I might add—Ideas. Every once in a while, I run through them. A good 75% of the time, when revisited, the idea has faded away. Which tells me it wasn’t that good to start with. The ones that are still as vivid and exciting as the day I put them in the file, those are the ones that I think long and hard about starting.

Because if I start a story, I finish it. I refuse to allow myself to abandon a project once it’s underway.
 

That sounds harsh, I’m sure. That I’m lashing my Muse to the prow of the ship and heading into dark waters with hurricane warnings ahead. And yes, sometimes, that’s how starting feels to me. A journey into the heart of darkness, with no idea of whether what lies ahead will be good, bad, or something in between.

But when I sit down to write a story, be it a short or a novel, I do so with a commitment to finish paramount in my mind.

Starting is hard. Finishing, though, is sometimes much, much more difficult.

I’ve been planning this blog for several days. I didn’t want to start it until I had a solid hour ahead in which I knew I could get it drafted. Today was the day. In one of those odd universe-timed moments, a friend wrote me right before I started with a question. She’s been balls to the wall on deadline for the biggest book of her career. All she’s wanted for weeks is to Get. It. Done. Already.

And today, the day she’s going to finish, she woke up and had the most jarring thought—that she didn’t want to let it go.

This, I believe, is why finishing is so hard.

Her emotion is one I am intimately familiar with. Every time I’m nearing the end of a story, I have the same sensation. For days, months, even years, in some cases, all I’ve wanted it to get the book done and off my plate. But when the moment presents itself, suddenly finishing doesn’t feel good. It feels too big. Too scary.

Finishing means your work will no longer be your own. To me, that’s a thousand times scarier than starting.

I believe this is why so many ideas are abandoned. Because when you finish, you have to let your work out into the world, where it will be judged. We’re writers, and this is a subjective industry. Some people will love your story. Some will hate it. That’s the nature of the beast.

The trick is to not let the beast slay you before you’ve even put the food in its maw.

All well and good, JT, you say. So tell me how to finish.

You just do.

You throw away your fear, you swallow the bile that rises at the thought of someone else reading your words, and you finish. And I don’t mean just putting an ending together and calling it done. You’ve spent all this time creating a brilliant story, why would you rush and throw something together so you can type The End? You won’t be happy, and neither will your Muse, and she won’t hesitate to let you know it.

No. Never that. You must be brave. You are a hunter. You must march deliberately into the darkness, your torch held high, and tap into your reckless abandon. That is the bait for the monster you must slay. Because all endings are monsters, and they do not like confidence, or excitement, or serenity.

When you find that perfect (or not so perfect) ending and wrestle it onto the page, crushing the biggest monster of all, two things will happen.

1 — You will have the incredible satisfaction of knowing you gave it your best (which is the psychological component you must overcome when finishing, because I heard the voice in the back of your mind say—But if this is my best, and people don’t like it, I will shrivel up and die in a corner—to which I say, bosh, no you won’t).

2 — You will experience something I like to call “creative satisfaction.”

Creative satisfaction is elusive and shy. She won’t come when called, and she will never show up willingly. She only pokes out her head when you’ve exhausted yourself, a balm for your wounds. She nestles next to you like a loving cat, tells you how fabulous you are for being brave, and gives you a sweet kiss on the forehead, one you’ll feel when the next new idea comes along. Real creative satisfaction fills you up, and gives you the strength to do it all over again.

But if you don’t finish, and finish strong, you’ll never find her.

Finish what you start. Find that ritual that tells the world you’re finishing (mine is donning my ragged old Harvard T-shirt. When I have it on, that’s a signal to the universe that today is finishing day—and I do it for every project!) and just get it done. Because I know you can do it, and do it well.

Write hard, my friends.

Save Time and Be More Productive with Workflows

This post first appeared on RT Book Reviews. If you missed it there, today's your lucky day!
 

Workflow. It’s a common business term that describes how a project moves from inception to completion. It is a simple, powerful way to get things done. For writers, the concept of workflow is intrinsic—we start a novel, we finish a novel. We start a short story, blog post, interview, we finish and submit. But if you think in broader terms, workflows can be applied to all aspects of your writing business.

Business. That pesky word again. Writing is a business. Those who treat it as such reap the rewards and build their readership. We can’t escape it—marketing and PR falls partially (sometimes fully) on the authors now. If you find ways to automate the most mundane tasks, you free up time to write.  

This is probably old news to established writers, but for the ones who are getting their start, establishing this kind of organizational structure to your writing business now will save you so many headaches down the line.

Though we act in the art of creation, there are still hundreds of moving parts that can be wrestled into some semblance of order to make your life run easier and smoother. 

Do you blog? Find a service that will deliver your blog directly to your social media accounts so you don’t need to post directly. Dlvr.it is superb for this. Want to post to Twitter at regular times, but don’t want to log in four times a day? (because hello, time suck!) My team uses Buffer, which allows us to automate and schedule well in advance. Even Facebook now has scheduling in advance, so you can sit down once a week and populate your feed with great content. Set it and forget it, which allows you to spend the time doing what social media is supposed to do for you—engage. When you’re done writing for the day, talk to your readers. Chat with them. Get to know them. Build a community. Your content is only as good as your relationships with the people in your networks.

But workflow can be much more robust than simply automating your posting to social media. Let’s take a book, for example. For every book you write, you already know the actions that have to take place. Develop your idea, create a synopsis, outline the book (or pants it, like me, based on the general idea of what’s happening) finish the book, edit the book, edit it again, deliver to beta readers, edit again, deliver to agent/editor, line edit, copy edit, last pass pages. Meanwhile, the business side kicks in—cover art is developed, sales get underway, marketing plans are written, PR begins, then you have release day, promotional tours, etc. 

For those of you who are indie, the process is similar, but you’re the one doing the work, hiring the art and editing, establishing the marketing, setting up the PR, deciding on sale price and release time. Plus doing all of the backlist promotion you do, scheduling discount sales, etc. 

As I’m writing this, I’m thinking through our process.

When I hired my author assistant in 2015, one of the things we worked on first was automation and workflow. We try not to reinvent the wheel every time a new book comes out. Add in we’re self-publishing through our own press and juggling multiple houses on the traditional side, and believe me, the established workflows have saved our bacon more than once. 

Here’s a typical workflow we use when we’re looking at scheduling a book launch. It’s very top-line, because each project is slightly different, but you’ll get the gist.

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As you can see, the step-by-step process makes it easy on us both. We know once the book is listed on Amazon, we put the cover up on the website. We know when to change our Facebook, Twitter and website banners to announce on-sale dates. We plan what information goes into which newsletter. We break everything down across the board as such: 

Project → Tasks → Subtasks. 

Once you build the workflow, it’s there, and you don’t need to think about anything but content creation. 

We have to be flexible, of course, because every project is its own beast. New opportunities arise. A blog that normally features us goes defunct. Contacts move on. But in general, this flow takes us through, making it easier on both of us. We apply this basic structure to every project, putting in place a general workflow the moment a deal is done. 

Now to the other side of the coin. I believe very deeply in this concept: your art is your business. At the same time, you have to create your art in order to have a business. That means finding pockets of deep work time which allow you to focus on nothing but writing. 

For some of you, the business side comes naturally. For others, it doesn’t. And that’s perfectly okay. There’s an easy solution for both writing brains: help. There are amazing author assistants out there who are trained to help you manage the business side of things. I think it’s very important to find people to work with who are fun, flexible, and dedicated to helping you be your best.

For those who think the cost of hiring help is insurmountable, let me say this: words equal money. The more time you spend writing and creating, the faster your business will grow. An author assistant can help you automate, create workflows, and in general free up your precious time so you can write. They can do as much or as little as you need. Even in only an hour a week, they can draft a monthly newsletter and program your social media for the week, and you can spend that time writing. It adds up. Say you can write 1,000 words in an uninterrupted hour. That hour a week you offload some business on an author assistant can add up to 52,000 words in a year. I think that’s worth $25 a week, don’t you?

Even if you don’t have the extra money to spend, you can get help. Contact your local college English department. They are always looking to place interns. These incredible young adults are tech savvy, social media aware, and bring so much to the table. They get first-hand experience in writing and publishing, and you get that extra hour a week for your deep work.

We all want to be more productive. Proactive planning, comprehensive workflows, and finding deep work time will get you there.

Here are some tools to get you started:

Freedom – the gold standard for tuning out distractions by shutting down your internet

Dlvr.it – automating social media feed systems from your blog

Author Rx – Mel Jolly has a ton of resources on finding author assistants

Cal Newport – The author of DEEP WORK, a book you must read

Asana and Wunderlist – Workflow task managers

Buffer – The best service for scheduling and sending links out to the world

On Blogging, and Blogs I Love

I love to blog. I love the examination of thoughts and words. I do it for myself in many ways, knowing that the days I’m struggling with writing, that if I at least put a blog in place, I’ll feel like I’ve accomplished something. My longstanding rule—When you can’t write, write about writing. It helps.

I started blogging many, many years ago, and have been relatively consistent with it. I used to blog every Friday at Murderati, then bi-monthly, then when it shut down, I kept it up on my website, albeit to a smaller audience. 

And then the socials happened, and blogging supposedly went the way of the dodo, or so we were meant to believe. Some of us kept at it—and many, many bloggers saw their audiences grow and bloom. Mine hasn’t really changed upwards or downwards, though I have seen that the more I blog, the more people who read them. 

But, oddly, the blog commenting seems to have migrated to Facebook, where I am very active on my business page. It’s no real skin off my nose, though it means I need to pay attention to make sure everyone is getting what they need. And then we started scheduling, so there’d be regular programming, which becomes it’s own issue. We’ve settled into a Sunday blog, and a Thursday blog. I vacillate on whether to do more, or less. 

Truth be told, I miss my daily snippet blogs, and might bring them back, if there’s interest…

Why do I bring all this up? My bestie, Laura Benedict, has starting blogging daily. It wasn’t something she necessarily set out to do, but when she realized the rhythm was pleasing, and helping with the work, she kept it up. 

This makes me happy on so many levels. Laura’s a true essayist. I’ve spent years saying how I wished she blogged more, because her words are just so calming and comforting. I always feel good when I finish reading, even if its a difficult topic.

Laura’s blog—Notes From The Handbasket—is everything you want from a writer’s blog. Funny, charming, engaging, vulnerable—she has a wonderful, unique voice and a wry sense of humor that takes the ordinary around her and makes it extraordinary. I highly recommend you give it a read. 

For me, there’s something very special about hearing about a writer’s day. The little accomplishments that, when taken en total, become a book, a series, a career. The blogs I gravitate to are ones of nurturing and education, that examine the world in a pleasing manner, and offer bits of enlightenment to the reader. Laura’s qualifies, on all accounts.

Here are some other blogs I love:

1. Dani Shapiro
2. Kristine Rusch
3. Modern Mrs. Darcy
4. I Heart Words
5. Quo Vadis
6. The Well-Appointed Desk
7. Tools and Toys
8. Cal Newport

What are your favorite blogs?

On Momentum

A note from The Kerr: J.T. will still be writing for The Tao on Thursdays. So these are (not surprisingly) her words, not mine!
 

There comes a time in every book when the story begins to coalesce and gain speed. This time has (thankfully) come for my new standalone, which I’m trying to finish by the end of April so I can turn, unencumbered, to Catherine and the next Nicholas Drummond book (which, thankfully, is already knocking at my brain with a few ideas) the second week of May.

It’s the coolest feeling, this momentum. I can pinpoint the moment it started, too.

The week before last, I was doing a set of three deep-work days in a row, and something simply clicked on the last day, at around four in the afternoon. I caught a wave, and rode it all the way to the shore. I was still writing when hubby arrived home, and simply held up a finger and accepted a quick buss on the cheek. He knows me well enough not to interrupt a moment of true flow, and that’s where I was.

The book had come alive under my fingertips.

Interestingly, it was something off script that caused this wave, too. A character who wasn’t in the proposal or outline, who appeared a few weeks ago as a throwaway line, a convenience person, and has suddenly become a lynchpin.

It happens that way sometimes. It’s really the fun of writing, when the character who is the least important suddenly raises their hand and says, “HEY! Pay attention to me. I’m here for a reason, you silly writer.”

I’m a baseball fan, and I respect a streak. The thing with these kinds of flows is to not let them die. I made sure to touch the book every day whilst I was in Florida, and now I’m back and my fingers are itching to rediscover the story and see where it takes me. I’m over the halfway mark, which means I’ve got two of my “turns” in place, with two more to planned. This book seems to be twisting itself like a braid, though, so there may be more than I first thought.

And so… back to it. I will report in on how it goes.