Career Planning:  Article 1

Career Planning: The Preliminaries

This series of articles will cover the necessary steps for creating a career plan.  While the focus will be on career planning for the unpublished or newly published author, these concepts taken from the corporate environment lend themselves to those further along in their publishing careers as well.

Career planning takes two tangible forms: goal setting and devising a career plan or strategy.  However, prior to developing realistic goals and a career plan, it is necessary to determine certain things about yourself as a writer.

WHAT YOU ARE WILLING TO GIVE TO YOUR CAREER AS A WRITER?  Are you willing to take time from other things you enjoy doing, from people you want to be with?  Are you willing to deal with rejection after rejection after rejection and keep on writing?  What about editors that take a year to read your work?  Or family members that don’t understand a job that doesn’t bring in any income?

A career in the arts has always carried with it certain sacrifices.  Rembrandt died destitute, his family having paid a horrendous price for his genius.   Edgar Rice Burroughs never achieved recognition for his writing in his lifetime and was forced to sell his wife’s jewelry to pay his bills.  Music entertainers spend several months a year on concert tours to promote their work so they can make a living at what they do.

Art is a hard taskmaster and the writing career isn’t exempt from its demands.

So, before devising a career plan, you must determine the amount of time each day, week, or month you will give to your writing.

WHAT IS YOUR WRITING PACE?  Writing pace is the amount of time in weeks or months that it takes you to finish a book to the point where it is ready for submission to an editor.  Your writing pace will factor in to the type of goals you set for yourself as well as determining your target market.  If you don’t know how long it takes you to finish and polish a manuscript, how can you set realistic goals for doing so?

Some books are easier to write than others.  Does this impact your creative pace?  It does and it doesn’t.  The reason we look at pace in terms of weeks and months rather than a straight pages per day is that you won’t necessarily know how many good pages you can write in a day, but hopefully you can tell how long overall it takes you to finish and polish your work.  That does not mean that you will never set a pages per day goal, but that’s something I will cover in a later article.

For now, focus on answering the questions raised here and if you’ve never completed a manuscript, don’t dismiss them.  You’ve got a natural and imperative career plan.  It consists of creating a strategy to complete and polish your manuscript, thereby making it possible to determine your writing pace. 

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Career Planning:  Article 2

Career Planning: Defining Your Vision and Target Market

A career plan is a concrete expression of a vision that exists inside you.  To give that vision expression, you need first to bring it into focus...to see it clearly with not only your subconscious, but your conscious mind.  In order to do that, you need to answer a couple of really important questions before you can set goals or write up a career plan.

YOUR VISION:  If you could be anywhere in the world as a writer, where would you be?  What publishing house would you write for?  How many books a year would you write?  What do you want out of your career as a writer?

The answers to these questions are going to take both a practical and measurable form as well as the more nebulous goals whose success is not necessarily reflected in sales statistics or recognition for the author.  For instance, part of my vision for my own writing is to touch a reader the way my favorite authors have touched me.  I want be a writer who changed someone’s life with my book, who made readers feel that afterglow that comes from reading a really emotionally satisfying story.   This aspect of my vision is just as important as the number of books I want to write a year and the subgenres I want to target.

YOUR TARGET MARKET:  What is your niche?

The first step here is to determine your general target market.  Are you writing romance, mystery, women’s fiction, something else?  The next step is to narrow your market to the subgenre in which you are writing and from there, to which publishers are most likely to publish what you write.

An example:  Happy Writer is writing books with a happy ending that are focused primarily on the relationship between the male and female protagonists.  Her books are set during the Gold Rush in North America.

Her general market:  Romance

Her subgenre:  Historical

Her niche:  Western Historical Romance

To determine her target publisher(s), Happy Writer needs to do some industry research.  Not all publishers of historical romance are open to Western settings.  How does Happy Writer go about identifying the ones who will?  She looks at the spine on the books most like her own.  Who is the publisher?  What is the line?  Who is the author?  Happy Writer not only reads the publisher guidelines, but she reads recent releases in niche market she is targeting.

A final note about determining your target market:  There are a lot of growing and new markets opening up in women’s fiction and romance right now – but they are subgenre specific and if elements of those markets don’t reflect your creative bent, targeting them isn’t going to get you one step closer to being published or meeting your career goals.  If you like to write stories that make people cry, targeting a comedy line because they are a more open market than single title sagas is only going to bind up your creativity.

Next month we will look at career objectives as the skeleton for the career plan.

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Career Planning:  Article 3

Career Planning: The Skeleton

This article is the 3^rd in a series covering the necessary steps for creating a career plan. 

We’ve explored our commitment to writing, done a realistic assessment of our pace, given voice to our vision and determined our target market.  Now, we are ready to write a career plan.  As we go into this phase, keep the following in mind: VISION is what we would like to be.  A CAREER PLAN is what we think we realistically can accomplish and GOALS are how we get there.

This article will cover career planning for the unpublished, nearly published and recently published author.  Keep in mind any career plan should include objectives to pursue the type of mentorship you need to take you to the next level in your writing. 

Unpublished: a career plan for an unpublished writer will differ slightly from that of a published author because as much as you might like to, you cannot plan on the when of getting published.  So you must concentrate on setting a path that will give the most likelihood success and that will naturally segue into a workable plan for after publishing.

Example career plan skeleton for unpublished writer, Suzie Q. Author:

1. Pursue publication in single title mainstream market (Pocket).
2. Increase my inventory of salable work.
3. Improve on identified weaknesses as a writer.
4. Improve my understanding of my market and target my manuscripts more directly to it.
5. Editor interface.
6. Agent interface.

Notice that in objective one, Suzie identified a market and set her objective as something she could do without doubt...she can PURSUE publication even if she can’t guarantee the outcome.

In objective two, Suzie was looking toward the future...what would happen if she didn’t sell her current manuscript?  She would then have another one to submit.  Or what if she did sell her book?  She would then have another manuscript for a two book contract.

In objective three, Suzie makes the assumption that she will spend time identifying her weaknesses as a writer before she can address her objective of improving on them.

In objective four, Suzie acknowledges that as her understanding of the market increases, her ability to smooth the rough edges on her work will also increase.

In objective five, she realizes that she will increase her chances of selling if she interfaces with an editor.  She makes the same assumption regarding agents in objective six.  (If Suzie is targeting category romance, it’s highly likely objective six would be something different.)

This is just an example.  Your career plan objectives could be completely different, but hopefully by seeing these, you will have an idea of the type of objectives you want in your career plan.

Once your skeleton objectives are outlined, we will take the next step (in Article 4) – which is setting immediate and extended goals in order to achieve each of your objectives.

Nearly Published:  Your career plan may differ in that you have expectations made of you by outside forces like editors that must be met.  These forces will perhaps change your first objective from something like "pursue publication with Pocket" to "revise manuscript per Amy Pierponts suggestions for publication with Pocket."

In addition, you will not only be focused on increasing your inventory of salable manuscripts, but revising current ones to fit an editor's specifications.

You are still going to be working hard at identifying your weaknesses and writing past them as well as writing to your strengths, but your source of information on what these might be will differ (now it is editors and agents as opposed to critiquers and contest judges).

You know your market at this point, but now you need to focus on knowing what happens in that market after a sale.   Not only with the publisher(s) that interest you, but in terms of self-promotion expected/needed within the market.

Bearing that in mind, you will want to make an objective to create a self-promotion plan to put into place when you sell.  It is at this point in your career that you may realize having a website *now* could be beneficial.

You are still going to make editor interface a goal and/or interface with an agent.  However you may have a much more specific list of agents and/or editor(s) you want one on one interaction with.  It's no longer enough to meet with any editor from Pocket, now you know your voice resonates with Amy Pierpont, so you will pursue opportunities to speak with her, see her and correspond with her.

Newly Published Author:  you no longer want to limit yourself to one-year long goal setting or career objective strategies.  It is at this point you start thinking in terms of one year, three year, five year...even ten year plans.

Year One

1.  Sell Book Two (or more) - is this self-evident?  I remember reading somewhere - please don't quote me - that some ridiculously high percentage of all first time authors never sell another book.  You don't want that to be you, so set that second sale as an objective and then set goals that will make it happen.

2. Take stock of my manuscripts - this is when you determine if anything you've written before would work revised for this market (or not revised) and pitch it to your editor or work on the revisions so you can pitch it to your editor.

3. Put Self-promotion plan into effect.  (If you don't have one, then your objective is to create one followed by an objective to put it into effect.)

4. Improve my craft.  If you had a revision letter that led to a sale, analyze it for identifiable weaknesses you can avoid in the future when writing for this editor.

5. Organize my filing system to reflect the needs of a published writer.  (You want a place you can always find your contracts, notes from phone calls with your editors, promotional opportunities, etc.)

6. Storage space.  (Funny career objective?  Lack of storage space may prevent you from buying an adequate number of author copies for promotion and reviews, or from buying sufficient quantities of promotional material.)

7. Develop a *good* working relationship with my editor.

8. Get an agent (if you want one), work out a long-term career plan with my agent (if you have one) or identify the areas of your next contract you would negotiate differently and be prepared to do so.

Year 2 and Beyond

When you go into long term objectives you will be setting the number of manuscripts you want to write and sell in a year, determining what kind of objective criteria you want to use to measure the marketable success of your work and where you want to fall in those measurements, what sort of long term promotional plan you are going to engage in.  The further out you go, the more visionary become your objectives (but maintain realistic expectations so doable goals can be set). 

Next month we will focus on setting goals to flesh out our Career Plan Skeletons.

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Career Planning:  Article 4

Career Planning: Goals

This article is the 4^th in a series covering the necessary steps for creating a career plan. 

We’re approaching the mountain peak.  Can you see it in the distance?  Oftentimes I think we assume our vision is the peak, but in reality, it is the broad base upon which we build our career plans...moving from the big picture to the little picture in concrete steps.

I was talking to my husband about this last night.  He’s a manager at Intel and he said, “Honey, that’s just exactly what we do at work.”  He didn’t have to look so surprised...I do have a masters degree in management.  Some of that stuff had to stick.  <g>  The point I’m making with this though is that I hope the more deeply we get into the development of a career plan, the more you will see how the business side of writing fits dove and tail with your creative side.  Writers are visionary.  It’s only natural that characteristic would be applied to their own lives as authors.

I think goals are the most recognizable aspect of a career plan for the majority of us.  We set goals in so many aspects of our lives...have been doing so since grammar school days.  My daughter has a personal monthly reading goal for school and it has to increase every month.  I applaud what her teacher is showing her about preparing for the future.  Look ahead, strive for the next level, but be realistic.

Those are excellent bits of advice for us as well.  In identifying your career objectives, I’m sure they felt like goals to you.  In fact, they are to a certain extent – long term goals.  However, to make your career plan as effective as it can possibly be, you want to set incremental goals to make those objectives happen. 

This is where we look at weekly, monthly and long term goals.  Take one of your career objectives and ask yourself what needs to happen long term for that objective to be realized.  For instance, Suzie Q. Author wanted to improve on her identified weaknesses as a writer.  So a long term goal might be to identify those weaknesses.  A monthly goal to achieve that end might be to enter a contest with significant feedback and several first round judges.  A weekly goal to make this possible might be to polish the first three chapters on her WIP.

So, if you were looking at a slice of her Career Plan, you would see:

Career Objective IV:  Improve on identified weaknesses as a writer

Long Term Goal 1. Identify weaknesses

Monthly Goal A:  Enter contest that judges Chapters 1 to 3 and a synopsis with two or more first round judges for each entry

Weekly Goals:

• Research contests
• Polish chapters
• Polish synopsis
• Put together contest entry

Developing long-term goals to go with each of your career objectives and following those up with weekly goals to make them happen gives you a direction for your efforts to pursue your dreams.  A career plan is the concrete embodiment of our dreams and I hope you have a better idea now of how to bring your dreams into the realm of reality.

Next month we’ll look at the final aspect to a career plan – ways to stay on track.

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Career Planning:  Article 5

Career Planning: Staying on Track

This article is the 5^th and final in a series covering the necessary steps for creating a career plan.

Well...you’ve got a Career Plan, complete with Career Objectives, long term and short term goals.   Do you feel accomplished?  You  should.  It’s uncommon in the business sector for someone to take the time and effort to plan their career in advance...even more so among those who choose a career in the arts.  You’ve gone beyond the norm, taken steps to take what control you can of your career as a writer.  That’s pretty terrific.

So, what’s left? 

It’s an incredible accomplishment to develop a workable career plan, but it does you no good if you never refer to it again.  It’s like organizing your silverware drawer and then using plastic cutlery so it won’t get messy again.  It looks nice, but what value does it have for you?

So, how do you stay on track?

It’s a matter of revisiting your goals frequently, updating your objectives as circumstances or priorities change and keeping the final goal – your vision – firmly in mind.  There are opportunities you will want to take advantage of in order to pursue your goals and others you will say no to, realizing the effort expended will not take you forward in the direction you want to go.

In other words, track your progress and filter your activities through your career plan.

You can track your progress in a number of ways.  I’m a list maker and list ticker.  I write down each week and month’s goals and then tick them off as they are accomplished.  A woman who took my career planning class said that she draws a big thermometer with marking for each achieved goal toward the long term goal (i.e. finishing a book) and fills in the thermometer with each goal achieved (like chapters written).  There is goal tracking software you can buy and a host of other ways to track your progress.  It doesn’t matter how you do it, just that you do it.

Filtering your activities through your career plan can be challenging.  It means saying no to some things that could be fun, but not necessarily beneficial.  Analyze the time you currently spend writing.  If you are doing things that will not take you forward in meeting your career objectives, consider setting those activities aside.  Sometimes you have to be ruthless with yourself and even on occasion, others.

If you have five hours a week to write, spending part of that keeping up on various e-loops might be detrimental to your goals.  Yes, there’s a lot of good information out there, but you have to find balance between your writing and keeping tabs on the industry.  The more limited your writing time, the more ruthless you need to be with yourself in regard to superfluous activities.

Finally, I’m going to close this series of articles with an observation.  Just as writers rarely stick with the original synopsis for their book, so do people rarely stick with the original version of the career plan.  It’s a place to start, a way of keeping yourself on track, but it is not a leash to hold you back from pursuing something better should it come along.  The best career plan is dynamic in nature and a constant reflection of the individual’s current desires and priorities.

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