Writing career dreams? How to prepare while you’re writing that novel.

by Anne R. Allen

Recently fellow mystery author Carmen Amato said she’d been asked by several new writers where they should be focusing their energies as they start a writing career.

Carmen passed the question on to me and I wrote a short answer for her blog. But I realized the subject needed more attention, so I’m expanding those answers here.

There are so many skills you need to cultivate for a writing career in today’s publishing world.

The most important is to be open, flexible, and ready to embrace change.

In a few years, who knows, maybe book-length fiction will have faded, and the novella will be king. After all, novellas are best for screenplay adaptation. (Check out our popular post on how to write novellas from Paul Alan Fahey.) But maybe 2-hr films will be a thing of the past too.

Maybe everything will need to be written with virtual reality in mind.

Right now a lot of you are probably working on a book-length piece—either a novel, memoir, or other creative nonfiction. Those will probably take a year or more.

Yes, even if you “win” NaNoWriMo, there will be many months of rewrites, editing, and prep work.

If you’re going for a traditional publishing career, there will be a painfully long period of querying agents and editors, then the submission process.

If you’re self-publishing, most experts agree you need at least two book-length works ready to go before you launch an indie career.

So what should you be doing in the meantime?

Here are my suggestions for how today’s new writer can best use that time.

1) Write Everything Down

Don’t “talk out” your novel or story and every new idea. You won’t remember and/or they’ll get stale. (And mostly, nobody wants to hear about them, anyway. Those glazed eyes are telling you something.)

Instead, jot down all those ideas—in notebooks, on Evernote, or whatever program works for you to save those thoughts, names, settings, weird stories that you can work into plots.

Ruth Harris is a notebook maven, and has some great suggestions of notebooks you might ask for with the holidays coming up. 🙂

Carry your note-taking device with you everywhere. I know a beginning writer can’t write on the WIP every day the way the old saw tells you to. (And if you’re doing NaNoWriMo now, you’ll probably want some time off in December.)

But you can jot down a few thoughts or sentences or observations. Do it.

They will all be a goldmine once your career is on its way. Your future self will thank you.

2) Get Lots of Feedback.

Take a class, join a critique group, find beta readers or a critique partner. Don’t write in a vacuum.

I’m not saying you should take all their advice. Far from it.

Learning to listen to feedback and cherry-pick what’s useful is part of learning to be a good writer. For more on that, see my post on why to ignore advice from critique groups, but they can help you anyway.

But you do want to seek feedback from other writers early on. Otherwise you can get stuck in bad habits or cultivate unrealistic expectations.

Or you may ask a friend, co-worker or significant other to read your first draft, which can lead to dark places, like divorce court.

A non-writer can often give terrible advice, because they usually don’t understand the concept of a first draft.

Or they can happily fill your head with pretty lies so you think you’re ready for your close-up long before you are.

Agents spend their days rejecting perfectly good books that aren’t ready yet. They almost never have time to give feedback, so don’t send out a half-baked manuscript “to see what happens.” What will happen will be a form rejection. Don’t mistake that for a critique.

Learning to write well is a long, steep learning curve. Don’t stay stuck at the bottom longer than you need to.

For some great advice on finding beta readers, here’s a great post on beta readers from Jami Gold.

Meetup is a popular way of forming in person critique groups these days, so check to see if there’s one in your area.

3) Write and Submit Short Pieces

Yes, you’ve got that WIP you’re pounding away at, but I’d advise you to spend at least a third of your time (after NaNo, of course) on shorter pieces—fiction, personal essays, maybe one-act plays, short screenplays, and poetry.

When you finish a short work, it gives you a feeling of accomplishment, and you can send those out to contests and journals and anthologies.

There’s nothing more empowering than getting something in print–or on the stage!–and putting “published author” after your name.

a) Short stories, poems, and essays will keep your skills sharp.

When you’re writing long form narrative, especially if you’re writing to a word count goal, you tend to forget all the stuff you learned about avoiding wordy construction, too many adjectives, adverbs, etc.

I find flash fiction especially helps me get my skills back on track.

b) Shorts are great for submitting to contests.

A contest win when you’re feeling stuck on the query-go-round or having a case of writer’s block can remind you you’re a “real writer.”

Some contests have big money prizes. Be sure to check our “opportunity alerts” at the bottom of each post on this blog.

c) Shorts build your platform as well as your self-esteem.

Getting into journals and anthologies isn’t only good for your self-esteem. Those credits can make all the difference in a query letter.

And they give a debut indie credibility as a professional with reviewers, bloggers and readers.

I know you’ve read books and blogs that say self-publishers don’t have to do any of that. They tell you to just write a bunch of books, publish them with KDP you’ll make millions.

But that stuff only happened to a handful of writers six or seven years ago. The Kindle gold rush is over, Amazon’s algorithms have changed. They have their own trad-pub imprints now, and no need for indies to fill up Kindles. Plus the competition has grown exponentially. That means indies have to put their schnozzes to the grindstone like everybody else.

If a reader, reviewer or blogger sees that somebody has actually vetted your work and published it, you’ll stand out from the self-publishing slush pile.

Plus getting published in an anthology with authors whose names are better known than yours can be a huge boost to any career. Anthologies are what helped me resurrect my career after my first publisher went out of business in 2008.

d) Short, creative nonfiction essays are perfect for guest blogposts, anthologies, or stand-alone pieces.

Every new writer should practice writing short personal essays. They are essential for marketing, no matter how you’re planning to publish. You’re going to be doing lots of interviews once you publish, no matter how you do it.

A great place to hone your creative nonfiction skills is on your own blog or on the new blog platform, Medium.

I’ll be writing a post on the importance of Medium for authors later. It’s the new social media platform invented by SocMed superstar Evan Williams, who also invented Blogger and Twitter. It’s the the most user-friendly of all blogging platforms, and it doesn’t require the commitment of starting a blog.

Pioneering indie author Bob Mayer has been using Medium very effectively, and it’s considered one of the best ways of getting your message out, sans gatekeepers, whether you’re a newbie scribbler or the President of the United States.

Creative nonfiction essays can also be the best vehicle to build your platform, whether your main gig is fiction or nonfiction. Many writers break into print with creative nonfiction anthologies like the Chicken Soup series.

A guest piece for a well known blog is probably the best way to jumpstart an online platform. A creative nonfiction piece or how-to is the best way to get one of those gigs.

e) Short stories about your novel characters or “outtakes” from a memoir are a future gold mine.

If you write short stories about the characters in your novel, and that novel becomes a series, you’re creating a future gold mine. Consider writing short pieces about each of your main characters.

It’s a great way to get to know your characters, and they can be published later to fill in between books.

Fuse Literary is one of a number of literary agencies that encourages this. They provide self-publishing help for their clients with their own imprint, Short Fuse for releases between trad-pubbed series book launches.

NOTE: I don’t recommend self-publishing a stand-alone short story or creative essay before you launch your writing career with a full length book.

Patience pays off! Even if you’re planning a 100% indie career, publishing a singleton short story is not a good first step unless you’ve got ten more in a series you can release in quick succession the way Hugh Howey did with his Silo series.

I wrote a piece several years ago about the importance of short fiction in the digital age. Even though I included many caveats about not self-publishing stand-alone short titles if you’re not an established writer, I’m constantly getting requests from people who have skimmed the article and want me to tell them how to make millions selling a short story on Amazon.

Nobody has done this, ever! The Kindle Singles program was more open when it started 5 years ago, and now mostly takes agented, well-known authors only.

A self-published short piece by an unknown newbie author is going to disappear in the Amazon jungle. It won’t pay for its cover and formatting. Be patient. Keep those stories at the ready to use later when they’ll be useful and lucrative.

4) Read Contemporary Work in your Genre.

If you’ve only read the young adult books from your own youth or you tend to reread the regencies or mysteries you loved 30 years ago, or you haven’t picked up a memoir since Millie’s Book: as Dictated to Barbara Bush, you probably won’t be able to compete in today’s market.

What was hot then will be clichéd now.

And if you’re young and just got your BA in Comp Lit and would die of embarrassment if anybody caught you reading Dan Brown or Paula Hawkins, then put the ebooks on your phone or tablet. Nobody has to know.

But you still need to read the stuff on the bestseller lists. Yes, even if the dialogue is wooden and the plots contrived.

If they’re selling millions, they’re doing something right. That’s what you need to find out. Ignore the rest.

If you’re older, it’s easy to wail “O tempora, O mores” and complain about “these hack writers today” (forgetting there have always been popular, terrible writers.)

But if you don’t know what’s good about contemporary bestsellers, you won’t know anything about the marketplace you’re trying to enter. You can’t have a writing career without knowing about the business of writing.

This is true even if you’re planning to go indie. Knowing what’s on the NYT and USA Today bestseller lists will tell you what people are actually reading. What you think they should be reading isn’t going to help you sell books.

And if you don’t know what contemporary books are similar to what you write, Amazon’s search engine can help. Just go to one of your favorite titles and click through the “also-boughts” and explore them. You’ll find what people who like your faves are buying now.

5) Network with Other Writers.

Writing is a lonely profession. And people who aren’t writers tend to think we’re weird. 🙂 It’s awfully important to be around other writers who are traveling the same road or maybe are a little bit ahead of us and can give us some pointers and the occasional heads-up.

Fellow writers can also give us a wake-up call if we really are being weird. (You can’t be a diva in a room full of divas.)

There are lots of great online social media groups and forums for writers, too many to list here. (Some are fantastic and others not so much, so make a quick exit if you see any trollish behavior that isn’t stopped ASAP. A group is only as good as its moderator.)

Blogging is also great way to network with other writers, and there are great blog networks for new writers like the Insecure Writers Support Group and Kristen Lamb’s WANATribe forums.

Simply commenting on well-known writing blogs like Kristen’s, the IWSG, or this one gets your name into search engines and raises your profile. And Nathan Bransford seems to be back to regular blogging. He has forums where writers can gather. And his archives are full of great info!

Get to know people and get known!

Genre groups that welcome both amateurs and professionals can be especially helpful, like RWA, SCBWI, and Sisters in Crime. They usually have online and in-person meetings.

You may be lucky enough to live in a community that has in-person writers clubs that meet at local libraries or bookstores. Network anyplace you find kindred spirits.

But you want to be online too. That’s where you’re going to make your sales and establish your career.

Online networking is a great way hear about agents who are looking for work like yours and to learn from people who are self-publishing and decide if it will work for you. This is where you’re going to find out about the business and learn the latest scams to stay away from (there are always scammers looking to pounce on newbie writers.)

6) Learn about the Publishing Business.

Yeah, I know, Bo-ring. You’re a creative person. If you wanted to go to business school, you would have. You’re an artiste.

But artistes famously starve in garrets.

You want to actually make a living at this, right? Or at least pay a few bills? Have an actual writing career?

So you gotta learn how the money side of all this stuff works. You can learn an awful lot by reading some inexpensive ebooks and free blogs.

If you’re thinking of going indie, check out some of Author Marketing Experts 50 Best Blogs for Indie Authors. And do read David Gaughran’s bible of the self publishing revolution, Let’s Get Digital, which he is giving away absolutely free as a PDF or if you’d rather read it on your ereader (which I would) it’s only $2.99 at Amazon.

And for traditional publishing advice as well as indie advice Jane Friedman’s blog is fantastic. We also have a lot more listed on our Resources page.

For advice on both traditional and indie publishing, do check out the book I wrote with NYT and #1 Amazon author Catherine Ryan Hyde, How to Be a Writer in the E-Age, which we’ve got on a countdown deal until November 12 in the US and the UK. (see our BOOK OF THE WEEK below)

And do keep in mind that anybody who makes all their money from authors is less likely to have solid information than somebody who makes money for authors or has other sources of revenue.

by Anne R. Allen @annerallen November 6, 2016

What about you, scriveners? What did you do when you were planning your writing career? Did you sit around rewriting your query letter, obsessing over rejection letters the way I did? Did you refuse to read bestsellers because they were full of head-hopping and cliched, wooden prose? (yup, I did that, too.) When did you have your breakthrough moment when you realized you had to treat writing as a business? What other things can you add to the list?

BOOKS OF THE WEEK

SALE!! 3-Day 99c Countdown Starts Monday in the US

5-day 99P SALE going on RIGHT NOW in the UK

HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE

Everything you wanted to know about contemporary publishing (traditional or indie) but were afraid to ask: from your first draft to that movie deal: blogging, social media, marketing, platform building, querying, dealing with reviews and rejection and internet trolls. It’s all in there!

co-written with NYT bestseller and Amazon million-seller Catherine Ryan Hyde

From November 6-November 12 It will be only 99P at Amazon UK for 5 days!

and from November 7-10 (Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday) it will be 99c at Amazon.com

I APOLOGIZE for the short US sale and the fact it starts on Monday instead of Sunday. I scheduled them to go at the same time in the US and the UK, but Amazon’s robots, in their infinite wisdom, cancelled the US one so I had to reschedule. So remember to pick it up on MONDAY, TUESDAY or WEDNESDAY in the US! )

It’s also available in paper for $12.99

OPPORTUNITY ALERTS

Payton James Freeman Contest for Creative Nonfiction. FREE $500 prize and publication in The Rumpus plus public reading at Drake University. Up to 3500 words. Theme is CHANGE AND CHANGES Deadline November 21.

Mid-American Review Story and Poetry Contests. $10 fee $1000 prize each contest. Prestigious. Story up to 6000 words. Up to 3 poems for poetry contest. Deadline November 30.

AUSTIN CHRONICLE SHORT STORY CONTEST FREE $1500 in prizes. 2500 words or less. Deadline December 11.

GEMINI MAGAZINE POETRY OPEN $5 ENTRY FEE. Grand prize $1,000. Second $100. Hon. mention $25. Publication in the March issue of Gemini. Open to any form of poetry. Poems must be unpublished, but work displayed on personal blogs is eligible. Deadline January 3, 2017

Write Vignettes? Vine Leaves Journal is looking for vignettes as well as poetry, artwork and photography. Paying Market. Publishes twice a year. Submission fee $5.

Grey Matter Press is looking for exceptional dark, speculative fiction for anthologies. Stories may be 3000-10,000 words.

MYSTERY AUTHORS! Here’s a list of 15 small presses that specialize in mysteries and do not require an agent for submissions. It’s compiled by Authors Publish Newsletter.

ROMANCE AUTHORS! And a list of 31 small presses that specialize in romance and do not require an agent for submissions. Also compiled by the Authors Publish Newsletter.

25 PUBLISHERS YOU CAN SUBMIT TO WITHOUT AN AGENT. These are respected, mostly independent publishing houses–vetted by the great people at Authors Publish. Do check out their newsletter

The Wanderer: A Paying Market for poetry, book reviews and more: The Wanderer is a new monthly literary magazine.