Please welcome guest blogger Kathryn Scannell.
I’ve been reflecting on what “writing each day” means. I see a lot of writers, both published and aspiring, beating themselves up with the need to write something every single day, and feeling like failures at being a professional writer when they don’t.
Of course the concept of being a professional is another whole can of worms – does it mean that you make a living off your writing, that you aspire to make a living off your writing, that you behave in a professional manner regarding your writing, or maybe some other variant I haven’t thought of? As writers we can get very hung up on labels. If you’re spending more energy on worrying about whether you’re approaching your writing as a professional than you are getting writing done, then you really need to rethink that.
But that’s a whole different topic than the one I want to look at today. Today I want to focus on what it means to “write each day”. Is that just adding new words to one or more of your current works in progress? There’s a lot more to writing than just that first draft. That makes it important not to measure your writing activity purely in terms of word count. If you’re editing or revising, how do calculate word count for that? If you’re a plotter, do words written on your outline also count? A pure word count fails almost immediately as a daily measurement.
That doesn’t mean you should throw out your word counts when you are writing new material, or rewriting section of a draft. You’ll want to keep track of that in the bigger picture, perhaps on a weekly or monthly basis, so you don’t lose sight of the need to keep writing new material along with all the other things that go into being a writer.
As a personal goal I aim to do something writing-focused each day. Being a writer is not just about putting words on paper or into a word processor document. Being a writer is more like being a small business owner. You’re responsible for everything – production, marketing, accounting, and a dozen other things.
Whether you’re publishing through a traditional New York publisher, a small specialty press, an electronic press, or publishing yourself, you’re largely responsible for how you interface with the public who will hopefully be your readers. You may get a bit more help from the big publisher, but even they will expect you to take responsibility for doing some marketing and connecting somehow with potential readers.
Assuming your goal is publication, marketing is part of the job. It’s expected. I’ve seen more than one set of submission guidelines where the publisher wanted to see your marketing plans as part of the initial submission package. I doubt that they’d reject an otherwise promising manuscript solely on the grounds that your marketing plan was bad, but they might if your marketing plan was to let them do it all. Thinking about that, and taking the initial steps is part of being a writer.
So is improving your skills. That may mean taking classes, face to face or on-line. It may mean reading books on specific aspects of writing. It may mean being part of a critique group and giving up some of your writing time to critique others. Don’t think of that as time wasted – nothing hones your ability to spot issues in your own work like seeing those same issues in a draft that you don’t have an emotional attachment to. These all take time, but if you don’t do at least some of them, you won’t grow as a writer.
Depending on what you write, you may need to devote time to research as well as writing. That may involve heading for the library or the internet, or going out and taking a hands on class in something. It may involve approaching experts in a topic for advice. Again, it all takes time, but it’s necessary time.
Building a personal network matters too. Social networking is rapidly becoming the glue that connects people. I have friends in the next town over who are so focused on the social network scene that I hear about major milestones in their lives like weddings and adopting a child from their facebook, not from an in-person contact. Whether that’s a good idea deserves its own rant, but it’s a reality we need to work with when it comes to connecting with readers. Maintaining that internet presence chews up time, but if you’re putting yourself out there as a writer, talking to other writers, building a reputation in the community and connecting to your potential readers, that’s part of your writing activity too.
Last, but not least, reading is important. You need to be in touch with what’s being written in the genre(s) you write in. You don’t want to try to copy whatever the latest hot selling trend is, because that dooms you to being forever behind the leaders, but you do want to have a sense of what’s going on in the genre, because that tells you want kinds of things your readers want and expect. If the books are recent, it can also give you a feel for what kinds of material appeal to various editors and publishers, so you can pick your targets appropriately when you have something ready to submit.
If you read with the eye of a writer, and after a while it become difficult not to, you’ll notice technique along with the story. This author does tons of info dumps and gets away with it. How does he manage it? This one head hops, and it works. How does she do it? It all helps you build your own skills.
All this is on top of banging out that first draft, and then polishing it. There are only so many hours in the day. For most of us writing is squeezed in around other things – a day job, a family, children, and so forth. There’s never enough time. The key here is to find a balance. If you spend all your time marketing and networking, you’ll never get anything written. But if you spend all your time focused on the first draft and polishing, then suddenly when it sells you’re playing catch up and trying to get all your marketing and internet presence established while getting edits back from your publisher.
You have to figure out a balance between the various aspects of being a writer. That balance is different for everyone, just as everyone’s writing process is different. It’s a matter of trial and error. The key thing is to be aware of it, and to start figuring it out before you get into a hole in one area.
Kathryn Scannell writes fantasy and erotic romance. She makes her living doing database management, programming, and general IT support for an environmental consulting firm. She has a BA in German, a BS in Computer Science, a minor in English, and a head full of facts about odd things. She lives in southern New Hampshire with her wife Beth and their seven cats.
Her first novel, Embracing the Dragon, released from Torquere Books in April 2011.
Email: Kathryn.scannell @gmail.com
Website: http://www.kathrynscannell.com
Blog: http://kathryn-scannell.dreamwidth.org
