LONG TIME NO BLOG: putting my money where my manuscript needed to be

Apologies for an unusually extended absence to those of you who follow this blog. I got distracted by something else in late August and am just now returning to my normal, blog-loving state.

Let me tell you about that "distraction," as it was a very working-writer thing.

I hadn't been able to make consistent time for my own writing for many months. In a time of financial pressure, paid projects always seemed to crowd as-yet unpaid writing out. And though I'm lucky enough to have teaching and consulting work that I deeply enjoy, a full day of work on others' books doesn't leave much energy for my own.
In the course of musing about this problem in the early summer, it occurred to me that I wasn't doing my own writing because there was a financial incentive not to do it.

A logical solution, therefore, would be to create a financial incentive to doing my own work. Or, stated in reverse, a financial disincentive to avoiding it.

So on June 28 I emailed eight dear friends who have supported me and my work lovingly over the years. I told them I was offering them a deal. If I could not produce a book proposal, synopsis, and 5,000 words of my new book on September 3, I would give each of them fifty bucks. They didn't need to read the work I produced, or for that matter do much of anything else. The only condition of the deal was that they weren't allowed to enable me or let me slide. If I couldn't produce, they had to agree to demand their money.

Well, guess what.

I love the gals I emailed my little proposition to. I'd be happy to give any one of them fifty bucks. But thrifty Bud Fox's thrifty daughter ain't handing out the equivalent of a month's mortgage payment to anyone (except a mortgage company).

And so I'm sitting here looking at the printouts. A proposal. A synopsis. Six thousand seven hundred and three words of writing. All finished on September 2, at which point I repaired to my bed to watch TV reruns, catch up on my sleep, and lick my creative wounds.

Not of the work I produced is great, let me hastily say. It's all very first-draftish. But it's there, and that's what counts.

Financial fear might not be your driving force (and if it's not, I deeply congratulate you).

What is?

Create some accountability around it, and see what happens. It worked for me.

At least so far.