Organizing Your Writing Time Organically
Copyright © 2003 by Angela Booth
This excerpt is from Digital-e's new ebook "Tell, Yell And Sell: Marketing Skills For Writers", available October 2003.
NOTE: ORGANIC ORGANIZATION WORKS FOR EVERYTHING. IF YOU'RE NOT A WRITER, USE IT TO DEVELOP ANY CAREER.
If you're a new writer, you may be feeling overwhelmed with how much there is to do and keep straight in your head. You've got to get ideas, research, write, find markets, create queries, and send them off to markets. And you've got to do at least one or two of those things every day. Does thinking about all this make you exhausted?
If so, relax. Just do one thing at a time. For now, if you're a new writer, tell yourself that the ability to do everything we've mentioned will develop as you develop as a writer. Let's talk about growing your career and writing skills organically, because it's important.
Every word you write will improve your writing skills. However, if you're not selling as much (or for as much money as you'd like) you can become frustrated.
Let yourself grow organically
What does that mean — "organically"?
It means to let yourself develop by trusting yourself. There's an excellent book: "The Inner Game of Work: Focus, Learning, Pleasure, and Mobility in the Workplace" by Tim Gallwey which talks about Self One and Self Two. Gallwey points out that we have two selves, Self One and Self Two. Self One is the bossy, didactic voice in our head. This voice is not our real self, it's a false self which parrots every hurtful, destructive thing we've ever heard. It's no wonder that we're frightened of failure, frightened of success, and just plain frightened if we take Self One seriously.
Gallwey suggests that we trust our real self, Self Two. Our real self, Self Two, is much more powerful than Self One. Self Two is everything we are. If we trust ourselves, and allow Self Two to do the work, it gets done.
The problem is that Self Two is mute. It's not verbal. It communicates with feelings, images and I guess — intuition. The easiest way to discover whether Self One or Self Two is currently in charge of our inner self is to ask: am I loving what I'm doing? Am I feeling joy? If the background feeling to what you're doing is joy, then Self Two is in charge. Self Two is you, happily absorbed, completely engrossed with what you're doing.
Letting yourself grow organically means putting Self Two in charge. Trust that as long as you're writing, you're letting Self Two take the lead.
When you start out as a writer, writing 500 words is a big deal. Sending out ONE query letter is a big deal. At this beginning stage, celebrate all these milestones. You got a query in the mail! You wrote a complete article! An editor wants to see your work! And of course — you've made your first sale!
If you're in the first five years of your writing career, enjoy your writing. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. When you walk into a bookstore, imagine your books on the shelves. Walk along the shelves, and imagine your books, sitting alongside all the other books. It will happen.
As your career picks up pace, you will have sent out so many queries and proposals, that the process has become automatic for you. You get an idea, write up the proposal, and send it out, and the entire process has taken you no longer than ten minutes. You'll write 2000 words of your book in two hours, and still have time to plot another book, answer your email, and write an entry in your blog (Web log, a kind of online journal).
Keep lists
Lists are lifesavers. As you become busier, and are working on several projects at a time, you need to develop the ability to compartmentalize. The easiest way to do this is to keep lists of what's happening in each of your projects.
Two computer programs I use and couldn't do without for list-making and all-round organization: Jot+ Notes and Inspiration.
Here are the URLs:
Jot+ Notes: http://www.kingstairs.com/
Inspiration: http://www.inspiration.com
(Please note: I don't have any financial interest in either of these programs. I use them because they're terrific.)
You can download 30-day trial versions of both programs to see whether they do what you want.
Jot+ Notes is an hierarchical information manager. It lets you store amazingly huge amounts of information, which is limited only by the size of your hard disk. I create a new Jot+ Note file for each project, and many of my files are hyperlinked, so I can skip from one project to another. The files are all transportable, so I can copy them from one machine to another, and can take them with me if I'm working on-site for a client for a day or two.
Inspiration is a visual outliner. I use Inspiration for almost everything. Seeing cluster diagrams of what I'm working on lets me focus on the words. I'm sure this is because a visual program like this lets you use both left and right sides of your brain. For example, yesterday I was working on a news release for a complex new lighting product which uses a completely new technology. I simply popped everything I needed to write into a cluster diagram in Inspiration. And because I could see the relationships at a glance, I completed the news release within an hour, without stress.
Your organizational skills will grow as your needs as a writer grow. Allow them to grow organically. Remember: you'll know that Self Two is in charge when you're excited and happy. Focus on maintaining that excitement, and let Self Two do the work.
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To read more articles by Angela Booth, visit the Digital-e Web site — Information for writers and creatives. Ebooks, free ezines, Creatives Club. Love to write? Turn your talent into a business! http://www.digital-e.biz/
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