That’s one reason I looked for a Muse. I needed someone to be my border collie and keep my worktime peregrinations to a minimum.  More about the Muse’s latest in another post.

Anyway, to be successful at being a writer, here are three things you must do. Now.

1. STOP READING THIS BLOG POST AND WRITE. You are probably procrastinating, aren’t you? I bet you have been sitting there, chin on one hand, mouse in the other, clicking your way through link after link while the razor-sharp second hand slices away what’s left of your day.

WRITE.

2. PLAN FOR YOUR WRITING TOMORROW. Write down ideas before they slip away. If you have an iPhone, use the Notes or Voice Memo. Better yet, use a concept map. Draw a circle in the center of a piece of paper (or use free software, like CMap Tools) and put down your one good idea you have that is rattling around your mind like a BB in an empty tuna fish can. Then draw five circles around it and write down five related ideas, two of which must be opposites. Then draw two lines off each circle and put two more ideas based on that circle. One must be a positive connection to the circle idea and one a negative, or anti-, idea.

There. Now, even if some of them are dry holes,  you have certainly enough ideas about what to write tomorrow, don’t you? Now get back to work and WRITE.

3. THINK OF 3 PEOPLE you can connect with by end of day tomorrow who can help your writing or consulting by brainstorming with you about story ideas, potential clients, or markets and marketing ideas. Get out their phone numbers NOW and write them down on a real or virtual Post-It and put it on your monitor or desktop. Call each before noon tomorrow. Ask each for the name and contact info of one other person who would be valuable for you to network with. DO IT.

Then get back to writing.

You’re welcome.

Most people look at the dog-man relationship as one way, as one of subservience,  as dog being taken care of by man. But it also goes the other way. Back in the earliest days of barely domesticated wolf-dogs, man benefited from the presence of dogs. Besides the obvious watchdog and even guard dog functions, dogs also provided companionship, meal scrap clean-up and a hunting partner.

Even today, dogs still gain from the relationship, but man gains as well, especially with certain ones. In the life of every Dog Person is one special dog, that one dog among many that touches the heart in a special way.

There’s a relationship that is hard to explain, but it is best described by love. Not just the love of a pet, but the love of another living being that is trying to understand and please you just as hard as you are trying to understand and share life with it. It’s not simply a pet-and-owner relationship. It’s more.

That’s why, several years after her death from cancer at age 3, I still miss my chocolate lab terribly. She provided something in my life that was missing, and remains missing today. It is a hole in my life. I am not embarrassed to admit it.

It’s the same with writing, at least non-fiction. With fiction, you don’t need to worry so much about facts, though internal consistency is important once you get the story going. You just more or less give birth to the characters and let them go. They will create their own facts.

But with non-fiction, there’s fact-gathering (which I always overdo), interviewing, more fact-gathering and checking, more interviewing, collating of notes, rough drafts, editing and yada yada yada.

Depending on the subject, you may even have to re-check facts you have already checked (sound like fun?). For instance, I did a piece on the fire ant a few years ago. The story took a long time to come together, and while I was working on it, new facts came out on the spread of the ant and about a fly that was being used to try to contain the growth of ant colonies. One never knows when the facts will change.

Still, fiction scares me. So much power, so much responsibility. Despite the work, I still think I prefer non-fiction. Too timid for fiction for now.

As part of my re-focusing of my writing, editing and design work, I have decided to move more aggressively into videos and podcasts. Got a new mic and new tripod for camera.

I am backing out a bit on Twitter. Tiring of the crowds and spam. Complained in a tweet about all the p*rn and int3rn*t m*rket1ng (hey, why take a chance here???) “followers.” Immediately, I was hit with four tweets from IMers and two from young girls who wanted — to quote the Bard — to “make the beast with two backs” with me.

More soon.

The artist doesn’t care about what the reader thinks. He is not writing for the reader — he is writing for himself. It’s rather like the argument I have made about art vs. design, which needs to be functional for the user, unlike art.

Those of us who write mostly non-fiction have to care about all sorts of things that the fiction writer/artist doesn’t have to consider.  Many people will disagree, I’m sure, but that’s how I see it.

People who write for others, and do so poorly, are hacks. I think I will work out a Writer Taxonomy, including the above categories and others as well. Watch for it soon.

The latest was the difference between re-writing and editing. Can writers edit or do they only re-write? If an editor does a heavy-handed job, is it really a rewrite? When does it reach a point that an editor deserves a co-byline? Should editors even be allowed to edit that much?

I worked one summer as a copyeditor at a ski magazine. The editor had accepted a freelance article that was so badly written I had to take a heavy blue pencil (yes, it was that long ago) to it. The story was as much mine as the writer’s. We should have sent it back to the author.

As a writer, I always re-write — probably too much. But do I edit my own work?

I know it doesn’t matter, but that doesn’t stop me from worrying about it.  I have to quit this post. The Muse just raised her head from the couch and inquired about proofreading.

I am organizing the notes and documents into a set of folders that follow the current, loose outline. I have to scan some documents.

I have to set up organizational and reminder software. I want to just start writing, to get into the “fun” work (HA!) of writing. This preliminary stuff is almost enough to make me kick the Muse off the couch and take a nap.

Is writing an addiction? Why do we writers willingly spend so much time suffering? We suffer to write; we suffer when we write. We agonize over the flaws after publication.

We write again. Ad infiwritum.

Bad typography, whether it is type size, line width or linespacing (and it’s usually a combination of those three), can make reading a book an almost painful experience.

I can’t imagine how frustrating it is for a writer to find his or her work basically ruined by a bad designer. I think it underlines the importance of writers, editors and designers working together as a team.

On this blog, I increased the linespacing a bit because the type is set pretty wide. Had I not done that in my CSS file, the type would clump into a ball of stems and strokes and not be as easy to read.

Writers: pay attention to typography. Don’t leave it all to the designer.

People still like a good tale, well-told. This can’t be done on Twitter. It really can’t be done on blogs. I am not even sure it can be done online. Who can read for more than a few minutes on a computer screen?

Although I truly understand the pressures modern newspapers are under, the last thing they should do is cut the good reads. People who don’t like to read will simply go to the web. Why would they want to read web-styled content on paper? People who like to read will pay for your paper if you give them what they want.

There will always be a need for solid, investigative reporting.

Most thinking is done with words. Writing is done with words. I try to tell my students that the two are connected and that they will be better critical thinkers if they work on their writing skills. The thinking skills needed to become a better thinker also make you a better writer. The thinking skills needed to become a better writer also make you a better thinker.

In this blog, I am going to talk about my writing, and about how writing, editing and design, especially for newspapers, must all work together.