Are you prepared for success?
When you get that precious time in your day to do your writing, you want to make the most of it. Preparation will help you with that. Let’s start with some great quotes from some great people on the importance of preparation, so we’re in no doubt of its importance:
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” - Benjamin Franklin
“He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration.” - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“Success depends upon previous preparation.” - Confucius
“Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” - Alexander Graham Bell
We happy now that preparation will help us achieve our best? Good! - he said, not waiting for any disagreement or hesitation from you.
What can we do to prepare? I’m going to give you a three-step strategy.
Step 1: Mental preparation - Set your goal
There are many activities a writer could be undertaking. You might want to do some planning, setting out a story arc of your novel. You could be having a research session; some specific historical facts or geographic information. It could be that you want to achieve a chapter or scene today, or a word count. This could be an editing session on a previous draft.
Whatever it is, set a realistic, achievable goal with a time limit. This is important because we’ll form metrics - measurements of what we are capable of - to use in future from these. I’ll talk about that later. And it will stop you drifting off into unfocused activities which might make you feel you have achieved nothing substantial.
Your goal must be, in some way measurable. Otherwise, how can you know if you achieved it? Here’s some examples of goals:
- 2000 words of an environment description
- A character sheet for your protagonist
- Full line edit of chapter two
- Three act structure for the romantic sub-plot
Not sure what you can achieve yet? Define something. We’ll adjust it later.
You might find that you want a back-up goal in case you stall completely on your initial choice. That can be dangerous, of course, letting you off from achieving those difficult items, but it might be better than becoming demoralised and wasting precious time. That will be a decision for you and how you work. I wouldn’t have more than two, however.
Step 2: Physical preparation - Set the scene
The last thing you would want is to be mentally prepared and then find the world is against you: you can’t find your notes, the kids are due home in ten minutes, your phone is running through its full range of noises.
For a productive session - as opposed to just one of those important, but ad hoc writing moments - get as many of the predictable, but manageable, distractions out of the way. If anything does go wrong, we’ll make a note about it in debriefing (see later).
Think of anything you need to achieve your goal (previous research notes to hand, files on your computer located, etc.) BEFORE you start and make sure you have them available. That might also include some refreshments or a snack if you’ve set yourself a long one.
I demanded a time limit on your goal earlier. You might want to keep going if you are in flow, but that’s the same as having an unstructured session and that’s not what we’re doing today. Set an alarm and stick to it. This will make sure we start generating those metrics as well (they’re coming).
Okay. Ready? Off you go!
Ring, ring! Awooga! Honk, honk! (or whatever noise your alarm makes)… or, you achieved your goal before the alarm went off? Nice work!
Whichever it is, pens down… please.
Step 3: Future preparation - Record your score
Firstly, reward yourself: a deep breath, kettle on, or similar, marking that the session is over. But make it brief because there is an important final task that needs to be done as soon as possible after your efforts - and make sure it is very soon after because you won’t remember the details if you leave it too long.
I want you to keep a record of all your formal sessions: a diary or log book. In it, write what your goal was, the time estimate and whether you achieved it or not. If you didn’t achieve it, how much did you achieve? This is where a goal which has a very measurable deliverable is very useful. Record anything which went wrong during the session (next door banged on the door wanting to borrow sugar… again!) or anything which really helped you get there (my new editing software made things much easier).
This information might show you need more–or less–time to achieve things in future. It might point out that you need to be more organised because you found things hard to find, or you have to have a word with Mrs Higgins at no. 5 about your writing commitments. Note: I would always collect information from a few similar sessions before making a decision, unless it’s obvious; you might have just had a bad day.
You can also collect the metrics to work out how long it takes you to do things. Then you can give a reliable… well, some sort of timescale, to your publisher about how long it will take you to finish your next, great novel.
Are you prepared? Good luck with your work!
You can find more from Norman at www.normanturrell.com