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As a writer, you have to move forward to keep up with the onslaught of books and authors in the book publishing arena.
And, you especially need to be sure you're keeping in alignment with your writing goals. This means every now and then you need to stop to evaluate what your core goals are and if you’re actually heading in that direction.
Every marketer will tell you that the beginning of each year you need to create a list of core or major goals. It's important to make your goals realistic and obtainable, and not to burden yourself with too many goals.
Three is a good number of writing goals, not too few, not too many. Then under each goal you can list a few tasks that will you will do on a daily or weekly basis to help you reach your objectives.
In addition to creating and typing your goals down in a document, they need to be printed and kept visible. It's important to put them somewhere you'll be sure to notice on a daily basis. You might put your list on your computer, inside your laptop case, on top of your daily planner, on the inside of a kitchen cabinet you open everyday.
You get the idea,
your writing goals need to be visible each and every day. Not just visible though, they need to be read each and every day.
Why is it important to keep your writing goals front and center?Here's another question to help answer that question: Did you ever hear the expression, ‘Out of sight, out of mind?’
That's the answer. On January 1st of 'any year,' you may tell yourself, and maybe even write it down, that you will:
1. Write a minimum of five pages of your new book each week
2. Effectively market your published books
3. Submit articles to three paying magazines on a monthly basis
Okay, that's great, but suppose it's now July and you haven't even written 10 pages of your new book, and you haven't gone past the very basics of promoting your published books.
What happened to your writing goals?Easy. You didn’t keep your goals list front and center, so you got sidetracked.
While you may have had the best of intentions on January 1st, without keeping those
writing goals visible, it’s difficult to stay on course.
Maybe you decided to add the writing of unrelated e-books to your workload. Maybe you decided to do book reviews and started a critique group of your own. Maybe you devoted too much time to social networking and your online groups.
These additions may not necessarily be a bad thing, but before you continue on, ask yourself three questions:
1. Are these additions to your workload moving you in the direction of your major writing goals?
2. Are they actually keeping you from attaining your goals?
3. Are they providing some kind of income?
If your answers to these questions are NO, YES, NO, then you need to step back, redirect your steps, and get back on track. If you keep your
writing goals front and center, you’ll be amazed at how you automatically work toward achieving them.
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Related Articles:Aim for Writing SuccessDetermination, Focus, and Perseverance
6 Comments on Keep Your Writing Goals Front and Center, last added: 10/26/2011
As every writer knows,
creating and increasing visibility is an essential part of the business. Whether you're writing and promoting books or you're a freelance writer, you need to be out there . . . it's never ending.
As we progress on our writing path, we gain insight into what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong. At least hopefully we learn. Sometimes, if we're lucky enough to have the guidance of a writing coach or mentor, we're actually told what might be amiss, or what steps we can take to work more effectively and profitability.
But, no matter how you come to the realization of certain steps you need to take, the most important thing is to actually take those steps.
This is something I've been working on lately. As with a lot of writers, I spin my wheels trying to be everywhere and do everything, but it's not an effective use of time or an effective way of accomplishing what you want to, and it's just plain tiring.
Fortunately, I've been reminded of what I need to do by my writing coach Suzanne Lieurance. I've worked with Suzanne in a couple of different clubs since 2008, and she knows her stuff.
A key to
writing success is to have your major writing goals in place and to be focused. What tends to happen though is we forget what out actual goals are - we get sidetracked, or we keep adding more and more goals to our list. This doesn't work.
My three major goals for 2011 are:1. Working on children's books for publication
2. Marketing my existing books
3. Growing my ghostwriting business
While I've been working somewhat on goals one and three, and working regularly on number three, I'm not being productive enough. The reason: I've added this, that, and the other thing to my list of goals, or just to my workload.
So, although it's the Fall, I'm going to be doing some Spring cleaning. Some of the tasks will be tough, but are absolutely necessary to streamline my workload toward productive and goal attaining strategies.
What tasks will I need to undertake to direct focus back on my major goals?1. I'll be changing my KarenCioffi.com site to my children's author site. This will entail getting a more 'children's author like' website theme and focusing the site solely on me as a children's author.
2. Establishing this site as my sole writing and marketing information and services site. Since it's pretty well established as this, it won't take too much work - although, I do have a lot of
article marketing links directed to KarenCioffi.com. To remedy this, I'll have to have a redirect page there letting folks know this is my primary freelancing site.
3. Eliminate non-productive and non-money-making jobs, and other extraneous goals that are diluting my major goals.
4. Absolutely make time to write children's books - my current WIP is a sequel to
Walking Through Walls.
5. Look into school author visits; get the book marketing items I need; write a couple of focused articles on my book topics and post them to the individual book sites to generate more visibility for the books.
5. Possibly reduce the posts here to two times a week, rather than three times
This is from a talk Andrew McMillen gave on a panel about freelancing at the Walkley Foundation’s MediaPass student industry days. Andrew has a lot of great insights, so I thought I would share his talk with Renegade Writer readers.
Andrew McMillen: Things I’ve learned about freelance journalism
The best way to be a freelance journalist is to wake up every day and be a freelance journalist. This means you’ll spend your day researching story ideas, pitching stories to editors, requesting interviews with people you wish to speak to, transcribing interviews, shaping stories until they’re as good as they can be, and then filing them to your editor. I’ve just summed up the entire job in a sentence. That’s what freelance journalism involves. You’ll think of an interesting thing to write about, pitch this interesting thing to an editor, get permission from the editor to write about this interesting thing in exchange for money, and then go out and do just that. Over and over.
In a way, it’s not glamorous at all, but it depends how you look at it. I choose to look at freelance journalism as: getting paid to learn things, and sharing that knowledge with readers. In many cases I know very little about a particular topic when I pitch a story, but through curiosity and initiative in approaching an editor to write about it, I get paid to familiarise myself with an industry, or a culture, or an issue that affects a lot of people. I’m not saying that I become an expert on something after researching it for only a week or two, but I’ll generally know more about it than the average person. And then when the average person reads my story, they too become informed. It’s a beautiful cycle, and it’s a wonderful way to make a living, as long as you have an interest in learning things. If not, freelance journalism probably isn’t for you. But you should still try it anyway, because you never know.
Ideas. You need to have absolute faith and conviction in your ideas, because ideas are your lifeblood as a freelance journalist. Without them, you fail. Without them, you’re nothing to nobody. But to have an idea is not enough: you need to conceptualise an idea in a full enough manner that an editor will read your idea and be willing to part with a few hundred or thousand dollars from their budget in order for you to bring that idea to fruition. When I started freelance journalism, my ideas were terrible. I look back on them now and I’m embarrassed by how lame and elementary they seem in comparison to what I’m pitching now. Like anything though, freelance journalism is a learning experience, and you get better over time. But at the heart of this game is the quality of your ideas, which you need to hone and sharpen and polish on a daily basis if you have any hope of getting anywhere.
Curiosity. Curiosity is currency. As I mentioned earlier, I see this job as being paid to learn, and to teach. Curiosity is key, though, because 95% of my ideas come from reading or watching something and wondering, “why is that?” Or, “how does that work?” Or “why did that person or company make that decision?” Generally, the question is “why.” The “why” should be a question that you ask yourself constantly. Not out loud, because you’ll probably sound like a lunatic, but as you move through the world, be curious. Story ideas should come easily if you keep listening to the “Why” in the back of your head.
Mentors. This might be the most important thing I’m going to say today. You need
Today, I have an article by the very successful Jack Canfield, and it's about mastering the earnings game. Boiled down, it reveals what is needed to be successful no matter what field you're applying yourself. According to the article, as writers we should know our talents and raise our intentional bar. So, without further ado, here is the article.
Master the Earning Gameby Jack CanfieldWhen faced with a challenge, some people freeze. They stop taking action. They drift or coast, hoping that the problem will disappear. They blame, complain, whine, or moan about their circumstances.
You have another option: Take 100 percent responsibility. In an unreliable economy, pointing your finger at the president, oil producers, mortgage lenders, Wall Street, or your boss takes your attention away from the inspired actions that will improve your financial well-being.
Starting today, move into action.
The things that you do during the next few months will dramatically affect your earning power and financial resilience for years to come.
Focus on Your Core Genius Socrates said it best: “Know thyself.” Those two words offer timeless wisdom about attracting wealth.
Inside you is a core genius—something that you love to do, something that’s effortless and fun. When engaged in this activity, you feel fully alive. Time disappears, and you disappear into a pure state of flow.
This activity is your core genius. It might be teaching, coaching, writing, painting, acting, selling, computing, or accounting.
Whatever it is, discover it. Connect it to a demand in the economy. Then make this activity the cornerstone of your career.
Dan Sullivan, a successful strategic coach, describes entrepreneurs as con artists. They get people to pay them for doing something that they love to do—and would otherwise do for free.
“The biggest mistake people make in life is not trying to make a living at doing what they most enjoy,” said Malcolm Forbes, former publisher of Fortune magazine. And as a multimillionaire, Forbes knew something about attracting wealth.
Delegate the Rest The flip side of doing what you love is letting go of the rest. Successful people focus on their core genius—and delegate everything else.
You can use the same strategy. Perhaps your core genius is sales. Then ask your manager to let someone else process paperwork, make photocopies, and schedule meetings. If your core genius is training, then find someone else to call prospective clients and process seminar registrations.
If it can be done faster, better, and more cheaply by someone else, then let it go— once and for all.
Create More Value When customers are hard to find and revenues decline, people often rivet their attention on the bottom line. The dominant question becomes: What can we do right now to make more money? Actually, there’s a more powerful question to ask first: What can we do right now to create more value? This shines a spotlight on the only reason that anyone makes money over the long term in the first place—by selling a product or delivering a service that creates value.
Mike Milliorn used to work as an Avery Label salesman. Some of his customers were restaurant managers who needed labels for food containers. The problem was that conventional labels dropped off containers when they sat for days in a refrigerator. Mik
So I was sharing my conference schedule with one of my writing friends — telling her about my recent trip to Rutgers and my plans to attend the Big Sur Children’s Writing Workshop
in December and SCBWI Florida Regional Conference in January.
My friend then shared how she feels that she’s lagging behind in her growth as a writer because she doesn’t have the discretionary income to attend conferences.
I told her that writers don’t need to attend conferences to grow in the craft. I’ve only started attending conferences on a regular basis — for me the most important thing is putting in the time to work on the novel.
But then we had an interesting conversation about privilege and writing. Could it be true that people who can pursue the craft have a time and money advantage?
Conferences can get expensive. This is why I thought the WriteOnCon concept was so great — having a free online conference gave lots of aspiring writers a chance to mingle with editors, agents, and other people in the industry.
Finding time to write can also be hard if you work two jobs to make ends meet. If you’re stressed out about paying bills and keeping a roof over your head, writing will probably fall way down your list of priorities.
Growing up working class, my family always appreciated the arts — especially music and books — but I must say no one really pushed the idea of me pursuing a career in writing — jobs that paid well were valued way more because of the possible better future it could bring.
And honestly for me, it wasn’t until I moved into the professional class and got settled financially that I was able to start pursue other craft development avenues such as attending writing conferences, taking writing courses, and enrolling briefly in a MFA program.
Before I got to that point, I would read craft books in the bookstore or borrow them from the library. I also found cheap one-day or weekend courses. So I do think if you want to pursue writing it can happen but depending on your situation, it could definitely be more challenging if you have time and/or money limits.
So what do you think? Is it a matter of money and/or time that gives some writers an edge? Or does it even matter? Does perseverance to pursue the craft determine success?
You have a relatively new freelance business going and you’ve gotten a really big project, at least the biggest you’ve ever done. You’re excited, but also a bit apprehensive: can you get it done on time?
You decide to subcontract some of the work to take the pressure off of you, or maybe because it’s just not feasible for you to do alone. Well, before you make commitments with subcontractors, think it through.
New Freelance Business Food for ThoughtAnalyze and answer this question before you start outsourcing work:
Does the job pay well enough to warrant hiring subcontractors? For example: you get a big article writing gig. It would be difficult for you to handle it alone within the specified time. Also, there are specific keywords that will need to be used for each article and it’s a concern that you will end up having articles that sound alike. These are valid concerns, but if you’re not making enough money on the deal, is it worth it to hire out, or even accept the job?
Get out a calculator if you need to, and determine how much you will make per article taking into account the time you will have to spend researching for your own articles, proofing each outsourced article, and possibly even editing them. The last scenario is very, very, very likely if you don’t already have a team of subcontractors who you are familiar with, and who you know can produce quality content.
And, there is always the possibility that the client will ask you to edit a few articles after you’ve submitted them to him. This is more of your time and energy being used. If the editing is required because you didn’t do a good job on that particular piece, or your information was inaccurate, then it’s your responsibility to edit it with no charge. If on the other hand, the site your client submitted the piece to is just being picky, you should charge an editing fee.
The key to being successful is to know your value.
Be sure to stop back on Monday, June 21st, for Part 3 of the Freelance Series.
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You might find these articles of interest also:Top 7 Mistakes e-Book Authors MakeWriting Books: Is There Money in It? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Writing Tools and Programs:Writing, Publishing, and Marketing - You Can Do ItWriting for Children One Step at a TimeThe Self-Publishing Guide, 2nd Edition The Children's Writers' Coaching ClubWrite More, Sell More, Make More Money Than EVER in 2010 Coaching ProgramIf you haven’t yet, be sure to sign up for our FREE monthly newsletter and get a FREE eBook!And, scroll down on the right sidebar--there are two free e-books just for stopping by!
Until next time,
Karen Cioffi
Author, Ghostwriter-for-hire, Freelance writer, Reviewerhttp://karencioffi.comhttp://dkvwriting4u.comhttp://nothingventurednothinggained.org
Today, I have a great article from writing coach and instructor, Suzanne Lieurance. As a member of her Children Writers Coaching Club, and Write More, Sell More, Make More Money Than EVER in 2010 Coaching Program, I know first hand of the unique quality Suzanne has of getting her message and instruction across. She knows the writing and marketing ropes and effectively imparts that knowledge to her members.
So, here's some writing insight from
Suzanne Lieurance:What is Holding You Back From the Success You Want?Want to know what is probably holding you back from being as successful as you could be?
The answer should be no surprise.
It's YOU.
Yep. YOU are the one thing that stands in your way to living the life of your dreams.
And, the thing is, you might not even realize why or how you are doing that. But you must learn to recognize certain behaviors and patterns before you can change them, so let's take a look at some common methods of self-sabotage.
First, think about all the little messages you send to yourself every day. The ones that play in your head over and over again and say things like, "I'm afraid to do that," or "I'd better not try that, I'd probably fail," or, "nothing I do ever works out the way I want it to."
Or maybe you recognize another common pattern - you do many of the things necessary to succeed, yet once you do start to make progress you pull back. You're just too afraid to break out of your comfort zone.
Sound familiar?
Here's yet another pattern that can hold you back - you try a few things to get the results you want. But when they don't work quickly you stop doing them and try something else. In other words, you don't give yourself enough time to succeed.
Every day you send messages to yourself - and to the world around you - through your thoughts, actions, and feelings. Those messages are like a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, is it any wonder you don't live up to your true potential?
Stop holding yourself back.
Each time you hear one of those negative messages in your head today, acknowledge it. Then replace it with a new, positive message that will lead to the future you truly want.
Try it!
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For more tips to help you create the life of your dreams, sign up for
The Morning Nudge Suzanne Lieurance is a full-time freelance writer, The Working Writer's Coach, and founder of Build Your Business Write.
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Suzanne_Lieurance ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Please be sure to check out Suzanne Lieurance's programs. If you want to write for children or get a freelance writing career going, she's the woman to learn from.The Children's Writers' Coaching ClubWrite More, Sell More, Make More Money Than EVER in 2010 Coaching ProgramAnd, please, if you do take my advice and join one or both of Suzanne's groups, please mention my name--I am an affiliate of hers. But, also know that I only recommend these programs because I belong to them and I know their value if you're serious about writing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Related Article:Aim for Writing Success
I just read Carol Lynch Williams’ novel THE CHOSEN ONE, which I couldn’t put down; I thought it was a very good novel. And it’s a huge success (lots of buzz, great reviews, looks to be selling very well). I googled Ms. Williams to learn more about her. Turns out she is an author who published several novels in the nineties and then couldn’t get her novels published. She went through what she called a “dry” spell. It lasted many years. Something like five or six. So here’s a woman who had published several books and suddenly found herself unable to get her work published. She struggled. She went back to school and got an MFA. Eventually, after what must have seemed like an eternity to her, she did publish two novels, THE CHOSEN ONE and another, and she is having a big success. I’m happy for her. But her story does illustrate the ups and downs of the business of writing. There are many other examples of this. Take one of my own instructors at Vermont College, Bret Lott. Wrote many literary novels that were all published and then he, too, couldn’t get his novels published. He went through a “dry” spell, too. After some years, he did get something published. Then, out of the blue, Oprah selected a novel he’d written eight years before, one that was out of print, called Jewel, for her book club. Hello big bucks. Hello lots of readers. You just never know what will happen in Publishing World. There are probably many reasons why some books sell and some books don’t; the problem is no one knows what most of them are.
If you measure success by the market you will most likely not feel you are successful for a number of reasons besides the most obvious I’ve raised here: market unpredictability. LIKE, for example, human craziness: a book of yours sells well; you want your next book to sell even better and expectations go up—your expectations, your publishers etc…Will you feel successful it that next book doesn’t do better, a lot better?
I consider myself a successful writer. Not because I’ve had big success in fame or fortune. Uh, no. Not even close. Sold a few books, won a few awards, but no fame, no fortune. But I am successful, nevertheless, because I’ve found something I love to do and I’m able to do it. That is rare.
Writing and the struggle to write well and the moments of writing well, of even transcendence, these are what I consider the real and tangible rewards of writing. If you fight through the difficult moments in a novel and you struggle and sweat and take care of all the necessary details you will come to moments when your novel seems to practically be writing itself, moments of transcendence, wonderful moments. These moments far exceed anything you can get from the world in the way of praise or financial reward. That’s why I write. (Of course I want my fiction to break a reader’s heart and cause them to laugh out loud, but those are things I strive for in the work and not rewards.)
Anyway, sell your work. Market it. Do whatever you can to get readers to read it, but don’t forget the reason you write in the first place. That’s all I’m saying. The ways of the market are inscrutable. Whatever happens in terms of sales and recognition, if you remember the love of the process and creation, you won’t be pulled under by disappointments in the publishing world.
Most of us are not in control of much when it comes to our writing career but we are in control of what we value, how we see our lives as writers.
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Karen:
I found your blog on my dynamic blogroll. You have given me a new way to look at my writing goals.
http://quietspirit-followingmyking.blogspot.com
Hi, QuietSpirit,
I'm so glad you found the post useful, and thanks for taking the time to comment!
I need to keep reading this to remind myself!
Added this to my Top Ten Blog posts in the SFC Newsletter for Writers.
VS Grenier
http://vsgrenier.com
Virginia, thanks so much!
Thanks for this great post. I'm really bad at setting/keeping goals and I need to change that.
Susanne, so am I. I'm trying very hard to change that also.