Commit, commit!
My normal emails are, as you know, long and baggy. They tell jokes. They digress. Sometimes (goat folding – pah!) they have no practical purpose whatsoever. This email, born as it is, in the clarity and cold of a New Year’s Day, is short and to the point.
Friends, it is time to commit.
What do you want to achieve, as a writer, in the next six months?
That’s not a rhetorical question. I actually want you to answer me. I want you to tell me – tell the world – what your intentions are.
I don’t want answers that may be unachievable. So, yes, lots of you will want to say something like:
“By 1 July 2021, I want to get a six-figure deal from a Big Five house.”, or
“By 1 July 2021, I want three books self-published on Amazon and a monthly income of at least $2,500.”
And sure, lots of you will have aspirations like those. But I want commitments that definitely lie within your capability. If you don’t achieve the goal, I want that to be because you haven’t done what you said you would do.
Put another way, we’re not, today, in the business of lifting a prayer to the universe. We’re in the business of building a To Do list that we will systematically execute.
So the kind of things I want to hear from you might be things like:
“I will completely my current manuscript. I will self-edit it hard. I will get a third-party manuscript assessment (from Jericho Writers, obviously 😊). Then I will submit the work to at least 12 properly selected agents. I will have the book out on submission to those agents no later than 30 June 2021.”
A newer author might make a commitment more like this:
“I will read at least three books on writing. I will watch and absorb all of the Jericho Writers’ video course on How To Write. I will spend at least 7 hours a week on writing, every single week. I will write at least 50,000 words of my current project. I will get beta-readers to look at 2x chunks of the book. I will commit to offering feedback to at least 12 other writers, so I contribute my share to the community. I will do all this by 30 June 2021.”
Someone who’s heading for the sunlit Land of Self-Pub might say something like this:
“I will complete my manuscript. I will get editorial feedback on it, complete my edits, and get the whole thing copy-edited. I will select a cover designer, deliver a brief, and get a quality cover that I’m happy with. I’ll research my metadata and make the choices I need. I will write and produce a lead magnet that will act as the basis for my mailing list. I will do all this by 29 June 2021.” [Why the 29th? Because self-pubbers always work harder and faster than trad authors.]
OK. You get the picture. I’m after specific commitments by you, that lie within your power to execute in the next six months.
Yes, you can simply write those on a sheet of paper and glue it above your computer, but public commitments work better. I want you to enter the public square and make your commitments visible to all.
I’ll do the same. So please make your commitments right here on Townhouse. (If you’re not a member, then become one. It’s fast and free to do so.)
That’s it from me. I promised short. Here’s short:
Make your commitment.
Make it here on Townhouse.
Do it now.
On Friday 2 July, we’re all going to check back on your promises. See how we’ve done.
Onwards!
Happy New Year! By July 1st I intend to have the first half of the first draft of my fifth book ‘waiting on God’ done. And the last half researched and ready to write.
Happy – and SAFE – New Year to you all. After having had two refusals from agents, I decided to ask for a full Editorial Report through Jericho Writers. (Living in South Africa I tried several publishers and agents here without success. ) Haydn Middleton produced a wonderful report of my literary novel in a surprisingly short time. I face a major rewrite of the ms based on his suggestions (I agreed with them all) and hope to have the work finished no later than 1 July 2021. Your challenge to ‘Commit Commit’ arrived just when my legs were feeling frail! Thank you so much.
“I will complete my current manuscript, which is now my 5th and hopefully final draft. I will not feel despondent but will be enthusiastic regarding my self-edit. I will continue with Eleanor from Jericho writers, for my manuscript assessment. Then I will submit the work to at least 12 properly selected agents. I will have the book out on submission to those agents no later than 30 June 2021.”
Have really loved reading through everyone’s commitments and seeing where they all are – it has made me feel not so alone!
I want to finish the current draft of my novel, send it to beta readers and reread “how to write a novel” for any points I’ve missed!
Also continue reading as many books as possible to really hone in on my writing!
Thanks for the emails every week – I look forward to reading them!
Dear You-Who-Wrote-A-Commitment:
Might I request your help? See, I don’t have a problem writing down a commitment here: “I commit to finish the first draft of my story idea in six months, and I accept it will be rather awful bin-worthy prose.” I have a problem with following through with it. What do you suggest I do to follow through? Yes I certainly want to follow through, but I’m adept at not doing so. You could say I’m successful at failing. Horrid! I know.
Thank you in advance for your suggestions,
Yours,
Chris.
Hi Chris,
I feel a bit odd responding to you because I am not a master of getting things done (so who am I to offer suggestions), but I did just complete my first nanowrimo. What helped me was the daily goals nano set for us. Others do better with weekly word count goals, so that they can take a day off here and there for when life does its thing.
Thank you !
The point here is making a public commitment that others can check up on in July. Of course, the problem is there are over 100 commitments on here and who’s going to check up on us all? Surely one or two if us can fall through the net if we want to? (Not the point, of course!)
Perhaps an idea for you, Chris, is to make your commitment on a more intimate basis – do you have a writer friend (or find one on here) who you can make a direct commitment to? You could support each other through your progress, update each other regularly.
Harder to let one person you know down than a crowd of people you don’t.
Good luck with it!
Thank you !!
Chris, if you were that successful at failing, then you would complete the logic and fail at failing, thereby succeeding. It can’t be that hard.
As to the commitment, the idea of a single 6-month commitment has inherent shortcomings. You have six months to get it done, so you’ll just start next week. Until you’re down to one remaining week and there’s no way to physically complete the commitment, even if it includes your bin-worthy clause.
Instead, your better option is to look at what you would need to do in those six months to hit an outlined goal, and break it down to how productive you would need to complete it in four. Break it down weekly, and then the weeks into daily equivalents, assuming only four productive days. Then, commit to that for today. Maybe you’ll do it. Maybe you’ll fail. Whichever, tomorrow is a new day, a clean slate. Commit to the same again tomorrow. Rinse and repeat.
If you fail at failing, even half the time, you’ll hit the bigger goal.
Chris. Don’t beat yourself up. We are all at different stages. I haven’t put any commitment on here because I haven’t a clue where I will be up to in the next 6 months (or 6 years). Some people love a deadline as it focuses them to get things done but if you are not one of those people then it can feel like you are setting yourself up to fail. You are not failing if writing is part of your life but not your whole life. You are still doing something you enjoy (hopefully) and if it takes longer than other people to get some recognition by being piblished that doesn’t have to spoil it. I have been writing for about 15 years or so, just for fun for my kids, then just for fun for myself. It took me until last year to think I might try to write something good enough to show other people and try to get published. Then I learnt how difficult that is but also how generous people are with their time and advice. I still work full time and find that having older kids takes up just as much time as having younger kids (nobody warns you that!) so I fit it in when I can. If it takes forever so be it, I am still enjoying gradually learning and improving. Good luck.
Dear Kate,
Thank you !!!
Chris.
Happy New Year everyone. By July 1st I want to complete an re-edit of Manuscript 1 using a number of things learnt from How To Write A Novel, and then take advantage of the Agent Submission Pack Review and the suggestions that come from it. I also have (about) 30,000 words to go on the first draft on Manuscript 2 which I would like to complete, but this is more because it is the fictionalised story of my elderly neighbour’s escape from Poland, and I want to be in a position to edit it to enable her to read it.
Happy New Year to all fellow writers! What a great idea to post a commitment. I learnt so much from the Festival of Writing last summer. Since then I’ve put together a detailed plot which I’ve no doubt will change hugely as I go along! January 1st means writing 1000 words a day which I’ve stuck to so far (Day 2 – it may get harder with the day job!), but I’m pretty disciplined and I really plan to stick to this. Get a 1st draft done by April. I know the editing process is where the real work lies but if I establish the commitment now I hope to stand in good stead. I also want to engage and give feedback on Townhouse where I can. Good luck to everyone writing this year!
I will complete a structural self-edit on my gloriously messy nanowrimo project by the end of February. I will work on voice (I know, this one needs to be more actionable!). I will be courageous in letting others see my work, and will show up once a week to comment on someone else’s work on Jericho. I will participate in as many Jericho webinars as work allows (they’ve been an awesome bright spot in the pandemic!). I will spend a minimum of 30 minutes a week learning about marketing. I will read every evening from my list of comparative book titles.
Happy new year. My short-term goals are two-fold. Am set on getting the most out of the Jericho experience and having an agent or self-publishing plan for my manuscript by July.
Have an agent for the first completed novel of a series and be a minimum of half way through the second.