Pretend You Are a Boss
You are a Writer
My articles sometimes occur to me as titles. Just now on my way to the patio to enjoy the afternoon sunshine and the last of my cup of coffee the words, “Pretend you are the boss” occurred to me.
One of the books I will write someday is going to be titled On the Wings of Pretend. It will be an instructional book about how to channel. In the meantime, as a retired person, this year I would like to again be the boss of myself.
What do you suppose a boss expects of his or her employees? There are, of course, the basics, like they’d expect everybody to come to work on time. If you are punching a timeclock that time would be there, stamped and recorded. But if the office or business you work in doesn’t have a timeclock, they’d expect you to be at your station or desk on time.
Another thing a boss might expect is that their employees don’t call in sick a lot. It’s different if you really are sick, but people can also spot patterns, mostly from the grumblings of your co-workers. Out of all the Mondays there are you happen to call in sick on half of them. Yep, dead giveaway you’ve been partying the day before and are so blown away drunk or stoned with a hangover that you cannot possibly go to work. That will get you let go from a job. Because not only do they expect the employees to show up on time they expect them to be at work in a capable fashion to work. Can’t do that if you are hungover.
Here’s another thing that bosses tend to expect of their employees. They expect them to finish their work in a reasonable fashion. You might have a job where you can leave everything at the end of your shift and pick it up just as easily the next day. It occurs to me cashiers have jobs like that. You count out your money from the cash drawer and you are done. If there are any other things that are required of you as an employee to perform before you clock out, you do them too.
If you work in an office where things tend to not always be completed at the end of the day you would leave your work area clean. So clean and ready to go that somebody else could sit down at your computer and work if they need to. This is useful in two ways. One, you have a fresh area to start working the next day and two: you can tell if anybody has sat themselves down to work at your space.
That way if the stapler is missing you know who to ask about it.
Of course, we always presume the next person will have left everything the same as if they found it, but that becomes your problem to hammer out a working relationship with anybody who feels so inclined to root through your stuff. The company might presume that the equipment you use belongs to everybody else in the company. However, as when I found a fricking tall stack of girly magazines in the desk drawer of a person I was subbing for while they went on an extended vacation, that is not always a view held by other employees. The stinkers had a good laugh over it. Had I been the boss they would have gotten an earful over it. But those days are behind me.
What I’m talking about is how you feel about your writing.
Is your writing something that you catch when you can? Is it something that ranks lower than your job but higher than the laundry? Your writing deserves a place, wherever you can fit it. A place in time of your own choosing; a schedule if you will. That way if someone asks you to go to a movie you can say, “I’m sorry, but I will be writing.” If they feel so entitled that they can whine to you about it to try to make you feel guilty, well, we all know what you should do. “Thanks for calling, but I’m hanging up now.”
You stick to your writing schedule. Also, you might have a goal each day that you want to accomplish. It could be 2,000 words or three stories to publish on Medium. Publish one of them that day and then schedule the other two for later in the week. Perhaps you are working on expanding your online presence as a writer and are writing for several different platforms at the same time? Cover all your bases and work on getting a following that might prove useful at some point in the future.
Perhaps you have a larger goal of writing a book. Figure out how long you’d like the book to be. Go grab one off your bookshelf and hold it in your hand. Does it feel good? Now, count the words. You don’t have to count every stinking word. Just three pages. And, again, not every word on every page. Take a sampling from each page. Say, you count every word on five lines on each page. Average them. Then, count the lines on each of your five pages. Average them too. Figure out how many words would be on one page of your book. Multiply that by the number of pages in the book you are holding in your hand. Two hundred thousand words? Okay, that’s good. Answer the question of how many words per chapter you’d like to have. Then, divide that into 200k. Then, you’ll have the number of chapters you will need.
It’s all guesswork, but now you have a goal whether it is a non-fiction or fiction book. Now, if you were to write 2,000 words a day about how long would it take you to write a book? One hundred days. About three months. Now, you can have a schedule. You’re not always going to write 2,000 words a day, but if you remember to sit down and write during your designated writing time you will sure as shit have something to show for it in 100 days.
Just like a boss would expect.
So, be your own boss. Hold yourself accountable. Be prepared to write when it is time to write. Always show up. You might not get paid for it right away, but it is important, I think, for a writer to write. Just point your nose in the right direction and get it on paper. Pretend you can do this. Sure as water runs downhill it will happen for you
Thanks for reading. If I hurry, there is still enough sun out on the patio to enjoy.