Risky Investments

The highest risk investment I make in my writing life belongs to inaction. I am convinced this precept holds true in most businesses. When I fall into complacency or avoidance, my writing business suffers. The same holds true for my publishing company.

Too often, I stare at my computer screen or blank sheet of paper (yes, I still go analog at times), only to move on to a rousing game of Spider Solitaire. My risk here borders on 'risk-guarantee'. I say "borders on" because every now and then a great idea or tangent comes to mind while I match wits with the witless computer. (We won't extrapolate that analogy because the results get very ugly for me...).

I know physically sitting down and writing, regardless of whether I feel the content riveting enough, holds the key to my success. I also know I write well. Perseverance wins the day in this industry, yet too often I fall into writing molasses. Writing molasses describes that thick, slow-death-drowning, in words you typically love, but for some reason you cannot bring to life.

The fix for this is to write. My posts lately repeat this theme over and over. Put your writing in perspective. Some of us desire to earn our livelihood from writing. When we key each day, whether the writing meets our specs or not, we make investments in our career, our future. When we flee the keyboard and pen, we invest our time in high-risk land.

I do not advocate doing away with the contemplation that leads to writing. In many ways, this pre-flight thought process holds more importance than the writing itself - but ONLY if the writing eventually occurs. How many times have you contemplated a great topic only to shove it off until later. Most often, later never comes and all that thought and contemplation now teeters on the high risk side of non-existence.

This leads to the next high risk area of writing - a great idea, topic, or thought comes to you and you do not write the idea down. The old, "Oh, I'll certainly remember that!" aspect of writing gets chronicled often. If you write with any seriousness at all, you experience the loss of ideas, topics, concepts, etc, simply because you did not write them down.

I own no excuse for allowing one of these precious ideas to sail away. At all times, my iPhone, pen and paper, or some other writing vehicle stands ready for my interaction. Should I miss a great idea, the fault lies in my inaction, not the excuses I once paraded for my ego. Pens quietly await my fingers in my cars, by my bed, on my desk, in the kitchen, in the family room, even in my bathrooms. The iPhone comes armed with the notepad feature, the voice recorder, email, and Facebook.

Do you want to minimize your risk of not producing? Set up pockets of tools - pens, pencils, paper, smart phone, etc - to rely on when you need them. Use these tools. Look forward to using them. I often get excited when great ideas begin to brew and I am away from my computer. The change in 'input scenery' can add freshness to your writing.

Along these lines, make sure you develop your ideas enough to recreate them when you get back to your workstation. A couple keywords may not do the trick. You may need to flesh the idea out so when you get back to the full-fledged writing, you create what you intended.

Editing

Another high risk issue for writers falls in the editing category, or lack thereof. I agree with many writers, especially those of us who write in the so-called 'writer mills'. We do not possess the time nor the funds to pay for professional editing. What we CAN do, though, is read what we've written out loud. Then begin with the last sentence, read it, followed by the next-to-last, followed by the next one up and so on. Simply running through our writing like this a couple times before we upload will catch most of the blatant errors.

These three risk areas are common to all writers - avoiding the writing chair, not writing down our ideas, and shrugging off editing. We may all increase our chances for success by keeping our awareness of these risky writing areas on high alert. When we're writing each day, keeping notes some place other than just our heads, and we take the time to edit, we minimize three of the most debilitating risks of our craft.