Hey
everyone! Welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! Have you missed me? I
hope you’ve been following me over at Art of Divine, on YouTube—I have
some really fun content in the works, and I’m planning a series for all you
writers out there, coming up shortly. The world needs more writers, don’t you
think?
So
today, I wanted to come back and talk to you about something I think is
incredibly important for writers, and generally fairly underrated for authors
as well.
Organization
Now,
I’ll start by saying this. The majority of successful authors I know are
organized people. Yes, there are always outliers. There are always people who
somehow work better and think clearer when everything is a mess, but don’t
think that just because those outliers exist, you must automatically be one of
them, just because you’re not very organized. More than likely, you’re a part
of the majority and not the minority. That’s just logical, isn’t it? So, while
you should always take advice with a grain of salt, remember to take it with an
open mind, as well. If you don’t have that, no one will ever be able to help
you with anything.
Authors need to be organized.
I
don’t just mean that we should be organized in our writing, though that’s where
we’ll get to later on in today’s post. I mean that your lifestyle should be
organized. You’ll need a strict budget, especially if you’re planning on
self-publishing. You’ll need to know precisely how much time you can take away
from your day job, before you hopefully get to make writing your full-time gig.
But, if you’re aware (as you should be) that it may never happen, that you’ll
always need that day job, then you’ll know that you just need to be organized.
You need to know how to allocate funds toward book tours, ad spend, cover design,
and so many more things—even if you’re going to traditionally publish, expect
that you’ll have to pay at least a little bit out of pocket, early on. At the
very least, you’ll have to take some days off in order to tour with your book.
There’s no other way to go about it.
If you want to be successful, you need to organize your life.
That’s
a fact, and one you can ask any successful business person, or business owner.
They’ll tell you, without batting an eye, that organization is a requirement.
Without it, you’re throwing both time and money out the window.
Remember, whether you’re self-publishing or not, being an author is being a business person. Your writing is your business, and you need to treat it as such.
My
recommendation, for every writer, is to get organized before you get published.
Start with your life in general, because if you can get your life organized,
your writing will get organized more naturally, by default. So put your stuff
away. Don’t leave things lying around. Clean out your closet. Do the dishes.
Organize your pantry so you can find and easily access the things you use the
most often. Decide where the mail should go when it comes in the house, and
make sure it stays there until it gets dealt with. Pay the bills on time (or
early!). Get yourself organized, because if you can’t do that, you won’t get
your writing organized either. If you can’t do it with the little things, you
won’t do it with your writing. Trust me, I’ve seen it over and over again, with
writers who haven’t decided if they take writing seriously.
It needs to start with your lifestyle, because your lifestyle determines how all the pieces fall.
So get
organized, before you get published; that way, your writing isn’t a mess by the
time you send out query letters. You don’t need it to be a mess, when you
finally get signed. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that’s the last thing you
need.
And once your life is organized, you can start with your writing.
Unless
you’re a Neanderthal, you’re writing on a computer (or at least having it
compiled onto one). So name all your files, and name them with things you won’t
forget. Be descriptive. Use folders to get everything hyper-organized. One
folder for each project, and folders within that folder for all the little things
that go with that project. Go over the top with it! There’s nothing wrong with
having your files so organized that an idiot could plop down on your computer
and find what they’re looking for. In fact, that’s a good thing! You want it
idiot proof, in case you need someone else to go on your computer and get a
file for you. And for goodness sake, please backup your files. No, not
on a cloud. Those expire, and they’re not confidential. Get yourself an
external hard drive and some flash drives. Back it up. Multiple times. And
update those backups at least once a week.
Trust
me. Once you’ve lost files, you’ll understand how important it is to backup
your writing. I don’t want you to experience that—so please, just back it up.
Okay, so now your life is organized, the kitchen is clean, and you’ve organized and backed up the files on your computer. What’s next? An organization.
Before
you publish, file for a business and open a bank account for it. Yeah, it’ll
cost you a little bit of money, but not much. And the paperwork is easy, trust
me. Create a business, and use that business as the signee, when you do get a
publisher. Why? Because that way, any lawsuits that come up won’t be against you,
but against your business. That way, your copyright is owned by an entity, not
a person. And this way, you can keep yourself even more organized when it comes
to the bills. All your royalties go into that account. All your ad spend comes
out of that account. You pay yourself a portion, once you’re making enough that
you can, but for the most part, it’s an account that’s separate from your
personal money, so you don’t spend your personal funds on your writing. Sure,
you’ll throw some of your own money in it early on, but you want this to be a business,
remember? So it’ll need to have its own revenue, and be able to sustain itself.
Don’t worry, if you get an agent, they’ll be able to help you with a lot of
this. But I highly recommend keeping your funds separate, both for legal
and personal reasons.
And, last but not least, we have what you all expected me to talk about from the start:
Organize
your story, before you start writing. Get your ideas together, write them down,
and organize them. Clear your head. Think on it. Don’t be afraid to start and
stop and start again a few times, if you’re not sure how the story is turning
out.
You
know me. I’m a seat-of-your-pants, deer-in-the-headlights kind of writer. I’m
not one to do too much organization before I sit down and write a story. But I
will be the first person to tell you that when you do have an idea that
involves a lot of little ideas that you’re not sure you’ll be able to remember…
you need to write them down! Write it all down. Use Scrivener,
and keep it all organized with the files for your actual writing. Keep the
ideas from getting lost, by getting them outside your head—where things can
actually be organized.
If that means sleeping with a paper and pencil beside you… well, shouldn’t you be doing that anyway? ;)
[love]
{Rani
Divine}
p.s.
Have a topic you’d like me to cover? Leave a comment and let me know!
