Budgeting Time for a Book Project: Dreams vs. Goals
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.
Driving Out-of-body in “the Cell Phone Lane”
I can’t be the only one who’s noticed that people talking on their cell phones while driving on the highway prefer the far left lane.
I do tend to look for patterns in things, so it didn’t take long for me to discover that when someone is doing 10 or 20 miles an hour under the speed limit in what is traditionally considered the “fast lane” or the “express lane,” more often than not, they are talking on the cell phone.
Then I began to notice something even stranger: cars in the “slow lane” on the far right would suddenly careen left across 2, 3 or even 4 lanes for no apparent reason.
I saw no slowpokes in front of them that they needed to go around. And even if there had been, there were no other cars in the adjacent lane to keep them from scooting over just one lane to pass. I saw no debris on the road to be avoided, no left-hand exits, and no exit-only right lanes that would cause these drivers to abruptly vacate their cozy little spots in the pokey lane.
What I did notice, whenever a car suddenly went skiing from the far right to the far left lane in front of me, is that, in every single case, the driver was talking on the cell phone. I have to assume that the pokey driver in the right lane received a phone call just prior to that rather reckless maneuver, and for some reason felt the need or instinct to cut across in front of numerous faster-moving vehicles in order to get to that cherished left-hand lane.
But why? The more I thought about it the more it made some kind of wacky sense.
When people are talking on the phone, their brains focus not on the road but on a mental picture of the person they are talking to, and perhaps even the environment that person is calling from. Effectively, the recipient of that call has now left his or her body.
As I understand it, in any out-of-body experience, the traveler maintains a thin umbilical to the corporeal body, in case there’s a fire or some medical emergency that needs to be tended to back at the ranch.
But the vacated corporeal shell body is in a kind of low-power state during this experience and can’t handle too many tasks. So it looks for a place where it can perform basic functions with a minimum of demands and distractions.
The far left lane is perfect for that.
In the slow/right lane, cars are constantly getting on and off at ramps and exits. And it is the slow lane after all: some drivers may be going even slower than the shell body wants to go and would necessitate passing. Many highways have disappearing right lanes, designated for exiting only. In some places, highway lanes branch off onto different highways. Getting stuck in one of these could short out the basic circuitry of the shell body.
Even discounting those rare left exits and leftward-splitting branches, the far left lane constitutes the safest, least mentally challenging option.
And the shell body is unlikely to come up behind another vehicle going slower than it wants to go in the left lane (unless it’s another cell-phone-talking driver’s shell in the car ahead). Drivers who want to go faster simply pass and go around, waving their special swear fingers out the window, unnoticed by the shell driver who is unaware that its vehicle is preventing dozens or hundreds of other cars from reaching (or exceeding) the permitted speeds.
Aside from the dangerous skating across multiple lanes of traffic to get there, the left lane really is the safest place for out-of-body vehicles. For this reason, I suggest we make it official. Designate the far left lane in any multi-lane road as “the cell phone lane.”
Or maybe we should broaden the designation to “the brainless lane,” or the “unguided missile lane,” or the “weapons of mass distruction lane,” to also accommodate people reading their folded up newspapers over the steering wheel, women putting on mascara, and couples having lap sex…in vehicles where cell phones also lurk, waiting like time bombs to go off at any moment and throw the entire balance of the universe off kilter.
Perhaps we should take all you socially and environmentally responsible drivers out of those snug little concrete-walled chutes we call HOV lanes and put the out-of-body vehicles in those. Maybe we could line the barriers on either side with pillows or at least old rubber tires so the shell people don’t even have to steer; they can just keep that right foot on the gas until a brain shows up.
The only challenge that remains is getting those virtually unoccupied vehicles into the brain-dead lane without killing their drivers and others in the process. That’s a much tricker matter.
Suggestions anyone?
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First Day in Eldritch, Texas
Hello all!
Today is my first day in Eldritch, TX, the mythical setting of my new novel series in development and the world reflected in my model train village.
Eldritch is a rather obscure adjective meaning “weird, eerie, supernatural.” A fitting name for the places I inhabit.
As an author, I have written 2.3 technothrillers so far, none of which have yet won the publishing lottery, but they have come close. I am now embarking on the Eldritch series: think X-Files & Indiana Jones meet Northern Exposure & M*A*S*H. And, to round out the fiction portrait, I am, myself, a character in two Clive Cussler best-sellers!
Some of my posts here will surely address my state of mind as I craft new tales and populate new landscapes. They will also offer tips for writers who may not yet have shed the requisite gallons of blood, sweat and tears to find direction in this crazy business.
I’ve also published a book about health and hormones (women’s and men’s) called What Part of Menopause Don’t You Understand? The Ultimate Hormone Toolkit (available at Amazon. com). I am virtually rabid about the injustices and damage being done to women and men each day by a healthcare system that is dysfunctional at best and manipulated by greed at the highest levels. I do what I can to help people take control of their own wellbeing. I suspect many, perhaps most, posts will address health issues.
And, finally, I actually make a living as a writer and management consultant to high-tech industries, improving and streamlining operational processes, documenting products and procedures, and providing marketing collateral and services. Some posts will surely address the roller-coaster life of a writer/consultant.
Then there are the loose ends–those miscellaneous strings dangling from the tapestry of a life that holds together only tentatively–threads that, if pulled, could unravel the whole garment that stands between me and raw exposure. You’ll see those here as well: my rantings.
I hope you’ll join me in this adventure.
