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So there’s totally nothing wrong with fan-casting your book’s movie.

Or fantasizing about what you’ll say when you’re promoting your latest bestseller on the biggest talk shows on TV.

Or doodling characters, covers, designs, and concepts.

Or even thinking about important promotional decisions and potential markets.

But first, you need a product, guys! Write the freakin’ thing! Write it!

Mess around as much as you want, but before your first draft is even completed isn’t really the time to be knuckling down trying to book actors to audition for the film. Sometimes I even talk to people who feel compelled to mention marketing ideas to agents or publishers they’re querying, thinking this makes them look like a go-getter or a big thinker, but what it actually does is make you look like you have no idea how the publishing world works.

If you’re more focused on the glamor and hoopla that comes after you’ve already succeeded, you’re not focusing on writing so much as what happens after you’ve written. Seriously, focus on the writing first. Or the rest of it will probably never come.