Part of the reason why I have reached this benchmark is because I am a full-time writer who can devote solid chunks of time to actual writing. When you’re not a full-time writer, you daydream what it would be like to crawl into your hole under the bridge and pound out word after word for at least eight hours a day, getting paid to create full-time like a perfect writing job would allow.
But as you can see, most of my writing sessions are over after about four hours, even with revisions. If I weren’t doing a cursory edit prior to publishing these chapters on the blog, it’d be even less time. Or I’d write even more, clocking in two chapters a day instead of only one. Unless I’m approaching a deadline, that’s typically the norm. My average content ranges anywhere from 3000 words to 5000 words written per day. Imagine how many books I could write if writing was all I did.
For most independently published writers, large chunks of time devoted solely to writing are a pipe dream. When you’re a novelist, you get paid to write books. But in order to get paid, you have to worry about all the marketing side of things, too. You’re constantly doing PR work for yourself, setting aside the time to work on social media and building your brand. If you’re in between projects you’re preparing for whatever project comes next, because indie publishing is a numbers game that forces you to be forward thinking.
You’re also doing all the real life stuff that gets shoved to the side whenever you’re racing to complete a deadline.
If I could break up my job throughout the day in specific categories, creating content only takes up probably 25% of the time. The rest is spent marketing, researching, bookkeeping and other assorted administrative work. As an indie, I wear a lot of hats. The buck pretty much starts and ends with me. This means I’m my own boss, but, to be honest with you… I’m a bit of a hardass. This is why, even though my schedule is chock-full, with a book to read, an edit to finish, ARCs to prepare, an interview to go to, paperwork to notarize, housework to do, chauffeur duties and general living stuff like showering, eating and sleeping, if I dare *whisper* that I don't think I can do this Nano project, which is not something I'm doing for profit or pay, I'm quick to remind myself...
I’m one of those bosses who knows where her employee’s limits are and pushes her to them every chance I get.
I’m also the kind of boss who can see through any bullshit excuses if those goals and deadlines aren’t met. Big ambition requires lots more discipline, remember. And I demand it of myself, even when I’m juggling at least fifteen other chainsaws that day. Even if it’s a holiday, birthday or anniversary. Even if I’m sick. Even if I’m so stressed out I can’t sleep at night.
I’ll open up my computer and start writing, because there’s no excuse I’ll accept why I don’t.
For those who don’t know, I’m a huge fan of the show “Empire.” This Fox drama centers on the Lyon family, who head up a highly successful record label called “Empire.” That is truly what it is, and patriarch Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard) rules just like an emperor would.
In a recent episode, he was working on a song with his son, Jamal (Jussie Smollett.) Due to some personal upheaval in his life, Jamal wasn’t feeling it. Lucious looked him point blank in the face and told him to put all the chaos, confusion, frustration and heartache into the music.
Chaos was how “Empire” was founded, with Lucious paving the way to success with a #NoExcuses attitude that meant business comes first, and bullshit comes dead last.
Given that bullshit, chaos, confusion, frustration and heartache have singlehandedly driven my writing career even before I could legitimately say I had one, this line spoke to me.
2015 has not been the easiest year for me. Like far too many indies, I’ve been swept away with the changing tide of our publishing world, changes that virtually derailed my momentum six months after I caught my first real express to success.
Given I had waited 33 years to catch it, I was extraordinarily bummed to find it only lasted for a good six months before I had to transfer, once again, back to Slow Poke station. This business is feast or famine, like I told you. We’ve discussed the statistics before. Only 20% of indies make over $1000 a year, which means some folks make $1001 and some people make millions.
Most come closer to the first number than they do the second. Statistics indicate that the biggest chunk of these writers make around the $10,000 mark annually, if you’re using $10,000 annually as the base.
In case you were wondering, a full-time job working at a fast food restaurant for minimum wage at the federal level is $15,080.
This keeps writers motivated to keep going, particularly when writing is their only job.
There’s no excuse for me, then, to not produce content. It’s either this or McDonalds, and the day that McDonald’s pays more, I may have some hard choices to make.
Until then, I’m fending off the wolves at the door with every word I write.
Hence why I write so many.
So even when my personal life has imploded around me all year, I’ve had to ignore all the bullets whizzing past my head and keep plodding forward. If I fell down, I didn’t allow myself the luxury of staying down. If I had a bad day, or a bad week, or a bad month, I had to suck it up and get back in the ring, even if there was blood in my eyes from the last sucker punch.
There was nothing left to do but put it in the content.
When I was homeless, I put all the fear and the uncertainty into the content. After my youngest son died, I put all the sadness and heartache into the content. When I found myself embroiled in a saga that involved a world where everything I encountered was as fake, and worthless, as Monopoly* money, friendships included, I put the frustration and the angst into the content.
The most significant writing I’ve done always happened at times of chaos.
So even though my mother is in hospice three states away with very little time left to live, and a half-sibling just passed away, and I’m getting closer and closer to, “You want fries with that?” I have no excuses to piss away a project.
Honestly if I wasn’t working, I’d likely be falling apart.
For most of you, the circumstances aren’t quite so dire. For some, it’s a matter of fitting in your writing project around family and full-time jobs. I completed four of my nine past Nanos doing that very thing. So I know it can be done. I can tell you how to do it. I just can’t do it for you. It’s up to you to decide if it’s worth it.
Because that’s what it all boils down to. If you want something, you make it happen. If you don’t, you make an excuse.
I do that weekly with the exercise. I want to get more fit, but that’s going to take a lot of work, and some days it’s easier to blow it off and just say, “I’ll do it tomorrow,” even though I’m relatively sure I won’t.
The time is going to pass either way. If I don’t reach my goals because I didn’t use it wisely, there’s really no excuse that covers it. Not really. So let’s run down some common excuses that you can torpedo the second they try to march into your brain.
EXCUSE NUMBER 1: YOU CAN’T WRITE A BOOK IN A MONTH.
If you look at the stats, hundreds of thousands** of people have participated in Nanowrimo since it began in 1999. Usually around only 20% actually complete the task annually. This proves that it’s quite difficult to write a 50,000-word book in a month, but it’s not impossible.
We need to stop treating it like it’s some mystical thing that happens to some and not others by virtue of luck. It is an accomplishment, not some errant miracle. Accomplishments take time, focus and dedication; most people are capable of all three.
You can write 50,000 thousand words in a month. It’s completely doable. Stephen King, whose daily count is around 2000 words per day, writes about 60,000 a month without the benefit of Nano at all.
If this is what you want to do for a full-time job one day, you’re going to have to treat it as such. Teach yourself the discipline first. Writer is not a title you’re given, it’s a title you earn. That comes only by doing. It’s up to you to do.
So why aren’t you?
EXCUSE #2: I DON’T HAVE THE TIME
This one I can kinda sorta give you, because it’s legitimate. It takes time to write 1,667 words a day. Even if you were merely transcribing 1,667 words a day, this would take time and effort. So I’m not going to blow sunshine up your butt here and say there is any shortcut around taking that time. It’s going to take what it takes and it’s up to you to figure out how to wedge it in.
It’s like the exercise bike. I only ride for 30 minutes at a stretch, but some days those 30 minutes are easier to fit in than others.
And that is why the whole time thing still falls under the heading of an excuse, even when it’s often a valid reason.
Time is what you make of it. We’re all given the same 24 hours every single day. It is how we choose to spend it that will determine our fate.
If you’ve decided to commit to Nano, it’s up to you to make the time. It’s up to you to fit the writing somewhere into your daily routine, even if it’s getting up an hour earlier and going to bed an hour later.
The whole point of Nano is to train you how to complete a project. If you’re a hobbyist or an aspiring writer who joins just to see if you could write a book in a month, you might not care if you complete it or not. As such, you’re not going to jump through any real hoops to do it. You’re not going to discomfort yourself. You’ll fit it in where you can and just wait to see what happens in the community frenzy that is Nanowrimo.
Perfectly valid, by the way. Make it work for you however you can.
If, however, you want to make this your full-time job, then you have to approach it like career, building one block at a time. For you, Nano isn’t some experiment. It’s a practice run. It’s your training ground. Just like the person who juggles going to college with work and family to prepare for their future careers, your ‘education’ involves all the same sacrifices. You will have to fit it in where you can, and find ways to fit it in where you can’t. This may mean giving up a Saturday or two for marathons to get you caught up, taking advantage of your rare downtime to rack up some serious word counts. It may mean giving up an hour of TV a night, or whipping out your notepad and writing on your breaks at work or school. If you’re a parent, particular of smaller kids, you’ll need to work around naps and playtime and family time and school. While your kids are doing their homework, do some of yours.
Better still, get your kids involved in the creative process if they’re so inclined. Enlist them as writing buddies, or artistic buddies. Challenge them to write stories or draw pictures when you’re writing your 1,667 for the day. Set an example. Encourage creativity. Get everyone in your family in on your goal so that it’s every bit their victory as it is yours at month’s end.
If you want to make this your dream career, your sacrifices and accomplishments are ultimately going to be theirs as well. Might as well get them used to it now. If it means that much to you, they’ll understand.
Look for opportunities, rather than excuses. Writing is one of the few jobs where you can do it anywhere, even if it looks like you’re doing nothing at all. You can even mentally prepare for what you need to do in your next chapter while you’re stuck in traffic. Use voice notes and scratch paper and jot down anything and everything that will make your next writing session a little easier.
This is where outlines prove the most useful. If you go into every writing session with a definite goal to accomplish, it’s going to go a lot smoother than just flying by the seat of your pants, praying that the words will come when you’re not exactly sure your Muse is going to report for duty that day.
Which brings us to…
EXCUSE #3: I HAVE WRITER’S BLOCK.
Yeah. No, you don’t. And even if you did, it’s not a valid excuse to stop writing.
I get that some days the words come easier than other days. Some days, it’s like pulling teeth to write a sentence. Some days, every single letter you type feels wrong. It just doesn’t sit well. It nags at your spirit and just brings you down, wondering why you ever wanted to be a writer in the first place.
Some days you’re going to stare at a blinking cursor for long minutes at a stretch as you mentally craft and discard sentences before they ever make it to the page. Some days you might not even reach that threshold of 1,667 words.
This makes it even more important to write every single day. Some days will be crap writing days. But some won’t. Some days it’ll be like your muse turned on a faucet and each perfect word just magically drops from heaven above. On those days, you’ll not only reach your threshold, you’ll pass it. The feeling is so euphoric that you won’t want to stop. You may stay up an extra hour that night, writing a thousand extra words, just because you could. And you should.
I love those days. Those days allow for the crap days. Since I know I need to average 1,667 words a day, the days I write 3,334 words virtually give me a day for free. I like that. I like being ahead of the game.
I’m a gold-star kinda girl, and have been since I was chasing honors in elementary school. I always want to do more than what is expected of me. If I only wrote 1,667 words a day and didn’t have that pretty blue progress bar way ahead of where it needed to be, it would stress me out. I would feel the pressure of the deadline. I would know that there wasn’t any wiggle room for a bad day where life reared its ugly head, or a crap writing day were I was lucky to reach a thousand words, much less the minimum.
If you struggle to meet that writing goal on a regular basis, it could be as simple as you not understanding the story you want to tell. This is also where the outlines come in handy, because you know the direction you’re going before you ever get started. Once you train yourself to do that, writer’s block will no longer intimidate you. You’ll have all the materials you need to build your chapters and reach your minimums.
Maybe your story is inherently flawed, without enough conflict to sustain it, where it fades out like a candle that has run out of wick. Maybe you don’t really know your characters all that well. This is where prep work will prove most useful, because a lot of this can be fleshed out before you even start your project. We’ll go into details about those later, and how you can use that to defeat the paper dragon known as Writer’s Block. Suffice it to say, it can be done. You just have to want to do it.
EXCUSE #4: IT’S CRAP. I’M CRAP. NANOWRIMO IS CRAP. UGG!!
What did I just tell you yesterday? It’s okay to suck in a first draft. It’s not going to be pretty and perfect, no matter how carefully you want to plan every single word. Give yourself the permission to write crap. Be verbose. Be pedantic. Use improper grammar. All that can be fixed later. It’s up to you to get the basic structure in place, and sometimes there’s no other way to do it than one crappy word at a time.
If you were building a house, your first draft would basically be the beams that make up the framework of the house. These show you were the walls and doors and windows will go. Eventually. Stop worrying about the shade of the curtains and pound those nails in wherever they are needed to fortify your foundation. Yes, it may be ugly at first, but I’d rather see a crappy first draft of a book than hear all the beautiful, unrealized ideas of a book no one has the balls to stick their neck out and actually write.
Show me you want it, and I’m behind you every step of the way.
If you want it, here’s the good news. You can “win” Nanowrimo. If it’s something you really want, there’s no excuse you will personally accept to prevent you from reaching that finish line.
If you don’t want it, every opportunity will present itself as an escape door. You don’t even have to go looking for them. They’ll just magically appear. If you decide to open them, then that’s on you. It’s okay not to want to finish. Nano isn’t for everybody.
That’s not a judgment call, by the way. If you decide you don’t want to finish, who am I to judge you? You get to pass your time your way. If you want to write a book, by all means, write a book. If you have other priorities, by all means, tend to your life the way you see fit.
But if you really, really want to finish Nano, the only thing that is stopping you is you. Kick off the excuses and make it happen.
You totally can.
You totally should, if nothing more than to show yourself how much you can do when you dare to declare #NOEXCUSES.
Now if you’ll excuse me. I have an exercise bike to ride. (Or a mall to walk. Either way: NO EXCUSES!)
*Another place marker to indicate that these brand names might need to be changed for publication. Once you publish a book for profit, you have to be cautious about all the specific legalities about copyrights and trademarks. I find it best never to refer to any brand name at all in my published work. Blogs work a little different though, so this is just a reminder to myself to fix this in the editing process.
**This place marker indicates that I need to research this data further. I need to dig a little to provide more accurate data, which wasn’t coming up easily in a cursory Google search as I was writing. Since I can’t spend a whole lot of time on that today due to my own limited schedule, I decided to place a little notation so I could move past it and move on.
Started First Draft: November 7, 2015 11:36am PST
Completed First draft: November 7, 2015 1:27pm PST
Word Count of first draft: 2,911
Completed revisions: November 7, 2015 2:11pm PST
Updated WC: 3,398/25,923
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