MemeMachineGo!

While I’m on the subject…

Wil McCarthy’s SF Career Planning Guide :

It’s important to know just how ambitious you really are, and how much you’re willing to sacrifice. Stephen Covey, in THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE, asserts that no terminally ill person ever lamented having spent too little time at work. Apparently, Mr. Covey’s “effective” set doesn’t include any committed artists, who, on their death beds, all too frequently say “I wasn’t finished — I had so much left to do. Oh, all the time I wasted making love on the beach when I could have been writing science fiction!”

Jerry Oltion’s 50 Strategies for Making Yourself Work :

• If you’ve been sitting on an idea until you think you’re good enough to do it justice, do it now! You may be run over by a bus tomorrow. Even if you aren’t, by the time you think you’re good enough, the passion for it will be gone. Write it now! Write all your good ideas as quickly as you can after you get them. Don’t worry about getting more; they’ll come faster and faster the more you write. Before you know it, you’ll be begging people to take them, like a gardener with zucchini.
• Outline. Plan everything you’re going to write, scene by scene, all the way through to the end. Do your research while you’re outlining, so by the time you start writing the actual story, you’re already living in that world. With a detailed enough outline, the actual writing becomes a matter of choosing the right words to describe what you’ve already decided to tell. You can concentrate on style and let the plot take care of itself, because you’ve already done that part.
• Don’t outline. Don’t plan ahead at all. Feel the lure of the blank page. Trust your instincts and dive into the story, and don’t look back until you’re done.