Is It Time for Spring Cleaning?

By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin

I love the freshness of spring. Baseball season starts. We freshen up our place from the trials of winter and plant flowers for spring along with other activities. The darkness of winter fades and we celebrate the newness of life with new growth and flowers.

As I ask in this article, is it time for spring cleaning? I’ve found that the more I’m organized and block different parts of my schedule, then it increases my productivity and output. As I’ve mentioned in past entries, almost daily books pour into my mailbox. In general, I unpack them and put them on my bookshelf but over the last few weeks the area for this book has filled. As a part of my spring cleaning, I sorted through some books and took a hard look at each one. Do I have the time to read it? I will look at a few pages and see if the writing is going to hold my interest. If “no” is the answer to these questions, then I remove the book from my shelf and get the books ready to go to a good home elsewhere. This book sorting process is a necessity to organize my office several times a year including spring. 

Creating a Pile Doesn’t Work

Like my bookshelves, I do the same evaluation process with the papers on my desk. From my experience, it doesn’t work to take a piece of paper or a stapled article and put it into a pile. Instead I have developed a system to know exactly where I’m keeping that article and why I’m keeping it. 

I admit every author is different in this area. One of the most prolific writers was Ray Bradbury. Recently an article about Bradbury came across my screen with a photo of his office with piles of paperwork. This novelist created a different system for organization which worked for his writing life. My encouragement is for you to create a working system for how you organize your desk, paperwork, books and other tasks so you continue moving forward each day. 

If You Are Stuck in a Rut...

I have a couple of projects which have been stuck on my desk and have not moved--which is a problem if I want them to get published. I’ve been stuck in a rut and proscratating on this work. I suspect you have a pitch or two which is also stuck. Spring cleaning is a great time to plot and take a new course of action. 

First determine what you want to accomplish? Do you want to increase your speaking? Do you want to sell more books? Do you want to publish more magazine articles? To achieve these goals, you have to take action and increase the amount of your pitches. Maybe you want to be on more podcasts or radio shows? These programs can be an effective way to sell more books and don’t require travel or other elements. The key to booking a radio broadcast or a podcast is pitching to the decision maker?  Craft your pitch and even use a pitch template from someone else if you need some ideas. Then get these pitches into the world. 

When you pitch, you will get turned down (rejected). This process happens to all of us including me. As I’ve written in these articles in the past, you are looking for the right fit and this process involves getting a number of rejections before you get acceptance. Learn what you need to do from others, then continually pitch. It sounds simple but takes consistent effort for it to actually happen. 

When You Haven’t Received a Response

Spring is a great time of year to do follow-up work where your pitches went into a black hole without a response. Did the other person receive the pitch? As editors and agents, we lose things and they get stuck in our email and never processed. I encourage you to use the gentle follow-up approach to prod that other person. Many writers are afraid to follow-up then they wonder why nothing is happening. One of the critical steps for every writer is to follow-up. 

Here’s some other ideas and approaches for your spring cleaning:

• Use a current market guide to make new pitches
• Plan to get to a writer’s conference
• Make new connections on LinkedIN 
• Join an online writer’s group and participate

Each of these actions will take effort on your part as a writer but could yield great results. As I’ve written in the past, it will not fly if you don’t try and try on a consistent basis. 

Each of us have the same amount of time or 24 hours. How you use that time will affect your results. Is it time for you to take some spring cleaning actions? Let me know in the comments.

 

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Spring is a great time to get organized and increase your productivity according to this prolific writer and editor. Is it time for your spring cleaning? Get the details here. (ClickToTweet)

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Productive Writers Are Organized

By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin

During my years in publishing, I have been through many different changes. At times, I've been a pack rat saving all sorts of things gathered in piles in my office. I've interviewed more than 150 authors and saved interview tapes. I've written many books and saved various versions of the manuscript and all sorts of things—many of them unnecessary. There is a basic principle that I've learned: the more chaotic my working space—the less productive I become. The chaos weighs on my writing.

When we move, this situation often helps me. Especially when you use a moving van and pay for the weight, it makes you review everything to see if it comes with you or you give it away or toss it. Especially when we moved from eight years in Arizona a while back, I tossed a lot of things I was keeping. Over the years I kept complete magazines of the different articles I had written. That amounted to boxes of magazines. In some ways, I wish I had taken the time to scan those articles (which I didn't) so they got tossed. But to be honest, I don't need those articles.

These days I'm much better organized in my office space and also electronically. I've discovered the increased organization has a number of benefits:

1. You are in touch with your priorities and meeting deadlines (large and small one). The majority of writers miss their deadlines. I've been the editor they call for extensions with their excuses. In book publishing when you set a deadline for a contract, it sets off a chain of events inside the publishing house that writers never see—but are critical to the success of the book and its release. When you ask for additional time, you disrupt that schedule—and unknowingly affect the sales of your book (which you will not know or experience until months later). It's not a wise step to extend your deadline and instead set realistic ones you can achieve from the beginning. Again it harkens back to organization—the theme of this article.

2. You can easily find projects and pieces of paper and bits of information. As an editor and writer, you would be surprised at the random emails and phone calls I get from my colleagues asking about some book or author. If I am organized, then I can often give a quick answer. If I am not organized, then I have to take time to dig for it (which could consume a lot of time).

3. You take a few minutes here and there to keep things organized and you will be much more productive and accomplish more in a single day than in the disorganization.

It is not easy to be organized in my view and takes continual effort and work—but the payoff is worth it. I have much more work to be done in this area but my encouragement to you with your writing life is to continue to this organizational effort. Once everything gets organized an in place, it takes continued vigilance and maintenance to keep it that way. If you ignore it, the piles of paper and disorganization tends to grow and get out of control again—or so has been my experience.

How does organization play into your writing life? What tips can you give us? Let me know in the comments below. 

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Productive writers are organized says this prolific editor and author. Get the details here. (ClickToTweet)

Increase Producivity. Get Organized.

As I get older, I'm more aware each of us have the same amount of time in every day. We have a lot of information and opportunity coming our direction. How do we harness these opportunities and increase our effectiveness? One important aspect is to get organized and keep organized.

If I take an honest look at myself, I tend to be a bit of a pack rat. I save magazines, articles I might write some day, books people have sent to read and review, manuscripts and proposals I've been handed at conferences, and the list goes on. This material can easily flood my office and pile up. During the last few weeks, I have been vigilant about sorting, filing and throwing most of this accumulation. At the moment, I'm much more organized than I have been during other periods.

Take Time to Eliminate & Organize Clutter

For me, it is a matter of taking a hard look at what has accumulated and asking if I will ever need this again. Most of the time that answer is “no” and I can throw it. Or can I quickly store some needed information such as an email address or phone on my computer where I can search and easily access it in the future? You can increase your effectiveness and productivity if you have less right in front of you to handle.

Use Your Smartphone Effectively

Often I meet writers who have a smartphone but only use it as a phone—and little else. Whether you are aware of it or not, you have a powerful communication device that you carry. Take the time to use various features. For example, I use the calendar to remind me of meetings and phone calls. I use the reminders section to call to my attention critical deadlines.

I also use my smartphone to post on social media. For example, I use Hootsuite to time out my posts for several social platforms. For Facebook at the moment, I post them myself using my phone. It is not the most efficient way to do it (as I know) but it does get done. 

Also I use my smartphone to quickly answer some important emails when I'm away from my office. Just a brief answer shows the other person you got it and responded. Use your phone as an effective communication tool.

If you don't know how to use these aspects of your smartphone, then take the time to learn. You can even take free classes at the Apple Store (which I have done).

Be Aware of the Time Zappers

I regularly hear from writers who spend hours scrolling through Facebook then wonder where they lost part of their day. Or they binge watch a television program or spend time at a bookstore browsing. None of these things are wrong or bad in themselves but increase your awareness of how you are using your time can help you be more effective.

Create a System to Achieve Over and Over

If there is something you need to accomplish over and over, I recommend you create a habit to accomplish it. Just writing 20 to 30 minutes a day on a project can continue to move it forward toward completion. Or set a word count for your writing then do it repeatedly. People wonder how I keep up with my social media. It's pretty simple. I've created a system where I do the functions over and over (with many different purposes and reasons).

 I still have things slip through the cracks and doesn't get done. For example, several days ago I got an email reminder the judging sheets for a contest are due right away. Yes I knew I was judging this contest and had the material for it but wasn't aware of the exact due date. I handled it and met the deadline. Each of us have these types of things which slip into our day and need to get done.

What steps are you taking to get organized and increase your productivity? Let me know in the comments below.

 Tweetable:


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Take A Re-Org Day

Late Saturday night, I returned home from the Write to Publish conference on the campus of Wheaton College. As I've mentioned in other entries on The Writing Life, I love to go to these conferences for several different reasons. They are an opportunity to encourage and give back to others in the writing community. Often there are many people new to the publishing community and it is an opportunity to encourage them. In addition, I always grow and learn new things which build into my own writing life.

The marketplace continues to change. One long-term magazine editor confided that she was working on the final issue of the publication which she had led for the last few years. Thankfully she still has a position at the company and is shifting to another magazine. My conversation with her served as another reminder about the continual ebb and flow of the magazine market--something that many writers don't consider. Just like the book industry changes constantly, change is a constant variable within the magazine community as well. While there are many new magazines introduced into the marketplace each year, many magazines fold and go out of business. For me, a number of years ago I gave up counting the number of publications where my work has appeared when I reached 50 publications. In a short amount of time, I could compile a list of magazines where my work has appeared and these publications no longer exist. Many magazines cease publication within the first five years yet I've written for a number of publications which have been around for many times longer than that benchmark and they have also ceased publication. It is difficult for these magazines to make the financials work on the business side of things--an issue that writers rarely consider.

If the magazine is going to cease publication, why continue to write for the magazines? There are many reasons for writers at all stages of their writing careers to continue writing for magazines. First, you write for magazines because it is an opportunity to practice your craft and continually be publishing in print. Yes, it's fine to write things online but in general, printed publications are held to a much higher standard of publication and writers should be writing for these publications on a regular basis. Also because magazine articles are much shorter than books, you can complete them in a shorter amount of time and most of the time reach many more people than with your books. I've personally reached millions of people with my magazine work where I have not had that experience (yet) with my book material. My encouragement is to not ignore the magazine market for your writing. Be writing those query letters and pitching your ideas on a regular basis.

After two back to back trips with little time in between (Book Expo America in Los Angeles and Write To Publish in Chicago), my office is a shambles with piles everywhere. I'm giving my self a re-org day (reorganization day) and it may take two days to achieve what needs to happen in my office. It gives me a chance to straighten my files and reorganize my office, sort and read through the various magazines and books which have arrived or I picked up in Los Angeles. Why is it important for every writer or anyone in publishing to take these steps?

Follow-up work and organization of information is key for any writer. I exchanged business cards with dozens of people yet if I can't access that data, then it is much harder to use. I'll be adding this information to my computer files for easier access. Instead of throwing the business cards into a drawer some place, how are you using this information to continually reach out and touch these people? If you aren't doing it, then you are potentially missing an opportunity to continue to strengthen that relationship. From my experience, the person who follows up and is organized has the greatest potential for success. I've found few people will follow-up and the people who do follow-up stand out in a costive manner. Also as I've written in other places in these entries, information is power. Do you have information, if so, what are you doing with it?

Finally, I wanted to point out a fascinating group of statistics in the June 2nd issue of Publishers Weekly. Every writer should be concerned about getting readers. Check out some of these recent statistics and see if they give you some insight for your own writing life.