Now - The Work
You can plan, plot, and think forever, but none of it means a thing until you get your ideas down on…whatever it is we get thoughts down on these times. To make that happen, you must organize your life around your writing objective. You must marshal your time, create opportunities for doing this work that, outside of your family and friends, and perhaps your regular job, is the most important thing in your life.
Daily Writing
You have to write every day, and if you don’t want to you aren’t cut out for this line of work.
CNN program host Jake Tapper, who has written three best-selling novels - it is a lot easier to get an agent and get your work published if you have a national television platform - says that he makes sure to write at least 15 minutes a day.
Seriously? Fifteen minutes? I’ve never read Jake Tapper fiction but it must not be long. It is hard for me to imagine that Tapper is a “real writer”, meaning a person who is going to write regardless of reward; a person who finishes their novels, stories, and screenplays.
I am an insomniac who works from home, which allows me to accomplish tremendous amounts of work at no more expense than surrender of social time. I’m an introvert, hardly matters. I awake each day by 3 a.m. and often write until 8 a.m., when my day job often begins. I have worked a lot with developers in Europe, Asia, and Australia, so my early morning hours are well-suited to those engagements. I adjust my work day as required, but I always do my fiction writing in the early morning hours, when the world is still and spooky.
Obstacles
There is no such thing as writer’s block, only writer’s who don’t really want to write, perhaps at the moment, perhaps not at all. Writer’s block is lack of having developed a plan that you can simply “work”.
In my experience, the greatest planners in the world are the project and program managers in the building trades. I have extensive experience with engineers and construction managers,and they build and execute work plans in ways unknown to the rest of the mortal world. Because I ran into the builders first, and was oriented to their way of doing things, I was shocked to learn that project managers in most other business sectors have little sense for process.
A good plan has work lanes, and it recognizes and plans for the dependencies associated with each. Milestones are established, timelines. Resources are cost estimated and allocated in a strategic way.
A writer can work to a plan, and one who does gets things done.
You cut the Gordian Knot on so-called “writer’s block”, which I believe to be a bullshit thing, by having a task to accomplish. That means that each day, during the time you have allotted for completing a novel, you see what chapter or topic is on the day’s docket, and you just starting writing. Don’t think too much, just write down your thoughts about what you want or need to happen in this part of your work. Get a draft done, then the next day you either refine that draft, or move on to the next section in the plan.
Don’t over-think it, just write whatever comes into your head. The chances are better than good that the reluctance you may have felt - your so-called writer’s block - will have disappeared, and if you just keep writing until you are exhausted you’ll likely find that you’ve done far better work than you had realized was in you on that day.
There is this magical thing that I have experienced in overcoming lazy lack of discipline, of any lack of enthusiasm for working the plan. The sections that I have sometimes been least excited about developing often turn out to be among my favorite sections in the completed work. It seems like I find things in characters and situations, in those plow-ahead sessions, that I may not have discovered had I not have gone there in the moment, when maybe I hadn’t realized that I really wanted to.
The Publishing Business
There is a sense that the traditional book publishing industry barely exists any longer exists - more on that following - but for the sake of reference, there was a time when writer’s sought out publishers who paired them with in-house editors, then a later time when writer’s sought out agents who sought out publishers, and now the landscape has evolved into a world of independent print-on-demand publishing.
In 1996, there were reported to be 172,000 new titles published. One source estimated that there were 600,000 to 1,000,000 new titles published in the U.S. alone in 2020.
Those numbers would indicate that book publishing is booming, which shouldn’t be read to imply that many of those involved are making any money. Few writers have ever made any money, and while the publishing world is evolving, writers’ incomes are not, though devolution is taking place.
The Bing robot, when queried, reported that global literacy rate has increased by 4% every five years from 1960 to 2015, from 42% to 86%. There are a lot of books and a lot of readers, and dividing one into the other indicates slim hopes for the rise to prominence of any particular writer.
There are reported to be hardly more than 1,000 book agents in the United States, and most of them aren’t looking for fiction writers, especially those who have no track record of making money for agents and publishers. Literary-agents.com suggests “that the odds of getting a literary agent are very low, as the best agents can receive up to 1,500 queries per month and only offer to represent a few new clients per year.”
Few publishers take over-the-transon submissions, so a writer could begin to wonder if it is worth the time trying to land an agent and get a publishing opportunity.
Indepent publishing has not produced a raft of wildly successful authors. Should any such creatures surface, it is always through the traditional publishers, so the aspiring novelist has a conundrum.
I have collected boxes of rejection letters from agents and publishers, and the worst thing about them is that you have to wait months for the pain to hit!
For me, it is too much bother; too much expense and administrative work. I publish my own books and love doing it. I love the book design aspects and have had nice experiences working with graphic artists to achieve design objectives that support the narrative feel of the books.
I wouldn’t dissuade anyone from pursuing an agent for your work, and helpful resources are provided on the Resoruce and References page.