An Updated Hat Lecture of Sorts

When Dorothy asked about reposting my Hat Lecture, I realized that I hadn’t done an updated version since 2011. So here is a revised version (or you can just go read the original one, if you’d rather).

The original Hat Lecture focused on the fact that a freelance writer—which covers the vast majority of fiction writers, as well as a lot of people who write non-fiction articles “on spec”—is responsible for making sure all of the various parts of running a business actually happen (assuming they actually want something to happen with their work besides piling it up in the bottom drawer somewhere). Unless you want to be Emily Dickinson, and hope that someone else collects your work and publishes it for you after you’re dead, you can’t just sit around writing. (And isn’t that a weird phrase to contemplate—“just sitting around writing,” as if that were the easy part…) You have to do all the different parts of running a business.

Or, to put it another way, you have to wear all the hats. You have to write amazing cool new stuff (the Creative Artiste Hat), but you also have to edit and copy-edit it (the Editor’s fedora or Copy-editor’s baseball cap), submit your work and track submissions (the Secretary’s trilby), keep expense/income records and pay taxes (the Accountant’s green eyeshade), handle publicity of various sorts (Publicist’s fascinator), and so on. A writer who has a lucrative day job, family money, or a supportive and dependable spouse, can hire or offload some of these tasks to other people, but the tasks still have to be done and the writer is still ultimately responsible for them.

Each of these jobs requires a slightly different mental approach. One of the more obvious ones is the difference between the Editor’s approach (“Fix this horrible sentence at once, and do it perfectly; who cares if it takes two hours?”) and the way the Creative Artiste sees things (“Get this cool bit down on paper immediately; who cares about spelling or grammar?”). There are gazillions of web pages on how to turn off your internal editor, but they all boil down to “For heaven’s sake, take off the Editor Hat while you’re trying to write something new.”

When I invented the Hat Lecture, the main problem I was trying to address was that I saw writers “wearing their Creative Artiste Hat” all the time. It’s not surprising; creating stories is why most of us get into this business. That’s the fun and interesting part, even when it’s a lot of work. Unfortunately, the Creative Artiste approach/attitude creates problems when it’s applied to other jobs, especially the ones that involve repetition or routine (booooring). Sending stuff out over and over (the Secretary Hat) is the first one most beginners run into, because they don’t yet have income/expenses to track and taxes to pay (Accountant Hat), or appearances to set up (Publicist Hat), or much in the way of administration (Executive Hat). So the original Hat Lecture was really about psyching oneself up to do the not-fun, not-interesting parts of the writing-career job.

But there are two other aspects of the multiple-jobs-of-a-writer that also need addressing.

The first one is to actually do all those things. Thinking “Gosh, I really need to put my Secretary Hat on and send that manuscript out” does not actually send out the manuscript. Thinking “Gee, I really need to set up a system to track my expenses” does not setting up a system. Acknowledging “Bother, I should get that scene written” does not putting on one’s Creative Artiste Hat and getting some writing done. Being aware that the job needs doing, whether or not it’s fun, is only the first step…and stopping after one step won’t get you anywhere. Awareness is not action.

The second thing that needs addressing is carving out the time to do all these jobs. This requires a realistic evaluation of how much time one actually has, and an acceptance of the importance of getting the boring stuff done, because everybody’s time is always full up, so if one is going to do anything new, one has to stop doing something one is currently doing. Many people are really unwilling to do this, especially for the support-staff roles (Secretary, Accountant, Publicist, etc.), because those are perceived as boring and/or annoying. However, there are only two other options: 1) Do the work in one’s non-existent “free time,” or 2) Use the time one would normally spend writing on support work instead.

Guess which one most writers choose?

It is, again, understandable. Sending out manuscripts, doing bookkeeping, planning publicity, etc. are all important (and downright necessary) parts of “a writing career,” and if one truly has only an hour a day to devote to one’s writing, well, needs must. However, most of the writers who use their “writing time” for support functions don’t really consider the inevitable hit their writing production will take. Because what they’re really doing is “dropping something in order to make time for support activities,” and the thing they’re dropping is “writing new stuff.” And while that may be truly necessary in some cases, it is always worth at least thinking about possible alternatives to using valuable writing time.