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.
I think this is a great post–especially this point right here. Becuase sometimes I think it’s really hard to be honest with ourselves about what we want, especially as we look at what the people around us are up to.
Obviously…I agree w/you 100%. You MUST know what you want or you’re screwed. You can’t sit waiting on other people to lead you around by the hand.
What I want has changed since I started publishing. It is a very good exercise to sit down and decide what it is that you really want and not to be afraid to reassess it every six months to a year to make certain you haven’t changed what it is you want.
Amie, it’s so easy to think you should want what everybody else wants, but nobody else is living your life. It’s still hard not to make comparisons and feel like “She did X, I should be doing that…” It helps if you know that wouldn’t really make you happy.
NJ, what I wanted four years ago looks different from what I want today! I try to re-evaluate at least once a year.
Well said. I know what I want, and that hasn’t really changed, I guess I just need to sit down and plot it out (heck, if plotting my life works- I might even try plotting my books 🙂 ).
Hope you’re enjoying your trip.
Ann, you don’t have to plot yourself into the inability to be spontaneous (in life or in books) but I think it does help to be specific and then ask, “Does X really lead where I want to go?”
And i always thought that creative people – writers – weren’t good at business because we want to spend more time writing than selling and the two don’t seem to mix (for me, at least). But what you said about us being innovative enough to find solutions really made a lot of sense.
Margay, it’s really not to our advantage to believe we can’t be good at business. *g*
Great, thought provoking information Charli. Thanks! I really need to ‘hear’ this.
Rhonda, glad it’s timely for you.