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.

I’ve just now read through all the comments that my blog readers have left since my last post. Wow! I’m impressed by the detailed action plans some of you have put together. That’s great!

I had to laugh at Karla’s comment that it sounded like a good idea to have a Board of Directors meeting and a Shareholder’s meeting. It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law–at least if you run a corporation. I incorporated all my writing and teaching activities about a year ago. (I don’t recommend this until you are earning a decent amount of money, because there are expenses that must be paid to run a corporation, AND you have to do pesky paperwork such as keeping minutes on official meetings. And annual meetings for the Board of Directors and the Shareholders are required.)

Even though it’s a boring legal requirement, I’m glad I was forced to do it. Before the meeting, I took a few hours and wrote up a President’s Report for 2007, which listed all my accomplishments for the year, including one failure. (Failure is OK; it’s good to fail occasionally, because that shows you’re taking risks; it’s also good to fail quickly, which I did in one project in 2007.)

I also did an analysis of which tasks earned me money and which ones didn’t. That’s very helpful in making plans for next year. In doing the analysis, I learned that keeping track of time is something that should NOT be done on paper, it should be done by computer. It’s far easier to analyze the information if the computer does the hard work. For 2008, I am eliminating paper records of time-keeping and am using an online service that costs me $9 per month. I think that’s a bargain. They actually have a free version that manages only one project, but I have more projects, so I’m using the payware version.

I also had to wince in sympathy at Gerhi’s comments:

I’m in a bit of a bind. This year I have decided to quit my job and start a business with my wife. Maybe it is more, quit my job and help her to make her business make enough money so that we can have a decent income – so that I can spend time on my projects, expecially writing. It involves selling the house, quitting my job, moving accross country to be closer to family and support, AND building the business as a matter of priority.

Randy sez: That’s where I was about two years ago. I had recently been laid off from my irritating day job, and decided there was no good reason to stay in San Diego any longer. So we sold the house, moved halfway across the country, bought a new house, and ramped up my writing/teaching business. That pretty much shot all of 2006. So 2007 was a year of getting back in the swing of things, learning to live in the Pacific Northwest, and learning how to schedule my time when I have apparently all the time in the world, but still have to earn a living.

If there’s anything I learned in 2007, it’s this:

Successful Fiction Writing = Organizing + Creating + Marketing

There are people who will tell you to focus on one or the other of these to the exclusion of all else. That works for awhile, but eventually things get out of kilter. I believe the great trick of managing your writing career is to continuously improve in each of these areas.

I am consciously spending time in each of these areas every day. Today, three of the actions I took were:

1) Cleaning up ONE drawer in my desk that had gotten out of control.
2) Editing the three sample chapters of my novel.
3) Writing up a strategic plan for products I plan to create and market this year.

If you look at those, that’s one organizational action, one creational action, and one marketing action. Actually, I had several other actions on my task list, so these are representative of what I did for the day.

Continuous improvement is essential, because improvements tend to multiply. As a rough example, if you learn to type twice as fast AND you learn to write twice as well, your writing time will be four times as effective. If you then learn to market twice as well, you could in principle end up earning eight times as much as originally.

Quality, of course, is hard to quantify, but the basic point is clear: small improvements multiply. Small improvements can mean; learning new skills; buying new tools; getting better organized; or automating your processes. Anything that makes you a better writer is an improvement. I’ll talk more about this in my e-zine tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Hi All:

I’m returning to the blogosphere after a much-needed break over the Christmas/New Year holiday. It’s been fun to take time off, and now I’m back in the saddle and ready to roll for the coming year.

I am no big fan of New Year’s Resolutions. I’m not sure if I’ve ever actually made one in my life. I have serious doubts that such things work. The goal of a New Year’s Resolution seems to be to suddenly BECOME someone new, all in one day.

Yeah, right. The real world doesn’t work that way. In the real world, you don’t suddenly switch from being one person to being another person. In the real world, change happens in increments. One day at a time, as the AA people say.

In the real world, change happens because you start DOING something new, and keep doing it and keep doing it. Six months later, you suddenly realize that you have BECOME someone substantially different from who you used to be.

It happens when you decide to take action today, and to take action tomorrow, and to take action the day after. Taking action is what makes things happen. Not taking action is what makes things stay the same.

It‘s all about continuous improvement, not instantaneous improvement.

I’ve got my action list for today. It’s different from the action list I made yesterday, because I got (most of) that action list done.

As a novelist, you’ve probably got some Big Goals for this year. Those might include:
1) Developing your skills as a writer.
2) Writing a first draft of that novel you’ve always wanted to write.
3) Making connections with agents at editors.

All of those are great Big Goals, but none of them can happen in a day. What can happen in a day is that you take an action TOWARD reaching that Big Goal. One action I’m taking today is to apply some new analytical tools to my current three sample chapters. I learned these tools from Margie Lawson, a psychologist who specializes in helping writers develop better characters.

What about you? What actions will you take today? There are hundreds or thousands you could take. Some will move you toward your Big Goal. Some won’t. Here are a few examples, taken completely at random:
1) Write one scene in your novel.
2) Buy a book on writing, such as Dwight Swain’s “Techniques of the Selling Writer” or James Scott Bell’s “Plot & Structure.”
3) Clear out a workspace for your writing where you can write comfortably.
4) Schedule time to write on a regular basis.
5) Browse the web to identify a good writing conference to attend this year.
6) Buy a lecture series on the craft of writing fiction, such as my Fiction 101 or Fiction 201 courses.
7) Buy a program that teaches you how to type better and faster.
8) Talk to your family about taking on some of the tasks you do so you’ll have more time to write.
9) Learn to use your time more effectively by using a time-management tool such as Simpleology.
10) Start a blog that you can use to develop name recognition and begin building the marketing platform for your next book.

There are many other possibilities. One blog I read every day is James Brausch’s blog on building an internet business. If you are familiar with James, you’ll see that I’ve learned a lot from him. I certainly use several of his tools for building my business. (And thanks to James for linking to this blog today.) The reason I read James’s blog is his unswerving commitment to taking action today. Nothing happens unless you take action.

So that’s my question for you all today. What’s your Big Goal for this coming year, and what action will you take today that will move you closer to achieving that Big Goal? Leave a comment here.