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Tips and Tricks ~ of a
Moderately Prolific Writer
Increasing your output
I hear a lot of authors say
they are slow writers. I don’t see anything wrong with that at all. Some
of the best writers describe themselves this way. Your process is your
process. These tips and tricks are merely ideas I have honed for myself,
which I am sharing with you to do with as you will.
First I want you to understand that I am a full-time writer. Last year I
completed three full length novels for Harlequin, did revisions for
same, and also wrote two short stories and one novella. Because I just
landed an eight book contract with Harlequin, four full length and four
short stories, I had to sit down and really think about my process and
what I wanted to accomplish. I had three questions in mind. Did I want
to write fast? And how fast? And when did I want to take vacations? I
plan to have this contract completed by June 2011.
My tips and tricks.
1. Know how much you write consistently. I use an excel spreadsheet to
track.
2. For a period of two weeks record your daily and weekly word counts.
Find out the average per day, then use that as your daily word count.
[Photo]3. Write to that word count every day, no matter how long it
takes. Make writing as much part of your day as cleaning your teeth.
4. Once it feels comfortable, usually after three weeks, increase it by
200 words.
5. Give it another three weeks and increase it another 200 words and so
on.
6. Don’t go beyond what is comfortable. If you have a bad day, don’t
sweat, add the lost words to the next few days of writing or write on a
weekend, or at sometime when you don’t usually write. EG this week my
daughter wanted me to meet her for lunch, so Friday was a lost day. I
don’t write on weekends but this weekend I wrote my missing words spread
over Saturday and Sunday.
7. Once you know how many words you can do a day, calculate your
deadline to finish the book and meet it. The calculation is length of
finished book in words, divided by number of words per day, divided by
number of days in week. I use five, because I usually don’t write on my
weekends.
[Photo]8. If you have a deadline from your publisher, use that to
calculate how many words you need to write every day. In my case my
publisher asked me to indicate the dates on which I would deliver the
books. I work with 2,000 words per day. Don’t leave it and do it in a
rush at the end. For me this ends up taking longer.
9. Sneaky trick. Take a notebook with you and write scenes in the
doctor’s office or any other time you are waiting. Or find an hour you
can carve out of the evening or the early morning. These extra times
will up your weekly word count. Make them "extras". If you can beat your
deadline, you can increase your output, without feeling the pressure.
You can even use these times to write a different book altogether (which
is what I did for the short story in the Mammoth book of Regencies
pictured to the left)
10. Add editing/polishing time to your schedule. Four weeks for me,
because I don’t plot.
11. If you are published, set other milestones in the schedule, date
synopsis and three chapters are due. Deadlines you agreed with your
editor. The date you should be at the midpoint of the story is another
one. You can then see if you are on track before it becomes a problem
12. Add in any time needed for editor’s revisions for a previous book or
for copy edits.
13. Add in time needed to promote previous books (this might reduce the
daily word count).
14. Establish a send-it-out date and send it out on that date. No
quarter given, even if it is only you sending it out as a query. Then
start the next book.
Good luck and happy writing.
Social Networks
We are always hearing that
a new social network is the place to be. How can a writer who want to
produce lots of books keep up with all that? And do you need to?
But can you afford not to?
It is a conundrum. An author wants to do her bit to promote her books.
And it is not just the social sites like facebook, myspace, goodreads,
etc., there are your publisher sites, like E-harlequin, Mills and Boon
Community, Casablanca Authors, and oh my goodness they have social sites
on facebook etc too. And if you are like me and you write under more
than one name, you can times all of them by two.
After scrambling madly for a while to be in all places at once, I
decided that it is readers who I want to contact, and my websites are
the key. I know they find me there, because those websites appear on
every site and they send me letters through the site email.
But how to cover off everything else. Will I be missing people if I
don't facebook etc? An important part of my website is the link to my
blog,
http://www.regencyramble.blogspot.com. This is where my alta egos
come together as one. This is where I update information weekly, where
as the websites are say once a month. And bliss.... I can link my blog
(via an RSS feed) to most social sites including twitter. It may seem
like cheating, but anything anyone wants to know about me as a writer
goes on my blog. If readers find me in both places, they are quickly
going to decide where they prefer to meet me. "Do it once" is my new
motto. Since the social sites connect to my email, if anyone comments, I
can quickly go and respond right away. And if I want to see what other
people are doing, then I can visit those sites at my leisure.
I do visit the forums on my publishers' website too, once a week, or
more, if something special is going on, but I have time, because I have
all the other sites pretty well covered.
Do those sites bring in new readers? I have no idea. The jury is still
out. But this is one way you can keep your toe in the water without
drowning and keep the words flowing onto the page.
I hope you find something here that helps you and feel feel to friend me
at your favourite social site.
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