NYE 2013

With 2012 coming to a close, you've got a chance to start the new year on a positive note. Enter 2013 with an increased craving for success.

It's going to take some determination and you have to start right away.  It doesn't matter how tired or hung over you are after your New Year's Eve parties and it doesn’t matter how many "last minute" tasks you need to finish up before you return to work.

Whatever you've set out to do in this coming year is far too important to be put off another day.  You owe it to yourself to get going and not waste this new year.

I know that philosophically, January 1 is nothing more than a man-made invention to keep track of time. I don't care. There is a tremendous psychological advantage to using New Year's Day as a method of starting and tracking your goals.

Open up your spreadsheet software. On the top row, type in the goal you have. Every day log your progress. I hate to make it a numbers game, but physically tracking your progress will help hold you accountable and keep you on track. For example, say you're hoping to lose 15 pounds this year. That's only 1.25 pounds per month. If you keep that on a daily spreadsheet, you can watch the downward slope on the graph. That right there is enough positive feedback to keep you working at it. The key is writing it down.

But that's not all. You'll also need to have some benchmarks set to track your progress. For example, one of my goals is to finish a new short story each month.

I break that up into weekly goals like so:

Week # 1 - Work on the basic plot summary and finish first rough draft.

Week # 2 - Clean up draft to where it's mostly presentable, then submit to a critique group. (I use Scribophile.com)

Week # 3 - Work on final revision, based on Scribophile feedback.

Week # 4 - Read it over a few more times for continuity and then format and submit to publisher.

This example will work because it includes weekly benchmarks (or deadlines, if you will) and the weekly goals aren't too difficult to reach.

So enjoy New Year's Eve tonight, party hard, and don't forget to write down some achievable goals for 2013.

Ten books to read in 2013

With 2012 coming to a close, I'd like to share ten books I read in the last two years that focus on  personal or financial success.  None of these are directly related to writing, but have a broader focus of achieving your goals and holding yourself accountable.   

Do yourself a favor and pick these up in the next year.  I promise you won't regret it. 

Here's the list in no particular order, although I consider the first two the most important.

1. The Top Ten Distinctions Between Millionaires and the Middle Class by Keith Cameron Smith

2. QBQ! The Question Behind the Question by John Miller

3. It's Called Work for a Reason!: Your Success is Your Own Damn Fault by Larry Winget

4. No Excuses: The Power of Self Discpline by Brian Tracy

5. Poke the Box by Seth Godin

6. Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy

7. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

8. The Success Principles by Jack Canfield

9. The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley

10. How Successful People Think by John C. Maxwell

How to make your New Year's Resolution work

December is flying by and soon the year will be over. This is the time of year where people either start planning their New Year's Resolutions or complaining about failing the goals they set for the year.

This brings up two points:

1) New Year's Resolutions don't work.

2) See point # 1.

The reason why New Year's Resolutions don't work is quite simple. When the majority of people make one, they aren't resolving to do a single thing. What they're actually doing is making a birthday wish.

For example: "This year I will make more money" actually means "This year, I hope that circumstances beyond my control will change and as a result, I will have more money." So what's the solution? It's a cliché, but use empowering language instead. Push away the "I wish" mentality and instead come up with a goal, a deadline, and a plan. It's not "I will lose weight," but "Here's how I will lose weight."

For me, "This year, I will write more," doesn't do anything to help me reach my goals for 2013. But by writing down exactly what I'm going to do, and when I'm going to do it, I'll get there.

Here's my 2013 tentative plan:

1. Finish one new short story every month (except for July and November) and submit it first to scribophile for critique and then to a publisher.

2. Reread and resubmit every rejection in no less than three days, unless it needs a major overhaul.

3. Submit, at minimum, one new agent query for the novel every week.

4. Participate in (and finish) NaNoWriMo in November.

These goals are easily attainable and shouldn't even take an hour each day to keep up with. And that's the key. Keep it specific and simple. If your goals are too big and require too much, you'll become overwhelmed and give up. If your goals are too vague, you'll have no trouble putting things off, and eventually stopping.

So throughout the year, I'll tweet the occasional goal updates in order to help hold myself accountable and see some progress.

Let me know if you do the same.

Thoughts on Duotrope.com

Last week, small press and aspiring writers found out that their best publishing tool, duotrope.com, would no longer be a free site. I saw all sorts of comments on twitter ranging from "I can't believe they managed to be free as long as they did," to others accusing them of corporate greed (of all things.)

My initial response was: Crap!

But my second thought was not nearly as dramatic. I want Duotrope to stick around and I surely don't mind paying fifty bucks a year for their incredible service. I probably should have added this sooner, but for those unfamiliar with duotrope.com, it's a site containing a search engine and submission tracker for publishing markets.

There is only one other site I pay an annual subscription for (PWInsider.com if you're interested.  It's 100% worth it, btw) and paying for Duotrope surely won't kill me.

I do however have a couple of concerns about Duotrope becoming a pay site.

For one thing, if only the paying users have access to the submission trackers, then the acceptance rates of market listings could potentially be skewed even higher than they are now. I'm assuming that writers paying for a service like Duotrope have a higher publishing rate than those who do not, so the Duotrope stats could make markets appear to accept a higher percentage than they actually do.

The other concern I have may be little more paranoid, but it's worth stating. Without getting political, I think it's safe to say that Americans like a handout. I truly hope that by becoming a pay site, Duotrope doesn't run the risk of chasing away too many of its users. I'd hate to see the site go. Even though there are other similar options out there, Duotrope is by far the best one I've seen.

With all of that out of the way, I just want to say that I think the owners of the site are making the right decision, and if they have to become a pay site in order to continue providing their excellent service to writers across the world, then it's worth every penny.

Blog update

Wow, did I drop the ball or what? I haven't written a new blog post since November 19.

Worry not, though; I wasn't just screwing around during the time off. In the last few weeks, I managed to get my novel finished to the point that it's ready to start sending out queries to agents. No takers yet, but as anyone who has ever tried publishing fiction will tell you, it's a marathon not a sprint.

I also figured it would be a good time to change things around a bit over here, starting with this fancy new design. What do you think? (Probably this: Eh? Still looks like a blog.)

Anyhow, in some ways, I’m still a reluctant computer nerd and have fun doing stuff like that every now and then.

I've also decided to make a few changes to the content of this site. While writing will remain the primary focus of the blog, I'll be expanding it to include a few other topics, especially in the area of success and goals. I might throw in the occasional book reviews or recommendations as well.

It should be fun, so check back every now and then and drop me a line if you like or hate anything I have to say.

And you can always follow me on twitter @jasonbougger if that's your thing.

A Bump in the Road

I was planning to write a follow-up post about writer’s block, but I walked into another kind of writer’s dilemma, so I thought I’d write about that instead.

My query letter for the novel is ready for the most part. One of the agents I’m looking at also requires a 1-2 page synopsis. As I was working on that, I thought of a scene that needed to be added to further develop the plot.

Not a big deal, I thought. A thousand words, maybe--something I could write on a single night. I threw a quick summary of the scene into the chapter where it will live and started reading the rest of the novel from there. That was when I realized that the new scene opened up two major plot-holes.

Great, I said, and started filling in the plot-holes. One thing led to another, and I soon realized some other flaws in the current manuscript. The main character has glasses in the opening scene, for example, but they are not mentioned again. And he gets thrown around quite a bit, so it’s a detail I need to address.

There’s also the fact that the novel takes place in present day, but not a single one of the kids in the book has a cell phone.

Both of these sound like small things that might not make a big difference, but they’re large enough issues in my mind to justify reading the novel one more time and making some adjustments. And I still haven’t finished writing that thousand-word scene that triggered all this.

So what’s my point, besides whining a bit? My point is that before you query an agent, your novel needs to be as perfect as you can make it.

And if that means biting your lower lip and reading the whole thing one more time to get every detail just right, then that’s what you’ve got to do.

When it's okay to skip NaNoWriMo...

A year ago, if an aspiring writer would have told me “I don’t have time to do NaNoWriMo,” my immediate response would have been: “How many hours of TV do you watch in a day?” And if the answer was a positive integer greater than zero, then I’d say he or she doesn’t have the heart to be a writer.

So here I am, one year later, saying “I don’t have time to do NaNoWriMo this year.”

It’s not what you think, though. I’ve got plenty of other writing goals to hit by the end of the year, and quite frankly, I can’t put them on hold for 30 days to put together another rough draft of a novel. I’ve got one novel in the final stages that I’m preparing agent queries/synopsizes for and another that I’d like to start cleaning up as soon as the query letters for the first go out.

I’ve also got a dozen short stories that need to be finished, edited and submitted, as well as resubmitting any rejections of already pending works.

My point here isn’t to say “Hey look at me, I’m so busy, I have no time for your silly writing contests.”

Quite the contrary. The purpose of this post is to illustrate that you need prioritize all of your writing goals, and focus primarily on the ones that are the most important at the moment. In my case, it’s more important to prepare and clean up the novels I have finished than it is to write a new first draft in November.

And remember: it’s not whether or not you have “time,” that is important. What’s important is that the time you do have is spent doing whatever it takes to further your goals, not only in writing, but in all aspects of your life.

And next year, I’m sure that for me that goal will include participating (and finishing) NaNoWriMo.

Setting Writing Goals

So many writers, including Stephen King in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft stress the importance of setting a daily word count goal (usually 500-1000 words) and then forcing yourself to write until you reach the goal.

Personally, I think this method of goal-setting is terrible and in many ways, it's a way to set yourself up for failure.  It works well if you're doing NaNoWriMo and need to reach 50,000 words by the end of the month, but outside of that, it's a very inefficient way to write.  It forces you to focus strictly on quantity and ignores so many other important areas of writing, such as editing/revising, outlining, querying, and marketing.

With that said, setting a written goal, not only in writing, but in everything you do, is vital if you plan to achieve an ounce of success.  I just go about it a different way.  We're busy people (humans), and the not every day is the same, therefore you can't have a one-size-fits-all writing goal.  Your writing goals also must included the other areas of "writing."

If you have a job and a family, like most aspiring writers, you'll have to figure out a way to fit writing into your daily schedule and, more often than not, your "real life" will get in the way.

What you need to do is set a daily goal based on your daily schedule.  I start the day with a long commute.  During that commute, I come up with a priority list of 1 to 3 writing goals for the day.

Here's an example of my writing goals last Friday: 1) Critique a story or two on Scribophile. 2) Read over and submit a story to Scibophile for critique. 3) Write a 500 word flash story.

And here's last Saturday: 1) Revise story based on the Scribophile feedback and submit to publisher.  2)  Read over a chapter from the novel and continue building the synopsis for agent queries.  3) Write a blog post, time permitting.

Any of the "success" authors and speakers out there will tell you that if you break down your big goal into smaller, more attainable goals, you'll be more likely to keep pushing along until you achieve your big goal, whatever that big goal is.

Preparing for NaNoWriMo

With just under two months left to prepare for National Novel Writing Month, I thought I’d talk a little about what I did to prepare the last couple of years.

This is obvious, but the most important thing you can do for the contest is to be prepared.  I failed miserably the first year I tried it because I basically went in cold.  I sat down on November 1 and said, "I like aliens.  I'll write about aliens and see what comes out."

After about a week, all I had was 5,000 words and a convoluted plot involving Roswell, Marilyn Monroe and the Pope.  I also had no idea what I was doing and during that week decided that writing was no longer fun.

Going into a story cold can still be fun and will often create a great result, but when you need to put out 1,667 words each day, you need some sense of direction, or you just get lost, frustrated, and ultimately give up.

By the time year number two came around, I decided that I'd finish a novel no matter what, and started with a much better plan.  I'm not the type of writer who uses a detailed outline or synopsis, but I did spend a good chunk of time in October going over things in my head.  I came up with the basic setting and a few major plot points.

By the time I sat down to start on November 1, I already had the first few scenes written in my head, as well as a list of some of the major characters and their personality traits.  With a general idea of where the story was going, I was able to stay focused and the words kept coming out.  I finished the novel on schedule.

The next year was even better and with the same basic preparation, I finished the contest a few days early.

So if you're planning to enter the contest this year, start your planning now and set yourself up for a successful November.

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my blog.  

I’m planning to use this part of my website to share some of what I’ve learned over the last couple of years as an aspiring writer.  You may wonder why I say aspiring writer instead of simply writer?  Let’s put it this way: If I haven’t earned enough money writing to pay for my drinks on a single night of writing, then I still have to consider myself “aspiring.”

My background is pretty simple and maybe even quite similar to yours.  I’ve been in my IT day job for over a decade and, while I enjoy it and it definitely pays the bills, my passion has always been to do something a little more creative than monitoring user accounts and disk space.  Way back when, my college minor was in English.  I enrolled in every creative writing class I could find.  I really enjoyed the classes, but figured early on that I didn’t have the time to pursue any kind of serious writing.

I contributed to various online sites, mostly libertarian-leaning political blogs or pro-wrestling commentary sites (It’s still real to me damn it!), as well as my personal blog for years before finally sitting down and deciding to try writing fiction.

I spent a year or so learning more about writing fiction in general and just trying stuff out.  On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King was a tremendous resource that I’d recommend to anyone who is eager to learn about what you need to do early on in your writing career.

I started working on a variety of short stories, and even finished a few.  Then due to the great site duotrope.com, I was able to find some small press publishers willing to actually pay me money for them.

Finally, thanks to nanowrimo.org, I’ve finished two novels in the last two years.  My first, Holy Fudgesicles, made it to the second round in the YA section of that Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest this year.  It is in the final cleanup mode, before I begin the next scary step of agent-hunting.

I’ll continue to share anything I learn along the way in my attempt to progress from aspiring writer to "starving-artist" writer and beyond, so check back often and feel free to drop me a note sometime.