My drawing teacher in college was always giving me a hard time about the fact that my sketchbook was not full enough. I love to draw, but it’s one of those things that I can only do when I feel moved to do so. (“A page a day, Peggy! You will never get accepted to the fine arts program with this!“) At the time, I was still wallowing in teenage angst, and felt that my drawings were not good enough to fill an entire book. (And, I had not yet realized what the tuition cost to art school was like.)

I’ve since learned that practice is absolutely necessary to perfect the skill of drawing, just like running, playing the violin, and – you saw this coming, I know – writing.

Frankly, I have always found it hard to keep into the habit of daily creative writing, especially when my work is about business or other non-fiction writing. I get distracted, I get caught up on the phone, I get snagged by an interesting client, and at the end of the day, the creative writing does not happen.

Just like drawing, I needed to develop a habit of doing it every day. The key for me was to develop a mechanism. This means something that happens on it’s own, whether I cause it to happen or not, and forces a chain reaction that causes the thing I really wanted to happen, to happen.

My mechanism for drawing is simple. I went against the rule of my instructors and bought a teensy tiny sketchbook that’s only 3×4 inches. (“Bigger Peggy, BIGGER!”) But I figured that small was better than not at all. This mini sketchbook has a lovely glove-leather bound cover and an elastic loop for my 2B graphite. It is a permanent part of my purse contents. That means that it is with me every time I get on the ferry that shuttles me from my small island home to the major shopping areas nearby. So each time I get on the ferry, I whip out that sketchbook.

Time on the ferry is like gold to me. My 13-month-old is strapped securely into her carseat, and is kept happy with toys and people passing outside the car window to distract her. That means that if I lose myself in an activity which requires my full concentration, there is a significantly lower chance of her accidentally maiming herself while I perform this. There are no small hands grabbing my pencil. There is no phone ringing. There is no message popping up on my screen demanding that I instantly return that email. I am free to draw for the entire 20-minute crossing, and I often sketch other passengers, cars, or scenes from over the rail. I can escape quite neatly, and without any sense of guilty obligation to any other activity.

In fact, the smaller page size has increased my powers of observation and distillation. Not unlike effective writing, drawing is about capturing an essence, a sense of movement, and of clarity. Gesture drawing is somewhat like the writing brainstorming sessions that I used to perform in school. I enjoy simply grabbing the instrument, dragging it across the paper, and allowing my subconscious true self to control the marks made. By discerning what is essential to write and draw, and what is not, I keep in the confines of that tiny page, and what I see as I flip pages is far more interesting than my big old sketchbook from college.

I’ve just signed up for a 2-year subscription to Joe’sGoals.com, (but you can sign up for the free account if you like), with a creative writing reminder set for each day. The little alarm goes off if I have not made an entry for myself each day. We’ll see how this new mechanism works – but sticking to a writing schedule has worked for many successful writers in the past. I’ll report back on my success in the next few weeks.

I have a theory that film directors should never direct their own screenplays. Take Sofia Coppola – great director, and Lost in Translation is one of my favourite films. However, there were moments that I found to be, frankly, rather limp. Too bad, because they detracted from the great moments in the film, and that’s what most people remember when the leave the theatre: the bad moments.

When I watched the film with the director’s comments turned on, (another one of my nerdy indulgences), I realized that Ms. Coppola doesn’t think those moments were awkward at all. In fact, during the mini-documentary that accompanies the DVD, while filming those shots, she is smothering her laughter behind her hand, so that you can’t hear her on the soundtrack. It’s so amusing you think she’s going to have an attack of some sort.

What she saw was completely different than what her audience saw. Her crew was giggling along with her, probably because the crew was also very close to her and to the story – and still not objective enough. Like any good manager, she has hired people who believe in her project and who are an extension of herself, like your own employees and associates. But, I just didn’t get it.

Objectivity is not easy to come by. Which brings me to my point: the best reason to hire somebody like me is that I’m not you. An Editor is really there to do one thing: help the writer get their message heard. Whether it is a book, a film, an audio CD, a webcast, a blog, or whatever, it’s my job to take all of those messages and make sure that they can be heard by your intended audience.

Part of that job is to maintain a projected project schedule. Many authors that I have interviewed recently are complaining that their self-managed projects tend to get stalled at stage (7), which is the part where you write the bits that fill in around your main points. (See my June 29th blog for an example of what that means.) Or worse, the project doesn’t get off the ground because you are new to the process. Or even worse, you get the book printed, but can’t sell it. Using a templated process (ahem, like mine) allows you to follow a predictable pattern of tasks, know your costs before you start, and delegate accordingly.

Don’t lose heart if you have already hit that wall on your project – perhaps even before you’ve set out the door. Take an example from George Lucas – he worked with Spielberg for 3 films, who directed all three of his Indiana Jones scripts. How successful were they? They’re making a fourth one now – repeating a successful methodology over and over again. Think about that as you pen your first book – will there be a fourth?