David posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

If an unpublished writer, with a completed and polished but still unsold novel, and maybe more novels (and some non-fiction ideas) in various stages of development, has severely limited time to put into writing (let’s say 10 hours or less per week), how will that time be best spent? The way I understand it, these are the demands for a novelist’s time:

– writing
– craft development (the words)
– art development (the story-telling)
– story research
– market research
– querying
– industry research (queries, proposals, agents, trends, etc.)
– publishing industry relationship building
– platform building
– self-promotion
– marketing education/development
– idea capturing and future work development
– critique group
– probably something else I’m missing

How would you rank these in importance for an unpublished writer?

Randy sez: Holy Smokes! That’s a hard question, and one we all face. A lot depends on where you are on the road to publication. If you haven’t read my article, “Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Author!” then you should probably read that first. It spells out the various stages you pass through as you go from novice to pro.

If you’re a Freshman, then you should focus on craft first. Learn the skills of writing good fiction. You do that by writing a lot, by getting your work critiqued, and by studying the theory of fiction (from books or lectures).

If you’re a Sophomore, keep doing that, but also start learning a bit about the industry and also how to write a proposal.

If you’re a Junior, your craft should now be very good. Keep improving it, but now begin to focus on how to sell your work. You should be going to conferences and meeting agents and submitting your work. This is hard and scary and can be crushing (if you have an attitude that you must succeed instantly or your life is a failure). But it’s necessary and all published authors go through this stage.

If you’re a Senior, then all of the above, but now you need to be also thinking about building your platform. This may be public speaking (for a few authors) or a blog (for others) or magazine articles (if you prefer print to the web) or podcasting (if you’re good at talking) or some other way of building your platform. Or you can do as the vast majority of writers do, and simply skip the platform-building altogether. You won’t die if you do this. You may end up with a GREAT publisher who promotes you effectively. But the odds are than any publisher will work harder for you if they think you’re already working hard for yourself.

So the answer to David’s question is this: “It depends on where you are. You can’t master everything all at once. So focus on where you are right now and do the things you need to do to get to the next stage in your career.”

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Last time I blogged about your “Hopes and Dreams” file. Hopes and dreams are great things. But they aren’t enough. None of them will ever happen unless you translate them into something a bit more tangible.

That thing is a project. A project is one of your hopes and dreams that you’ve taken two further steps on:
1) You’ve defined what it looks like, in tangible terms.
2) You’ve made a definite commitment to achieve it.

As an example, one of your hopes and dreams might be to be a published novelist someday. If you’re reading this blog, that’s either something you’re hoping for, or it’s something you’ve already achieved. How do you translate that into a project?

First, you define what it looks like in concrete terms. You can’t be a published novelist unless you actually write a book, sell it, and see it through the fiery process of editing and all the way through to publication. That means that you need to choose your category, pick a title, and choose characters and a storyline and a storyworld.

Second, you commit to writing that particular book. Commitment means that you won’t quit when things get hard (they will). You won’t quit when your critique buddies find flaws (they will). You won’t quit when the agents say they’re not interested in that particular book (they will). You won’t quit when the editors say no (they will). You won’t quit when the substantive editorial letter comes back with 20 pages of requested revisions (it will). Commitment means that you’re in all the way. Commitment means that you work on the book until one of two things happen — either you realize that the book is fatally flawed, or you finish the book.

I think it’s a powerful thing to make a list of annual goals, listing all the projects you’ve committed to (or the ones you might commit to) during the year. So every year, I make a list of annual goals. I run a small corporation, and I’m required by law to have a Board of Directors meeting and a Shareholders meeting at least once a year. Never mind that the Board of Directors is just me and my wife. Never mind that the Shareholders is also just us two. I write up a formal President’s Report for the previous year, and I present my Annual Goals for the coming year. We vote on it. (It always passes unanimously.) Then I show it to my accountant, who likes to make sure that I’m being legal with my corporate responsibilities.

Right now, I’ve got my Annual Goals for 2010 stuck to the filing cabinet beside my desk. I look at it every morning, first thing, to remind myself of all the cool things I want to get done this year.

Understand that we all suffer from the tendency to bite off more than we can chew. So I don’t really expect to achieve everything on my Annual Goals list. Last year I had ten items on my list and I only got two of them done. But they were the two most important ones, and it was an outstanding year. This year, I have nineteen items on the list, but there are three that are really important. I’ve got them highlighted in yellow. If I get only those three done, it’ll be an outstanding year.

Do you have an Annual Goals list? If not, it’s not too late. And if you have one, do you know which items are the absolute Must Do items, and which aren’t? Make an Annual Goals list. Highlight the ones that will give you the biggest bang for the buck. Commit to those few. Then look at your list every day.

Ten months from now, I’m betting you’ll have those done — or you’ll have busted a lung trying.

Awhile back I was at a writing conference hanging out with a group of friends. I happened to catch a fragment of a sentence one my friends asked another: “What are your hopes and dreams?”

That caught my attention for a couple of reasons.

First, hopes and dreams are the things that keep you going. They’re the fuel that powers your jet engine (or your go-cart, if you’re not a high-flier).

Second, the writer who asked the question IS a high-flier. He’s won some major awards and has been on the New York Times bestseller list a few times.

If you’re a beginning writer, one of your hopes and dreams is probably to get published someday. Once you get published, one of your hopes and dreams is probably to hit a bestseller list somewhere or to win an award. (Generally, the folks on the bestseller lists are dreaming about winning an award, whereas the award-winners are all longing desperately for bestseller status. Everybody wants whatever they don’t have.)

Hopes and dreams come in all flavors and sizes. Maybe you’d love to shave off a few pounds (or add them in strategic locations). Maybe the thing you long for is a fatter bank account. Maybe you just wanna be a rock star. Whatever. Your hopes and dreams are yours, and you don’t have to explain them to anybody or justify them.

The one thing you should try to do with your hopes and dreams is to achieve them. And that is most likely to happen when you know what they are and when you regularly remind yourself about them.

Typically, those pesky hopes and dreams are of three main types:
* Something you want to HAVE
* Something you want to DO
* Something you want to BE

I find it useful to keep a “Hopes and Dreams” file. (Actually, it’s about a dozen different files, covering all areas of my life.) When I think of another thing that I want to have or do or be, I write it on a sheet of paper and stick it in the appropriate file.

Of course, files are useless by themselves. The point is that when you’ve got it written down, it becomes a little more real. If you review your Hopes and Dreams files regularly (say once every week or once every month), at some point, you’re going to commit to one of them.

Understand that many of your Hopes and Dreams are going to lie fallow for years, maybe decades. Many of them will NEVER happen. You can’t do everything, be everything, or have everything that you want. There just isn’t time, energy, or money enough for them all. But when you want something bad enough, eventually you commit to it.

At that point, it becomes a project that you can move to its own project file and start working on. This is actually not very hard. Just ask yourself: “What’s the next action I should take to get this or have this or be this?” If you don’t know the answer to that question, look it up or ask somebody.

Then go do it.

Hopes and dreams never materialize unless you take action. You can’t achieve all of your hopes and dreams in this life, but . . . there’s a good chance that you can achieve some of them — those that are most important to you.

That’s what the Hopes and Dreams file is for — to remind you of what you want, to help you decide what you want most, and to motivate you to take action to achieve it.

On Wednesday, I talked about the hazards of multitasking. But what’s a busy writer to do? We can’t very well shut out the world, can we?

No, but yes.

No, we can’t shut it out forever. Yes, we can shut it out for periods of time.

Some people do this naturally. If I have one talent in life, it’s the ability to focus on things. Sometimes I am embarrassingly good at this, such as when my wife is talking to me and I literally can’t hear her. Sometimes I am conveniently good at this, such as when my wife is asking me to change the kitty litter. (“Dang! Didn’t hear ya! What’s that horrible smell?”)

But even if you’re not good at shutting things out naturally, you can simulate it by being intentional. I learned this trick from a guy named Eben Pagan, an internet entrepreneur who teaches people how to be more productive. Eben says to buy a kitchen timer and set it for a certain length of time. Then give yourself permission to ignore everything until that timer goes off.

Everything. Phone ringing? Ignore it. Email chiming? Worry about it later. Cat meowing? Shove outside into blizzard. Kid bleeding? Yes it’s OK to deal with a bleeding kid. Anything else? Save for later.

You really can do this and it works if you’re weak on focus. The reason is that you’re playing a psychological trick on yourself. You know the timer is going to go off soon. That timer sets the boundaries on your focus time. It’ll make sure you come back to the real world. But until it does, the time you’ve set aside is yours, all yours, for whatever task you’re doing.

A timer gives you boundaries that protect your time. Try it and see. Eben Pagan recommends that you set the timer for 50 minutes and then when it’s done, set it again for a 10-minute break in which you detach completely from whatever you were doing. Then if you still have work to do, set the timer for another 50-minute work jag. You can get an awful lot done in life in 50-minute chunks.

You don’t even have to spend the ten bucks on a kitchen timer. I went to VersionTracker.com and did a quick search and found a Mac program with the sexy name “Timer Utility”. It’s free and it lets you set up an alarm clock, a stopwatch, or a countdown timer. I have one running on each of my computers.

You may be wondering why I use a countdown timer if I have such excellent powers of concentration.

The answer: Because I have excellent powers of concentration. I can easily get lost for three hours straight on a task. That’s not good when I have other duties. A timer helps ensure that I don’t get lost in la-la land for too long.

Furthermore, I can use a timer to set myself a challenge: “I bet I can get this blog post written in 15 minutes.” That ensures that I don’t lollygag in la-la land.

Or if I set the timer before a phone call, then I put limits on how long I’ll be gabbing to Weird Aunt Muriel. (“Sorry, Auntie! The doorbell just rang. Gotta go!”)

As I noted in my e-zine this past week, many people say that “multitasking makes you stupid.”

The converse of that is also true: Singletasking makes you smart.

What do my loyal blog readers think? Do you have tricks to get out of multitasking mode and into singletasking mode? Go ahead and leave a comment to brag about how clever you are.

I was up past midnight yesterday getting my latest issue of the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine out. Today has been a catchup day, plus it was my monthly day to see my accountant and make sure everything is clicking.

A few comments caught my eye:

Daan wrote several comments that somehow got caught in my spam filter. Sorry Daan! It’s usually very reliable, but it must have seen something it didn’t like. I sent that spam filter to bed without any dessert.

Daan wrote:

I have returned from vacation yesterday and I spent quite some time reading all the posts by you and Susan as well as all the comments and questions. It was great!

Two months ago, I was inspired to translate an English novel in Afrikaans and, thanks to the holidays, I have translated 216 of the 338 pages, which is 73 326 words.

Randy sez: Yes, Susan’s series of guest posts is probably the most popular series I’ve ever done. Wow, Daan, you are really cooking on that translation. I know how hard translation is and what an art it can be. Have fun and good luck! Welcome back to the blog. We’ve missed you.

Sylvia asked:

What is the advantage of incorporating your business? It sounds like a lot of work and at least some expense, so what is the advantage to you?

Randy sez: That’s an excellent question. I only recommend incorporating when you have a business that is earning a substantial part of your income. Incorporation has some advantages, but it also has some costs. Bear in mind that I am not a lawyer or accountant, so the following does not constitute any sort of legal or accounting advice:

The advantages are as follows (and you can talk with any accountant about whether these apply to you):
1) A corporation is not you, so if somebody sues your corporation, they may conceivably bankrupt it, but they won’t bankrupt you. This is a minor point, but we’re writers and we say things in public that may make people angry.
2) There can be tax advantages for having a corporation that earns the income and then pays you a salary. An accountant can explain the differences between a C corporation, an S corporation, and an LLC, along with the tax advantages and disadvantages of each. Which of these is right for a writer depends on circumstances. I have an S corporation, but one of my writer friends has a C corporation and another has an LLC.
3) Drat, I forgot the other advantages. But the above two can be quite important. In particular, the tax advantages are very important.

The disadvantages are as follows:
1) It costs something to register as a corporation. The State of Washington is a good state for corporations and quite inexpensive. I have to pay my registration fee every year and pay a corporate agent.
2) A corporation is not you, and it must have at least one annual meeting of the Board of Directors and another for the Shareholders and proper minutes must be kept. My wife and I are the entire Board and the entire set of Shareholders, so we held our two meetings back to back in about half an hour. I wrote a President’s Report which I presented at the meetings and wrote up minutes and that was that. My accountant looked it over today and said I did an excellent job.
3) You can’t mix your personal money with the corporate money, because the corporation is not you. If you mix money, then the government can decide that the corporation is just a sham and can take away your tax advantages, which are generally substantial. The laws are written to make life good for corporations, so it pays to be one.
4) You have to have a good accounting system, which usually means getting an accountant. The fact is that if you’re earning much money, you need one anyway to keep track of it all, because doing the taxes just gets more complicated every year.

Cathy wrote:

Thanks Randy for your blog. Your last one, asking us to tell what we planned to do that day, got me motivated to choose something that would help clean up the clutter in my office as well as in the rest of the house. The job is far from done, but a lot of progress has been made. Some of this is because my husband also jumped in to help with this chore . . . and I didn’t even have to ask him.

Randy sez: I’ve found it useful to take a 15 minute break each day and get up, stretch, walk around, drink some water, and then declutter one small part of my work area. That may be my out-box or my desk or one shelf or whatever. The other day I cleaned up one drawer that contains my checkbook, checks, and all that. Not a big job, but that drawer had been causing me confusion whenever I opened it. Now it’s in good shape. You need to take breaks every hour or two anyway, so you might as well do something useful (and boring so you’ll be happy to get back to work).

David wrote:

I don’t know what your take is on the critiquing the work of other writers in an online fashion. I mentioned that I have joined a critiquing website www.critters.org which is basically a web version of the writers getting together to look at each others work. I must say it is a good move because just reading how to critique and then doing it forces me to edit my own work that much better. I would highly recommend this site for two very good reasons: First it has writers from novices to published and it archives all of the critiques so you can see what actually catches the eyes of people. The only way it could get better is if it had seasoned editors. Secondly it is free! You must perform critiques in order to be allowed to post your own ms. Seems fair to me!

Randy sez: This sounds like a great organization to me! When I started writing, nobody was online except us techie geeks, and there was no web. I lived for my monthly in-person critique group where we used real paper and red pens and sat around a table. But some months were well-attended and some weren’t. Online, somebody is always there, and you don’t have to be there at the same time. It’s a whole new world, and an online critique group can move you forward massively.

Getting critiqued is part of continuous improvement, and that is Xtremely important.