Patrick McDonald owns which, as you know, is full of writers. Then work your way up to 15 minutes.Īnd then I went to the guy who could make my wish come true. Make the mini-goal 5 minutes twice a week. If you get to the end of week 2 and you're really struggling with your mini-goal - say, you just weren't able to get yourself to write for 15 minutes twice a week - don't beat yourself up. Reassess at least once a week and make changes as necessary. I know you're impatient, but remember, it's better to get there a little slowly than not to get there at all!Ħ. Longer - think two to five years - if you have yet to have your work critiqued by objective strangers, if you need to build a platform, or if you need to get some short stories published to establish yourself. Likewise, give yourself at least six months to a year to find an agent. Only once the task is regularly coming easily - perhaps you even find yourself looking forward to the two days - should you move on to your next mini-goal. Instead, take some time making writing over your coffee a habit. If you're able to write for 15 minutes at least twice a week over coffee but you feel like you just barely pulled it off, the very last thing you should do is move up to your next mini-goal of writing for 15 minutes at least four times a week. Once you accomplish a mini-goal, take some time to make it a habit rather than rushing on to the next mini-goal. Then you can consider sending your material out. Build in plenty of mini-goals in which you get lots of feedback from other writers - and listen to what they have to say. Too many people rush out to find an agent before their work is really ready.
If you want to get an agent, write out all the steps not only of getting the agent, but also of preparing your manuscript and query. If you set the goal too high - say, 15 minutes every day - you're likely to fail and get the goal-violation effect, and then it's all over. For example, "I will write for 15 minutes at least twice a week over my morning coffee." Caveat: start smaller than you think you need to. Instead, start with a specific mini-goal you know you can achieve. In other words, after you've failed once or twice, you proverbially throw your hands in the air and decide you can't do it, so you give up. If you try, you're likely to get a goal-violation effect. But unless you already spend quite a bit of time writing each day, you'll never be able to ramp up to a whole hour a day from nothing. You may well spend an hour writing every day for the first two or three days, or - if you're stubborn - a week or so. So let's say you want to spend an hour a day writing.
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