Episode 125 - The Seven Most Common Mistakes of Non-Fiction Authors … and How to Avoid Them with Bryan Collins
March 22, 2022
Bryan Collins discusses THE SEVEN MOST COMMON MISTAKES OF NON-FICTION AUTHORS … AND HOW TO AVOID THEM. He talks about writing different things at once ... not organizing the ideas ... waiting for passion or inspiration to strike ... writing only on the weekends ... writing and editing at the same time ... believing that working harder will make it happen ... and waiting until it's perfect
Do any of those topics pique your interest? Check out my YouTube playlist 2 Minutes of Indy, where I will be posting a brief video clip from the interview on each of those topics!
Do any of those topics pique your interest? Check out my YouTube playlist 2 Minutes of Indy, where I will be posting a brief video clip from the interview on each of those topics!
After attempts at careers as a journalist and short story writer, Bryan Collins spent a year as a stay-at-home Dad. Broke, lacking self-belief and feeling a lack of purpose, Bryan decided to go back into writing, but this time focused on learning skills like copywriting and content marketing. He launched ‘Become a Writer Today’ which has racked up millions of views, and has written for LIFEHACKER, FASTCOMPANY, COPYBLOGGER, and FORBES. He’s a podcaster and the author THE ART OF WRITING A NON-FICTION BOOK, THE POWER OF CREATIVITY, and YES, YOU CAN WRITE.
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"Sometimes you've just got to turn up at your desk even if you don't have any ideas and you don't know what you're going to say. Because by turning up, you build a writing habit, and when you build a writing habit, you'll naturally find more things to, to write about." —Bryan Collins
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[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Bryan Collins. Hey Bryan, how are you doing?
[00:00:05] Bryan: Hi Matty, thanks very much for having me on.
[00:00:06] Matty: It is my pleasure. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, after failing as a journalist and short story writer, Bryan Collins spent a year as a stay-at-home dad. Broken, lacking self-belief, and feeling a lack of purpose, Bryan decided to go back into writing, but this time focused on learning skills like copywriting and content marketing. He launched BECOME A WRITER TODAY, which has racked up millions of views and has written for LifeHacker, Fast Company, Copyblogger, and FORBES. He's a podcaster and the author of THE ART OF WRITING A NON-FICTION BOOK, THE POWER OF CREATIVITY, and YES, YOU CAN WRITE.
[00:00:38] And I invited Bryan on the podcast to talk about the seven most common mistakes of non-fiction authors and how to avoid them. But I thought a nice entree to that, and Bryan and opportunity for you to give a little background on your own writing is, I'm wondering what first triggered you to decide to write your non-fiction books?
[00:00:56] Bryan: That's a good question, Matty, you touched on it there and your introduction. I originally worked as a journalist years ago. I was wanting to make a living writing, so I figured when I was 18, what's the best way to do that? So I enrolled in a journalism degree in a college in Dublin. And I graduated college and to my great surprise, but no one else's, I found it really difficult to find any work.
[00:01:19] I eventually got a few low-paying freelance writing gigs, writing reviews of printers and other gadgets for technology newspapers. Not the most exciting journalism, but I earned a couple of hundred Euro, which was enough to pay some of the bills, but not all of them.
[00:01:34] Unfortunately, it was also around the time of the financial crisis, so I quickly found myself out of work and I drifted out of journalism. So still wanted to write, so I took a series of creative writing classes and that's when I started writing the short stories that you also mentioned. I found that really enjoyable, but I spent like a year or two writing short stories alone in my bedroom and not submitting them anywhere, never really got feedback.
[00:01:57] And this actually brings me to some of the mistakes that non-fiction authors can make. And eventually I figured, I put two years into this, I've been shortlisted in one or two competitions, but I haven't gotten anywhere. What else do I know something about, but I haven't written about before? And that kind of led me to non-fiction and to writing online, which I guess it was a combination of creative expression through to blogging and also journalism, because I was able to combine both approaches. And then gradually over the course of a few years, I've just been more and more into non-fiction. And I actually recently published a non-fiction parenting memoir. So, yeah, non-fiction is what I read the most and it's what I like to write the most these days, anyway.
[00:02:35] Matty: I thought what I would do is just feed you these seven common mistakes. I believe I pulled these from a blog post or an article you had written, and we can chat about them. And so the first one is writing different things at once. Talk a little bit about that.
Writing Different Things at Once
[00:02:48] Bryan: When you look at successful authors like James Patterson or Malcolm Gladwell, it seems like they have a huge library of books and articles and they're appearing everywhere. So it's natural for new writers and authors to take on lots of different writing projects because you've lots of great ideas and it's fun to start new things. But finishing is actually a lot harder and it's only through finishing something that you get feedback from editors and readers. And the quickest way to delay finishing your first few pieces or your first book is by starting another one when you haven't finished the first one.
[00:03:22] And the secret of those authors and writers who have lots of multiple projects at once is that they have a team behind them. So James Patterson would have authors that he collaborates with, or that they've actually finished all his projects, but they don't have necessarily full control over the release dates. So Malcolm Gladwell might've written that article a while ago, or he might have written a book a while ago and now he's moved on to something else.
[00:03:44] Or also they've just been doing it longer and are able to do it full-time, so they're able to manage their resources a bit more effectively. But if you're new, it's far better to finish one thing than to start multiple things.
[00:03:54] Matty: I definitely find that for my fiction, I try to hold myself to only working on one novel at a time. And it's been especially challenging because I've been hammering away at the edits on my fifth Ann Kinnear book for just it seems like forever. And I already have the idea for a sixth, so it's hard to hold myself back, but I totally agree with you that once I launch myself into six, I'm not going to be excited about going back to five.
[00:04:20] But I found that with my non-fiction writing, I almost have to write little bits until I have a critical mass of information that launches me down the finishing route. And so I might be collecting little bits of information about podcasting for authors for a couple of years, and then I finally thought, okay, now it's starting to look like a book, now I'm going to fill in all the gaps. Does that approach violate the writing different things at once admonition?
[00:04:49] Bryan: No, I think you've actually touched on a great strategy. So when I say don't start multiple projects at once, that doesn't mean you can't research or prepare for your next project. And often that's what a lot of writing is, particularly non-fiction it's the research and gathering of ideas. So for example, what I would do is, if I was writing a 2000-word article today or tomorrow, that would take me two days maybe to write. So I would focus on getting that article done during the writing time in the mornings. But meanwhile, if I come across an interesting video or an intro to like a course, or listen to a podcast interview that's related to something I want to write next week or next month, I'll just note down a few highlights on that article or from that video or from that course, and just save it into a notetaking system, and maybe add some of my thoughts on the notes or how could potentially use it for a future article.
[00:05:38] So you're still going about gathering information and researching your next piece, but for your writing time, you're focused on whatever the current project is. And that way, when you finish the current project, you just go through your notetaking system and you can search for all of your recent notes, and then you can see what's been on your mind most, and that can help you decide what to write next.
[00:05:56] Matty: And I suppose your approach also needs to be adjusted based on whether you're writing for a publication, for example. Like you can't just wait for the muse to strike to turn in your article for FORBES. But if you're writing a book for your own imprint, basically for your followers, but there's not a deadline associated with it, that could be a plus or minus, but at least it gives you some bandwidth to have that mulling-over period.
[00:06:21] Bryan: For a few years and as part of writing for FORBES, you had to write five to 10 articles per month. And the topics I covered were productivity, leadership, and business articles. So what I do is I'd look at the articles that got the most views and I try and write similar articles next week or next month. But I guess if it's a self-driven creative project like a book, where you have to set your own deadlines and that's where starting multiple projects can really be a challenge, because if you're starting multiple projects, you're more likely to delay your own project. Whereas if you're writing for someone else, you're probably more likely to progress, whether it's because you don't want to let that person down or you don't want to miss a deadline.
[00:06:59] Matty: That's interesting that you were looking back across, where you just looking at your own FORBES articles and extrapolating on what seems most popular or were you looking across FORBES articles in general and saying, maybe somebody else's article was very popular, what can I draw from that?
[00:07:14] Bryan: Yeah, it was a combination of both. So I eventually did find paying work as a writer, and I got a job in a content marketing team. And when I was working in content marketing for a British software company, one of the things we spent a lot of time doing was using analytics to figure out what content was resonating with readers and followers and subscribers.
[00:07:33] So I use this in my own work today. So basically what I do is, I go into Google Analytics, if it's one of my sites, I look at the most popular articles and then figure out related content that I can publish on those articles. I'll either write those myself or commission someone to write them.
[00:07:47] Or alternatively, I'm not a freelance writer anymore, but when I was a freelance writer for FORBES and other publications, I would look up my stats for the different articles and then I would try and write ones that resonated with readers. So I would ask myself was it the headline, was it the topic, was it the structure of the article? And then I would try and write more of those. So do more of what work and less of what doesn't.
[00:08:09] Matty: That is a fascinating idea of applying that kind of scientific approach to one's creative work.
[00:08:15] So the second most common mistake, one of the seven most common mistakes is not organizing the ideas. Talk a little bit about that.
Not Organizing the Ideas
[00:08:23] Bryan: That's an idea we touched upon when we were talking about the research process. So it's great to have a trusted system that you use for your research and for your notes. I've tried lots of systems over the years on index cards, notepads, journals, you name it, a commonplace book. And what I found is there's no perfect notetaking system, but it's better to have all your notes and research and ideas in one place that you go to, to save them when you come across them and also that you review regularly. And that way you'll naturally begin to bring some sort of order and structure to your notes and your research. And even if it looks a little bit messy, if it's all in one place, it's constrained within that system that you've created for it.
[00:09:03] And then the key part of the organization then is to actually go in and look at your research and your notes. So I remember at one point I had a thousand, or two or three hundred index cards for a book I was going to write, but I didn't really review them that regularly. So when the time came to write the book, it was quite difficult because I wasn't looking at the system enough.
[00:09:19] So these days, what I try to do is write down two to three notes on a topic every morning. And then at the end of the week, I'll review all of the notes for the week and see if I need to update any of the notes or if I could interlink them. And then when it comes time to plan more articles for the following week, I'll look at the notes that I have been taking and that will say to me that these are the things I've been interested in or reading about.
[00:09:38] Matty: You use a different approach between writing an article and writing a book?
[00:09:42] Bryan: Yeah, writing a book is a much bigger project, takes longer, it takes more planning. What I try to do is write several articles on the topic and see if that resonates with readers in terms of views or shares, and also if it's something I'm interested in writing more about. As anybody who's bought books on Amazon can attest to, some books can just feel like blog posts that have been potted out, so I try to avoid that over writing a book.
[00:10:05] Maybe my first book, I didn't quite succeed with that, it was probably something that would have been better as a long-form article. But I recently wrote a parenting memoir, which took me a good year to write, and it was a combination of journal entries and other types of writing that I was able to use. But for writing a book basically, I do still try and apply some structure. So I figure out what the key idea of the book is or what the different acts of the book are, and then what section I need to include in each act.
[00:10:31] Matty: What tool are you using? Do you have a particular app for collecting the data for it?
[00:10:36] Bryan: I use a journaling app called Day One. So I use that because I like to journal a lot, but I've started to put my notes and research in there as well. And that's not necessarily because it's a great notetaking app, it's just, I'm in there every morning, writing journal entries. So it's, I'm just trying to constrain myself to one tool. But there's lots of other great notetaking apps. Notion is pretty popular. Evernote was pretty popular, but then I know some people found it clunky. You can also use apps like Bear or Ulysses, or even Apple Notes is great too as it syncs across all of your devices. Potentially use, I think it's Google Keep. They're good as well.
[00:11:11] And then for the actual outlining, I'll use just bullet points. So there's a bullet point app I'll use called Dynalist that's free, so I find that quite good, really easy to use. And sometimes if I'm just getting a bit stressed with computers and technology, I'll use index cards or a whiteboard and just do a mind map on a whiteboard, or just map out the book chapters with index cards and move them around on a table. And that can be helpful too, for especially for a book, because it's so big, a computer screen can be quite constraining, whereas it's probably easier to outline an article on a computer.
[00:11:42] Matty: I like the idea of if you're using an automated tool, one that you have open anyway, and although I'm not 100% happy with my approach either, I tend to use Scrivener because I'm in Scrivener every day, mainly working on my fiction books. But if I have an idea for an indy-author-focused book, I'll either put a note in there or if I have a quite fleshed out idea, I'll flesh it out in Scrivener as a chapter. And then if I start seeing an evolving theme, like I would love to put out a book called THE EFFICIENT AUTHOR, and so I can look through all my chapters and say, oh, I have 15 or 20 blocks of notes that are related to efficiency. That seems like a good start or, oh, you know what, I only have three here, it's probably something that needs to simmer a bit more.
[00:12:31] Bryan: Yeah, Scrivener's great, I've written several books in Scrivener. Not using it as much these days, that's only because I'm not writing a book. And I guess for writing online content, the formatting can be a bit tricky in Scrivener. But definitely for long form projects, Scrivener is excellent.
[00:12:46] Matty: Yeah, I'm really happy with it for my fiction writing for sure. So the third common mistake people make is waiting for passion or inspiration to strike.
Waiting for Inspiration to Strike
[00:12:55] Bryan: It's common to sit around and say, I don't feel like writing today. I'm not inspired, I don't have a great idea, I'm going to wait till this evening after work. Because typically if you're a new writer, you're writing around a job. Or you're going to wait till the weekend, when I'll have the whole Saturday cleared to write. And what inevitably happens is after work you're tired or your family commitments, or Saturday rolls around and you get a better offer or life intervenes, and you don't have the time to write.
[00:13:22] So sometimes you just got to get up and turn up at your desk, even if you don't have any ideas where you don't know what you're going to say. Because it's true, turning up, that you build a writing habit and then when you build a writing habit, you'll naturally find more things to write about. So by all means, write about something if it inspires you, but also try and write a little bit, even if you're feeling uninspired.
[00:13:43] Matty: Are there any practices that you've taken from the writing you've done where you had an externally imposed deadline, like a magazine, that you apply to work where you're imposing your own deadline, like your books?
[00:13:58] Bryan: Yeah, so for writing non-fiction, there’s a weird productivity secret I learned from an article about Elon Musk. So he had a bad habit of announcing deadlines for Tesla cars, and he used to announce them to the press and then he was slated by the press or criticized when the company inevitably missed his deadlines, and it was the same for Space X. So what they've started doing is setting two deadlines. One was a public deadline that all the press would hold them to account to, and then one was a deadline for the company or for the team. And that was a bit closer and that's what they would hold themselves accountable to. And so they would have a buffer, so if they miss the internal deadline, they would still have some time before the external deadline.
[00:14:37] Now that's for a big corporate company or somebody trying to go to Mars, but for your own writing, if you're a freelance writer and you're writing for publication, and your editor says, I need this Monday, two weeks’ time, you could say to yourself, I'm going to finish this on Friday, two weeks’ time. So then you have a slight buffer of the weekend, if for some reason you need to change something in the article or you missed your deadline. And I find that quite helpful if you put that into your Google Calendar.
[00:15:01] Matty: Yes, definitely something that's on a calendar, I use Trello to do monitoring. Anything that's there is more likely to get done than if it's just in my brain.
[00:15:08] So a sort of associated common mistake is writing only on the weekends. And I'm assuming you're saying weekends because of what you just said about, many indy authors are working around a full-time job, but are weekends just dangerous for other reasons?
Writing Only on the Weekends
[00:15:23] Bryan: If you're waiting until Saturday to write, you might write 3000 words, and then it could be another week before you write 3000 words. Whereas if you write 300 words every day, there's a good chance that you'll go past the 3000 words, because some days will go better than others. And it won't be so stressful and difficult, particularly if you're a new writer. So rather than trying to block book a couple of hours on a Saturday, why not block book 15 or 30 minutes every morning or every evening? And that's usually a better way to write more efficiently.
[00:15:51] The other good thing is sometimes people like to take time off for the weekends as well, to recharge. So if you want to do that, that's where again, you could review what you're doing during the week after work or before work and see if there's something that you can do less of, like social media or the news or whatever it is.
[00:16:06] Matty: Do you use word count to track your productivity?
[00:16:09] Bryan: Yeah, yeah, so I used to use word count quite a lot. I still find it helpful, particularly for first drafts. So what I would do is I set a target word count for the article or for the chapter and then I'm saying, during this writing session, I'm going to try and hit this particular word count.
[00:16:25] But what I found is because over the years word count is only helpful for like already drafts, because when you get to editing, how do you track your word count, because you're still doing creative work. So what I started doing for editing is tracking the time spent editing, and that can be helpful. So if I'm on a first draft phase and focused on the first draft, it'll be word count for the week and then if I'm on an editing phase, it'll be time spent editing articles per week. And sometimes if that feels like a micromanagement, I'll just focus on the number of articles written in a week.
[00:16:53] So it really depends on the scale of the project, but I would say that unless you're, you know, focused on publishing a set amount of fiction books every year, word count is just one measure that you can use. Also consider time spent editing.
[00:17:07] Matty: Yeah, I've found that word count doesn't really work for me because the few times I've gone into Scrivener, which does show you daily word count, I feel like the math doesn't work out because I'll go for what feels like weeks getting down, I don't know, 50 words a day, which is probably me writing 400 and deleting 350, writing 200 and deleting 150. And the end result is I get out of 80-, 85-ish thousand-word novel at least once a year. But it stresses me to think about the word count, the word count approach. It would be more destructive than productive for me to be spending too much time on word count.
[00:17:50] Bryan: Yeah, yeah, I've had a similar experience. It's helpful for an early draft, but after that I find it less so.
[00:17:54] Matty: Yeah. So that kind of leads us to one of the other mistakes, which is writing and editing at the same time. Can we talk about that?
Writing and Editing at the Same Time
[00:18:03] Bryan: I found that writing and editing engage different parts of your brain. So if you try to write and edit, it gets a bit confusing. Years ago when I was writing those short stories that I talked about, our instructor, who was a guy from Texas, he tasked us on writing one true sentence. The true sentence was like a perfect sentence, which is impossible. But I took on a bit too literally, and I spent a lot of time trying to write perfect sentences and I'd write a sentence and then go back and rewrite it and then go back and rewrite it again and again.
[00:18:33] I wasn't actually finishing the stories and getting feedback from an editor. So far better to just focus during one session on your draft or get into the end of the piece, and then during another separate session, perhaps in the afternoon or the following day to engage the other side of your brain and approach it more critically, ask yourself, what can I take out, what can I change and what can I remove? Because there are different types of writing. So to do both at the same time, can really get confusing.
[00:18:59] Matty: Yeah, I've found that I could write fiction and edit non-fiction or vice versa, but especially within one work, I can't try to wear both hats. And I will put a link in the show notes, I don't remember the episode title, but I've had Tiffany Yates Martin, who is an editor on several times, and she talks about dividing that process into three. There's the writing, there's the editing where you assess it, and then there's the revising where you're actually making the changes. And she even feels that you need to separate those three things out, even beyond separating the two things out. But yeah, trying not to wear multiple hats of any kind while you're doing that kind of work, I think is important.
[00:19:38] Bryan: I like that, I could see how that would work for a book.
[00:19:41] Matty: Yeah, I do like the fact that she separates revising and editing because I think it avoids that, I'm assessing what the reader's going to experience, now I'm trying to fix it, now I'm assessing. It separates it, I think, in a nice way and makes those hat changes clearer.
[00:20:28] Matty: I love this one, working harder will make it happen. Talk about that mistake.
Working Harder Will Make It Happen
[00:20:36] Bryan: So sometimes when you're a new writer, it can feel like you just got to persevere and keep putting in extra hours and then you'll find success, but sometimes it's good to also step back and ask yourself what exactly you're trying to achieve. Are you trying to write short stories? Are you trying to build a blog? Are you trying to land profitable freelance writing clients? Are you trying to write a book?
[00:21:01] Because all of those are very different types of writing goals, which require a different approach to the work. And even how you think about word count for a short story versus pitching freelance writing clients is different.
[00:21:12] So taking a moment to step back and asking what type of writer are you, what are the conventions of your niche and who is your ideal reader, can help you avoid working extra hours on the wrong things that aren't really moving your writing career, whatever that means to you, in the right direction.
[00:21:28] So for me, when I asked myself those questions, I realized that I don't really want to write fiction. I enjoy reading fiction, but it's not something that I wanted to write. So that immediately freed up a good chunk of the week for non-fiction writing projects. And it also meant that I was able to reduce the amount of time spent working as well.
[00:21:44] Matty: In our conversation up till now, we've talked about or implied that the financial side of it, if you're using your writing to pay the bills, then that's obviously an important consideration. What are some of the other criteria that you apply to help you make that decision about, there's only a limited number of hours, you don't want to fill them all with work, which ones are you going to pick?
[00:22:07] Bryan: So I would ask yourself, what's your writing goal for the next few months? But it's still not simple setting a writing goal for the year, which can be challenging because a year is quite a long time. So I like to think of it in terms of seasons. So if you pick about three, three and a half months, that's long enough to get something done, but not so long that it feels like it's ages away. So what you want to accomplish this season for your writing or for your creative life? And then break that down into smaller milestones to accomplish every month and every week and every day. So if it's writing a book, you can break that down by word count or by chapter, and then focus on that.
[00:22:43] If you pick one thing to work on every season, one big creative project, then you'd be surprised by how much you can accomplish during a year.
[00:22:50] Matty: I've been trying to be more diligent about what I spend my time on, but I recently had this idea for author book plates. So if I haven't already announced this to the listeners, they can stay tuned for a formal announcement about that. And I kept holding it up to my business plan and saying, it doesn't comply with the criteria that I've set up for myself, but I finally just decided that I was so excited about it that I was going to approach it kind of like my spare time activity, like my creative play period.
[00:23:16] Because I really wanted to do it, and as long as I went into it knowing that this was probably not going to be a big money maker, it was just something I was doing because I got intrigued by it and at least my expectations were set appropriately.
[00:23:29] So the last of the seven mistakes that aspiring non-fiction writers can make is wait until it's perfect.
Wait Until It's Perfect
[00:23:35] Bryan: If you think back today, writing one true sentence story I was telling you about, firstly, it's impossible to write anything that's perfect, as any writer will know. But the other interesting thing I've found is, your standard for what constitutes good, great or excellent will change as your skills grow.
[00:23:52] So you might read a story and say, that's really good, and then you'll try and write something similar, and you'll get your own story or your own piece of non-fiction to a certain point. But then, because your skills have improved, you'll start to spot other mistakes in the work or other things that you can fix. And then you raise the bar on yourself and then you'll rewrite it again.
[00:24:11] And you can keep doing that but eventually you reach a point where diminishing returns sets in. So you got to ask yourself, at what point do you need to send this to an editor who's expecting it so you can get paid, or what point should you just publish the book, and accept it's never going to be perfect? Or at what point should you hire an editor if you're self-publishing who can find and fix mistakes faster than you can.
[00:24:33] This is a mistake I think I made with my latest book. I wrote it during the lockdown, so I wanted to invest a good bit of time in it. It was more of a creative project rather than something that was going to build a business in some way. So there's lots of parenting stories in it, but because it was so personal and I spent a lot of time rewriting those stories and I think it costs me about two or three months in the editing process, because of trying to write the stories myself, because they were so personal.
[00:24:57] But I would have been better hiring an editor sooner because when I did hire an editor, she did point out some things in the book that I was able to fix quite quickly, some structural issues. And as soon as I did that, it solved a few problems for me with the book. And when it was done, I was like, if I had done this in February, it would have been able to publish a lot sooner. So I suppose that's the key lesson I've learned on that particular mistake. So I'm still making it basically.
[00:25:18] Matty: Yeah. I think it's something that one has to keep an eye on throughout one's career. And do you have different types of editing? Like I'll say a developmental edit versus a copy edit?
[00:25:30] Bryan: Yeah, it depends, these days I write a lot of articles, but for a book I will go through a developmental edit where I would try and look at a book away from a computer. So I'll print out, I get the index cards of the book and look at the overall structure, so I'm not getting caught up with individual sections or sentences. And then I'll try and edit specific chapters and then I'll try and edit specific lines.
[00:25:53] So depending on the type of edits, I could use software like Grammarly or Hemingway app, if it's for copy edits. If it's for a developmental edit, I can do that myself, or alternatively, I could hire an editor. I guess if it's a smaller project, like an article, you can do some of those things yourself. But I would definitely agree with that advice that you said about your editor, or who recommended that you've three different approaches to your editing.
[00:26:15] Matty: Yeah. I've finally come to terms with the fact that I'm going to need two edits. I think most of my novels have only ever had one edit and it was kind of a combination, calling out structural or character issues and some level of copy editing, and then I would separately have a proofread. But I think that after my experience with Ann Kinnear 5, which has been dragging on for a long time, I feel like I need to just outline and show my editor something that has all the structural parts without having sunk all the time into description and dialogue and all those other things.
[00:26:49] And once I have that straightened out, then dive into that other stuff, because I think that this book is going to win the award for most thrown away words, because I had to change so much based on the first edit, and then I realized I needed the second edit because I was like, this is really not going to look anything like it did when the editor saw it the first time.
[00:27:07] But I think that wait until it's perfect it's such a fine line to walk, especially for indy authors, because there's always this feeling if you're traditionally published, then your editor is by definition, the gatekeeper between you and giving your reader something that isn't up to snuff. And so many times indy authors are functioning in that role themselves.
[00:27:28] And I feel like there's sort of seasons of the recommendation that people who are big in the indy author community give. And so for a while, I think it was, we need to compete with the traditionally published authors who have a whole team of people who are taking care of cover design and proofreading, editing, and so on. So don’t put something out there that's half baked, but more recently, I've heard the same experts more saying, don't wait until it's perfect. What's the phrase that, perfect can be the enemy of the good. And so do you feel like that's cyclical? Do you think your advice always would have been wait until it's perfect or was there ever a period, like early on where your advice was more, don't just throw something out that's half-baked?
[00:28:15] Bryan: Yeah, it's an interesting way to think about it. So I think the biggest challenge these days is capturing the attention of readers online, whether that's with a Twitter thread or an article. Or even for authors, capturing the attention of potential book buyers on Amazon. And if you wait too long, you'll never learn what readers want from you. So it can be a balancing act to find what works best.
[00:28:38] But on the other hand, if you're worried about discarding too much, you don't have to delete it, you can just put it into your notetaking system, or your scrap file and it could potentially form the gems of your next project. But it is better to get something out there. If you look at any of the most successful non-fiction authors or fiction authors, they all have a big back catalog that they draw upon. So they are publishing consistently, and their books naturally improve. If you type in Stephen King, best books and worst books, you'll find lots of diverse opinions.
[00:29:05] I'm a big fan of Stephen King. We'll say that he explored multiple genres over his career, and he's gotten much better at different genres. You can learn a little bit about that approach, for whatever genre you're writing in or niche.
[00:29:17] Matty: You ever go back and republish something that you've published yourself with modifications?
[00:29:22] Bryan: I do, I do. So I tried to edit my first book myself, which was a mistake. And then I got some emails from readers complaining about typos and similar issues in the book, so I rewrote the book and I republished it and I got the help of an editor with that rewrite. And that was a really stressful way to do it, so I don't recommend that. The reason why I edited it to myself was I didn't have much money and I figured because I was a journalist, I'd be able to do it, but I was wrong. So these days I try to avoid that, you know, and hire an editor up front.
[00:29:51] In terms of articles, I do that quite a lot, so it's actually good practice for Google search. So if you've written an article on a particular topic and the information about the topic has changed in some way, or what readers are expecting from search results has changed in some way, it makes sense to go back in and update the article with the latest statistics and information and reset the publication date.
[00:30:12] And then sometimes, you'll write an article and then you might think of a follow-on piece because your thoughts on that article has changed. I guess that can be a form of rewriting too.
[00:30:20] Matty: I think a theme I'm hearing about the wait until is perfect, is that people shouldn't be working away on it in their garret, not showing it to anybody else and using only their own eyes as the measure of how good it is, because I think once you get it to a certain point, if you're uncertain about it, start showing it to other people, it might be an editor, it might be a fellow writers, friends, beta readers, and that they can help. Those impartial third-party eyes can help you decide if you've reached the point where it's valuable to share it out with readers or if it needs more work.
[00:30:52] Bryan: Yeah, if any of your listeners or viewers are wanting to share their work and they're writing non-fiction now I would encourage them to start publishing it on Medium consistently. So there are lots of publications on Medium looking for guest writers and niches like entrepreneurship and personal development. And writing for those publications is going immediately level up your skills if you're new. And because Medium has a partner program, you can get paid to learn more about writing non-fiction too. So that's definitely one approach. And I know there are some networks that fiction writers use like Wattpad, for publishing stories and getting feedback.
[00:31:25] I find it's better for a non-fiction, if you get some feedback before you start embarking on a bigger project, like a book.
[00:31:30] Matty: Yeah, all great advice. Bryan, thank you so much. Please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and all your work online.
[00:31:38] Bryan: Sure. Thanks. Thanks for asking, Matty. So, you can visit BecomeAWriterToday.com and you'll find a book of writing prompts on the homepage that I'll give you. A I also have a podcast under the same name where I interview authors about their writing processes and Matty was kind enough to take part in a few weeks ago. So please do check out the podcast on iTunes.
[00:32:01] Matty: Very good. Thank you so much.
[00:32:03] Bryan: Thanks, Matty.
[00:00:05] Bryan: Hi Matty, thanks very much for having me on.
[00:00:06] Matty: It is my pleasure. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, after failing as a journalist and short story writer, Bryan Collins spent a year as a stay-at-home dad. Broken, lacking self-belief, and feeling a lack of purpose, Bryan decided to go back into writing, but this time focused on learning skills like copywriting and content marketing. He launched BECOME A WRITER TODAY, which has racked up millions of views and has written for LifeHacker, Fast Company, Copyblogger, and FORBES. He's a podcaster and the author of THE ART OF WRITING A NON-FICTION BOOK, THE POWER OF CREATIVITY, and YES, YOU CAN WRITE.
[00:00:38] And I invited Bryan on the podcast to talk about the seven most common mistakes of non-fiction authors and how to avoid them. But I thought a nice entree to that, and Bryan and opportunity for you to give a little background on your own writing is, I'm wondering what first triggered you to decide to write your non-fiction books?
[00:00:56] Bryan: That's a good question, Matty, you touched on it there and your introduction. I originally worked as a journalist years ago. I was wanting to make a living writing, so I figured when I was 18, what's the best way to do that? So I enrolled in a journalism degree in a college in Dublin. And I graduated college and to my great surprise, but no one else's, I found it really difficult to find any work.
[00:01:19] I eventually got a few low-paying freelance writing gigs, writing reviews of printers and other gadgets for technology newspapers. Not the most exciting journalism, but I earned a couple of hundred Euro, which was enough to pay some of the bills, but not all of them.
[00:01:34] Unfortunately, it was also around the time of the financial crisis, so I quickly found myself out of work and I drifted out of journalism. So still wanted to write, so I took a series of creative writing classes and that's when I started writing the short stories that you also mentioned. I found that really enjoyable, but I spent like a year or two writing short stories alone in my bedroom and not submitting them anywhere, never really got feedback.
[00:01:57] And this actually brings me to some of the mistakes that non-fiction authors can make. And eventually I figured, I put two years into this, I've been shortlisted in one or two competitions, but I haven't gotten anywhere. What else do I know something about, but I haven't written about before? And that kind of led me to non-fiction and to writing online, which I guess it was a combination of creative expression through to blogging and also journalism, because I was able to combine both approaches. And then gradually over the course of a few years, I've just been more and more into non-fiction. And I actually recently published a non-fiction parenting memoir. So, yeah, non-fiction is what I read the most and it's what I like to write the most these days, anyway.
[00:02:35] Matty: I thought what I would do is just feed you these seven common mistakes. I believe I pulled these from a blog post or an article you had written, and we can chat about them. And so the first one is writing different things at once. Talk a little bit about that.
Writing Different Things at Once
[00:02:48] Bryan: When you look at successful authors like James Patterson or Malcolm Gladwell, it seems like they have a huge library of books and articles and they're appearing everywhere. So it's natural for new writers and authors to take on lots of different writing projects because you've lots of great ideas and it's fun to start new things. But finishing is actually a lot harder and it's only through finishing something that you get feedback from editors and readers. And the quickest way to delay finishing your first few pieces or your first book is by starting another one when you haven't finished the first one.
[00:03:22] And the secret of those authors and writers who have lots of multiple projects at once is that they have a team behind them. So James Patterson would have authors that he collaborates with, or that they've actually finished all his projects, but they don't have necessarily full control over the release dates. So Malcolm Gladwell might've written that article a while ago, or he might have written a book a while ago and now he's moved on to something else.
[00:03:44] Or also they've just been doing it longer and are able to do it full-time, so they're able to manage their resources a bit more effectively. But if you're new, it's far better to finish one thing than to start multiple things.
[00:03:54] Matty: I definitely find that for my fiction, I try to hold myself to only working on one novel at a time. And it's been especially challenging because I've been hammering away at the edits on my fifth Ann Kinnear book for just it seems like forever. And I already have the idea for a sixth, so it's hard to hold myself back, but I totally agree with you that once I launch myself into six, I'm not going to be excited about going back to five.
[00:04:20] But I found that with my non-fiction writing, I almost have to write little bits until I have a critical mass of information that launches me down the finishing route. And so I might be collecting little bits of information about podcasting for authors for a couple of years, and then I finally thought, okay, now it's starting to look like a book, now I'm going to fill in all the gaps. Does that approach violate the writing different things at once admonition?
[00:04:49] Bryan: No, I think you've actually touched on a great strategy. So when I say don't start multiple projects at once, that doesn't mean you can't research or prepare for your next project. And often that's what a lot of writing is, particularly non-fiction it's the research and gathering of ideas. So for example, what I would do is, if I was writing a 2000-word article today or tomorrow, that would take me two days maybe to write. So I would focus on getting that article done during the writing time in the mornings. But meanwhile, if I come across an interesting video or an intro to like a course, or listen to a podcast interview that's related to something I want to write next week or next month, I'll just note down a few highlights on that article or from that video or from that course, and just save it into a notetaking system, and maybe add some of my thoughts on the notes or how could potentially use it for a future article.
[00:05:38] So you're still going about gathering information and researching your next piece, but for your writing time, you're focused on whatever the current project is. And that way, when you finish the current project, you just go through your notetaking system and you can search for all of your recent notes, and then you can see what's been on your mind most, and that can help you decide what to write next.
[00:05:56] Matty: And I suppose your approach also needs to be adjusted based on whether you're writing for a publication, for example. Like you can't just wait for the muse to strike to turn in your article for FORBES. But if you're writing a book for your own imprint, basically for your followers, but there's not a deadline associated with it, that could be a plus or minus, but at least it gives you some bandwidth to have that mulling-over period.
[00:06:21] Bryan: For a few years and as part of writing for FORBES, you had to write five to 10 articles per month. And the topics I covered were productivity, leadership, and business articles. So what I do is I'd look at the articles that got the most views and I try and write similar articles next week or next month. But I guess if it's a self-driven creative project like a book, where you have to set your own deadlines and that's where starting multiple projects can really be a challenge, because if you're starting multiple projects, you're more likely to delay your own project. Whereas if you're writing for someone else, you're probably more likely to progress, whether it's because you don't want to let that person down or you don't want to miss a deadline.
[00:06:59] Matty: That's interesting that you were looking back across, where you just looking at your own FORBES articles and extrapolating on what seems most popular or were you looking across FORBES articles in general and saying, maybe somebody else's article was very popular, what can I draw from that?
[00:07:14] Bryan: Yeah, it was a combination of both. So I eventually did find paying work as a writer, and I got a job in a content marketing team. And when I was working in content marketing for a British software company, one of the things we spent a lot of time doing was using analytics to figure out what content was resonating with readers and followers and subscribers.
[00:07:33] So I use this in my own work today. So basically what I do is, I go into Google Analytics, if it's one of my sites, I look at the most popular articles and then figure out related content that I can publish on those articles. I'll either write those myself or commission someone to write them.
[00:07:47] Or alternatively, I'm not a freelance writer anymore, but when I was a freelance writer for FORBES and other publications, I would look up my stats for the different articles and then I would try and write ones that resonated with readers. So I would ask myself was it the headline, was it the topic, was it the structure of the article? And then I would try and write more of those. So do more of what work and less of what doesn't.
[00:08:09] Matty: That is a fascinating idea of applying that kind of scientific approach to one's creative work.
[00:08:15] So the second most common mistake, one of the seven most common mistakes is not organizing the ideas. Talk a little bit about that.
Not Organizing the Ideas
[00:08:23] Bryan: That's an idea we touched upon when we were talking about the research process. So it's great to have a trusted system that you use for your research and for your notes. I've tried lots of systems over the years on index cards, notepads, journals, you name it, a commonplace book. And what I found is there's no perfect notetaking system, but it's better to have all your notes and research and ideas in one place that you go to, to save them when you come across them and also that you review regularly. And that way you'll naturally begin to bring some sort of order and structure to your notes and your research. And even if it looks a little bit messy, if it's all in one place, it's constrained within that system that you've created for it.
[00:09:03] And then the key part of the organization then is to actually go in and look at your research and your notes. So I remember at one point I had a thousand, or two or three hundred index cards for a book I was going to write, but I didn't really review them that regularly. So when the time came to write the book, it was quite difficult because I wasn't looking at the system enough.
[00:09:19] So these days, what I try to do is write down two to three notes on a topic every morning. And then at the end of the week, I'll review all of the notes for the week and see if I need to update any of the notes or if I could interlink them. And then when it comes time to plan more articles for the following week, I'll look at the notes that I have been taking and that will say to me that these are the things I've been interested in or reading about.
[00:09:38] Matty: You use a different approach between writing an article and writing a book?
[00:09:42] Bryan: Yeah, writing a book is a much bigger project, takes longer, it takes more planning. What I try to do is write several articles on the topic and see if that resonates with readers in terms of views or shares, and also if it's something I'm interested in writing more about. As anybody who's bought books on Amazon can attest to, some books can just feel like blog posts that have been potted out, so I try to avoid that over writing a book.
[00:10:05] Maybe my first book, I didn't quite succeed with that, it was probably something that would have been better as a long-form article. But I recently wrote a parenting memoir, which took me a good year to write, and it was a combination of journal entries and other types of writing that I was able to use. But for writing a book basically, I do still try and apply some structure. So I figure out what the key idea of the book is or what the different acts of the book are, and then what section I need to include in each act.
[00:10:31] Matty: What tool are you using? Do you have a particular app for collecting the data for it?
[00:10:36] Bryan: I use a journaling app called Day One. So I use that because I like to journal a lot, but I've started to put my notes and research in there as well. And that's not necessarily because it's a great notetaking app, it's just, I'm in there every morning, writing journal entries. So it's, I'm just trying to constrain myself to one tool. But there's lots of other great notetaking apps. Notion is pretty popular. Evernote was pretty popular, but then I know some people found it clunky. You can also use apps like Bear or Ulysses, or even Apple Notes is great too as it syncs across all of your devices. Potentially use, I think it's Google Keep. They're good as well.
[00:11:11] And then for the actual outlining, I'll use just bullet points. So there's a bullet point app I'll use called Dynalist that's free, so I find that quite good, really easy to use. And sometimes if I'm just getting a bit stressed with computers and technology, I'll use index cards or a whiteboard and just do a mind map on a whiteboard, or just map out the book chapters with index cards and move them around on a table. And that can be helpful too, for especially for a book, because it's so big, a computer screen can be quite constraining, whereas it's probably easier to outline an article on a computer.
[00:11:42] Matty: I like the idea of if you're using an automated tool, one that you have open anyway, and although I'm not 100% happy with my approach either, I tend to use Scrivener because I'm in Scrivener every day, mainly working on my fiction books. But if I have an idea for an indy-author-focused book, I'll either put a note in there or if I have a quite fleshed out idea, I'll flesh it out in Scrivener as a chapter. And then if I start seeing an evolving theme, like I would love to put out a book called THE EFFICIENT AUTHOR, and so I can look through all my chapters and say, oh, I have 15 or 20 blocks of notes that are related to efficiency. That seems like a good start or, oh, you know what, I only have three here, it's probably something that needs to simmer a bit more.
[00:12:31] Bryan: Yeah, Scrivener's great, I've written several books in Scrivener. Not using it as much these days, that's only because I'm not writing a book. And I guess for writing online content, the formatting can be a bit tricky in Scrivener. But definitely for long form projects, Scrivener is excellent.
[00:12:46] Matty: Yeah, I'm really happy with it for my fiction writing for sure. So the third common mistake people make is waiting for passion or inspiration to strike.
Waiting for Inspiration to Strike
[00:12:55] Bryan: It's common to sit around and say, I don't feel like writing today. I'm not inspired, I don't have a great idea, I'm going to wait till this evening after work. Because typically if you're a new writer, you're writing around a job. Or you're going to wait till the weekend, when I'll have the whole Saturday cleared to write. And what inevitably happens is after work you're tired or your family commitments, or Saturday rolls around and you get a better offer or life intervenes, and you don't have the time to write.
[00:13:22] So sometimes you just got to get up and turn up at your desk, even if you don't have any ideas where you don't know what you're going to say. Because it's true, turning up, that you build a writing habit and then when you build a writing habit, you'll naturally find more things to write about. So by all means, write about something if it inspires you, but also try and write a little bit, even if you're feeling uninspired.
[00:13:43] Matty: Are there any practices that you've taken from the writing you've done where you had an externally imposed deadline, like a magazine, that you apply to work where you're imposing your own deadline, like your books?
[00:13:58] Bryan: Yeah, so for writing non-fiction, there’s a weird productivity secret I learned from an article about Elon Musk. So he had a bad habit of announcing deadlines for Tesla cars, and he used to announce them to the press and then he was slated by the press or criticized when the company inevitably missed his deadlines, and it was the same for Space X. So what they've started doing is setting two deadlines. One was a public deadline that all the press would hold them to account to, and then one was a deadline for the company or for the team. And that was a bit closer and that's what they would hold themselves accountable to. And so they would have a buffer, so if they miss the internal deadline, they would still have some time before the external deadline.
[00:14:37] Now that's for a big corporate company or somebody trying to go to Mars, but for your own writing, if you're a freelance writer and you're writing for publication, and your editor says, I need this Monday, two weeks’ time, you could say to yourself, I'm going to finish this on Friday, two weeks’ time. So then you have a slight buffer of the weekend, if for some reason you need to change something in the article or you missed your deadline. And I find that quite helpful if you put that into your Google Calendar.
[00:15:01] Matty: Yes, definitely something that's on a calendar, I use Trello to do monitoring. Anything that's there is more likely to get done than if it's just in my brain.
[00:15:08] So a sort of associated common mistake is writing only on the weekends. And I'm assuming you're saying weekends because of what you just said about, many indy authors are working around a full-time job, but are weekends just dangerous for other reasons?
Writing Only on the Weekends
[00:15:23] Bryan: If you're waiting until Saturday to write, you might write 3000 words, and then it could be another week before you write 3000 words. Whereas if you write 300 words every day, there's a good chance that you'll go past the 3000 words, because some days will go better than others. And it won't be so stressful and difficult, particularly if you're a new writer. So rather than trying to block book a couple of hours on a Saturday, why not block book 15 or 30 minutes every morning or every evening? And that's usually a better way to write more efficiently.
[00:15:51] The other good thing is sometimes people like to take time off for the weekends as well, to recharge. So if you want to do that, that's where again, you could review what you're doing during the week after work or before work and see if there's something that you can do less of, like social media or the news or whatever it is.
[00:16:06] Matty: Do you use word count to track your productivity?
[00:16:09] Bryan: Yeah, yeah, so I used to use word count quite a lot. I still find it helpful, particularly for first drafts. So what I would do is I set a target word count for the article or for the chapter and then I'm saying, during this writing session, I'm going to try and hit this particular word count.
[00:16:25] But what I found is because over the years word count is only helpful for like already drafts, because when you get to editing, how do you track your word count, because you're still doing creative work. So what I started doing for editing is tracking the time spent editing, and that can be helpful. So if I'm on a first draft phase and focused on the first draft, it'll be word count for the week and then if I'm on an editing phase, it'll be time spent editing articles per week. And sometimes if that feels like a micromanagement, I'll just focus on the number of articles written in a week.
[00:16:53] So it really depends on the scale of the project, but I would say that unless you're, you know, focused on publishing a set amount of fiction books every year, word count is just one measure that you can use. Also consider time spent editing.
[00:17:07] Matty: Yeah, I've found that word count doesn't really work for me because the few times I've gone into Scrivener, which does show you daily word count, I feel like the math doesn't work out because I'll go for what feels like weeks getting down, I don't know, 50 words a day, which is probably me writing 400 and deleting 350, writing 200 and deleting 150. And the end result is I get out of 80-, 85-ish thousand-word novel at least once a year. But it stresses me to think about the word count, the word count approach. It would be more destructive than productive for me to be spending too much time on word count.
[00:17:50] Bryan: Yeah, yeah, I've had a similar experience. It's helpful for an early draft, but after that I find it less so.
[00:17:54] Matty: Yeah. So that kind of leads us to one of the other mistakes, which is writing and editing at the same time. Can we talk about that?
Writing and Editing at the Same Time
[00:18:03] Bryan: I found that writing and editing engage different parts of your brain. So if you try to write and edit, it gets a bit confusing. Years ago when I was writing those short stories that I talked about, our instructor, who was a guy from Texas, he tasked us on writing one true sentence. The true sentence was like a perfect sentence, which is impossible. But I took on a bit too literally, and I spent a lot of time trying to write perfect sentences and I'd write a sentence and then go back and rewrite it and then go back and rewrite it again and again.
[00:18:33] I wasn't actually finishing the stories and getting feedback from an editor. So far better to just focus during one session on your draft or get into the end of the piece, and then during another separate session, perhaps in the afternoon or the following day to engage the other side of your brain and approach it more critically, ask yourself, what can I take out, what can I change and what can I remove? Because there are different types of writing. So to do both at the same time, can really get confusing.
[00:18:59] Matty: Yeah, I've found that I could write fiction and edit non-fiction or vice versa, but especially within one work, I can't try to wear both hats. And I will put a link in the show notes, I don't remember the episode title, but I've had Tiffany Yates Martin, who is an editor on several times, and she talks about dividing that process into three. There's the writing, there's the editing where you assess it, and then there's the revising where you're actually making the changes. And she even feels that you need to separate those three things out, even beyond separating the two things out. But yeah, trying not to wear multiple hats of any kind while you're doing that kind of work, I think is important.
[00:19:38] Bryan: I like that, I could see how that would work for a book.
[00:19:41] Matty: Yeah, I do like the fact that she separates revising and editing because I think it avoids that, I'm assessing what the reader's going to experience, now I'm trying to fix it, now I'm assessing. It separates it, I think, in a nice way and makes those hat changes clearer.
[00:20:28] Matty: I love this one, working harder will make it happen. Talk about that mistake.
Working Harder Will Make It Happen
[00:20:36] Bryan: So sometimes when you're a new writer, it can feel like you just got to persevere and keep putting in extra hours and then you'll find success, but sometimes it's good to also step back and ask yourself what exactly you're trying to achieve. Are you trying to write short stories? Are you trying to build a blog? Are you trying to land profitable freelance writing clients? Are you trying to write a book?
[00:21:01] Because all of those are very different types of writing goals, which require a different approach to the work. And even how you think about word count for a short story versus pitching freelance writing clients is different.
[00:21:12] So taking a moment to step back and asking what type of writer are you, what are the conventions of your niche and who is your ideal reader, can help you avoid working extra hours on the wrong things that aren't really moving your writing career, whatever that means to you, in the right direction.
[00:21:28] So for me, when I asked myself those questions, I realized that I don't really want to write fiction. I enjoy reading fiction, but it's not something that I wanted to write. So that immediately freed up a good chunk of the week for non-fiction writing projects. And it also meant that I was able to reduce the amount of time spent working as well.
[00:21:44] Matty: In our conversation up till now, we've talked about or implied that the financial side of it, if you're using your writing to pay the bills, then that's obviously an important consideration. What are some of the other criteria that you apply to help you make that decision about, there's only a limited number of hours, you don't want to fill them all with work, which ones are you going to pick?
[00:22:07] Bryan: So I would ask yourself, what's your writing goal for the next few months? But it's still not simple setting a writing goal for the year, which can be challenging because a year is quite a long time. So I like to think of it in terms of seasons. So if you pick about three, three and a half months, that's long enough to get something done, but not so long that it feels like it's ages away. So what you want to accomplish this season for your writing or for your creative life? And then break that down into smaller milestones to accomplish every month and every week and every day. So if it's writing a book, you can break that down by word count or by chapter, and then focus on that.
[00:22:43] If you pick one thing to work on every season, one big creative project, then you'd be surprised by how much you can accomplish during a year.
[00:22:50] Matty: I've been trying to be more diligent about what I spend my time on, but I recently had this idea for author book plates. So if I haven't already announced this to the listeners, they can stay tuned for a formal announcement about that. And I kept holding it up to my business plan and saying, it doesn't comply with the criteria that I've set up for myself, but I finally just decided that I was so excited about it that I was going to approach it kind of like my spare time activity, like my creative play period.
[00:23:16] Because I really wanted to do it, and as long as I went into it knowing that this was probably not going to be a big money maker, it was just something I was doing because I got intrigued by it and at least my expectations were set appropriately.
[00:23:29] So the last of the seven mistakes that aspiring non-fiction writers can make is wait until it's perfect.
Wait Until It's Perfect
[00:23:35] Bryan: If you think back today, writing one true sentence story I was telling you about, firstly, it's impossible to write anything that's perfect, as any writer will know. But the other interesting thing I've found is, your standard for what constitutes good, great or excellent will change as your skills grow.
[00:23:52] So you might read a story and say, that's really good, and then you'll try and write something similar, and you'll get your own story or your own piece of non-fiction to a certain point. But then, because your skills have improved, you'll start to spot other mistakes in the work or other things that you can fix. And then you raise the bar on yourself and then you'll rewrite it again.
[00:24:11] And you can keep doing that but eventually you reach a point where diminishing returns sets in. So you got to ask yourself, at what point do you need to send this to an editor who's expecting it so you can get paid, or what point should you just publish the book, and accept it's never going to be perfect? Or at what point should you hire an editor if you're self-publishing who can find and fix mistakes faster than you can.
[00:24:33] This is a mistake I think I made with my latest book. I wrote it during the lockdown, so I wanted to invest a good bit of time in it. It was more of a creative project rather than something that was going to build a business in some way. So there's lots of parenting stories in it, but because it was so personal and I spent a lot of time rewriting those stories and I think it costs me about two or three months in the editing process, because of trying to write the stories myself, because they were so personal.
[00:24:57] But I would have been better hiring an editor sooner because when I did hire an editor, she did point out some things in the book that I was able to fix quite quickly, some structural issues. And as soon as I did that, it solved a few problems for me with the book. And when it was done, I was like, if I had done this in February, it would have been able to publish a lot sooner. So I suppose that's the key lesson I've learned on that particular mistake. So I'm still making it basically.
[00:25:18] Matty: Yeah. I think it's something that one has to keep an eye on throughout one's career. And do you have different types of editing? Like I'll say a developmental edit versus a copy edit?
[00:25:30] Bryan: Yeah, it depends, these days I write a lot of articles, but for a book I will go through a developmental edit where I would try and look at a book away from a computer. So I'll print out, I get the index cards of the book and look at the overall structure, so I'm not getting caught up with individual sections or sentences. And then I'll try and edit specific chapters and then I'll try and edit specific lines.
[00:25:53] So depending on the type of edits, I could use software like Grammarly or Hemingway app, if it's for copy edits. If it's for a developmental edit, I can do that myself, or alternatively, I could hire an editor. I guess if it's a smaller project, like an article, you can do some of those things yourself. But I would definitely agree with that advice that you said about your editor, or who recommended that you've three different approaches to your editing.
[00:26:15] Matty: Yeah. I've finally come to terms with the fact that I'm going to need two edits. I think most of my novels have only ever had one edit and it was kind of a combination, calling out structural or character issues and some level of copy editing, and then I would separately have a proofread. But I think that after my experience with Ann Kinnear 5, which has been dragging on for a long time, I feel like I need to just outline and show my editor something that has all the structural parts without having sunk all the time into description and dialogue and all those other things.
[00:26:49] And once I have that straightened out, then dive into that other stuff, because I think that this book is going to win the award for most thrown away words, because I had to change so much based on the first edit, and then I realized I needed the second edit because I was like, this is really not going to look anything like it did when the editor saw it the first time.
[00:27:07] But I think that wait until it's perfect it's such a fine line to walk, especially for indy authors, because there's always this feeling if you're traditionally published, then your editor is by definition, the gatekeeper between you and giving your reader something that isn't up to snuff. And so many times indy authors are functioning in that role themselves.
[00:27:28] And I feel like there's sort of seasons of the recommendation that people who are big in the indy author community give. And so for a while, I think it was, we need to compete with the traditionally published authors who have a whole team of people who are taking care of cover design and proofreading, editing, and so on. So don’t put something out there that's half baked, but more recently, I've heard the same experts more saying, don't wait until it's perfect. What's the phrase that, perfect can be the enemy of the good. And so do you feel like that's cyclical? Do you think your advice always would have been wait until it's perfect or was there ever a period, like early on where your advice was more, don't just throw something out that's half-baked?
[00:28:15] Bryan: Yeah, it's an interesting way to think about it. So I think the biggest challenge these days is capturing the attention of readers online, whether that's with a Twitter thread or an article. Or even for authors, capturing the attention of potential book buyers on Amazon. And if you wait too long, you'll never learn what readers want from you. So it can be a balancing act to find what works best.
[00:28:38] But on the other hand, if you're worried about discarding too much, you don't have to delete it, you can just put it into your notetaking system, or your scrap file and it could potentially form the gems of your next project. But it is better to get something out there. If you look at any of the most successful non-fiction authors or fiction authors, they all have a big back catalog that they draw upon. So they are publishing consistently, and their books naturally improve. If you type in Stephen King, best books and worst books, you'll find lots of diverse opinions.
[00:29:05] I'm a big fan of Stephen King. We'll say that he explored multiple genres over his career, and he's gotten much better at different genres. You can learn a little bit about that approach, for whatever genre you're writing in or niche.
[00:29:17] Matty: You ever go back and republish something that you've published yourself with modifications?
[00:29:22] Bryan: I do, I do. So I tried to edit my first book myself, which was a mistake. And then I got some emails from readers complaining about typos and similar issues in the book, so I rewrote the book and I republished it and I got the help of an editor with that rewrite. And that was a really stressful way to do it, so I don't recommend that. The reason why I edited it to myself was I didn't have much money and I figured because I was a journalist, I'd be able to do it, but I was wrong. So these days I try to avoid that, you know, and hire an editor up front.
[00:29:51] In terms of articles, I do that quite a lot, so it's actually good practice for Google search. So if you've written an article on a particular topic and the information about the topic has changed in some way, or what readers are expecting from search results has changed in some way, it makes sense to go back in and update the article with the latest statistics and information and reset the publication date.
[00:30:12] And then sometimes, you'll write an article and then you might think of a follow-on piece because your thoughts on that article has changed. I guess that can be a form of rewriting too.
[00:30:20] Matty: I think a theme I'm hearing about the wait until is perfect, is that people shouldn't be working away on it in their garret, not showing it to anybody else and using only their own eyes as the measure of how good it is, because I think once you get it to a certain point, if you're uncertain about it, start showing it to other people, it might be an editor, it might be a fellow writers, friends, beta readers, and that they can help. Those impartial third-party eyes can help you decide if you've reached the point where it's valuable to share it out with readers or if it needs more work.
[00:30:52] Bryan: Yeah, if any of your listeners or viewers are wanting to share their work and they're writing non-fiction now I would encourage them to start publishing it on Medium consistently. So there are lots of publications on Medium looking for guest writers and niches like entrepreneurship and personal development. And writing for those publications is going immediately level up your skills if you're new. And because Medium has a partner program, you can get paid to learn more about writing non-fiction too. So that's definitely one approach. And I know there are some networks that fiction writers use like Wattpad, for publishing stories and getting feedback.
[00:31:25] I find it's better for a non-fiction, if you get some feedback before you start embarking on a bigger project, like a book.
[00:31:30] Matty: Yeah, all great advice. Bryan, thank you so much. Please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and all your work online.
[00:31:38] Bryan: Sure. Thanks. Thanks for asking, Matty. So, you can visit BecomeAWriterToday.com and you'll find a book of writing prompts on the homepage that I'll give you. A I also have a podcast under the same name where I interview authors about their writing processes and Matty was kind enough to take part in a few weeks ago. So please do check out the podcast on iTunes.
[00:32:01] Matty: Very good. Thank you so much.
[00:32:03] Bryan: Thanks, Matty.
Links
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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCglNILz3uBqPer5EMJ_pzVg
https://becomeawritertoday.com/
https://www.theindyauthor.com/088---how-to-receive-and-give-critique.html
https://twitter.com/BryanJCollins
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCglNILz3uBqPer5EMJ_pzVg
https://becomeawritertoday.com/
https://www.theindyauthor.com/088---how-to-receive-and-give-critique.html
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I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Bryan! Are you a non-fiction writer and, if yes, did you recognize any of Bryan’s THE SEVEN MOST COMMON MISTAKES OF NON-FICTION AUTHORS in your own work practices? I’m definitely guilty of believing that working harder will make it happen, and I’m taking some concrete steps to try to combat that, including making sure I take time away from my computer ... stay tuned for an upcoming episode addressing that very topic. Did any of Bryan’s cautions hit home with you? If yes, what is your plan to change that?
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