Transcript:
1 – Staying Productive
Welcome to Tracy’s Cafe where writers meet inspiration. Today our focus is on you, the writer, the author. This is where we give tips and tricks on goal setting, time management, and accountability along with the occasional author-help interview.
If you haven’t been here before, or even if you have, Welcome. My name is Cynthia. We do podcasts on how to write it, edit it, and publish it and then market it. And that’s your book we’re talking about.
If you like this type of video or podcast, do give us a thumbs up, poke the subscribe button, and click the bell.
Today I want to talk about wanting to write your book. Maybe you have one that is already started, maybe it’s just your dream to start writing it and then you think, Oh my gosh I’ll never be able to write that many words. Let me help you chunk it down. First off, lets don’t get overwhelmed with word counts. We have different counts, if you write a novella that is a different word count than if you write a novel or an Epic Fantasy. Let’s don’t be concerned with the outcome, let’s focus on 250 words a day. That’s not really that much. Blog posts are usually 300 – 500 words, you get some that get rather long winded and write 1,500 words. But for the most part it’s 300 to 500 words.
Sabrina – I’ll introduced them as they walk across the screen.
Whether or not you want to write a long book or short, a novella or an actual novel. What we want to do is for you to find the sweet spot for your writing. Writing 20 minutes a day without a goal of how many words you write, could be.
There are a couple of writing not virtual conferences (Events) , Nanowrimo is one of them. National Novel Writing Month and it’s in November. They recommend you write 1,667 words a day. That might not be you, You might only want to write half that or to challenge yourself you only want to write 600 words a day. There are Prep-tober, and we will do preptober on this channel too. It begins in October. And it allows you to sit down and plot out your novel. But it gives you a road map as to where you want to be at the end of November. And then we have edit-ary. It is where you skip the month of December and you don’t write that month. Then you come back in January and you edit the story you wrote.
When I first started twenty years ago, I got caught up in the habits of successful authors. I would write five pages and then edit the heck out of them and that’s what I did. I edited so much my story wasn’t there. Then I would go through and do it again. So the advice I was taking from very successful authors did not work for me. What does work for me, is writing and not editing, then going through it by reading over it, tweaking the sentences, paragraphs or different scenes and then going through it yet again. I will go through it about three times. And if I feel like it is a pretty good story but maybe the grammar isn’t right, then I will send it off to my editor.
That will be another video on how to choose an editor, one that works best with you.
Chunking your time, if you are not one of these people who can sit down with a planner and account for each hour of the day. Make a list of six things you know what six items you are going to dedicate 15 – 20 minutes a day to0, and you can check them off. You will find yourself more productive if you are not a rigid planner. I’m not a rigid planner.
What else did I want to talk about? (looking over notes) Genres. Don’t be concerned about your genre. Just tell your story. At the end of your story, have someone that is more versed in genre you should label your story as. I did not have any clue what my story genre was, I thought it might be thriller. I was wrong. It was more of a suspense. We knew who the bad guys were to begin with, but how they were going to get caught? So don’t worry about it, just write it.
And with that being said, That’s it for today. Decide how many words you are going to do, and if that doesn’t work decide how long you are going to write. If you only have 15 minutes before you head out to work? Do you want to write over two cups of coffee? And we will see you tomorrow. Because this is where we are going to focus on your book, you write it, you edit it, you market it and we are here to help you along the way.
So if you like the video, please subscribe, click the reminder bell, leave us a comment or share. Until next time, happy writing, stay creative.
Cynthia Carver, writes magickal realism paranormal, starring a psychic investigator. NaNoWriMo, Preptober, and Edit-ary will be cover it, and sometimes in order.
Aliya DalRae, writes paranormal romance and urban fantasy, featuring shifters and vampires. This channel is based on fiction, paranormal, and creative writing.
Join our podcast mailing list: https://www.subscribepage.com/authorchat
Follow Cynthia: https://linktr.ee/cynthiacarver
Follow Aliya: https://linktr.ee/aliyadalrae
Appreciate my content? Buy me a cup of coffee, a gallon of gas, or dinner. Thank you! https://paypal.me/revcindylee