by Charlene Teglia | Jul 29, 2008 | Uncategorized
The problem with achieving a goal is that writing it down may leave you paralyzed. It seems too big, too unattainable. “How am I going to publish a novel?” you think. And since you don’t know where to start, you don’t.
One of the first things I did when I got serious about writing for publication was to make it a rule that I did some action every day to move me towards my goal. Market research, working on a story, writing a query letter, getting a proposal proofed and mailed, these all count as daily actions. If you aren’t doing the daily actions, you’ll never reach the long-term goal. On the flip side, if you fill up your days with the wrong actions (all research but never actually writing) you’ll never get there, either. The key to achieving a long-term goal is in what you do on a daily basis.
Let’s use this example of achieving a goal with the action broken down. You’ve decided you want to write for Harlequin Blaze, and you want to write two books a year for them. You have a realistic idea of how much time that will take and what you’ll earn. You’ve analyzed your time and you know the time it takes to write 2 books of this length per year is achievable. You’ve read the line and you know you could write books like that. You could see yourself doing this for the next 2-5 years, the foreseeable future.
First, you work on an idea that you think could fit in with the blurbs you’re reading on the backs of current and recent releases. You write a synopsis for your story. You do research. You write the first three chapters. Now you have a proposal, a synopsis and three chapters. (If you don’t know how to write a synopsis or where to begin your chapters, the eHarlequin site has an entire section dedicated on learning to write. Use it!) You can either submit your partial with a query letter, or you can continue to write the entire book before submitting your query.
If it’s your first book, finishing it comes before selling it. If you’ve written a few, then you might be better off seeing if anybody bites before you invest the time in completing the book. It’s a big investment of your time and energy.
Here’s a closer look at the goal and breakdown:
Goal: write a Blaze, sell it to Harlequin
1. Make sure idea fits with books currently and recently released from the line (aka Market Research)
2. Develop synopsis. Use resources as needed to write the synopsis.
3. Research the book so you have the background you need to write.
4. Write the first three chapters.
a. Figure average length of Blaze: 55-60K
b. Divide this into average page length/chapter length
c. Determine goal for each chapter’s length
e. Determine how many days with the time you have it will take to reach the 3-chapter milestone: at 4 pages a day, about two weeks for this example.
f. Each day for those two weeks, average 4 pages.
5. Query with proposal
a. Write query letter
b. Find correct address
c. Print and proof proposal carefully
d. Mail proposal and mark calendar with date sent and average response time
6. Develop another idea that fits with current titles releasing.
7. Continue to write 4 pages a day until book is complete.
8. Revise and edit book to best of ability.
Repeat steps for 2nd idea.
Your first attempt may not fly. Your second or third might. If you really want to sell to Blaze, the first no doesn’t mean failure. It means try again. But whatever you do, break the goal down into steps you can achieve with daily action, and make time each day to work towards that goal.
You might also decide at what point you’ll reassess your goal and see if you need to make changes. Maybe the craft is not really up to publishable level and it’s time to take some classes. Maybe your ideas would fit better somewhere else, another line, or even another genre. It takes persistence to achieve a goal, but it also takes flexibility to be open to achieving your goal (publish a novel) in another way.
by Charlene Teglia | Jul 28, 2008 | Uncategorized
In the course of writing your business plan, you need to really think about your goals. Do you want to keep your day job and write a book a year? Do you have time to write a book while holding down the job and raising the kids? Can you consistently make an hour or so a day for this? Do you want to write multiple books a year, and do you have the creative drive to sustain that? Do you want to earn a living as a writer, or do you really not want the stress and insecurity that comes along with that?
Do you want to write for yourself more than you want to write to publisher’s requirements? Will you be able to let go of your individual idea of what your book should be in order to mesh with your editor’s ideas and create a viable product?
Think long and hard about this, because writing is a wonderful thing for anybody to do…but not everybody’s goals lead to publication, or even to the serious pursuit of a publishing career. There is nothing wrong with wanting to write for self-expression, or artistic joy. If your real goals revolve around being an artist, publishing may not be what you want at all.
Publishing is a business, and books are products. Yes, it’s a creative business. Yes, writing a book requires artistic ability. But it also requires the ability to creatively incorporate publisher’s guidelines, editorial direction, and the flexibility to shift with market changes.
I think creative people are ideally suited to business, because we are creative thinkers. We innovate. We come up with solutions and make connections. We were born to think outside the box. The trick is taking the creative problem-solving we’ve learned to utilize in writing and apply it to publishing.
Now is the time to be honest about what you really want. Forget what everybody else thinks you should do or what your local writing group expects of you, or what your spouse will say if you don’t make any money with writing after all the time and expense you’ve put into learning the craft.
Maybe what you really want is the security of a day job and the creative satisfaction of writing a book a year for a supportive small press that won’t pay the largest advances, but will allow you more creative freedom.
Maybe what you really want is to hit the NYT bestseller list and make a comfortable living. Whatever you want, be honest, because if you want to make a comfortable living and hit the NYT list, the supportive small press is probably not the publisher you want to target to achieve your goals.
There’s no right or wrong answer, there’s just you and the life you want to create for yourself. And…your answers may change over time. This is why it’s good to revisit your business plan at least once a year. Even if business changes don’t happen, personal changes might. The birth of a child, corporate down-sizing, the line you write for closing or changing direction, things happen and you’ll need to adapt.
by Charlene Teglia | Jul 27, 2008 | Uncategorized
“People with goals succeed because they know where they are going.” – Earl Nightingale
Research studies have shown a direct link between goals and enhanced performance. Experts estimate that only 5-10% of people think about their goals on a regular basis, and only 1% to 3% have clear written goals.
A business plan starts with goals: what do you want to earn in your first year, your third year, your fifth? Who do you want to write for? What do you want to write? A business plan is really nothing more than organizing your goals and laying out the steps to achieve them.
Most authors approach writing as a creative endeavor and don’t think of themselves as a small business. But that’s what you are. You have to think about expenses, resources, marketing, and production. You have to establish budget guidelines. A business plan is a way to organize all of this, and to have something in writing you can refer back to on a regular basis to make sure you’re staying on track. Or you can adjust your plan as changes and new factors come into play.
The Small Business Association provides an excellent online resource for writing a small business plan, including samples of business plans.
If you haven’t sold your first book, you can utilitze Brenda Hiatt’s Show Me the Money to guesstimate your first sale for the financial portion of your plan. This is an important reality check when you start considering all the expenses involved in your business venture; office equipment, postage, paper, internet access, and so on. The money you earn isn’t your profit; it’s only profit after your taxes and expenses.
by Charlene Teglia | Jul 26, 2008 | Uncategorized
Since we’re taking a road trip, I leave you with a poem I wrote about my almost coast to coast solo road trip.
Interstate into Infinity
copyright 2000 Charlene Teglia
Following the pilgrim hat, I took the Mass Pike into forever
Or to the Berkshires, whichever came first
Through forests and over rivers
Riding the gas pedal across the border
New York Throughway and a series of toll booths
Rest stops peopled by sleeping truckers
Counting the miles amazed to see
How quickly they peel off in hundreds
Through the long night, into forever
How far will Interstate 90 take me?
As far as Rochester, to a faded room with no heat
And a kind night clerk who offered me a space heater,
Filled the coffee urn and gave me directions back to the I
I slept there for a few hours, body humming
With the vibrations of a day on the road
Stretched taut by the distance between two points
Point of origin now an infinite number of points away on this line
Infinity fills my head and gas fills my tank
The gas station attendant confirming the desk clerk’s message
And my tired memory turns out to be a fellow
Pilgrim from the West Coast, a friendly smile from home
And I drive through Buffalo after watching the sunrise
Knowing it will next rise for me in Iowa
After Cleveland and Chicago are distant points on the line
That is I-80 now, point of origin ever receding
I travel through cornfields and discover Nebraska
The point of origin for the Flat Earth Society, I think
And here I believe it in spite of the proof of
Satellite pictures taken from space and Newton’s arguments;
This line I travel takes me to a Nissan dealer who
Can’t tell me why my alternator light is on
So I drive to Wyoming, to a point outside Cheyenne
And a rest stop where the line intersects with
The mechanic from LA who shares my point of origin
And present position; this trip back west from the east
Is full of wandering Pacific Northwesterners
And he solves the mystery of the alternator with a bolt
“That’ll hold,” he tells me
Another friendly smile from home
A wave as he passes me later
And he is right; the bolt holds through highway construction
And twilight deer, through miles of open country
So wild and wide that the dust tastes of heaven
I follow the line with the wind of Wyoming in my heart
Drunk on strong coffee and the sight of red rock
Following the line across the last border
Where a bawling calf stares in confusion at the Interstate
“How did I get here?” on his red and white face
Both of us trying to get home
I’m cutting through the route the truckers use,
Cutting off Utah, straight into Idaho
I hope I find my way
I hope the rancher finds the calf
More miles peeling off behind me like hundreds off a high roller
Up into the thousands now
Racing across flat desert with the conies
More miles, more points mark the line of my present geometry
Infinity crossed in spite of Zeno’s paradox
I come to rest in Boise
Proof that you can go home again.
by Charlene Teglia | Jul 26, 2008 | Uncategorized
We are getting ready to get out of town. First actual vacation in you don’t want to know how many years but longer than we’ve been married. Pretend along with me that it’s not a partially working vacation. I’ve come to realize that time off and time away is essential, though, and I’m determined to do more of it.
Via Elizabeth Bear, I found this article, and it’s sobering. Writer brain must recharge regularly. Also, I added up the number of books, novellas, short stories and proposals I’ve written in the last four years, and then just the last two years (I did not count articles or other short pieces), and, well, I’m giving my brain a rest. I’m going to go look at pretty flowers and pretty pictures and walk by the water and come back ready to kick butt and take names.
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