9 Ways to Jumpstart Your Writing During the Holidays

You can almost feel the shift in the publishing world when the calendar gets close to the holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day.  I'm receiving fewer emails. My phone calls and emails are not as quickly returned.  The culture is shifting into holiday mode where activities outside of publishing fill our schedule and less is happening.

While the schedule for others fills with holiday activities, your writing does not have to go on hold. In fact, from my experience, the holidays are a perfect time to jumpstart your writing life.  Here's nine action steps you can take during the holidays:

1. Increase Your Writing. Now is the time to lean into your novel or your nonfiction book and complete it.  No book manuscript is created overnight. It takes day after day effort to write your story and finish the manuscript. Make a plan for your writing then stick with it.

2. Create A New Product or Book. Do you have a new product or book idea? Take this time to lean into it and create. I encourage you to download The 24–Hour Product Creation Cheat Sheet from Jimmy D. Brown. I have several of these types of projects which have been on hold because of other work. I've started scheduling regular time into my work day to begin to move these projects forward and get them into the marketplace.

3. Write A Book Proposal. Maybe you have several book ideas and the place for you to dig in during the holidays is creating a new book proposal. If you don't know how to create a proposal, take my Write A Book Proposal membership course or use my free Book Proposal Checklist or take my free proposal teleseminar. Then take action and create your proposal.

4. Reach out to Editors and Agents. The holidays are often a great time to touch base with these publishing professionals. Send them a card or email and reconnect with them. Tell them some detail you appreciated about them and see how you can help them. Those simple statements may go a long way with that person. 

5. Read and Review books of others. I've written about this important habit but if you've never started it or forgotten about it. Now is a good time to read these books and review them. You will be practicing your craft of writing but also building good will among other writers as you read these books and write book reviews.

6. Begin a new program or tool. Do you want to learn how to make money with your blog or increase your social media presence? The key is to develope an easy system for you or to learn from someone else. I have a risk-free, detailed 31–Day Guide to Blogging for Bucks. Or listen to my free teleseminar on blogging or follow my detailed information on social media. Take committed time to work on developing a new skill or tool.

7. Get Organized. As a writer, I have piles of paper that isn't in a file folder (where I'm much more organized). I took some time this weekend to sort through the papers, put them into folders and get more organized. If I haven't used or read something,  I threw it away rather than lurking in a pile. As you get organized, you can be much more effective as a writer.

8. Pitch and Write Magazine Articles. Think about the publications you read and send ideas to the editor. If you have written for a magazine in the past, what can you write that they need? Approach the editor and see if they have a theme list online or one you can get from the editor. Then pitch appropriate ideas. 

9. Write to Look for New Opportunities.  Maybe you want to do more speaking in the new year or have a greater visibility at a particular conference. Work on expanding those possibilities during this season.

I include more than a dozen ways to jumpstart your publishing life in my book, Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams. The key is to take action during the holidays and move forward with your writing.

Dodged Another Error

Some times I will get a book from a publisher or a book proposal from an author. Because I’m looking at their product or manuscript or proposal for the first time, I see something they have completely missed like a typographical error.

People wonder how in the world someone could let something so basic slip out of their hands into the world for others to see. It happens fairly often. My encouragement with this post is for you to check something then check it again before sending it out.

Yesterday I dodged another error for my own product and I wanted to use my own story to illustrate this point.

For the last several months, I've been developing my first audio CD product teaching about a topic which I am passionate about--book proposals. With the first product, it was two CDs or an hour of teaching combined with a bonus CD. I've been receiving proto-types of the product and testing it. In the first attempt, the files on the CD had not been converted. They played on the computer but not in a regular CD player. The goal is for the product to be as flexible as possible and play in both areas. The second version of the product arrived recently and it worked great in my regular CD player. When I ran the product by a mentor, he told me that I needed more value or content for the product. I returned to my wealth of teaching files and added a third CD to the product. Now it is over three hours of teaching about book proposals and a tremendous value for anyone who wants to gain my insight into the publishing process.

Because my product changed from a two CD package into a three CD package, I had to look at another proto-type of the product. I tested all three CDs and they ran perfectly in the computer and in the regular CD player. I checked the copy on the package and everything looked great. Earlier this week, I gave the OK to go into production and I’ve been making plans to launch this product next week.

As I've been writing the materials to launch this product, for inspiration, I've had this three CD package on my desk. Then yesterday afternoon, I re-read the spine of the product. Beneath the title, it says, "Presented by W. Tery Whalin" Hopefully you spot the typo in my last sentence--a common word--especially for me.

After I saw this typo, I checked the other two proto-types. They contained the same typographical error. in this case, the product hasn't gone out to any customer and I was reassured this morning via email that it will be fixed in the production process. Whew, I dodged another error. And when someone puts this new product on their bookshelf, what do they see? The spine which contained the typographical error.

My encouragement to you today: whatever you are working on--a query letter to a magazine, a book proposal, a book manuscript, a product to launch into the marketplace--take a second, third and fourth look at it. If you don't, then you risk launching something that needed that one additional touch.