The Eldritch Post

I know that it takes a major investment of time to produce a book worth publishing. And up until last year, I’d looked at my objective like a little savings account where I squirreled away and forgot a few dollars here and there until…surprise!…I’d accumulated a substantial sum. I didn’t think about the long view, how many years it would take to get to my goal. I just kept writing, one chapter at a time, and I lived in the present, enjoying the journey, looking forward to the satisfied surprise at the end.

But as I grew older and the years started to move faster, I became more pressed by the quantity of time available (in each year, and in my lifetime) for lengthy projects like books. Last year, for the first time I mapped out my whole year’s budget, because I had two book projects I wanted to complete. I knew if I didn’t allocate enough time every week, every month, I wouldn’t be aware of the time pressure, wouldn’t hear the tick of the clock, and I wouldn’t meet my goals.

I set out with the plan to write a non-fiction business book, transcribe and revise my grandfather’s hand-written autobiography, and, if time allowed, start on the first book of a new novel series. My sights were set on completing at least two books, and possibly half of another, all while managing my client projects. (I am a business writer and consultant.)

I tried to be realistic, with a goal of only 22 pages per week for the business book. Since I knew I could write 10 pages a day (on a good day), this was do-able, taking up, at most, three days a week on average, some weeks more, some less, depending on client work and my clarity of thought at the moment.

And the plan worked, at least in principle.  I completed the business book within the budgeted three months.

But then I had to write the proposal. I hadn’t budgeted nearly enough for that time. I had to conduct a lot of research on the competition, and had to gather, crunch and illustrate statistics to support my premise.

First. I wrote the full proposal, complete with graphs and artwork, a professional cover and interior layout. 

But then I found proposal guidelines for a specific publishing house I was targeting. I was meeting with one of its editors at a writers’ conference that October, so I had to create a subset of the full proposal for her, adding new bits and pieces that weren’t in the full proposal (then later adding those bits and pieces to the full proposal).

And then there were revisions to the proposal recommended by my agents to help them pitch it to other editors. These were all beneficial changes. But I’d allocated two weeks for the proposal; it took nearly six instead.

In the meantime, every other week, I revised a chapter of my 2nd technothriller to take to my writers’ group meeting. I hadn’t budgeted for that at all. Sometimes I could do the revisions in a half day or less, but other times it took a whole day because the changes were structural, not cosmetic.  The book had already made the rounds of editors and been rejected in its earlier, much fatter, incarnation, and my group believed it only needed some streamlining to make it ready for another try. Still, this effort ate yet another couple of days each month that I hadn’t accounted for in my budget.

And then, as they say about the best laid plans, my husband got sick and was diagnosed with colon cancer. The writing plan fell off the map and my entire life revolved around researching his disease and how to beat it…even after the doctor told us to take him home to die. Now, nine months later, he’s in remission, doing great, and taking a vacation from chemo.

And now I’m back where I was at the beginning of 2007, trying to decide how to budget my time for big writing projects. Only it’s worse now. I have too many projects I want to do. But this time I know enough to budget for the other parts of writing a book that don’t involve writing a book.

Writing this entry today has actually helped me manage this planning task so I don’t make myself crazy. I am hereby allowing myself the rest of 2008 to evaluate the various projects, to do some research, stick my toes in the water and get a sense of which projects make the most sense to pursue next year. If I get some clear direction before then, great, I can start sooner. If not, no pressure. 

And, of course, nothing is etched in stone because the Universe can throw in its own twists at any moment. But the important thing is to know where you want to go and what it takes to get there, even if you get knocked off course for a while. 

A dear friend once said to me: “I have dreams; YOU have GOALS.” That’s what this budgeting is all about: not dreaming of writing books and having a successful publishing career, but setting concrete and realistic goals to make the dreams come true.