|
"Fifty Things You Can Do"Cynthia's Column , Sept. 2001 Summer is ending, and a new season is about to begin. Fall is on the way. Old things are dying and change is coming. The rich days of harvest are almost here. You may not realize it, but this means it is time to break out of the rut and patterns of your daily life, take the reins of your heart in both hands and begin to make your dreams come true. You have been writing for many years. You may have thought I didn't know about that, but I do. And you have dreams and aspirations for your work that you hardly dare to share even with yourself. Climb into that dark attic, turn on the light, dust off your hope chest and open it. What do you find there, tucked away, waiting for someday to arrive? It has arrived. Pull out your dearly beloved projects and shake the wrinkles out of them. What can you do to light the magic fuse that will lead to a creative explosion in your writing life? Find a free hour you can devote to your dreams. This one right now will do perfectly. Now pull up a chair, grab a fresh pad of paper and your favorite pen. (Luckily it is Back to School time and even all night gas stations and grocery stores are stocked with mountains of gorgeous paper and pencils. ) At the top of the page write "Fifty Things I Can Do To Forward My Writing Career." Write it boldly, clearly, fearlessly. Don't worry that you can't think of five things to do, let alone fifty. That's your left brain trying to control/kill the creative process. You all know about your two minds. The Creative Right Brain and the Critical, Controlling Left Brain. We need both to write well and sell our work. So begin the list, logically, thinking of good ideas that make sense, processed by the left brain. You should get a few ideas for your list right off the bat. Polish this one. Send out that one. Research a market, etc. When your Left Brain runs out of good ideas, don't stop. This is the key. If you just sit there, committed to fifty things on your list, the Left Brain usually sooner or later will get disgusted and leave. Then the Right Brain can take over and come up with additional, more creative, less linear ideas. Stay with it until you get fifty. Even if some of them are ridiculously far out. (Such as "Win the lottery and publish my own book," etc. ) It is in this process, of far out Right Brain ideas (in the #30 to 50 range), that original notions arise. Like Keith and Peggy Walker deciding to float a life-size rubber Orca in Richard Donner's pool, to get him to shoot Free Willy. Or my sending a dozen roses to a difficult producer who was blowing a years' long negotiation against us, with a note that thanked him for all his help. Both of these tactics worked and both of those movies got made. And they didn't come from anywhere near the Left Brain. (And they both seemed crazy at the time. ) Many other crazy ideas have backfired, of course, but that's part of what keeps life fun and interesting. You never know what's going to work, so there are tons of interesting things to try. In thinking of fifty things you can do to forward your career, here are a few thoughts to help get the list rolling. Can you do market research, like taking a pad and pen to Blockbuster or Powells and making notes on what other projects are like yours, who is buying, editing, producing or agenting them and query those people? In book acknowledgment pages, authors usually thank their editors and agents. So with an hour or so of research you can find out who handles the writers you'd most like to emulate. How about researching email addresses for people you've queried or submitted to and following up with a short email note? Or sending a funny, subject-appropriate Christmas card to the agent who's had your book since summer. Include making clean polished copies, updating your writing resume, picking up or reading that great Elizabeth Lyon book on Nonfiction Book Proposals Anyone Can Write. Entering writing contests you can later include in a query letter. You could hire an editor to go over fifty or a hundred pages of your manuscript to give you an idea how close to polished, publishable shape your work is in. Is there a support group, critique group or class you've been meaning to join? A writing book you've been meaning to read? A research trip you've been wanting to take? Buying fresh writing supplies would forward your career. As would scheduling writing time, or making a coffee and writing date with yourself for your favorite café. Is there any equipment that you would need if you were a professional writer that you have not allowed yourself to buy? Begin treating yourself like a professional writer if you want to be one. Maybe you could research the latest in technology for writers. What about i-publishing? How does it work? How do you make money in it? What about screenwriting for the internet? You could read up on Stephen King's direct to net book projects to see how he has done it. Shake up that static, nothing-I-can-do-but-wait inactive mindset. There are hundreds of things you can do. Just come up with fifty. You have them? You made it? I knew you could do it. Now pick one item on your list. And do it. And tomorrow pick another one. And do it. This is how careers are made up from scratch. I know. That's how I made up mine. Cynthia Whitcomb will be teaching her Screenwriting Class again this fall every other Saturday beginning September 22 and ending December 1. To enroll call the WW office at (503)452-1592. Cynthia Whitcomb is president of Willamette Writers, and has had 29 of her screenplays produced. She is author of The Writers' Guide to Writing Your Screenplay and The Writers' Guide to Selling Your Screenplay. She teaches screenwriting classes at Portland State University.and through Willamette Writers. |