Drifting Sideways

Let me know if this sounds familiar.  You, or someone you know, loves the process of writing project after project.  This person is obsessively learns new writing skills and follows the publishing industry.  However, this person (who will remain nameless) bounces from project to project on a whim, and despite having a good work ethic and short bursts of success, wastes a lot of opportunity and misses out on long term success.  They show great promise in short flashes, but are lacking somehow in the ability to build a successful long-term campaign or career.

The work ethic is there, but all the writing, skill, and knowledge in the world end up in nothing.  I know this sounds familiar, whether because it describes you or someone you know.  It describes Todd Henry, and it probably used to describe some other famous writers out there who somehow figured out how to quit leaping before looking.

The advice to just get in the chair and do the work helps a dreamer, but it’s not going to help a drifter one bit.  They’re already doing the work, and that’s not working long term.

So today we’re going to train our inner manager in the skills needed to help a drifter find focus and become what Todd calls a developer.  A developer is someone who can do all three of the types of work needed to build a satisfying body of work and successful career.

In his book, “Die Empty,” Todd explains that you, me and everyone else wanting to be a creative maker need to be able to do three categories of work.  The first category of work he calls mapping.  This is basically planning.  It’s the ability to make clear goals and set priorities.  The second category of work he calls making.  Making is actually doing the work.  It’s the progress part of the work where you’re doing anything and everything that moves you forward.  It’s the visible tasks you can point to at the end of the day and say “That wouldn’t have happened without me today.”  The final category of work he calls meshing.  Meshing is everything you do that stretches and grows you professionally and personally as a creative and professional.  Meshing is learning and developing new skills, cultivating your curiosity, and keeping up with what’s going on in the industry and your genre.

A drifter is a person who is doing the making and the meshing, but falling apart on the mapping.  In other words, they’ve got the ability to do the work and build professional skills and savvy, but they don’t have the ability to do the work needed to find their purpose and then make, and stick to, a long-term plan.  In Todd’s very direct words, the drifter “fails to follow through on many of his ideas and projects.  He gets stuck and doesn’t see things through to the end.  He may have spotty success, but wonder why his work never seems to sustain itself.”

This problem might not be a big deal when writing is a hobby, but when you want it to be your career, struggling with the mapping part of the equation is a disaster.

So again, what we need here is not blame and shame.  Nor gloating, if this happens to not be a problem you suffer from in your work.  What we need is to look into this common and well-known management problem, and find out how it’s handled by a savvy leader who knows just what to do.  If we know how to handle it, we can be that capable manager for ourselves, and point our wanna-be author friends in the right direction.

It might seem that the obvious solution here is to yell, “Oh, just set a goal and stick to it!”  The problem seems obvious and easily solved with a bit of bullying and pressure.  But as I’ve learned since last week, being weak in one of these three areas means there is a lot more to fixing the problem than tackling only one aspect of it.  So hang in there.  Someone who manages a creative needs the gentle touch, the service and support approach.  Otherwise you run the risk of crushing the fragile balance of trust and freedom that fosters and builds creativity.

Our inner writer, if she is a drifter, needs training and support, not disgust.

Last week, I set about focusing on the downfall of the dreamer, the writer who does well enough at planning and learning the business well enough to plot a career strategy, but struggles to actually do the work of writing.  As someone who falls into this category personally, researching, writing, and then trying to put the solution into action this last week taught me something interesting.  My default is to plan, learn and plot.  Whenever I want to work on my writing career, I fall into the easiest, most practiced work for me.  Because my former careers involved lots of planning, learning and plotting but no novel writing, I’d rather plan, learn and plot all day rather than do the scary new stuff involved in actually getting the writing work done.

I would guess the same sort of situation is happening for someone who is practiced at setting writing tasks and checking them off, learning and plotting, but doesn’t spend time planning.  The drifter.  Resistance hits this writer hardest when it’s time to set clear goals and priorities, find their purpose, and then make and stick to a long-term plan.  The drifter hits the emotional wall when it’s time to follow through on a project and see it though to the end.

So, if you’re a drifter, the advice to just sit down and write doesn’t work for you.  You’re already sitting and writing.  Similarly, signing up for more books, courses and conferences will not solve your problem.  You’ve actually got to take time away from writing, learning and plotting.  You don’t have to do this in big chunks, but every day you need to spend at least a little time on either making your plan or going over it to keep yourself on track.

Like me, you’re probably totally excited and willing to do this.  Until it’s time to actually sit down and do this.

What are you doing again?  Specifically, you’re doing all the exercises and thought assignments needed to work out all seven steps of setting a goal.  If this is the first Writing Boss episode you’ve listened to, it’s time to go back in the queue and listen to the episodes titled Goal Setting, The Audacity of Wanting, Obstacles, Knowledge & Skill, Help I Need Help, A Detailed Plan and Accountability.  Actually listen with a pen and paper (or whatever you use to write) and do the list making and thought assignments mentioned.  If you follow this process of making a detailed goal step by step, you’ll probably not only end up with a basic version of the plan you’ve never made, but you’ll also be excited about it.

You’ll be excited about the plan you make because it’s not my plan or anyone else’s.  It’s yours.  It’s your private, personal plan for getting everything you want and more than you think you deserve.  A plan guided by the best practices and advice of experts on creative work.

But how will you stick to this plan?  After all, you might have made plenty of plans in the past and been excited and clear before you hit the second Achilles Heel of the drifter…sticking to the plan long-term.

For this half of the problem of being a drifter, you need to focus in on creating a progress loop for yourself, as explained by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer in “The Progress Principle.”  I also suggest reading Steven Pressfield’s “The War of Art.”  You need to know how to make small steps every day toward your goal, and beat resistance to sticking to that goal every time you’re tempted to fly off into a new, more exciting and easier (in the short term) path.

Here again, it would help to go back and listen to past Writing Boss episodes Start a Progress Loop, Keeping the Progress Loop Rolling, and Tracking Your Progress.  Especially if you won’t have time to read two books this week and want to get started right away making a goal and sticking to it.

It might seem like a cop-out to direct you to previous episodes, but I’ve covered these subjects so thoroughly before that I hate to do a dehydrated recap for you when there’s so much more detailed help available.  As I said last week in paraphrasing Steven Pressfield, you don’t have to feel enthusiasm for doing the work that’s hard for you if you’re willing to sit down and work miserably through a checklist of tasks with your hands until your head and heart catch up.

The last thought I’ll leave you with is that you might struggle with drifting because you have vision problems.  You’ve made a plan, you stick to the plan, but you feel like a blind person, or someone trying to see who they are, what they’re meant to do, and where they’re going through frosted glass.  You can’t see yourself or your work clearly, because you’re too close to both.

If you’re struggling with your plan because you can’t see your own big picture or clarify your artistic or career vision, you need outside help.  This is where your strength at actually getting work out there and knowing the industry will really help you.

First, you need to find a trusted source farther away from you and your work to find your brand, your voice, or your vision for you.  This can be done by pulling all the reviews on your work and looking for patterns of what people like or almost got and still want from your work.  You can also approach dedicated fans who know exactly why they seek out your work again and again.  Don’t ask your mom, but do ask a few friends you trust to give you their opinions.  By gathering all this information, you’ll have a way of seeing your work and career more clearly through the eyes of others.

I’ll wrap up by saying that you’re probably interested in doing all this, but won’t actually get to it without making a point of getting to it.  As my own manager, I’ve decided every time my writer wants to sit down to do comfortable work this fall, I’m going to redirect to uncomfortable work I haven’t been doing.  You don’t have to give up writing, learning and plotting to plan every time you sit down to work, but it might help to pick a percentage of the time or a specific time and day of the week to take the offramp from your work freeway and bump along the unpaved gravel road that will lead to your plan, your vision, and eventually, your successful career focused on priorities important to you and your readers.

Next week, I’ll be covering the third type of person doing only two out of three types of work necessary for success:  the driver.  This is the person who plans, does the work, but doesn’t learn their craft, their industry, or plot a career path to succeed in their marketplace.