3 Questions To Ask Before You Begin Writing

The alarm goes off, you roll out of bed, hit the shower, grab a coffee, jump on a Zoom call followed by another and another and before you know it, you haven’t stood up from your desk until your spouse calls you for dinner.  Or, maybe your day starts out the same but its not a series of Zoom calls you are facing but a day of dressing toddlers, picking up toys, being a short order cook for a house full of kids all home for the summer. Before you realize it the sun is setting and you never got to the work you really wanted to focus on today, writing that blog, reviewing that book or writing your first chapter.  How do other authors do it?  How do they seemingly crank out book after book, blog after blog?

As I talk with the writers and authors I coach on the various projects they are working on I encourage them to ask these three questions.

Question Number 1: When are you going to find time to write?  Some people are morning people, others are night owls, and still others need a block of time each day.  No matter your personality you need to find an uninterrupted time that works for you.  Writing is deep work. The initiator of the concept, Cal Newport, author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, defines it this way, “professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limits.” He goes on to say, “these efforts create new value, improve your skill and are hard to replicate.”  

It doesn’t matter how good you are at multi-tasking, (some are saying that that is not even a real thing and our brains can’t operate that way effectively) you will not see success as a writer if you are not able to set aside time to do the deep concentrated work of putting pen to page, figuratively or literally and getting the ideas out and organized without distractions. So, before you decide to embark on this journey, take a hard look at your routine of the week and block out a few hours each day, a day a week or whatever you need to block out the distractions, settle your mind and let your thoughts flow uninterrupted and stick to it. Those time blocks will mean nothing if you just keep pushing them aside for the other things on your to-do list. Make your writing a priority and don’t let that priority slide down the ever growing to-do list.

Question number 2: How are you getting from idea to submission? Okay you’ve blocked out your time to write, you’ve talked a publisher into taking your idea or a website into posting your blogs, now how are you going to stay on task; meet those deadlines?  Author Courtney Reissig does it this way; she reverse engineers it.  She looks at the calendar and asks herself, “how many chapters do I have to write each month so that I will hit my deadline?” Then she looks at how many words she has to write each week to hit her chapter goal.  In essence, she uses the calendar and her word count to map out her plan from idea to submission.  You might have a different way of doing it but having a map and a plan to get to the destination is crucial to succeeding in your writing.  

One final question: Who is getting the glory here? Whether you are writing a book, posting a blog or crafting a tweet, always ask yourself who is getting the glory here?  As an author you have the unique position to elevate your work. You can do that through the skill of your turn of phrase, the cleverness of a well-placed social media post or the association you make between your work and someone else’s.  Words have the power to set something on fire, to build up and to tear down.  They can be the source of a brilliant idea or they can lead someone astray.  They can puff up and they can display genuine humility.  Who are you giving or is getting the glory in your words is always a good question to ask as you check your heart in whatever you write.  

So, before you launch out into this wild world of authorship ask yourself these three questions.  Writing is not easy; it’s grueling, time consuming and potentially punishing to the ego.  Be sure you are ready for what is coming before the first keystroke.