Before and After the Book Deal. Courtney Maum

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ when your friends are busy writing in front of you”), which is why coworking spaces are an attractive option for those who put laundry first and writing seventh when they “work” from home.

      There are coworking spaces that exist exclusively for writers that give you access to caffeine, a desk, and a printer for a certain price each month. The downsides are that the printer might not work and you must get into the creative zone alongside a stranger who wants to be published in the exact same places you do; the upside is that you don’t have to bring your computer with you every time you go to the restroom.

      Monetize your writing

      When author Mira Jacob was unexpectedly laid off from a corporate job she’d held in different capacities for over a decade, her husband convinced her to pretend that her two months of severance pay was an advance for her first novel. Almost immediately, though, Mira started receiving sympathy job offers from professionals who knew she had been the only parent working at a parenting website. “I don’t think I would have had the courage to turn those opportunities down if I hadn’t had an awesome agent who begged me not to take another job,” Mira explains. “She told me, ‘Don’t go back and work for any assholes; this book is going to sell. It will sell for real money. It’s going to change your life.’ I’d been writing that book for almost ten years,” Mira says, “and I finished it in a month.”

      Mira wasn’t setting out to get fired, and she certainly doesn’t recommend tacking LAYOFFS! onto your vision board, but it’s true that Mira made advances in her writing when she decided to monetize her work. Regardless of what it is—a novel, a collection of short stories, a book of poetry, or essays—most writers will not be getting paid for their first book before it actually becomes one, so you are going to have to trick yourself into believing in its value while you’re writing it.

      Maybe you divert part of your salary to pay yourself a writing wage—an unnecessary visit to Instagram will feel more lamentable if you’re on the clock. If you have the budget, some writers find it useful to rent a separate office or a desk in the kind of communal workspaces we’ve mentioned. Heck, maybe you need to rent a computer by the hour at an old-school Internet café—whatever it takes to shame your inner procrastinator into actually writing.

      DIY your own writing retreat

      Customized residencies are a godsend because you don’t have to apply for them; you don’t even need to leave your couch to participate in one. If you need a weekend to turbospeed ahead in a writing project, put up an out-of-office reminder, change your social media avatars to a note saying “Gone writing,” and lock yourself inside your dwelling. (Or have someone lock you up in theirs: when the aforementioned Michele Filgate was trying to finish a difficult personal essay, a friend agreed to keep Michele locked inside their apartment until she finished it, and Lisa Ko has done some of her best writing while pet-sitting for friends.)

      Airbnb has homeowners attuned to people’s space needs, and savvy hosts have realized how far writers will travel for solid peace and quiet. Formerly private residences like The Porches in Virginia, Patchwork Farm in Massachusetts, or Spruceton Inn in the Catskills have transitioned into retreat centers with customized residencies for writers, and nothing stops you from contacting a hotel to see if they’ll offer you a discounted rate if you bring your writing group. For writers looking to pack a little vacation into their retreat, Shaw Guides has a titillating list of conferences in destinations like Peru, Greece, and Mexico, as well as a variety of lesser-known retreats and conferences throughout the United States.

      Because writers aren’t the only species craving stillness, DIY retreaters should take note of the meditation resources in their communities. Poet Aaron Belz enjoyed many a writing weekend at the Vision of Peace Hermitages in Missouri, where twenty-five dollars a night would get him a private cabin or trailer, with meals delivered by a monk in a golf cart for a pittance more. Cameron Dezen Hammon used to do silent retreats at the Villa de Matel convent in Houston, Texas: it was completely free for day use, and the donation for an overnight stay was up to the retreater’s discretion. Author Samantha Hunt favors the Holy Cross Monastery in upstate New York, where seventy dollars gets her a room, three square meals, and all the silence she can write through. An added benefit of religious and/or mindfulness programs is that alcohol isn’t allowed, which can certainly aid focus.

      Know when you work best (and try to write during those times)

      When I’m deep into a project, I’m not an easy person to live with. I’m snippy, distracted, disheveled: you interrupt me at my writing desk, I will actually snarl. I have a spouse who also works at home and a young child, and although they’re willing to share space with my wild boar–ness sometimes, every day’s not cool.

      After fits, starts, and therapy, I discovered that planning the work week around my energy levels is the only way that I can show up for all my roles. Mondays and Tuesdays I’m at my most energetic, so I reserve these days exclusively for my creative writing. The other days of the week, I eke out life stuff (email, freelance work, groceries, parenting, attempts at human kindness), and I feel calmer about that eking because of my hyperconcentrated work at the beginning of the week. You can’t write all day during a weekday if you have a nine-to-five, but you can learn to honor your energy patterns when you make a writing schedule. If you’re not a morning person, it’s unlikely that you are going to be able to sustain an existence in which you write before your day job. Likewise, if you have responsibilities that leave you exhausted in the evenings, maybe writing after midnight isn’t the best choice. To the extent that you can control for this, try to plan your writing time when you have energy to write.

Setting writing goals

      In order to maximize the time they have for writing, the most successful of our brethren decide what they want to accomplish before they start to work. Writing goals often fall into the three following categories:

      Quantity

      People balk at the idea that a novel can be written in a month, but National Novel Writing Month (better known as NaNoWriMo) exists to prove the contrary. Participants set ambitious word-count goals per day in order to write the entirety of a novel draft during the month of November, and the website offers fun tools to track your progress and to connect with writing friends.

      Although NaNoWriMo has created unnecessary stress for literary agents whose inboxes are flooded with half-baked manuscripts each December, it proves that you can make ambitious writing projects manageable by breaking them down into small parts. A ninety-thousand-word novel, for example, can be written over a year by writing three hundred fifty words on each day of the workweek (reward yourself for your productivity and take the weekend off!). For people who have a hard time visualizing word-count amounts, three hundred fifty words is roughly the length of the desperate, run-on email you just sent to your best friend. So to reach your writing goals, stop writing long emails, and work on your book instead.

      Most writers who use the word-count method feel productive if they write one thousand words a day. Regardless of the number you pick, remember that hitting your word-count goal doesn’t perfect the project; revision does. So leave time to revise!

      Butt-in-the-chair time

      “I am for consistency,” says author Gina Sorell. “There have been times in my life I’ve been able to write for a few hours every day, and times when I can only write for a few hours on Saturday mornings. But I find that the consistency of the routine, whatever that may be, is key. Right now, five days a week, I’m at my desk by 5:30 a.m. for two hours, before family life and work life wake up. I’m not bragging about the time of day that I get up,” Gina adds. “I’m a terrible morning person, but dawn is the only time I can feel free of other responsibilities to write.”

      You СКАЧАТЬ