The Steak Trick: Top 5 Tips to add Sizzle to your Writing

Dean Wesley Smith’s steak trick for accountability

On Medium, I haven’t set specific publication goals. Instead of aiming for an article a week or daily blog posts, I’ve written when the Muse struck. The result has been heartfelt articles, written on a whim, without regularity. I need to follow the steak trick for accountability

My number one priority is fiction writing. The sequel to my first novel, Feeding Frenzy: Curse of the Necromancer, needs editing, and anything that hinders that process has to go. So, the excuse for neglecting Medium is solid, but have I been editing?

Months ago, I signed up for a course in January on writing fantasy capers. Half a year ago, when I signed up, I assumed I would have submitted Feeding Frenzy II to the editor by now.

Did I?

For reasons I’d rather not bore you with, let’s say that starting now, I’ll be using the steak trick for accountability.

Before he was a bestselling author, Dean Wesley Smith aimed to write and submit one short story per week. Goals are fun to set but hard to keep. One story a week works out to five to ten hours of writing time per week. That doesn’t sound bad. A couple of hours a day should do it if every story works and no extra editing time is required.

Plan versus reality

Enthusiasm and pent-up ideas will always get me through the first few weeks of a new venture, but after that initial burst of creativity, consistency grinds. Deadlines help, but writing short stories on spec doesn’t come with a deadline. Acceptance rates for professional fiction magazines hover around one percent. Writing rejected stories can discourage writers fast, which is why I’m writing about the steak trick for accountability. These tips are partly to share but also a lesson for myself.

The best trick for sizzling up your writing is accountability.

When I started writing fiction seriously with my short-story-per-week challenge, I actually had a bet going with Nina Kiriki Hoffman. If I missed my story for the week, I had to buy her a steak dinner. I couldn’t afford a steak dinner. — Dean Wesley Smith (from his blog)

That’s the number one trick, Smith’s steak trick for accountability, which I have altered for my own purposes.

Top 5 tips to add sizzle to your writing

1) Keep a public tally of writing goals and post your progress (the subject of this article). You can use the steak trick if you wish to set a penalty for not making your weekly writing quota. If paying for dinner isn’t harsh enough, promise to donate to a political cause you hate.

2) Track your days and calculate how much time you fritter watching TV, browsing social media, or indulging in other time-wasters.

3) Schedule and protect writing time. This gets easier after step two. Writing shouldn’t be an excuse to neglect priorities like family, earning a living, or whatever else you prize as a responsible adult; but if you are serious about writing well, plan to write weekly or daily.

4) Go public with your writing. Nothing beats writing for an audience to make you try harder. Whether you send it to your newsletter, submit to an editor, or indie publish your work, knowing readers will see it forces you to step up.

5) Learn to refuse distracting new projects or write faster.

After my first novel, I wrote short stories, published a couple of children’s novels, and took and taught writing classes. A focussed person would have ignored everything else to write the next book in the series—which I drafted but neglected to edit.

Don’t be like me. Be better. Banish squirrely inspirations that make me want to write All! The! Things!

Does this mean I should turn down every opportunity until after Feeding Frenzy II? A strategic indie author would agree, but I can’t help myself. When exciting opportunities arise, temptation gets me—but no more.

1 Work a Week, a new Substack writing venture, provides the accountability I need to focus on editing until Feeding Frenzy II is done.

I mean it this time.

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17/12/2022 Update: I have been reading the manuscript on paper and making edits as I go.