Successful Fiction Writing = Creating + Organizing + Marketing
I blog weekly on one of the above three topics, alternating between them. This week, I’m blogging on Organizing. Today I’m writing about how to map out your writing career—what can you expect and how can you optimize things?
What’s Normal in the Publishing World?
I know a writer who signed her first publishing contract after working on her novel for 26 years. She went on to write a number of award-winning novels.
I know another writer who was a novice writer when I met her at a conference, and she signed her first publishing contract less than a year later. She went on to write a number of other novels and has done well with them.
I know another writer who uploaded her first novel to Amazon as a self-published work, and it sold pretty well. Then it sold very well. She went on to write a number of other novels that have also done very well.
I worked about 11 years learning the craft of writing before I sold my first novel to a publisher. I went on to write several more award-winning novels and 3 best-selling books on how to write fiction.
If you’re looking for a pattern here, there isn’t one. There is no “normal.” Other than persistence. Some writers have to persist longer than others, but persistence is what gets you there—if you do actually end up getting there.
But I also know many writers who have persisted for a long time and never got published. Or they self-published and got no sales.
So how do you plan your writing career, when you don’t know whether it’s going to go anywhere? Let’s talk about the stages of a writer’s career, and how to know which one you’re in, and how to move on to the next level…
The Four Stages of a Writer’s Career
Your life before you get published is a lot like high school. It can be a miserable experience or a fantastic experience, or both, or neither. But your success after graduation has no correlation with how much you enjoyed high school. Your success in life has all kinds of correlation with the amount of work you put into getting a good solid high school education.
I see four stages in a writer’s pre-published life, much like the four years of high school—freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. And yes, I know some people go to middle school from 7th to 9th grade, and then high school only takes up three years. So the metaphor’s not perfect. But let’s run with the four-year analogy, because it has a lot to tell you about where you stand and what you can do to graduate.
The Freshman Writer
A freshman writer typically has been writing for less than a year. The freshman has an idea for a novel. Maybe she’s been mulling it for a long time, but one day she decides to actually write the thing. So she sits down and starts typing.
Some freshman are amazingly energetic. They can drill out several hundred pages in a few weeks or months. Others are agonizingly slow. They may take years to get the first ten chapters written.
What is common to most freshmen is that they don’t start out getting any feedback on their work. They just type words. They may think the words are amazing. They may think the words are hopeless drivel. They are generally wrong on both counts. Freshmen typically don’t have the skills to assess their own work. And (in most cases) they will continue to be freshman forever unless they get some help.
What kind of help? There are all kinds of help. The right critique group can move you along very quickly. (The wrong critique group can crush your will to live.) A good coach can tell you what you’re doing wrong and show you how to do it right. Sometimes, a community college class on writing is all it takes to get a freshman moving in the right direction. Or a few good books on writing. Or a writing conference. Some writers choose to get an MFA in creative writing.
A personal note: I was a freshman for a couple of years. What kicked up my game was going to a good writing conference, getting hooked into a quite decent critique group, meeting some writing buddies, and reading a couple of spectacularly great books on how to write fiction.
Every writer is different. What worked for me won’t necessarily work for you. But every writer needs some kind of help. Once you get the right kind of help and use it to improve your writing, you will rapidly advance over the next year or so to the next stage…
The Sophomore Writer
A sophomore writer is starting to write pretty good fiction. If she’s in a critique group, she is the best or second-best writer in the group. If she’s working with a coach, the coach has taught her most of what they have to teach. If she’s taking a class at a community college, she’s getting an A or an A+ in the class. If she’s reading books on craft, all the books are starting to sound the same.
It’s easy for the sophomore writer to think she has arrived. She is now publishable, because she’s getting As, right? No, wrong. Getting an A in your local community college writing class is not enough. It’s a start, but it’s not going to get you a writing contract. Yes, you write better than 99% of all humans. But there are still hundreds of thousands of writers who write better than you. This is a hard truth to hear, but it’s still truth.
There is a big difference between “good fiction” and “marketable fiction.” What is common to all sophomores is that they don’t understand what makes a novel marketable. Sophomores (in most cases) are going to remain sophomores forever until they get help.
What kind of help? For the most part, reading more books is not going to have much value. You’re going to have to interact with real humans, people in the publishing world. You can go to writing conferences and make appointments with editors or agents. (If this sounds terrifying, then I have been unclear. This is utterly traumatic.) You can join a group of online writers that includes actual published authors. You can hire a high-priced editor with experience in the publishing world.
One way or another, you’re going to need to learn how to write a book proposal. I recommend doing this, even if you intend to self-publish. Writing a book proposal will expose all the gaps in your understanding of marketability. If you show your proposal to anyone with experience in publishing, they’ll point out all the things you don’t understand about the realities of modern publishing. And that will be good for you, if you let it.
A personal note: The first book proposal I wrote was spectacularly awful. It ran on for about 200 pages, which is ten times too long, but I didn’t know any better. I lugged a couple of copies to a writing conference and made appointments with two real, live editors. Both were far, far, far kinder than I deserved, and I learned something from them. My second proposal was better; it was merely awful. My tenth proposal was quite good.
Every writer is different. One way or another, you must find some way to learn how to make your novel marketable. Because an unmarketable book is not going anywhere. Once you’ve figured out the marketability thing, you’ll wake up one happy day to discover that you’ve advanced to the next stage…
The Junior Writer
A writer in her junior year is writing very good fiction. She’s writing very good proposals. But she is not yet writing at the professional level. “Very good” is fine if you want to impress people in your writing class or your critique group or your fellow writers at a writing conference. It’s not enough if you want to impress an editor or an agent.
You need to get better, if you want to advance. You get better by writing more pages of your manuscript. And by writing more proposals. And by showing your work to publishing professionals. And by learning how to tell good advice from bad advice. You will get both kinds. From very intelligent, well-meaning people. It’s on you to know which advice is right for you and which is wrong. The same advice can be perfect for one writer and awful for another.
A personal note: I spent several years at the junior level. That was longer than it should have taken, but I was very busy with other things in my life—young children, new house, demanding job. I worked on my novel most days. I went to a local conference once a year. What I needed was to go to larger conferences with more editors. Once I started doing that, I quickly broke through to the next level. (“Quickly” means it only took two years.)
Every writer is different. You will need to find your own path to advancing your skills. You will need to work hard. You will need to find your writing voice, so that no AI on the planet can copy you. You will need to understand the psychology of your Target Audience, so that you can write exactly what they’re dying to read. If you do that long enough, you’ll realize one day that you’ve moved on…
The Senior Writer
A writer in her senior year is in the zone and in perfect misery, both at the same time. She is writing the best fiction she’s ever written. She is writing amazing, powerful proposals. She is showing her work to editors or agents on a regular schedule. She is getting back all kinds of warm, glowy feedback, all of which ends with, “…but it’s not quite right for us.”
What’s wrong here? The senior writer who is committed to selling her work to a traditional publisher spends a lot of time angsting about this. Why is she getting all kinds of bites, but never pulling in a fish?
The answer is time. It just takes time. You need to connect with the right editor or agent, at the right time in their life, at the right time in the publishing world. That can happen fast or it can happen slow. It may never happen. That’s the risk you take.
A personal note: After writing for nine years and creating many proposals and going to many conferences and meeting with many editors, I sat down across the table from an editor at a conference. We made small talk for a few minutes, and that went badly. We talked about my novel idea for a few more minutes, and that went catastrophically. The editor, in complete exasperation, asked if I had a writing sample. I pushed five pages across the table. Two minutes later, he pushed them back and said, “Send me a proposal.” A year later, he called to ask for the full manuscript. Nine months after that, he called to make me an offer. My first novel appeared on the shelves about 12 years after I started writing. A year later, it won a major award in its category.
Every author who has ever gotten published traditionally has been through this hellish senior year. It’s a horrible time, because you know in your heart you deserve to be published. And it’s not happening, not happening, not happening. Until one day it does. One day, you get a call and you have an offer. Without any warning at all, you have graduated. You’re about to move on to a whole new realm of existence, which may not be all you expected, but it will be different.
One way around the brutal senior year is to simply self-publish your work. Why bother with a traditional publisher who takes forever, when you can just upload to Amazon and click Publish? That’s a question for another day. I will say only that self-publishing works wonderfully well for some authors (it has done very well for me), while traditional publishing with a big corporate publisher works fantastically for other authors (I did OK with traditional publishers).
If you want to self-publish, go to it and have fun! You’ll be very glad you learned how to write a book proposal, because that knowledge will guide you in your marketing efforts. If instead you work with a traditional publisher, you’ll be even more glad you learned to write a proposal, because that’s how you make it happen, if it’s going to happen.
Is All This Struggle Worth It?
Yes. Any published author will tell you the same thing. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! The-diner-scene-in-When-Harry-Met-Sally yes.
The writing life is hard. It’s hard, whether you’re published or unpublished. It’s hard whether you work with a traditional publisher or you act as your own publisher. You’re going to sweat blood to learn how to write. You’ll sweat more to learn how to make your work marketable. You’ll sweat more to achieve mastery. You’ll sweat more to find exactly the right publishing opportunity. You’ll sweat blood until the day you hang up your spurs, or the day you die in the saddle, whichever comes first.
You will hate very minute of it. You will love every minute of it. I wish you the very best of luck.
Homework:
- If you are not yet published, what stage are you currently in—Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, or Senior? What actions can you take today and this week and this month and this year to advance to the next stage?
- If you are currently published, are there writers you know that you could help move forward in their writing career? What actions could you take to help them advance?
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