30. Project Management for Writers with Kerry Savage

In this episode, Suzy sits down with fellow book coach, Kerry Savage to discuss how writers can use project management strategies to reach their writing goals. It's more than just a to-do list! They talk technology, SMART goals, and how to put it together with a strategy. 

Resources Mentioned in the Episode: 

• 5 ChatGPT Prompts To Stop Playing Small And 10x Your Reality
• Writing Practice Success Strategies workbook

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Transcript

0:49

Welcome to Show Don't Tell Writing with me, Susie Vidore, where I teach you the tried and true secrets to writing fiction, nonfiction, that are going to wow your readers broken down step by step. We're going to explore writing techniques. I'm going to show you a glimpse behind the scenes of successful writers careers that you wouldn't have access to otherwise, and I'm also going to coach writers live on their pages so that you can learn and transform your own storytelling. Whether you're just starting out, you're drafting your first book, you're editing, or you're currently rewriting that book, or maybe even your tenth book, this show's gonna help you unlock the writing skills that you didn't even know you needed, but you definitely do. I'm so looking forward to helping you get your amazing ideas from your mind onto your pages in an exciting way for both you and your readers so that you can achieve your wildest writing dreams. And you're going to also have some fun doing it. Let's dive in. I am over the moon to have Carrie Savage with me today. We recorded this interview live at a retreat together, sitting on a couch and it was just so much fun to have my book coaching colleague there as she's from the Boston area and we don't get together very often. She has so much experience from her former life before she became a book coach, but she's been an editor and project manager for educational publishers and a digital marketing agency for a number of years. So she's worked in publishing for a long time. And she coaches all genres of fiction and she is just an absolute delight. You're going to learn a ton in this episode where she breaks down the scary concept of project management or putting timelines to your writing and gives us tons of practical tips. Enjoy. Welcome, Keri. I am so excited to be sitting down with you in person. It's been a few years. It has been. It's so good to see you. It's so, so good. And we are going to go behind the scenes today and talk about project management, which sounds like it's totally not related to writing a book, but I can promise you all it's totally related to writing a book. Keri brings so much experience to this, and we're going to just unpack all of that. Are you excited for that? I'm very excited because yes, a lot of people hear project management and they think. I can't do that or, Oh, I don't want to do that because I want to be creative and just write and be free. And I am here to tell you that project management can help you be more creative. It can help you be even more creative. Okay. This is what listeners want to hear. But first, if you're getting a little weirded out and you're like, Oh my gosh, this is not the podcast for me. I'm going to turn you off because I don't even know what project management is. What are you talking about when you say project management? Let's, let's like take a step back for a minute. So my favorite thing to say, and I was a project manager officially in a very corporate capacity for about a decade. And I like to say it was herding cats because that's often what it felt like. But really what it is, it's just the things that we do every day formalized. So, like, if you make dinner for your family, or you go to the grocery store, you run an errand, you make a list, you're checking things off, like, you're project managing dinner or that trip to the grocery store. So, when people get a little freaked out about project management, think, oh, I can't do that, or I don't want to do that. You actually do it all the time. We're all experts at it, we just don't really know that we are, because we don't call it that. Well, some of us are more expert than others, I would argue, and just full disclosure, I am a writer, but my previous life, I was an operations professional. And project management is kind of my life when you're talking about running a household with three kids and making dinner and everything else. It's like this constant matrix in my mind of what has to come first and where the critical path is and where we're going with that. So you're speaking my language, but I do know in talking with writers, this is not something that always comes naturally. Is that what you find? Absolutely. Like, like I said, people get very terrified by it in a lot of ways. Or they think. That's like the other side of my brain, right? Because it's like, what is it? The left side of your brain is the creative brain and the system side is the other side. And so they think those 2 things can't go together. And honestly, when I started out, I was very resistant. I was so burned out on project management having done it for so long. And it was actually Jenny Nash who convinced me that I had this set of skills. I absolutely could put it to use in my writing life, my writing practice, and also my coaching practice. And when I sat back and really thought about it, I was like, you know, of course she's absolutely right. And so that's when I started developing for these systems and tools that I use with my coaching clients and with my own writing to get stuff done, because that's really what it's all about. That makes you such a unique book coach as well, Kerry, because you can do that. Can I tell you that recently a colleague of mine shared with me this chat GPT prompt, and before we get all AI, not talking about writing a book or anything like that, it's like prompts to brainstorm your business or what you should do with your life or something. It was this really cool prompt and I'll put it in the show notes. I put in there that I like to write and then I put my background of all my operation stuff and it literally came up and said I should have a book coaching. I was like, well thanks chat GPT, like, did you look me up and find out that's what I was already doing? I don't know how useful it was, but maybe, you know, whatever. I think one of the cool things is that many writers actually come to writing from other walks of life. Absolutely. They, they come from other places and we think just like you did. Oh, Can't bring that with me or that skill doesn't matter. Oh, I'm a I'm an imposter in this writing world. And yet, you know, you do bring skills and you do bring other things. And this is a great example it is. But yeah, I mean, we all bring all of our own past things. I mean, I was other things too. It was a. You know, a writer and an editor and a project manager and a barista. So I make really good coffee when I start to work here in Arizona together. So if I take you up on making a coffee, I don't know what they have for equipment here. So, yes, we all, we absolutely bring all of this other stuff into our writing practice. And I think that it makes us stronger writers because if we were just that focused thing, you know, we would never. I don't know, get to experience like all that, that joy and variety and all the, the wealth that it brings to us. We'd all probably be writing the same books, right? Because we'd all be writing from the same stuff. But no, we have this wide variety of, of literature and nonfiction and fiction that's available to us and all the memoirs and everything. I'm rambling, but all of which to say is like, that's just how we get this breadth of experience and this breadth of like wonderful knowledge that we all get to bring to it. So yeah, don't ever be afraid that if you're coming to writing from something else. That you can't do it because you've been in this other space for so long, you know, you're bringing whatever you've brought all those experiences with you to enrich your writing life. So how have you brought? Yeah, that's amazing. And how have you brought, like, I'm fascinated to see what your process is as compared to. You know, other things that I've worked with and so please feel free to geek out about this. But, but how have you brought, how are you bringing project management into your writers that you work with into their lives and into your own writing life if you want to share that? So I think one of the things that I realized and actually like project management to me for a long time was really about nuts and bolts. It was about scheduling and making lists of tasks. And don't get me wrong. It absolutely is that. And that is part of my practice. But in the old corporate world, once we started doing really great projects and great work, and I felt like a really great project manager was when we married both the scheduling piece With the strategy piece and that so those are when I talk about project management with my coaching practice. And in my writing practice, I talk about these 2 pillars of strategy and schedule. And I think strategy is that piece that a lot of people get a little freaked out about scary sounds scary because the other thing is that if you're a pants are in particular, you know, 1 of those people who just likes to sit down and do whatever, like, right by the seat of their pants. Exactly. Whatever the muse, wherever the news takes them. They think anything about like, oh, I don't want to pre think about any of this. But what I try to convince them of is the strategy is really these three important questions to ask yourself that are not going to box you in in any way, but they are going to help you think through the book that you want to write before you sit down to write it. And those questions are, who are you writing for? What are you trying to say? And why? Why are you writing this book? Because, Susie, as you know, writing a book is freaking hard! Yeah, I know, I actually, when I was preparing for this show, I've known Carrie for a long time, and, you know, I was taking a look and just making some notes and all the things, and I came across your website, and one of the things on your very first page is writing a book is hard. And it's not something, I mean, something that we've talked about for sure, but can you just say a little bit more on that? Because I think If people are in, if you're listening to this now, and you're in the middle of writing a book, you might be hitting this. If you're done your book, you know what I'm talking about. If you're just getting started, maybe plug your ears, because you might, you might not want to know. And maybe that's okay because if we knew how much time and how much effort and how much soul searching it's really going to take to get to that finish line and write something that is what you want it to be, not what I think is good or what Carrie thinks is good, but what if you were to actually put your heart and soul into making what you know you can do, you know what it takes, right? But what does it mean to you when you say writing a book is hard? I think. We have an idea for whatever reason, maybe it's because of the way we consume books and we hear authors talk about them sometimes as a finished product and we read the book off the shelf and we think like, this is amazing. It's so great. You're transported to this other world or whatever it is that you take away from the books you read, we think it's simple somehow that like a writer just sits down at the desk and it all just, you know, pours out and it comes out in its final form. And then it tells us that. Yeah, that's. Yeah. Because that you're exactly right. So we are taught to think that it is a relatively straightforward thing, and either you can do it or you can't, right? Either you're born with this genius that you sit down at the desk and these words just spill out of you and then you hand it off and away you go. And as anyone who has ever attempted to do any of this knows, like, it doesn't happen like that at all. It does. It does not. And if you're in the throes of it, and this is not happening the way that it does in the Hollywood scripts. That's okay. That's totally normal. You're probably on the right track. Absolutely. I would, I would make the argument that if it feels too easy, there is something that's a little bit off. And I don't mean, I don't mean to say that in a discouraging way. If you are one of those people who like, as soon as you sit down at the desk, the words just fly out of you. That's amazing. Good for you. Like hold onto that precious gift. But for most of us, we have a few days like that. So we realize, and we get super jazzed when those days come. And then there are the days. That are just a slog and it hurts to write a hundred words and, you know, we all have all of those days and that's all part of the process. It's totally normal and you're, there's nothing wrong with you if that's what you're experiencing. You're just like, welcome to the tribe. Right. Because like, we've all been there. So how would you say, how would you apply or suggest that a writer applies project management when they're starting versus like, if we're listening and we're kind of halfway through? And we're like, okay, maybe I could get some structure. Maybe I need some scheduling and some strategy and these things that Carrie are saying make sense. What do you suggest that they do? When is the right time to, to apply it? So the cool thing about it, I think I would make the argument that you can apply it whenever you are always going to benefit from it. So whether you do some of this work right at the start, because that's what makes sense to you, maybe that's the place that you're at. Or if you're stuck, doing this stuff is a great way, I think, to, like, clear the decks and sort of find your way out of the forest and sort of reset where you're at. And I always do this, too, at every major milestone, as I call them, so, like, you know, milestones for writing a book would be, like, just starting off, and I am a planner, not a pantser, so. I will apply a lot of these techniques before I sit down and actually start to write and then I'll do them. I'll do the same thing when I start to draft and then I'll do the same thing for however many revisions I need to go through. So it can happen at any point. This stuff can be helpful for you at any point. So if you feel like, well, geez, that's great for book number two, Carrie, but I'm stuck, you know, two thirds of the way through book one. And I don't think this can help me. It absolutely can. How do we start? I mean, I'm sold and I'm always looking for new techniques. I'm not a pantser for sure, but I am not really a planner either. Mm-hmm . I'm sort of a quilter. You're a in that qui Yeah. I'm a planter or I am, you know, someone who has a plan and then kind of rolls with it if it changes. Mm-hmm . But I think too, you know, I've written a number of books and coached and edited so many, so many more, and I think at this point in time I am doing all of the steps and just doing them in my head. Mm-hmm . And so it's really hard to like. Articulate it when you're trying to share the process. So yes, yes. And what is it that you need to do? So I think you would start off with the strategy is where I always start off. And like I said, the strategy for me comes back to these three questions. So the first thing I would do is sit down and write out your why. Why do you want to write this book? And the reason for that is because you are going to hit these points in the process. All along the way, we're going to be like, well, this is terrible. I'm don't feel good about it. I don't want to do it anymore. But we all those of us who finish and you can absolutely be 1 of those people. 1 of those that 3 percent or whatever that why statement is your motivation. It's the thing that you can stick on your computer or up on your wall. And that reminds you when you're in the thick of the nastiness, right? And can sometimes be. Oh, yeah, I'm dedicating all this time to it because I love it because I care about it. And and that why statement. Is encapsulating that it's so motivating. I mean, I just came back to mine just a couple of months ago when I was feeling really terrible about it. And I had someone remind me to go back to that. And I was like, Oh yeah, of course. And it really, it like opened up the whole book for me again. It was really magical. And that's why I think it's so important. And I won't put you on the spot and ask you to share your why, because why if you can, if you want, but why is totally personal and there's no right answer. I do this exercise with my clients as well. And it sounds like maybe you're looking for a statement or a sentence. I like to make sure that they are writing at least a page. And the reason is because usually, I mean, you could answer that really quickly and be like, Susie, I'm writing it because I want to make a lot of money or I want to do this, but you know what? You can't fill a page with that. You're going to get to your deeper. Why? If you keep going and dig deeper, it's got to be something personal. That really means something to you that isn't trite and it's why, you know, why are you writing this particular story at this particular moment in your life? Right? And digging it. And I know that you and I have the same training. We're both certified with author accelerator. So I'm sure that you teach the same things, but it's not just a trite statement. It's like so deep. And, and sometimes clients, you know, I've had clients say to me, Oh my gosh, I didn't realize I thought I was telling this story about a mythical being that I made up and I'm telling the story of my childhood or or something and, you know, like, not that everybody has such a deep 1, but we're writing is always personal. So dig deep and see if you can figure that out. Because if you're feeling called to write. There might be something deeper there and as Kerry said, you can revisit that over and over again when you get lost and you're like, Oh, I don't know if I want to finish it, then go back and look at that. And the answer might be that no longer matters to me. And maybe you can let it go. It's true. That's very, very true. I mean, that's not usually true. I have pages. So my why has shifted over, over my writing life and also different books, of course, I've written, you know, different ways for different books, but. It can shift it can change and that's okay. One of the reasons I love project management is that it's and I think one of the reasons people are afraid of it too, is it feels like it should be very rigid. And if you miss a date, or you change something, you change your answer to your why that, like, you failed, you've done it wrong. And that's absolutely not the case. And part of what you want to embrace. As putting some structure around your writing project is that it gives you the space to be a little reflective when you want to be, and if things shift, they shift. That's great. One of the things I always used to tell all of my website clients, my digital clients, was I'm going to give you a schedule. This is what I would say when I would kick off a project. Sorry, when you were, when you were project managing website sites. Yes, website design. Before. In a digital agency, before I was a book coach. And when we would kick off a project, I would say to them, I'm going to give you a schedule. Schedule in about a week, you know, we know what we're what we're digging our hands into here. That's going to outline all the tasks that need to happen and the dates that they're going to get done and you're going to get an end date and I'm going to tell you this. I'm going to give you this to approve, but I'm going to tell you this right now. It's going to change. It's going to change a bunch. It might change every single time. I send you the updated version might be once a week. And that is totally normal. What we don't want to do is end up, you know, three years from now. Like, that is not, we want to keep an eye on things for obvious reasons. But change is fine. Change is okay. Change is something to not be scared of. You haven't failed. You're just re evaluating. And that's okay. Yeah. And I like to say that, you know, if you pick a date, And you have to change it, you're still going to finish faster than if you didn't pick a date at all. I don't know if you agree with that. A hundred percent. Yes. I mean, I am, I'm just a deadline person, a deadline driven person. At one point I thought I would be a journalist and that was, then I realized I did not want to do that. But what I think drew me to it was it's writing with a deadline. And so I definitely am a deadline driven person. And maybe Chat GPT, if you put in all your skill sets, they'd be like, you should be a journalist, right? So like, no, yeah, the introvert in me could not handle it. That's really what it came down to. I could not talk to people all day. So that's awesome. Okay. So we've got some, we've got our three questions. Yes. We're going to do some digging. We've got the strategy. Now your strategy. Yeah. Schedule. Like. Really? What does that mean? Like schedule? Isn't it a hobby you're writing? Like, do you just fit it in? Like, how do we make it, how do we make it more than that? So I, the next step that I like to take people through, and you'll be familiar with this because I know you, you come from business world too. So you're going to set a SMART goal. And that is something that comes from the business world too, but do not be afraid of it for that reason. Right? So SMART is an acronym. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and time bound or timely, so there's your deadline, right? When we talk about specifics, I'm talking about, you're not coming to me and you're not saying, I want to write a book. Everybody, whoever talks to a book coach or, and millions of other people to the side say, I want to write a book. I want to write a book someday. I'll just, I'll just change that letter. Something. No, no, no, no, no. Let's get specific. What kind of book do you want to write? Are you writing fiction, nonfiction, memoir? What genre are you writing in? And that will really, that along with the audience that you're writing for, meaning like, are you writing adult? Are you writing children's, middle grade, YA? That gives you more specifics. It gives you some idea of like what your word count should be and some tropes that you're going to want to play with, or at least be aware of. It starts to help you hone in on your reader expectations, right? And I was just going to say, Keri, just for those of you who are getting like, your minds are being blown, like, I don't, I don't know what genre I'm writing in, I just want to write. Just, it doesn't have to be that complicated, the information is out there, just take a look at books that you want to emulate the vibe of, and ones that you admire, ones that you, not that you want to do the same thing, but that you want to sort of be that same amount of impact, or have that same vibe, and take a look at those, and then research what They're in if you look at on Amazon, you can see what categories they're in that might give you a hint as to the genre. Take a look at the length. Those types of things. It's not something it's actually something that a lot of writers don't know. And so and that's okay if you don't know. But you still have to figure it out. You can't just fly by the seat of your pants and write something and hope that it has a market afterward. I wouldn't. Well, you can, of course, you can do anything you'd like to do anything. But if you if you expect to find a readership at the end, Having some of those decisions made in advance is going to help you. Absolutely. Absolutely. It'll also help you if you want to go the traditional route, like doing the research up front that Susie was just talking about can help you find comparable titles or comp titles as we call them, which is really important. Even if you want to be publishing independently, so not just, yes, traditional is definitely important for those comp titles. Even if you want to be publishing independently, the categories that you're going to be in, what bookshelf are you going to sit in, you know, virtual bookshelf or real bookshelf, that all really helps, especially because you're going to have to be creating all of your own marketing and all of your own outreach, and it'll help you figure out. Where your book is going to get read. Perfect. Yeah, that's exactly right. But sometimes I think where people also get a little tripped up on that question, potentially, is like, well, my, my book is romance and fantasy, and this, that, and the other name, you know, five different genres. No, it's not. And the thing that is, is You can have elements of all of those things in your book. Absolutely. We are not trying to, like, box you in and say you can only do this one thing or be this one thing. Your book can contain multitudes. However, you should pick one primary genre, and then you can say the others are contributing factors. It's just going to help you gain a little bit of focus. Which is especially if you're just things are swirling around and feeling very big and amorphous and scary a focal point can be incredibly helpful. Yeah, in particular, if you are choosing romance or mystery as one of your multiple genres, if those become your primary. Then you need to be aware of the structure, and other genres don't have as rigid a structure as romance and mystery, but if you say that you have a romance with fantastical elements, then you are expected to be writing in that structure, and if you're already resisting structure and thinking that, that's probably not what you want to do. Maybe you're writing a fantasy with some romantic elements, which you. Is it something totally different? So know what your primary genre is. Yeah. I think going back to that too, when I, when I was saying genre expectations, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah. Is that that readers who pick up your romance are gonna think that are going to expect that it's going to do certain things, it's going to have a certain structure and you mess with that at, at your peril. I think especially, I mean even if romance and mystery writers, readers. Readers and if they read your book and they might just panic, even if the book is terrific, if it doesn't meet what they're expecting, which is not really fair to you. So give yourself a break. Yeah. All right. So back to our goals, we're getting specific. So we're getting, we're getting really specific. We're getting as specific as you can be. And this is a, this is a place where, again, you want to kind of come back, revisit, and it's not that you're going to blow everything up, but I think you can add details to this. Like when I was first starting out with my first book, I knew I wanted to write a historical I knew who the main character was more or less. And so I knew a few things about her knowing those 2 pieces. Let me fill in some more blanks. So I could say, I want to write a historical novel of about 90, 000 words about the pirate Mary read, you know, and I could add a few things around that. That's all I'm talking about when I'm talking about specific. That's not crazy to know these like sort of basic things when you're first starting out. So don't worry that I'm, I'm thinking like I'm wanting you to know every single little detail. I'm not asking for that at all. So that's specific. Then we have measurable, and we're going to punt on that for a second because measurability is really, it's a little bit squishy when you get to a book project because we're not building an app, right? We're not selling widgets. So we can't say, I want to sell, like, I want to have X number of downloads, or I want to sell this many products in the course of three months. Oh, I was waiting for your like, yes or no binary answer, and I was kind of excited to hear what it is. So maybe I'll have to put a pin in it. I'll put a pin in it. What I can say, I'll jump ahead a little bit and say my two metrics that I like to use when we talk about measurability in a book project are a word count. So that's where your genre expectation or your, your sort of box there can come in and help you out because at least you have a target for your draft of roughly how long you want to. Or it can be your deadline, can also be your measurability. So time or word count? Time or word count. Something that will hold you to our next thing, which is accountability, right? And that is where you're going to outline for yourself, how are you showing up for yourself for your book? And maybe you only have 15 minutes to write on the bus in the morning on your commute. That's fine. Do that. I, I was in a writing class years ago with someone who, that's exactly how he wrote his book. Would have driven me crazy because I can't write on my phone. Carrie, you nailed it. Carrie and I shared a cab today somewhere. And we were talking about, uh, I, I like to ride in the front seat. I am not a taxi passenger. And Carrie said that she could actually ride in the trunk or the backseat or backwards. Doesn't matter. It doesn't bother her at all. And so I'm just, I'm picturing myself trying to ride on a bus. It sounds terrible. Maybe you could do it. I, I can't write on the little screen. I really can't. I'm, I'm one of those texters and I spell all the words wrong because I have fat thumbs. It's great. Could you dictate? Be like whispering your story to yourself? Probably do that. Oh, I just might get more productive. I have a colleague and she and her husband did a tour. I think they were Motorbiking. I forget where they were. I think they were motorbiking across Europe. Oh, wow. And she rode on the back, and she had like a microphone inside her helmet. And he drove all day, and she told herself her story, and then at the end of the night, she would type it up. That's amazing. And that's how she wrote one of her books, yeah. Oh, now I want to write my book on the back of a motor. So cool. Yeah. And they were retired when they did that. Delightful. Hashtag goals. Okay. Let's talk more about your smart goals. If that's your goal, you might want to get really specific. Yes. That is all. That's very nice and specific, but set up these account, whatever systems you need to keep yourself accountable to, right? So you're going to say, like, I am part of this smart goal statement that you're going to make is I am going to write for 15 minutes on the commute every morning, or. I am taking Saturday morning, I am locking my office door and I did quotation fingers there because we don't all have an office to which we can lock the door. But whatever that looks like for you, if it's just a desk in the, you know, the corner of the kitchen, that still works, whatever it is, just write that out, just writing it down and solidifying that in your mind and seeing it print like in print on a piece of paper. Like it just, It's, I don't know what the brain science is behind it, but it has been shown to actually be so motivating for people, right? Amazing. So relevance is the next bit of our SMART goal. And if you've written your why statement, as I just sort of urged you to do as part of the strategy, then you've written your relevant statement, right? You know why it's important for you to do this work. So they're like, you've done and dusted that piece of it. And then time bound or timely is, like, I like to say, that's when stuff gets real, right? Because people start to get very scared of dates and deadlines. That just, I don't know, there's something about putting a stake in the ground and actually pointing to a day on the calendar and saying, this is when I'm going to be done. Or even. This is when I'm going to start that just like, Oh, now it's real. It's going to happen. And that's why it's so important because you are, again, you're solidifying that plan in your mind, right? You're making it real. You're committing. So exactly. Committing to it. Is that, yeah. Yeah. No, that's exactly it. Whereas before it's just all kind of floating around in your head. Like I'm going to do this or I'll sit down when I have a couple of minutes. You know, not prioritizing it, not prioritizing it. I mean, think about all the other things that go on our to do lists. Oh, my gosh. I can list a lot. A lot of things today that and a lot of those things don't happen, not because we didn't have the best of intentions, but because they didn't get written down and had an official time for when they were going to happen. So what you're doing is you're just putting all these pieces into place to make your writing practice, which is what is going to lead you to a finished book. You're putting that writing, the pieces of that writing practice in place and making it real. Okay. And that's really powerful. Yeah. So we've got, okay. So we're all tracking with you. All the listeners at home have got their smart goals. They've been writing furiously as Kerry talks. I know you guys are all on top of this. We're getting specific. We're measuring it. It's attainable. It's relevant. It's time bound. And now what? Like, are we going to open up project management software that you used to use in your old job and have like a whole bunch of tasks or how do we, how do we manage this? Whole thing from start to finish or wherever you're at. Well, so I said, yes, no fancy software required though. I promise I wouldn't, I don't ever want to see that project software, project software again. Yeah, me either. I am just a fan of a spreadsheet. So I actually have a spreadsheet that I have as part of my project management course, but you do not need that specific spreadsheet. Any sort of, like, little scheduling tool can help you do this, or you can literally game it out on your planner, you know, like, hand, write it on a planner. If that's how you how you roll or do it in your digital calendar, whatever it is. But what you're going to do is you are going to sit down. You are going to take. The stage of your book, and I recommend, unless you are sort of old school, old hat project managers like me and Susie, sitting down to plan a book project from soup to nuts, doesn't really intimidate me because I've done that kind of big picture thinking a million times. If you're coming to this for the first time, just start with the first thing, right? So if you're at the drafting stage, just plan the drafting. You can plan your revision. When you get to that stage, you're going to do the same things. How many stages are there? I like to say that there's four, and I am a fiction coach. I don't coach nonfiction. So you may disagree. Like, you can tell me that I might be, or it might be different from nonfiction, but I am planning because I am a planner. Some of you might skip that. Planning, drafting, revising, and then pitching or publishing. Okay. You know, I would, I was just curious if you cracked the revisions into multiple buckets. And the reason is because many times we said at the beginning of this. Interview that writing is hard and if you knew just how hard you might not do it, but do it. Please do it. So You know, the revision stage is not just one revision, so that's the piece, and I don't know how many revisions it's going to be for you. The first book usually has more than in subsequent books, but generally you have at least, you know, three drafts going, even if you're crack at this and you've written 10 books. So expect at least that many, probably many more on your first draft. Yes, yeah. I mean, revision specifically, I think. I do look at it as a stage and so the way my brain works is that I will like make that stage and then what my revision will look like is like actually any other stage. It's a to do list. It's a punch list is sometimes what we call them but it is just a list of tasks that need to be completed and then what I'll do is I'll I sit down, I stick an hour estimate, and I literally do this in hours. I sort of round to, I'm probably like on the half hour. You can do it every 15 minutes. If you're really obsessed with compulsive, very detailed. I have seen some people do it. It's impressive. Sometimes just do it by the hour. A key thing that I want to encourage people here to do too, is be generous with yourself. Round up, honestly, round up. You can always scale down, but things take longer than we expect them to. Always. Humans were just bad at time management and time estimation. And there's nothing more demoralizing, I think, than just seeing like, oh, I said, this was going to take each scene was going to take me 2 hours to write and you're writing and you find that they're actually taking you for there's nothing wrong with that. That's fine. But if you're constantly missing your mark, that's a really easy way to get discouraged. So if you round up and then you, you know, you scale it back down, you're like, I'm going so much faster than I thought I was. It's a very different feeling than, oh, I'm writing so much. It's a really hard thing to predict how long it's going to take you and, and it also depends, as we said earlier in this interview, it depends on how much planning you do. So if it takes you, you know, if somebody says, Oh, I sit down and write something in half an hour and you're like, wow, that took me three hours, but they've been thinking about it for three months and then finally got to do it. I didn't actually realize how true this was until I finally quit my day job and could theoretically write all day long. And I was like, well, on a good Saturday, if I spent all day, 10 hours, I could get 10, 000 words written. And I'd done it. I'd done it before when I had to, and I was under a deadline and all the smart wool things. But you know, that was only maybe once a month that I got to do a 10 hour sprint with three kids at home and working full time and traveling for my job. Like I didn't have that kind of time. And so when I did, it was like all the stuff that I'd been carrying around in my head, that story or that whatever, all the characters, all the things, all the scenes, it kind of been working on it. It, I could sit down and it would just flow. And then I was like, all right, well, like how just sit down every single day and pump out 10, 000 words because I haven't done any of the planning. So if you're writing a little bit slower than your colleagues or you're comparing notes or you're listening to a podcast and somebody tells you their word count. That's nuts, by the way. I cannot do that now. And the reason is because you have to actually count everything. It's not just word count. It's not just words on the page. It's all the things that should be on your to do list, like thinking about it or making decisions. Please make decisions as you write. Oh my gosh, this is my favorite thing. When, when I get this like really vague pages from clients and I'm like, Hey, looks like you haven't decided quite how this thing in your world works. And they're like, how did you know that? And I'm like, Because it's so vague, it was boring. And once you, like, you have to make those decisions, and I like to tell writers, especially ones who are strapped for time, take a walk, take that with you, make that decision, put it on your checklist, say, this decision's going to take me half an hour. Do it, check it off, get the dopamine hit, which feels great by the way, um, check, check, check, check, check. I actually carry, okay, I don't actually get to sit down with other project management enthusiasts very often. So I don't know what her answer is going to be because I don't think I've ever asked anybody who might actually answer the same way as me. But do you write down things you already did and check them off? Yes, I do. Oh yeah, yeah. So like if I'm halfway through, because I was like, had it all in my head and I did all those things for my writing. And then I'm going to make my list. I take credit, but give yourself credit. You have to because I think there, there have been the days where I will look back on my day and think I didn't get anything done today. And I feel like crap, honestly, because I'm like, oh, well, what did I do today? And so I have learned over the course of my years on this earth to stop beating myself up about that. And the way part of the way that I can do that is to look back and say, well, no, like write down those things like, oh, no, I did do this. I did this. I did this. You know, things that might have taken 15 minutes or might have seemed like a small thing, you know? Oh, I I've thought about that scene and I picked a song Like to make a playlist about it because that's the emotion that I want to evoke. I picked a song counts That's part of your process. I don't listen to music while I while I write but if I did I wish I could well I don't actually listen to it while I write but I will listen to it before I write because it will trigger an emotional response In me that is what I want to get Yeah, I want to get that emotion in the scene. And I feel like if I'm feeling it, then it'll help me. I maybe just experienced too much emotion in my life because that's why I'm a quilter. So I have a plan. And then if I'm in that mood, I'm going to write that scene, but maybe I just experienced all of those things, but yeah, maybe I could actually manufacture. That's a smart way though of, of I think sharing because we're all, I have a very specific way that I do things and I've learned that and that's part of my project management process. But I think what's beautiful about project management is that you can take it and adapt it to meet your own process. I've tried to put all of my writers in a box way back in the day when I was still a baby coach and didn't quite know what I was doing or I did, but. When I was, you hoped it would be different. It was, I was like, well, no, the thing, but what it was was I know what I'm doing and this, I know this process works. So you're all going to do this process. And what I found was, haha, that's cute. We have a framework again. It's the project management thing, right? We have a sandbox. We have a framework that we're working within. And then within that framework, everyone's going to do things a little bit differently. Like I have a lot of clients that cannot go like. They come to me because they've been writing and they're in that same 30, 000 words that they've been in for a year and a half and like, I'm stuck. I don't know why 1 of the 1st rules that I give them is no more rewriting. We are writing forward. No matter how icky it feels. And they're like, they don't like it at all. But they end up finishing the book, whereas another writer I was specifically thinking of, I always think of her because she is my anomaly or one of my anomalies, is that I would give her feedback and she would go and rewrite her pages with the feedback and then move forward. But the reason she was allowed to do that, and the reason she, because she can't do it. More air quotes that you can't see, listeners, dear listeners. Allows you and she would she would go in. She'd like target the make those targeted edits and then move forward. And I think that's I mean, I revise. I'm going to admit this. Okay, cover your ears, dear listeners. I will admit to you that I do something that I advise against, which is I actually edit as I write and I edit as I write all the time. And and many times you shouldn't do that because it can get you stuck. But for me, it works. And I'm literally an editor, so I want it to be good. I don't spend, you know, a week on a paragraph. I spend that extra 30 seconds it takes to go back and fix something that I know in my brain didn't work. I don't keep going. I fix it. Because for me. That's the way it works. And then I know it's good and I move on and then I'll read it sometime in the future and figure out that maybe it wasn't as good as I thought. And that's okay. But yeah, I do edit as I go. Well, I think the key thing for that, right, is if you, if you can. Yeah, if you can. You don't get stuck in that 13 words. I didn't do it in my, I didn't do it in my first book. Yeah. And I do it now that I've edited, you know, hundreds of books. Right, exactly. And I know what I'm doing. I'm not making it worse and breaking a rule that I know is going to piss a reader off. Right. All right. So for me, when I do project management, I mean, Excel, yes. I use Asana. I love Asana. Just the to do lists mainly for my own work. But I also have clients who are super creative. So if you are super creative and these software programs sound really blah and not your cup of tea, I have writers who have books full of sticky notes or highlighted or they've got timelines or they've got something up on their wall or something visual or they've made something or they've drawn something. I actually have clients who've drawn their characters and drawn the things and like, yeah, they bring me these, these vision boards, but which are really their, their project plans. And so they don't have to be something. You know, you don't have to make this dry. Nope. Nope. You don't have to be like Carrie and I. We have this other side to us, right? This very, very straight laced side where we like to make project plans, but no, but you can do what works for you. But I think that the advice that you've given today here with the SMART goals and then making your to do list and assigning timeframes. Checking that off and then checking where you're at and just check in with yourself every now and again. Yeah, no, I think and just to circle back to give like the practical folks who like really, really like some people just really want to know when am I going to be done? And I think 1 of the most self defeating things that a writer can do is think I'm going to knock this out in, you know, A month or 3 months or whatever it is, and then you don't, and then you feel like a failure and I hate that. And I don't want anyone to quit writing because they feel like, oh, I, I couldn't do it. Like, those 3 people over there on Instagram all just wrote their books in 90 days and I didn't. So I must. Yeah, exactly. So I must be a failure. So really what part of that, like making the to do list, getting the dopamine hit of checking it off, but also giving yourself those hours is you can even look, you can break it down, like say, here's what I'm going to get done this week. And it doesn't have to be super granular. You can just say, I'm writing these two scenes and get those done. But more granular than finish my book this month. I mean, if you don't have, you got to break it down into smaller tasks, like finish. I know I've got these 10 scenes left. You know, what are these 10 scenes write them each on their own line and check them off and then check in and don't say, oh, my gosh, I can't believe I it's not binary. Right? It's not yes or no. I finished my book in a month or I didn't finish my book in a month. It's well, how far did I get? And how long did that take? And then adjust it? How much how much time in my week? Can I. Actually give to this project, right? And then go do it. Exactly. Exactly. Thinking all of that through is what gets you to that success. It's what gets the things done and knowing how long things are going to take and then seeing where that can fit into your week or knowing like, Hey, I have these 10 tasks and they're going to take this long. I'm not going to get them all done this week, but I know I'll be done at the end of the month. And then you can put like, slot them where you want to, where, you know, you're going to have energy or, or, you know, have some downtime or whatever. And the end of the month, they're actually done. It feels amazing and it's very motivating. So, so Carrie, if writers are wanting to find out more about you and your book coaching practice, where should they look? What are you up to? Where, what should they look for? Uh, they can go to carrie savage. com. So I know you'll probably put that on the show. We'll drop all those because I have a weird name and I say that with love. I love my name, but I've also been asked if it's a stage name. No, it's really my name. HarrySavage. com is where you can find me. You can also find me at ShadowsAndSecretsRetreats. com, which is an adventure that, a writing retreat, and some other fun stuff that I do with another fellow coach. That's for mystery, thriller, suspense, and horror authors, so we've been doing that for about a year. It's really, really fun, so. And what genres do you coach? I coach all, almost all fiction. I know Sam and I focus a little bit in the MTS space, but me personally, I like to say, I have ADD. I have a neurodiverse brain. If I focused too much on any one specific genre, I would just probably go a little bit crazy. I just love that you've been able to adapt this to your clients, and I've just seen the absolute progress that the writers that work with you make. And thank you for doing this work. Thank you for having me. Thanks for tuning in to Show Don't Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vidori. I'll be continuing to bring you the straight goods for that book you're writing or planning to write. Please consider subscribing to this podcast and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you're listening. Also, visit SuzyVidori. com forward slash newsletter to hop on my weekly inspired writing newsletter list where you'll stay inspired and be the first to know about upcoming training events and writing courses that happen in my community. If you're feeling brave, check the show notes and send us a page of your writing that isn't quite where you want it to be yet for our show don't tell page review episodes. Remember that book and your writing is going to open doors that you haven't even thought And I can't wait to help make it the absolute best. If you're feeling called to write that book, keep going and I'm going to be right here cheering you on. See you again next week.