How to Be Your Own Intern
By Jael McHenry | March 7, 2011 |
Therese here, elbowing in for a quick sec to say woohoo, our first week of donations in the Writers for The Red Cross auction has earned $450! Don’t miss this week’s packages, including “The Kitchen Daughter” Book Club in a Box donated by Jael McHenry; a signed copy of Donald Maass’s not-yet-released book The Breakout Novelist; a 100-page critique of your work-in-progress by author Ann Aguirre; and signed copies of Anna Elliott’s Avalon series. Bidding begins today. Back to your regularly scheduled blog post…
Balancing my writing career with all my other responsibilities is a constant challenge, and I always joked that what I really needed was an intern. Now, my “office” is a corner of the living room of a typical Manhattan one-bedroom apartment, meaning that even my desk isn’t a full-size desk, so onsite help was out of the question. (The writing life has its elements of romance, but it is also jam-packed with unromantic logistics.)
But we all have more than we can do ourselves, or at least it feels that way, right? If you are writing with the goal of publication, no matter where you are in the process, you’re looking at two important and sometimes conflicting types of work: the craft and the business. In struggling to find time for both, you may find you’re not satisfied with the progress you’re making on either.
I was lucky; I actually got the intern I’d been joking about needing. An opportunity came up (via the magic of Twitter) to post a listing for Winter Term interns at Oberlin College, and after interviewing several applicants, I selected one to work for me this past January. He was incredibly helpful. At the time I was several months away from the launch of The Kitchen Daughter and needed help tracking down information on everything from festival deadlines to book bloggers’ timeline requirements to the Facebook and Twitter accounts of my favorite indie bookstores. He even helped out on the historical research for my next book, currently underway.
But what if you can’t get an intern? Simple. Be your own.
Here are three easy ways:
- Separate your work. The business and the craft aspects of writing are both absolutely necessary to tackle, but if you’re anything like me, you use different parts of your brain to address them. And it can be hard to switch back and forth. If you’re trying to finish a novel draft and research agents at the same time, try setting either a completion goal or a time goal on the writing before you tackle the agent stuff. Maybe you work four days a week on the writing and only research agents on Fridays. Or maybe you write 10,000 words before you switch to research. For my intern, I separated things I absolutely had to do myself (talk to my publicist) from things I didn’t (find out if Prairie Lights has a Facebook page). And if there are enough different things you’re juggling, this is inextricably linked to…
- List your tasks and set priorities. More often than not, when I found a spare 15 minutes or so to work on something writing-related, I’d spend that time looking through my e-mail trying to remember what all I had to do. For the sake of my intern, I had to list out what I wanted him to work on, and at the same time I got in the habit of keeping a similar list for myself. Lists are magical. You don’t need to label everything down to the gnat’s eyelash with rankings and details. Just have a list. Put things that are more important toward the top. Then when you have that 15 minutes, hit the list. It seems so simple, and it makes such a difference.
- Go easy on yourself. Since I’d obviously never worked with this intern before, and I have only the haziest recollection of what I myself was capable of when I was a senior in college, I gave him the task list, set reasonable deadlines, and then just let him be. Contrast this with how I treat myself: more often than not, I tell myself I should be doing more and doing it faster, staying perfectly focused, knocking out both fiction and pieces like this one with a speedy and accurate hand. Do not drive yourself nuts this way. If it takes you five days to write a page, that’s how long it takes. This may seem contrary, and it is, but setting more reasonable goals can actually make you more productive than sky-high ones. Give it a shot and see.
These guidelines won’t give you an extra pair of hands, but they may help you do more with the pair you have.
For the comments below: How do you make yourself more productive? And what would you do if you had an intern?
[Image via Flickr’s Creative Commons by drooooo]
Jael McHenry is the debut author of The Kitchen Daughter (Simon & Schuster/Gallery Books, April 12, 2011). Her work has appeared in publications such as the North American Review, Indiana Review, and the Graduate Review at American University, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing. You can read more about Jael and her book at jaelmchenry.com or follow her on Twitter at @jaelmchenry.
Hi Jael, great post. Hey, you wouldn’t be thinking about sharing that spreadsheet with festival deadlines, etc would you? How about the barter system?
I always enjoy your posts, Jael. They have a re-balancing effect.
I love this post. It is very calming and sensible, and I need that. Balancing writing, research, business, and family leaves me a little frazzled at times. You list some great strategies for organization. Thank you!
Really helpful post, and a hearty “amen” to The Power Of Lists!
We can only do so much, and lists help us figure out which things to try to do first. The act of prioritizing the things we want/need to do is both important and empowering.
Thanks for this – a reminder that I’ve gotta get going with that that intern hunt I’ve been meaning to do! And glad to hear your non-self intern worked out well. Wish I could be my own intern but with job + kids + writing, not enough hours in the day.
Check that…as a fellow listmaker I love to hear from others. Thanks for the great suggestions!
Hmmm. My husband keeps saying he wishes he could help. Maybe he could be my intern.
I’m going to apply these tips to become my own intern…I like that idea! :) Thanks!
I love that you had an intern! Completely genius!
You’re absolutely right about the different head-spaces required to organize versus create. I’m more confident about the former and find it easier to fit into the nooks and crannies, so I’m trying to designate the larger clumps of time for writing.
I make lists, too, and have become disciplined about using my Outlook calendar. It helps unclutter my brain.
Like this post! I discovered that writing lists only worked when I only had “one list to rule them all”… otherwise I kept re-writing the list when I misplaced them, or had scraps of little lists everywhere! :) Still working out the rules of my system.
Oh wow, it sounds like I already am my own intern. Still, I’m going to bookmark this post because I’m sure things will get busier if I ever do pursue publication. Thanks for the advice.
Thanks for all the great responses! If you can get your hands on an intern (or draft a family member) I highly recommend it, of course. But if not, hopefully these tips give you a little boost.
(And some balance! So glad people called that out. It’s always my goal.)
Great helpful lists. I have also found that making lists and writing them down really help a lot.
This gives me a great idea–I just happen to have an out-of-work teen in my house who knows how to use the internet! I bet she’d work for food (or clean laundry)!
If I had an intern I’d want help with getting my internet presence streamlined. If I had the time, I would have already started my facebook page for my latest WIP, (as a guinea pig for learning how to optimize my facebook author fan page) and I would love to get a website started. Then I would want them to figure out how to get all of my different feeds to update each other. I saw this on another blogger’s post, and I had a serious bout of envy wishing all of my work would automatically update to each site with the click of a mouse.
I love lists, but I’m a slave to them if I start. I’ll waste more time on creating the list than getting any of the items done. I tend to get sucked into time-space vortexes preparing to take the next step.
Since an intern is probably way outside of my scope right now, I’d settle for someone who could do the laundry, buy the food and clean the house!
Very late to post, but I loved this blog. Lists are my favorite thing, and my current favorite thing is a program for my Mac called Stickies, which is a post-it program for my desk top. I can click on them to minimize, so they disappear, but I can also keep things front and center when I need them. I have “Goals For This Week” on one, “next scenes” on another, and “possible blog posts” on another.
I also accidentally happened into a virtual assistant and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done for my peace of mind. She takes care of a million little things for me, even things I wouldn’t think of.