Develop and Follow Routines..

In absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia – Author Unknown.

Develop Routines…and Stick to them!

I first learned the value of routines when working in cash services for a large bank.  I started in that department as a supervisor.  Not only was I honing and developing my skills as a supervisor, I also had to learn the jobs and functions of my team as well.  One of the skills I learned to coach was developing routines with the employees and their cash handling.  It took me a while, but I translated this skill into to my work ever since.  Routines have helped me to be successful in management, training, sales, and now writing.

When it comes to your writing, find the time in your schedule to hone your craft and hone yourself.  Yes, I said it, take care of yourself.  The first part of taking care of yourself is getting enough rest and exercise.  Even if you just take a twenty minute walk during your lunch at work, that's good exercise that will give you the energy you need to work your writing into your schedule.

The other part of honing yourself is reading books to help you with your writing or help you with your self confidence.  This could be a book about developing plot, developing character, or getting your manuscript published.  This could also be a book to help bolster your self-confidence, about achieving your goals.  Either way, reading a book to improve yourself and exercise help you to hone yourself so you can be everything you want to be to your family and your writing.

And of course, make routine time to write.  In the beginning, write just fifteen minutes a day or one page a day.  If you write one page a day of 250-300 words for a year, you'll have a full length novel manuscript when you're done.  After you get into your work, you'll figure out how to carve more time out of your schedule to pursue your dreams and goals.  In addition to your writing, make time to read.  If you're writing fiction, read fiction.  If you're writing non-fiction, read other non-fiction to hone your skills.  Reading will help you hone your writing craft.

In short make time each day to write, read the genre you are writing, read to help you better yourself, and exercise to take care of yourself physically.  It will all make you a better writer and help you accomplish your goals.

Routines – Closing Thoughts…

1.    Develop routines.
2.    Stick to them.
3.    Constantly revise.

Set Goals

This week's blog is a bit late.  Here it is, short and sweet; this will have to do for next week as well.  I have to travel out of town for my current full time job and won't have the access to submit a full update...bear with me...I'll be back at in in a week.

Set and Attain Goals...

You will never “find” time for anything.  If you want time you must make it – Charles Bruxton.

Now that you have established a vision and you know what "success" looks like, break up the journey to get there into milestones.  These milestones become goals.

I love the song in Disney's "Cinderella", "A dream is a wish your heart makes."  A goal is a dream with a date attached to it.  Until you assign a date for completion on your goals, they are just dreams.  I also like, "...That star can only take you part of the way, you've got to help it along with some hard work of your own and then you can do anything you set your mind to.." That's from Disney's, "The Princess and the Frog."

As the quote says, you must make time to reach your vision through your goals.

Goals – Closing Thoughts…

1.    Set goals.
2.    Schedule activities.
3.    Constantly revise.

Have a great week everyone.  I will return in a week and talk about developing and following routines to make your writing dreams (vision, goals) come true.

dean

Creating Your Vision

“If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end someplace else.”  Yogi Berra


    To begin, you should have a vision of what you’d like to accomplish with your writing career.  Are you looking to create some a little bit of extra income to pay down some debt, go on a vacation, complete a home remodeling project?  Are you looking to create a full time career that generates a comparable income to what you’re making today?  Or are you looking to write the next New York Times bestseller, do a fifty-state book signing tour, and be on Oprah, Ellen, and The Tonight Show? Maybe your goal is simply to pursue your writing as a hobby for relaxation, to get your mind off work, and productively occupy your free time.

    And what does your vision of success look like?  Does success mean that you complete one short story over a long weekend? Does success mean that you start blogging for your favorite web site to earn some extra money each week?  Maybe for you success means writing the Greatest American Novel of the current decade, making millions of dollars...living in Hawaii writing on the lanai with the sound of the waves accompanying the sound of the keyboard on your laptop?

   However you picture yourself as a writer and however you define success, the first step in being a “successful writer” is to define what that looks like for you.  Write down on a piece of paper (or type out) the following phrase:  "The definition of a writer for me is…"  Now take a few moments to define for yourself what your success will look like.  If you haven’t thought about it, take some time to define for yourself what you want to accomplish with your writing career.  Stop and take a few moments to figure out what it will take for you to see yourself as successful.  If you've already thought about this, then finish the sentence, this exercise should be relatively painless for you. 

   If you use this definition, that means the you can define yourself as a writer and successful even if all you want to do is create a collection of short stories throughout the next year for your own personal enjoyment.  Only you can define what it means to be successful. 

    Next week I'll write about putting  your Vision to action.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step...

This is one of my favorite Chinese proverbs. This blog site is my journey in my world of writing. I am currently working on my first fiction novel. Keep up with me on a weekly basis as I share with you my journey to get my first book published.

I am no one special.  I wasn’t a teen writing phenomenon like S.E. Hinton.   I didn’t go to school to become a writer.  Writing is something that I enjoy and direction I took when it was right for me.  The older I get, the more important it becomes to truly love and enjoy what I do for a career.  That’s why I chose to pursue a career in writing.

The process I’m going to share with you is a refinement of years and years of reading popular self help books and business books.  There’s a short bibliography at the back of this book.  This bibliography is only a list of the books that I remember reading, it is by no means a comprehensive list of everything I’ve ever read to define these principles that have shaped my success for at least the last twenty years.

The Five Step Process I’d like you to consider are:

1.    Create a Vision.  Answer the questions, “What do I want to accomplish? And what will ‘success’ look like for me?”

2.    Set Goals.  Answer the questions, “When do I want to accomplish my writing projects?  And when do I want to be successful?”

3.    Develop and Follow Routines.  Answer the question, “How will I go about completing my writing projects?”

4.    Define Boundaries.  Answer the question, “Where will I accomplish my writing projects?”

5.    Find a Friend.  Answer the question, “Who else is out there that could use my support just as much as I could use his/hers?”

In the upcoming weeks, I'll elaborate on each of these steps in the process individually. For the first week, this is it.