Why Writers Must Dream (But Also Herd Cats)

Over at SuccessCreeations.com Chris Cree is talking about Visionaries and Executioners (er, Princes of Execution). He asks, Can you move (or move someone) from one category to the other?

I was born a dreamer. In college I began to forget appointments that mattered. (Like a date with my soon-to-be wife.)

She sat me down and said, “You can’t live like this.”

I said, “It’s just the way I am.”

She bought me a day planner. I tried for several years to make it work. But I kept forgetting to review the specific tasks for the day.

Then I forgot a parent-teacher conference. Yes, some kid’s dad took vacation time to meet with me about his son’s grade. And I forgot the meeting.

The tech revolution of the 1990s saved me. I bought a pocket calendar. Now when I entered tasks, it would beep at me to remind me to do simple things. Later I switched to various types of Palms. Soon I hope to get a Treo or something similar.

The Absent-Minded Flubber inventor would have remembered his own wedding with one of these things. I continue to use mine. (Today–9:00 call the doctor, 9:30 call to cancel a meeting, 10:00-4:00 a strategic editing meeting, 5:40 choir practice at church.) If I don’t write these things down and hear the beep, I won’t remember to go to them.

Sometimes I beep myself to remember to leave work.

But the machine has worked a little bit like training wheels. Every so often, I forget my Palm, but I remember the things I have to remember. And even more important, the little device has gradually (over a period of 13 years) taught me how to turn a vision into a series of strategic steps that fit into my calendar and beep at me when they come due.

Thinking about Chris’ question, I recalled my own experience moving gradually from Dreamer to Dreamer/Executioner. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve become a little bit like the anal retentive carpenter. Execution still doesn’t come naturally to me, but it’s a skill I’ve learned. And I do find joy in sorting out the puzzle of a schedule—much like Phil Hartman enjoyed the syntax of his tool belt pnuemonic.

Then I started thinking about a specific statement that Chris made:

When you are a one man (or one woman) show, you get to wear both hats. In fact you have to wear both of them or you are sunk.

Writers are a one person show. We go it alone—at least for the first draft usually. Then you call in the expert editor, and the agent, and the layout team, and the marketing team, and the whole gamut of resources that presses offer.

But writers build the prototype on their own.

They need to be visionaries:

• Telling stories, beginning arguments with the end in mind
• Knowing the unique selling proposition of their work
• Thinking in grand epic images and metaphors
• Creating characters and voices and motives and psychologies
• Understanding and imagining the reader who will pick up their work
• Knowing exactly what the audience can expect to get from the work.

But they also need to be executioners:

• Scheduling time to write daily, BIC (butt-in-chair)
• Creating characters, finding anecdotes in ways that are systematic
• Sometimes mapping out plots (or the non-fiction persuasive arc) chapter by chapter
• Paying attention to things like sentence structure, usage, standard grammar and punctuation. (It’s important y’all.)
• And worst of all, mailing submissions, tracking magazines and rejections and queries and markets and agents.

Writing is an art. But so is any successful business. We can dabble in our art as an avocation. We can be serious hobbyists. But if we want to enter into the business of writing, if we want to receive credibility in the form of published work and publisher contracts, we’ve got to lose the wishy-washy, right-brained, psycho-pop image of ourselves as nutty professors who forget their own weddings (or dinner dates).

There may be some artists who present that image, but it’s probably just sprezzatura.

Like my wife taught me before we married, you can’t live like that. You won’t be successful.

Every writer is an entreprenuer. Every publisher is a venture capitalist looking for the next big brand.

The sooner writers realize this, the more focused they will be.

Keep the vision. Keep the passion. Break all the rules and write from the heart. But don’t use your vision or the creative process as an excuse to let the cats run off and stampede.

Execute. Execute. Execute.

There’s no other option.

(Note to readers: there’s still some house cleaning going on here. I will back in full force soon–when we finish the transfer to the new server. In the meantime, feel free to comment.)

(Another note to readers: I’m almost done with the house cleaning. We lost a few comments in the process, but I’ll load those back in tonight. Thanks for your patience!)