One Writer's Life -- Barbara Mountjoy

Organizing: One Less Thing


When I started writing fiction years ago, I read an estimate that a novelist needs to spend 2000 hours learning the craft of fiction writing in order to get published.


I thought that was excessive. I figured a smart guy could learn to write a novel in a few hundred hours.

Maybe I'm just not all that smart, but it wound up taking me quite a bit more than 2000 hours of writing to get my first novel accepted by a publisher and on the shelves of bookstores.

Even though I wildly underestimated the amount of time it would take, I always knew it wasn't something you do in a weekend, so I made a point early in my writing life to find ways to spend more time writing.

I believe that if you're a serious writer, you need to be writing at least 10 to 20 hours per week.

Why?

Because when you finally sell your manuscript to a publisher, they're going to expect you to polish your novel within a few months. And then they'll expect you to do a second novel soon after that. And then a third, and a fourth . . .

That level of effort is easily going to cost you 20 hours every week for the rest of your writing life. Easily.

If you're not already writing at least 10 hours per week by that time, you just plain won't be able to gear up quickly enough to meet those demands from your publisher.

You don't have to start out writing 10 hours per week when you first begin writing fiction, of course. Hardly anybody can do that.

I recommend that you work up to the level of writing about 5 hours per week by the end of your first year of serious writing. And yes, it may take you a full year just to get up to that level.

Once you're writing 5 hours per week, you can then ramp up over the next year or two to writing at that magic level of 10 hours per week.

How do you do that? How do you find that kind of time when you're probably already overwhelmed by all the other things you're doing in life?

It's not easy. It's going to call for you to make some hard decisions on what's most important to you.

We're all juggling a lot of different things in our lives. I am. You are. That's just how things are.

Think about all the things on your plate. You probably have 10 or 15 that are important. Maybe more. You've got 168 hours in every week, and you're awake for at least 110 of those. That's a lot of hours. How do you fill up those hours?

Is it possible that you could live your life with one less thing on your plate?

(I know that the grammar purists will probably say it should be "one fewer thing," but that just doesn't ring well in my ear.)

If you've never tracked your time, this might be an enlightening exercise. Keep a daily log of where your time goes over the course of a full week. Keep a record of anything that takes longer than about 5 minutes. Lump together things that take less time than that. You may be amazed at what you spend your time on.

Now it's time to get serious. Every three months, ask yourself if there's one less thing you could do. One thing you could shove off your plate that would gain you at least an hour per week in writing time.

Maybe it's an "essential" TV show that really isn't all that important.

Maybe it's time spent browsing the web, fooling around on Facebook, texting, Skyping, tweeting, or whatever your favorite way is to chitchat electronically. Can you carve out an hour from that?

Every three months, can you find one less thing that "must" be done? Something that's really not essential? Something you can offload to somebody else?

Can you take that time and use it for your writing?

One less thing, every three months. If that one less thing buys you an extra hour per week of writing time, then in a year, you'll be writing at least four hours per week.

In two years, you'll have an extra eight hours per week to devote to your writing.

In three years, you'll have twelve hours a week.

This is not easy. At first, that "one less thing" won't cost you much. But as the months go by, each "one less thing" is going to sting more and more.

Life is full of sacrifices. If you want to write a novel, you have to give up something else that you like doing. You have to give up lots of somethings.

You can get there. One less thing at a time.


REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION-- Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the
Snowflake Guy," publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 25,000 readers, every month. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.

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Where's Bette Davis when you need her?
The last thirty days have been quite a rollercoaster for me. I finally got the job with the county I've been angling for since about 2008, with full benefits for me and the whole family. Fantastic. My book THE ELF CHILD, second in the Clan Elves of the Bitterroot series, came out. My first romance, SECRETS IN THE SAND, was released in ebook by The Wild Rose Press. My first teaching gig in the writing field got WOW reviews from attendees at the St. David's mini-conference.

At the same time, my father's painful bone cancer finally rendered him incapable of caring for himself, and we took him into our home, with the help of Hospice, for his final days.

So much got put aside as we really took things day by day, not planning farther ahead than the next morning. Work took a back seat, and I am grateful for the court's understanding and patience. Writing was set aside, too, except for the moments when I just needed to escape to some other place to get through an hour, anywhere except real life that was all too real.

Here's hoping the "bumpy night" is over, and spring might actually arrive sometime here in the frozen Northlands, setting my fibromyalgia pain to 'low' for the season. My hyacinths are out, sharing their delightful aromas, so that's a good sign. Writing on book three, THE ELF MAGE, is proceeding again at last. Working up to the Pennwriters conference in three weeks, where I'll meet with an agent about an autism project very close to my heart. Forward, world, forward.

I'm hosting a number of my sister authors on their blog tours at the Clan Elves' site, Other Writers, Other Worlds, including Brianna Soloski, Mayra Calvani and Jessica Zellman, and making the rounds myself to celebrate my new books as well. See me at Brianna's blog, asking the question, Are You an Old Dog?

I'm guest blogging today on The Book of Your Heart at Mayra Calvani's blog, The Dark Phantom Review.  Come by and say hello!

And for a look at Mayra's column at the Clan Elves' page, see A Typical Writing Day!

One of the things an author needs to have in his or her arsenal is a good photo to send with press releases, interviews and post with notices of book releases, etc. I've been putting this off for some time, partly because of cost and partly because I HATE HATE HATE having my picture taken. :)  (That's why I'm always the one with the camera--then I'm sure I'm out of the viewer range!!)

But as more and more opportunities come along, (and more and more books, too!) it seems like an inevitable task that we need to accomplish. Yesterday, I gathered the courage to go to the studio. My lovely "Theatah" friend Pam with the fabulous shoe store AND a Mary Kay business (how does she find the time!!) did my 'glam' makeup, and sent me off to the photo session, where a lovely young woman named Jennifer cajoled me through the process. I can't wait till she gets her own studio up and running--Capturing Moments Photography seems like the perfect name to me! Thanks so much to both of you for your help and encouragement!

It wasn't too painful, and I in fact survived. I've already sent out some of the shots as accompaniments to interviews and the like. What do you think?

Today I'm the blog guest of Emma Lai at Emma Lai Writes-- She is a delightful hostess with fascinating books of her own. :)  Come by and say hello!

Well, here it is, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen: My new book cover for Secrets in the Sand, my first published romance novel, available soon from The Wild Rose Press.

Here's hint of what it's about:

After a run of bad relationships, Lily Pearl Evans has finally become an independent woman. In the New Mexico desert town of Chaparral, she works for herself in her own house, she sets her own rules, and she's determined no man will hold her back again.



Gene Nicholas worked for more than a decade to achieve his dream to be a doctor. Wanting to share his gifts with those less fortunate, he leaves South Florida to volunteer for a tour with Doctors without Borders in Mexico.


When Gene provokes a showdown with the local Mexican drug cartel, he becomes a man with a price on his head. On the run, he ends up on Lily’s doorstep, a mystery man forced to conceal his past to protect them both. With the cartel’s dangerous web drawing tight around them, can Lily and Gene survive a druglord’s revenge?