In episode 152 of The Writing Coach podcast, writing coach Kevin T. Johns shares four simple tips writers can implement to help set themselves up for both short and long-term success.
Listen to the episode or read the transcript below:
The Writing Coach Episode #152 Show Notes
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The Writing Coach Episode #152 Transcript
Hello, beloved listeners, and welcome back to The Writing Coach podcast. It’s your host, as always, writing coach Kevin T. Johns here.
How are you doing? Are you in the springtime frame of mind? I know certainly here in Canada in winter we all like to go into hermit mode or hibernation mode and, and you know, <laugh> hermit / hibernation mode can actually be a great way to get a book written. But I know that wintertime can also be a hard time for energy, especially up here in Canada where we really don’t get enough vitamin D. I think it’s been pretty much scientifically proven at this point that those of us living in northern parts of the world are really lacking in vitamin D. And of course, in today’s world where we spend so much in time inside it is only worse. And so spring can be a really great re-energizing time.
I mean, even if you were working on a project and maybe it fell off a little bit, springtime, that change in the season, can be a great time to invigorate yourself to dive back into your writing and into your creative output.
That’s probably one of the reasons why the springtime edition of my Story Plan Intensive Challenge normally does so well. I think it’s the right time of year for folks to be looking to the future and thinking, “Hey, I want to get that book written.” And so we actually kick off next Monday. Yeah, April 3rd is the latest edition of Story Plan Intensive. It’s a program that I’ve put together with the goal of helping writers craft a rock-solid outline for their book in 30 days or less. It involves four weeks of training videos, one or two videos a day, for 20 weekdays. And then I give you the weekend to do some homework and to do some hard thinking and planning and implementation of what we talk about in the training. So if you want to get involved, if you want to participate in Story Plan, head on over to www.kevintjohns.com/story-plan and you can get signed up for free now.
As part of the launch for that program, as part of getting folks organized and kind of best prepared to find success over the course of the program, I held a live call earlier this week, not really a webinar, more of just a live training where I got together a small group of writers and we talked about things that they could do this week, things that they could do now to set themselves up for success with the story plan challenge because it’s not easy. You know, it’s a lot of training and thought and effort that takes place over a month’s time, which might sound like a lot, but is not really a lot of time. And so I laid out some things that they could do to set themselves up for success.
Now, I was thinking about it, I was thinking about some of the things I recommended, and I was thinking, “Well, you know, a lot of this advice is kind of my standard advice for any project that you’re getting prepared to do.” If you are planning to write a book and whether it’s your first book or you know, your 20th book, these tips are applicable.
And so what I want to do on today’s episode is adapt some of the material from that Story Plan call I had earlier this week, and just talk about some things that writers can do in general to set themselves up for success with their books.
1. TIME MANAGEMENT
Now, number one, if you know me at all, if you’ve listened to the podcast, and you’re probably not going to be surprised, it’s time management. Writing a book is a time intensive exercise. There’s no getting around it. And if you are someone who hasn’t already carved out time for your life to do that, writing it is a really quick path to overwhelm. There’s so many people who want to write a book and they try and they’re like, I can’t do it. I don’t have the time. And there’s a couple things you can do to help carve out that time. And one is non-negotiable writing time. You might have heard me talk about this before. It’s creating a regular schedule for your writing, the way you might create a regular schedule for going to the gym or, or for your day job. It’s putting time in your calendar to get your writing done and treating that time as holy.
So that’s one, you know, carving out that time. But this is the other thing that’s so important. Look at things that you can let go of look at the time sucks in your life, because as I said, if you’re just piling non-negotiable writing time on top of all the things you already have going on in your life, it’s probably going to be too much. I meet very few people these days who have infinite time or infinite energy and can just, “Hey, sure, I’ll add a couple hours a week of writing to my schedule” and not have it impact them.
Take a look at things like, how much time do you spend watching television or movies each week? How much time are you spending surfing social media, you know, dooms scrolling on the old phone or watching silly videos on YouTube or playing video games, even, something like that.
That’s these entertainment activities that we do that we enjoy to a certain extent, but can, can also be such a huge time socket and say, what can I cut away from my life in order to carve out time to do something that I’m focused on doing, which is writing a book.
It’s not a simple thing, time management, and it’s an ongoing thing as well. You know, just because you found the time this month doesn’t mean you’ll have it next month. And so it’s an ongoing relationship between our creative endeavours and our dreams of what we want to achieve with our writing careers and our daily schedules and what life looks like at any given time. And so you really want to think about time management, but also moderate, do regular check-ins and say, “Hey, am I getting the amount of done, of writing done that I want to get done or that I’m committed to getting done?”
2. CRITICAL PATHS AND DEADLINES
Building upon this idea of being conscious of your time, I also highly encourage people to commit to a specific timeline for a project that’s a whole, as well as for little sections of a project.
Anyone who’s involved in project management of any kind in the workplace you know, outside of the creative writing field, this stuff is perfectly normal, right? We have our Gantt chart, we have our critical path. We understand major milestones that we need to achieve by certain dates if we want our project to be a success. And I really encourage people to apply that to your writing as well, because the reality is, I know we want a little, it’s like in hockey when the goal goes in, there’s a little red light behind the rink, or sorry, behind the, the net that goes off the goal light, you know, when it spins around.
And I think sometimes people feel like there’s an imaginary light up there above their writing desks, and that someday it’s going to go off and it’s just going to go, woo, woo woo. The book is done, <laugh>. But the reality is, you can plan until the end of time. You can write until the end of time, you can edit until the end of time. And if you don’t put some barriers around the amount of time you’re goning dedicate to any portion of the project, it can just go on forever.
It makes me think of Wonderboys. Both the book and the movie are amazing. If you’re a writer, definitely read Wonderboys or watch the movie. I mean, the movie’s so great cuz you got a young Toby Maguire, a fairly young Robert Downey Jr. Before he was Iron Man, and you got Bob Dylan doing a song on the soundtrack that ended up winning him an Oscar.
But anyway, in that movie, <laugh>, Michael Douglass plays a character who is writing his second novel. His first was like thought of as a masterpiece, and it’s follow-up is something like 200,000 words long now or longer or something. And Katie Holmes is in it as well as one of his students. And there’s, there’s a part in the movie where she’s reading through the manuscript and she says something like, “You know, you didn’t know when to stop <laugh>, it feels like you just kept writing.” And so you know, you can go down these rabbit holes and so build some barriers around the amount of time you’re going to dedicate to any given project.
For of the first time writers out there, first time novelist folks who haven’t written a book yet, particularly a fiction book, but I think you can maybe do non-fiction a bit quicker. So let’s just talk about fiction. What I think is a really reasonable timeline is a month of planning. This is why Story Plan Intensive is a four-week program, and sometimes folks will commit to the program, they’ll, they’ll sign up, but then they’ll say, well, I’m actually going to spread it out over two months and, and do the planning over two months rather than one. And I don’t agree with that. If you’re going to do the program, do it in four weeks because it’s so easy to start doing the work about the work. You know, there are subreddits where people world-build forever without ever writing the books. They just keep on world-building.
We probably all know someone who started a business, and they’ll give you their business card, and they’re so proud, and they’re like, “Here’s my business card.” You’re like, “Amazing. What’s the business going to be? What are you going to do? What service are you going to provide? Or what, what product are you selling?” And they’re like, “I haven’t quite nailed that down yet, but you know, I’ve got the business cards, right?”
It’s really easy to do the work about the work instead of actually doing the work itself. So I am a huge proponent of story planning. I mean, this is why I made this program. This is why I’ve run this program Story Plan, but I don’t think planning needs to go on forever. And I think a lot of the creative process happens in the writing. And so for something like planning a book, I think you can do an amazing, incredible outline for a book in a month’s time.
Then when folks finish the Story Plan challenge, what they often do is kind of graduate or choose to join my First Draft program, which is a six-month program focused on getting a first draft of a book written in six months or less.
Can you write a first draft of a novel in less than six months? For sure, you can, but I really think six months is a great timeline to carve out for yourself and kind of say, “You know, come heck or high water, I’m going to have that draft written at least six months from now, if not sooner.” And what I’ve found through that program is huge success. Most people who are working with me in First Draft are able to get the first draft done in six months or less. And so these sorts of timelines a month, planning the book, six months, writing the book, something I often say is plan on spending at least twice the time you spend writing the first draft on revisions. In which case, if you spent six months writing the first draft, you might want to plan for a year of revisions.
And of course, everyone’s timeline is different. I’m kind of throwing out first-time novelists really reasonable timelines here that you can get done without pulling your hair out or quitting your day job or wrecking your marriage, right? These are all reasonable timelines, but the point is they are timelines. You want to set these things up — and by ‘things’ I mean deadlines — set up deadlines for yourself because otherwise projects can go on forever.
3. ACCOUNTABILITY
Now, the third thing I recommended on the training earlier this week, and that again, I would recommend to anyone at any stage in the writing process is find accountability. We make promises to ourselves. I promise I’m going to write 50 pages next by next week, right? We make these promises, but it’s so easy to break promises to yourself. You come up with the excuses, you come up with the reasons fo why it didn’t happen. You give yourself a pass.
It is so much more difficult to lie to an accountability partner <laugh>, about why something didn’t happen. And this is one of the reasons why writing coaches exist. We are there to encourage people, we’re there to work as developmental editors, we’re there to be collaborative partners, but we’re also there for accountability. Working with a writing coach, especially one-on-one isn’t cheap. And so when people make that financial decision to invest in a coach that you can be sure that’s part of the accountability that they’re creating for themselves, they’re getting their writing done because they know I’m on the other end of that email waiting to receive those pages and waiting to get on a coaching call with them and to talk about it in depth. And so, you know, do you need to get a writing coach?
No, of course not. But I mean, as a writing coach, I highly recommend it. But here’s some other options that you can think about. A one-on-one writing coach is going to be the most expensive option, but there are free options as well. Your accountability buddy can be your husband or your wife, or your sibling, or your friend or your coworker, just someone you say, “Hey, I’m looking for some accountability in getting my writing done. Can you do that for me? Can you email, email me every Friday and say, ‘Hey, where are those pages you’re supposed to send me every week?’” That’s a great way to hold yourself accountable via someone you already know in your life who’s willing to help you out a bit and, and service some accountability for you.
There are also tons of writing groups out there. There are writing groups in your community. I guarantee if you look up, you know, writing group or writing class or something and put your city or town’s name in, you’re going to find all sorts of stuff. And, of course, online, I mean, there are endless groups. I mean, there are free groups that you can join on Facebook. There are group coaching programs like my First Draft program that I talked about. There are lots of different ways to connect with other writers, other people who are kind of in the creative trenches with you going through the same type of thing. And those people can often be extra good accountability buddies because they’re going through the same thing you’re going through. They understand it. And often you can do it as an exchange, right? So rather than just kind of relying on a friend to hold you accountable, you are holding yourself accountable, but then you’re holding them accountable in return, right? It’s a nice little trade-off.
And so whether you’re doing this for free with someone you know, or whether it’s a group that you’re part of, of writers that you’re paying for or not, or whether you’re making the leap and working really closely with a writing coach, either way, what you’ve done is created some accountability to ensure that you make steady progress and you stick to the timelines that you’ve set for yourself.
You can see how these things kind of build upon each other, right?
It’s like you think about your time management, you carve out certain times in the week to get your creative work done, then you establish timelines for how long you’re going to spend on any given portion of the project, and you set up accountability to make sure that you’re moving towards those milestones at a pace that seems reasonable to you.
And so all of these things are working together to set yourself up for success on the day-to-day level, but also on the long term.
4. LACE UP THE SKATES AND GET ON THE ICE
The final piece of advice that I’d group in here with these four pieces of advice from Wednesday’s training, the advice was, if you’re going to participate in Story Plan Intensive, do the homework. <Laugh>, there’s no point in treating a training video as entertainment or infotainment, you know, watching a bunch of videos going, oh yeah, great, great. Now I know that stuff, but not actually putting pen to the paper or fingers to the keyboard. And applying these things that you’ve learned. And especially when you’re moving into the drafting phase and the revision phase, you have to put the nose to the grindstone and actually write.
It’s so easy to get online and join a bunch of Facebook groups and talk about being a writer. It’s fun to think about being a writer and joke about being a writer and dream about being a writer and share memes about being a writer. But none of that matters if you’re not putting words on the page.
You have to actually do the work.
And I know a lot of the times people say to themselves, “I’m still in the learning phase, and I can’t start writing until I know everything.” And, of course, you’re never going to know anything. Like Hemingway said, “We’re all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” But also you can do these things in unison.
And this is one of the things we talk about in my First Draft group coaching program quite a bit, which is dual paths. If you’re writing a book and learning to write a book at the same time, and it’s really important that those two tracks are working not just in parallel, but in relationship to one another, that you’re learning how to write a book and then you’re taking the time each week to try to implement the things that you’re learning.
The example I like to use is the person who sits up in the crowd. In a hockey arena, you know me, I’m always using hockey as my example, right? Can you guess? I played hockey for most of my life? But here’s the thing, you can sit up in the stands in a hockey rank and you can read every book ever written about the history of hockey, about hockey technique, about hockey strategy. You could know how to set up every perfect play in your head on paper.
And guess what? None of that matters if you don’t know how to skate. And you know how you learn how to skate by putting skates on and getting on the ice and moving around and learning. And it is not easy. Anyone who’s tried to learn how to skate, especially tried as an adult, you were probably shocked by how challenging it really is. It takes a long time to learn how to skate.
And so, yes, do the education. Yes, read the books. If you’re in Story Plan Intensive, yes, watch the training videos, but then put on the skates, get on the ice, then fire up that computer and get some words down on paper, because talking about being a writer is one thing, but actually writing, actually taking the time to put words on the page is something else entirely.
STORY PLAN & FIRST DRAFT
All right, so we talked about a couple of different programs I have on the go, I guess, on this podcast episode.
IF you’re interested in checking out my First Draft program, that’s a six-month program focused on getting an incredible first draft of your book written, while, as I said, learning the fundamentals of the art form, you can head over to www.kevintjohns.com/firstdraft.
If you are not at the drafting stage yet, or if you’ve started but you don’t have a clear plan of attack for how you’re going to actually write this book, I highly encourage you to head over to www.kevintjohns.com/story-plan. That’s where you can get signed up for free for Story Plan Intensive.
It’s a challenging program. It’s a lot of work and training in a four-week period, but I guarantee if you take the program, if you sign up, if you watch the videos, and if you do the homework, you’re going to be blown away by the outline that you have by the end of April.
A month sounds like a lot of time to dedicate to something. It’s not. You blink and the month is going to be over, and you’re going to have an incredible plan for a book in front of you that when you sit down to start drafting, you’re going to be able to rely on. You’re going to have the confidence of knowing one, that you’ve created a story that is fundamentally sound at the structural level, at the very base level. You know that your story has character arcs, and you know that your story has the proper structure. And what the proper structure does is ensure good pacing.
It’s so much easier to write when you have that story plan in your back pocket, giving you the confidence that you are headed in the right direction and that you know where this story is going.
This is all kicking off just a few days from when this podcast is going live. So if you’re hearing this, you want to head over right away to www.kevintjohns.com/story-plan, get signed up, and we’ll have an amazing April together.
All right, that is it for this episode. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button on your podcatcher of choice so that I can see you on the next episode of The Writing Coach.
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