The Day I Got Tired Of Failure

Back in 2004, I decided I was tired of being a failed writer.

I didn't really know how to turn it around, but for years I'd been a has-been writer, one novel published when I was a wee bairn and then a few scattered short stories since then. Editor-orphaned. Still writing, but everything sitting in a drawer. I was attending a writing group, but I'd kind of gotten used to failure as a steady state.

In 2005, when the new year hit, I decided I was done with that. I'd gotten good at failure, but it didn't have any appeal. Yes, I was a mom with small kids and sure, it was understandable, and of course the market was tough blah blah blah. I was tired of making excuses. I was tired of failure. Time to change things.

So I set myself a goal, and I made sure it was possible to achive through sheer effort. Ready?

I had one year to make my goal. I had to get either 12 acceptances or 100 rejections.

That was it. Either I had to get twelve pieces accepted, and it didn't matter how or where, or I had to get enough rejections that I could accept that I was not and never would be a successful writer. Period. There was no middle ground, and the glory here was that if I worked hard enough, I was going to make either one or the other.

Do the math: if I submitted 111 times, one or the other condition had to be reached.

The grind of publishing is that you cannot force success. You have no idea if you're really writing at peak performance, and you can always do better. You can't control whether your work gets accepted. You can't control how well your work will sell. You can't control your reviews. You can't control whether an agent will request sample pages or whether an editor will send your book to the acquisitions committee.

You can control you.

You can control the number of words you write every week (within limits -- build in a cushion for things like illness and unexpected emergencies.)  You can control what kind of pieces you're working on. You can control how much you learn about the business. You can control how often you submit your work.

In my case, I decided that was the way to go. I knew my writing was good enough, and I knew just barely enough of the business to get started freelancing. (I read two books to learn more about it so I stood a chance of hitting the twelve rather than the hundred.)

My overall goal was to earn a living via novels. I knew that wouldn't happen right out of the gate, though. I'd already done fabulously with one novel, but that had been ages ago, and then nothing. It was more realistic to send out small pieces. So I started scanning calls for submission and looking at what I already had. I worked on short pieces. I looked at the guidelines for magazines I read on a regular basis. And I learned how to write an awesome query.

From a career point, it was probably laughable. I queried a novel to agents and another to editors while simultaneously pitching nonfiction articles, poems, satire, and how-to pieces. It was a flurry of literary activity with no discipline. That's not how you build a career. Careers require focus. They require intense knowledge of one area.

But you know? Along with the rejections, the acceptances started coming in. I even got a couple of checks out of it.

I went to a writer's conference and pitched a magazine editor, and instead of being nervous, I realized I didn't care if she rejected me because even if she rejected me, her rejection got me one step closer to my goal.  (She didn't like that, by the way. I think I was supposed to simper, and I was all out of the need to simper.)

Sometime in November, I hit my goal. I'd made contacts and had money coming in, and I had my first two pieces with a magazine that eventually would list me on their masthead, and I had short stories awaiting publication. Twelve acceptances. I don't remember now how many rejections. Maybe seventy? It didn't kill me.

So for 2017, set yourself a goal. Make it something you can reach without having to control anyone else. Don't worry about doing it wrong. If you need to get yourself started, do something that will get you started and correct your course later on, once you're in motion.

I was tired of being a failed writer, so I changed it. As the year draws to a close, what are you tired of? What can you do to change it?


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For When Things Aren't Working Out

Ash had a wonderful post last week about the bravery and necessity of creating plans. Unlike her, I am and always have been a planner, not a pantser. I have made new year's resolutions without fail since I was 17 years old. For something like the past 5 years, I've broken those resolutions into quarterly, monthly, and, ultimately, weekly goals. I like check marks. I like seeing my progress. I will argue to a stalemate with anyone who tells me lists aren't important.

But, as Eisenhower says, "...I have always founds that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."

We've talked about how indispensable planning is, so I want to focus on how useless the plans themselves can be sometimes.

In 2011, I had some ambitions new year's resolutions. Already a resolutions veteran, I knew I had to make actionable, measurable goals if I wanted to get anywhere. So I did. And one of the things on my list was to be able to run two miles without having to walk. I was getting married that September, and though I wasn't out of shape, I certainly wasn't in shape, either. So I joined a gym and got on a treadmill. I followed my plan.

By early summer, I still couldn't run two miles, and I'd learned something: I hated running. I didn't enjoy that time in the gym at all. I had to focus on anything else to keep me on the treadmill. My knee, which has a stress injury from doing gymnastics as a kid, was hurting me again. Instead of looking forward to meeting my goal, I was looking forward to lifting weights, which I did after my dreaded time on the treadmill.

That goal, and many others in 2011, I never met. But I learned a lot about myself in making them. At the time, I was frustrated that I didn't meet my goal, instead of happy that I learned something.

Fast forward two years to when I decided to write a novel. I made a plan: write it, edit it, query it, publish it, profit. Simple. I planned on the whole process going quickly, so I edited as little as my CPs would let me get away with. I started querying long before the book was ready. I wrote another book, edited it, queried it. I saw some small problems with how the plot was going, and knew my word count was on the short end. I decided the agent who would inevitably fall in love with my book was going to help me fix it, so why bother.

When 2016 started, I had 40,000 words of novel #3 and no agent. My goal for this year was to finish my third novel and be querying before the year was out. I finished my first draft at the end of May, but unlike with my previous novels, I decided to take the advice of basically the entire writing world and set it aside for a month. So I did. Then, as I revised, I was determined to do the best I could by this book, because it's one I really believe in. So it's the middle of November and not a single critique partner has seen my novel yet. I'm not going to be sending out my first query by the end of the year.

I need to remind myself that it isn't a failed goal. It isn't something I stopped working toward, and it isn't a story I gave up on. The unchecked box on my Resolutions page represents not giving up, but hope. I believe in this book, so I'm going to take the time I need to make it as good as I possibly can before I query it. I'm going to send out the most polished writing I can muster.

Without my plan, I would never have gotten as far as I have on this book. Every week, I write out a new micro-goal that will push me closer to sending this book to my critique partners, and ultimately to agents. Every week, I fail that micro-goal but make progress. I am not defined by that box I won't check at the end of the year, because that goal is the reason I am as far as I am, and the unchecked box is my hope that this book, with enough time, will succeed.

Rochelle Deans sometimes feels like the only writer on the planet who rushes through the writing so she can start editing. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two kids two and under. Her bad habits include mispronouncing words, correcting grammar, and spending far too much time on the Internet.

New Year's Resolutions that Actually Work

Statistically speaking, by the time the chips and dip are passed around at the pre-bowl game on Superbowl Sunday, as many as half of people who make a New Year's Resolution have already broken it. One month of an unused gym membership has been paid for. The dairy-free/gluten-free/sugar-free diet was replaced with an ice cream sundae by January 15th. Sure, the intention was to avoid eating out at all costs, but surely it doesn't count for a friend's birthday... or a weekend getaway... or when you're just really busy... right?

It can be all too easy to let resolutions like "lose weight" or "go to the gym more" fall by the wayside as life gets in the way. Don't let this happen to your writing goals.

All too often, I see writers with New Year's Resolutions like "sell a book," or "get an agent," or or "finish my next novel." Now, unlike "lose weight" or "go to the gym more," they are measurable goals. After all, the moment you get an agent, you'll be shouting from the rooftops! So it should count as a reasonable resolution for the year... except it doesn't.

Why not? You do not have all the control when it comes to whether you get an agent or not, and even less control over whether a book sells. Thinking that you do places all the blame on yourself if it doesn't happen, and that isn't good for your self-esteem, which writers struggle with enough. It isn't great for your writing career, either.

So, what to do? Don't set writing resolutions at all? Of course not! Just make sure they're SMART. (Specific, measurable, achievable, results-focused, and time-bound). With one month under our belts, there is plenty of time to re-evaluate not what we want to achieve, but how we get there.

Want an agent for a book you've already revised to perfection? Maybe your goal looks like this: By December 31, 2016, I will have queried at least 75 agents and entered two contests. I will work on my query until it shines, and tweak it if I'm not getting the request rate that I want. I can stop querying before I reach these goals if and only if I get an agent sooner.

Boom. That is a SMART goal, one you can achieve regardless of the market, or your story, or what an agent ate for breakfast the day she read your query.

"Finish my next novel" sounds like a great goal at first. I've been writing lists of New Year's Resolutions for more than ten years and I had to learn the hard way that this one isn't SMART. It turns out, books are never finished--at least not until they hit the printing press and you're out of time to revise. After realizing that I never defined "finish," I set a different goal for the next year: Work on WIP until it is ready for critique partners to review, then take their advice for another revision. By December 31, 2016, have WIP ready enough that I feel comfortable querying it. 

As you're writing this year, don't set yourself up to fail your goals. Make sure they're SMART, then implement a way to track them (I just started tracking my word count using stickers on my calendar, and it's working like magic) that keeps you accountable. Then you'll be amazed what you've accomplished by the end of the year.

Rochelle Deans sometimes feels like the only writer on the planet who rushes through the writing so she can start editing. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two kids under two. Her bad habits include mispronouncing words, correcting grammar, and spending far too much time on the Internet.

Setting Your Querying Goals

You’ve finished your manuscript and your critique group/partner and beta readers have helped you strengthen the writing and the story. Now you’re ready for the next step: querying.

This month on the Querytracker Blog, each contributor will be sharing tips for querying. Today, I want to discuss your query goals. Yes, I know your goal is to land your dream agent. Am I right? I thought so. Unfortunately, it’s not a goal because you can’t control whether or not you’ll achieve it. A goal is something you have control over.

Let’s assume you’ve written a top notch query that will grab an agent’s attention as early as with the first line. The next thing you’ll need to do is create a list of agents who will most likely be interested in your book. If you’ve written a romance, you don’t want to query agents who HATE all things romantic. That’s just wasting your time and theirs.

Do you have your list of potential agents? Good. Now you need to figure out how many agents you will send your first batch of queries to. You don’t want to send it to everyone on the list at the same time (and I’m not referring to a mass mail out, which you should NEVER do). Maybe you want to send it to five agents at a time. Once they’ve all responded to the query (or after a given period of time to accommodate the non responders), you send out the next batch. You keep doing this until you’ve reach your next goal…

In total, how many agents are you planning to query before you move on? Some writers decide to query fifty agents before they wonder if something is wrong with the book and decide it’s time to move on. Some decide one hundred agents is the magic number. And some writers keep querying agents until their next book is ready to query. If you set a goal, it will push you to keep querying once the novelty wears off (and once you get busy with other things). It also helps to have a goal in mind for when you want to rethink your query and sample pages (usually the first five pages to first three chapters, depending on what the agent requests on the agent’s website). If you’re getting requests on your query and sample pages, then you’re golden. If you’re getting nothing but rejections on the query and sample pages, you need to re-examine those and make them stronger. But before you do that, you need to figure out at what point in the querying process you’ll consider reworking them. It could simply be that it’s not the right premise or voice for that particular agent and there’s nothing wrong with your query.  And while you’re at it, determine how many rejections on partial and full requests you’ll sit through before you re-examine your story premise and writing. It could be that it needs some major rewriting, or it could be that you haven’t found the right agent for the book, yet.

By figuring out your goals ahead of time, it will help motive you to keep trying and help you know when it’s time to shelf the project. It will help remove one level of frustration from the process.

Do you have querying goals?

Writer Productivity Tip: Have Measurable Goals

My children love corny jokes, so I frequently hear elephant jokes. Things like, "How do you get an elephant in the fridge?" / "You open the door and put in the elephant."

My children will also ask, "How do you eat an elephant?" and then tell me, "One bite at a time."

I've talked before about the value of incremental effort for writers. If it takes a hundred thousand words to make a book, or a hundred hours to make an edit, or a hundred books read to make a good writer, then you're going to have to get used to taking small steps toward your overall goals. The important thing is to guide your steps in the right direction. And keep taking them.

Michael talked about having a routine to boost writing productivity, but I'd like to take that a bit further into mapping out your goals such that you have specific, reachable goals you can hit on a daily basis, a weekly basis, a monthly basis. 

Back in 2013, I met my agent for lunch and griped that I'd been stalled at 35,000 words on my novel for far too long. I forget what I said, but I effectively gave myself a kick in the pants. Lent had just started, so I turned it into Personal Novel-Writing Lent. A thousand words a day, no excuses. I feel my writing is a God-given vocation, and therefore for me it fit nicely into the category of "spiritual discipline."

I got a notebook and my fountain pen, and they accompanied me everywhere. I had to estimate what that thousand words was since I was hand-writing it, but 40 days of Lent should net me 40,000 words (with the occasional day off for taking a sick child to the ER.) That would put me in striking range of the ending. 

Nice and measurable. (I screwed up the measurements and ended up with more than 1k per day, but that's fine.) Sustainable.

After that, the next goal was to have the entire hand-written portion of the book entered into the computer in two weeks. Definable.

Then a nice round goal of one month to do my first- and second-pass edits. Get it off to beta readers. Incorporate their suggestions. (That part was tricky because it wasn't solely dependent on me, and you can't rope other people into your goals.) And then have it to my agent by June. Then get it on submission by September.

I outlined every step and knew what it would take to achieve it, and having that goal every day kept me on target. You can't eat an elephant in one bite; similarly, a book-length manuscript is huge. You can't just spit it out. 

The incremental effort link talks about taking 34,000 stitches to knit a pair of socks, but one of the ways you stay on track with socks is having a pattern, and having an idea of how much time you can commit to knitting. Or the inverse: if you know it takes 20 hours to knit socks, then you know how much time you have to give the project if it's September 23rd versus if it's December 23rd. (Er…just trust me you don't want to be doing that.) 

Books don't have spiecific patterns, but the same way you can say, "I need to reach the heel turn today," you can also say "I need to reach 45,000 words by the end of today," or "I need to get the first draft of my query letter written by 9pm" and eventually "I need to decide by Thursday which of these agent offers to accept."

Having a goal you can hit means you will be more motivated to try. Higher motivation boosts productivity. Good luck!

’Tis the Season for . . . Business Plans???

by Stina Lindenblatt @StinaLL

 ©Stina Lindenblatt

It’s that time of the year when we reflect on what we have or haven’t accomplished this year, and we plan for next year. No, I don’t mean the dreaded New Year’s resolutions. Most people fail to achieve those. I’m going to go one step further and have you think about your business plans. 

Now, a few of you are freaking out because we are writers. Business plans are for, well, businesses. But if you’re planning to make money with your writing, you need to start thinking of it as a business. And all successful businesses have business plans. A strong business plan will help your book achieve the level of success it deserves.

The good news is that business plans aren’t much different than the usual goal setting we do each year. Only this time, I want you to delve a little deeper. It doesn’t matter if you’re planning to self publish or traditionally publish your book—or if you’ve just written your first first draft—if you want to be taken seriously, now is the time to start planning. And it’s easier to do it now than a few weeks before your book launch. 

Step One: Brainstorm

What do you want to accomplish next year? Sorry, landing an agent or having your book become a bestseller doesn’t count. Those are dreams, not goals. You have no control over whether an agent or readers will love your book. Goals are achievable, unless you get lazy and don’t do them. For example, losing five pounds is achievable, unless you don’t exercise and don’t decrease your caloric intake.

Step Two: Dating

Figure out by what date you want to accomplish each goal. It’s not enough to say, “I want to write a novel next year.” When you do want to achieve this by? Also, this goal is not specific enough. Do you mean you want to finish the first draft by October 1st, or do you want to have a novel ready to query by then?

Step Three: Division

Break down each goal into manageable tasks and give them dates by which you want to accomplish them. For example, say you want to set up your website by April 1^st. 

Goal: Set up website (April 1^st)

• Determine author brand (January 15^th)

• List ten authors who write similar stories to me. (January 20^th)

• List the things I like and dislike about their websites. (January 25^th)

• Research website designers (February 15^th).

• . . . .

By breaking down the larger goal into bite-size pieces, it will make the goal seem less daunting and you’ll be more likely to achieve it. 

When you create your goals, think about the following:

Product: This is your book. 

• What do you need to do to create a query-ready book? Figure this out for each story you plan to write next year. 

 

Competition:
 

• What’s going on in your genre?

• Are you approaching the tail end of a trend?

• Is your genre saturated and difficult to break into?

• What are agents and editors saying? What are readers saying?

• Is there a less saturated genre you love that you might want to focus on instead?

• Of course, the only way you can answer these questions is by reading LOTS of books in your genre and following industry blogs, so . . . what are your reading goals for next year? 

 

Human Resources:
 

• This includes books and workshops to help you improve your writing craft and knowledge related to anything dealing with publishing (e.g. creating a website, social networking for authors, creating your author brand).

• Start researching services (editors, cover designers, book formatters, website designers, etc) early in your planning process. If you spread it over a few months, it won’t be so daunting, and it will give you time to find the right person. This applies to researching agents, too.

 

Distribution:

• If you’re querying next year, who are you planning to query (agents or editors)? How many queries are you planning to send out with each batch, and how often will you be sending them out? When are you planning to write your query and synopsis?

 
 

• If you’re self publishing, research what you need to know to be successful. Some great resources to check out include: Smart Self-Publishing by Zoe Winters and Self-Publishing Attack by James Scott Bell. 

 
 

Promotion/Marketing:

• Are you planning to use Facebook? Twitter? Pinterest? Come up with goals that you can live with and that will enable you to have enough time to write. 

 

• How’s your website working for you? Do you have one?

 

• What are your marketing plans for before, during, and after your book launch? You might not be releasing a book next year, but it wouldn’t hurt to start brainstorming ideas for the future. Some agents and publishers want to know your marketing plans before they sign you. Make your life easier and plan ahead.

 

Finances:

• How much have you budgeted for your business next year? By planning ahead a year or two in advance, the costs can be spread over that time period, and it will feel less intimidating. 

 

Obviously, someone who has a book launch next year (either via traditional or self publishing) will have a more extensive business plan verses someone who is writing her first novel. Also, you don’t have to write your plans for just one year. Most companies have a five-year plan. The beauty of your business plan is that it’s flexible. You can change the dates as need be, and add or delete goals as necessary.

Do you create goals every year? Have you created business plans for your writing career?

Stina Lindenblatt @StinaLL writes young adult and new adult novels. In her spare time, she’s a photographer and blogging addict, and can be found hanging out on her blog.  

War of the Genres

We’ve all heard them. Those assumptions about the different genres found in fiction. 

Literary: Boring. Nothing more than whiny characters.

Thriller and horror: Cheap thrills for the intellectually challenged.

Romance: Smut. Nothing more than the flashing of body parts.

Picture Books: Coloring books with words.

You can probably add to this list of what you’ve heard for your favorite genre, but have you turned your back on a genre you figured you could never enjoy? Maybe if you give it a chance, it could open your eyes to a world of possibilities. Possibilities that could cause your writing career to leap into a whole new stratosphere.  

Some Benefits of Reading Outside Your Genre

Certain genres are character-based while others focus on plot. If you read predominantly plot-based stories, you’re missing out on an opportunity to see how others develop characters readers love to connect with. If they (and this includes agents and editors) connect with your characters, they’ll keep turning the pages. This is what you want. Romance, young adult, and horror are a few genres that rely heavily on emotions. Thrillers and suspense are perfect examples for solid pacing. By reading other genres, it will help you further develop your craft.

And let’s not ignore the ideas that might be triggered by reading outside your genre. Just don’t forget to make them your own and not a copy of someone else’s story.

Challenge Your Assumptions

Before you shoot down a genre, make sure your beliefs are based on education and not on assumptions. By education, I mean borrow books in the genre then actually read them. But make sure you do this with an open mind. If you’ve already told yourself the genre is a waste of shelf space, nothing short of a miracle will change that opinion.

Which Books to Read?

When looking for a book to read, find out what titles won the genre’s prestigious awards. You can read the bestsellers, but sometimes they aren’t the best representation of it. The books might have been heavily promoted because they landed the author an equally hefty advance.  On the other hand, you might love them as much as their fans.

Target Audience

Keep in mind the genre’s target audience. You might not appreciate Dancing Cinderella (a Disney Princess book); however, many six-year-old girls love it. It’s all right not to like middle grade or young adult novels, but remember, you weren’t their target audience to begin with.

Goals of the Genre

You might not think a genre is worth reading, but you might be surprised when you discover the goals it sets out to achieve. For example, many people assume erotic romance is nothing more than pornography. It isn’t. The sexual encounters between the heroine and hero are predominantly there as part of the character’s personal growth, for example, trust of the opposite gender. Another genre would utilize a different approach for the same goal. Each has its own purpose.

The common writing advice we hear is to read outside your genre. Have you recently tried one you’ve never considered reading? One you felt wasn’t worth your time? You never know, you might discover one you never expected to like. Maybe you’ll even write a novel in it and see your career take off in a direction you never expected. Now, wouldn’t that be worth it?

Stina Lindenblatt writes romantic suspense and young adult novels. In her spare time, she’s a photographer and blogging addict, and can be found hanging out on her blog, Seeing Creative.  

What Are Your Goals Up To Lately?

In my former life, I was a drug rep. Each December, the sales group for my territory would get together to figure out our business plans for the following year. Welcome to my start as a fiction writer. None of us liked writing these things. Fortunately, my teammates didn’t care what I wrote down. They just wanted to be out on territory. So, while they were out freezing their butts off (I live in Canada, in case you’re wondering), I created some impressive plans for the upcoming year. What can I say? I love creative writing.

Turns out I wasn’t the only budding fiction writer in the company. Eventually (like five years later), head office clued in that the business plans were boarding more on fantasy than reality. The result was a mid-year review to make sure we were following through with our goals.

As you may remember, the Querytracker.net blog had a post back in January on writing goals. The aim wasn’t to come up with resolutions that would be broken within a few weeks. It was a chance to figure out what you want to achieve this year in a realistic manner.

Well, it’s time to revisit them and see if you’re still on track, or see if things need to be tweaked. That’s right. Just because you said you were going to accomplish A, B, and C doesn’t mean you cannot change your goals to A, D, and E.

Say, for example, you wrote that you were going to query your novel, land an agent, and said agent would sell your book. Maybe you achieved your first two goals, but although your book came close to being sold, in the end you didn’t achieve the third goal (which is why it probably wasn’t the best goal to begin with). However, since there’s a lot of buzz about self-publishing lately, you’ve decided that it might be a viable option for you. Now you need to change your goals for the remainder of the year:

1. Investigate the realities of self-publishing (especially for your given genre). Some genres (e.g. romance) are thriving in e-publishing; whereas, others are not doing so well in that format. E-published books are selling, but not to the same extent as in romance. This might affect your decision on self-publishing, or how you’re going to achieve it.
2. Research the time, work, and expensive involved. Is it something that still interests you after you discover how difficult and time consuming it might be? Or does the idea of doing the work leave you feeling dizzy, in a positive way?
3. Study all you can about marketing and social networking.
4. Create a business plan. Sorry, no fiction writing here if you want your book to succeed. Trust me on this one. You only have yourself to impress.

As you can see, this is a very different set of goals from the original ones. For the next step, figure out a time frame in which you want to achieve each goal, and pick another date (maybe in three months) to make sure you’re still on track. Do you need to tweak them (because after doing #1, you’ve decided you don’t want to self-publish the book after all)? Or have you let your plans slide, and you are now behind schedule?

Remember, this was just an example. Maybe your plan is to work on a different project than what was laid out in your goals at the beginning of the year. Maybe you want to improve your craft so you are no longer receiving form rejections. Or maybe you’ve decided that you want to write short stories and novellas, and establish your name before returning to your original goal of writing a novel. The main thing is to change your goals to something that you can live with and is achievable. And do it now, rather than waiting until January 2012.

Any questions or suggestions?

Stina Lindenblatt writes romantic suspense and young adults novels. In her spare time, she’s a photographer and blogging addict, and can be found hanging out on her blog, Seeing Creative.  

Goal-setting for writers

Did you make a writing resolution for the new year? Writers especially need to be careful when setting goals, moreso than in other fields.Goal-setting for a hockey player is easy: “Get the puck into the net.”

Goals are especially important for writers because writing is a "squishy" pursuit. Without goals, we lack a means to judge our performance. In setting goals, however, we must be careful to make “us-dependent” goals rather than “them-dependent” goals.

A goal that is us-dependent is a goal realized through our own effort. It does not involve anyone else’s response. For example:

• I will write one poem every week.
• I will keep a journal.
• I will attend the writer’s group and bring something to critique.

A goal that is them-dependent relies on others for its fulfillment.

• I will get my novel published this year.
• I will write a column for the newspaper.

Publication and contest wins are beyond your control. You can improve your odds of publication with market research and a sparkling query, but you cannot guarantee acceptance. The editor might not even read your query. Is that rejection truly a measure of your skill? The publisher might have just accepted a piece similar to yours. The newspaper may not have any funding. While important, this sort of goal is not an accurate gauge of progress.

A writer’s goals should combine the two types. If your ultimate goal is to be published, then use that…but add in others.

Just for example, my goals one year were:

• Get a novel published.
• Get 12 pieces accepted or get 100 rejections in the process.

The first was not dependent on me. I could submit all I liked, but if my genre wasn’t snapping, I wasn’t going to sell, and I didn’t.

For the second, though, I was guaranteed to achieve one part or the other if I submitted 111 pieces: two pieces per week, and some weeks three. Plus, every rejection letter, rather than being disheartening, carried me closer to my goal!

As it turned out, I did get 12 acceptances that year, so I made my second goal. I didn’t sell the novel until the next year.

Finally, is your goal achievable? If you’ve never written a short story before, publication in The New Yorker is less achievable than the goal of bringing one highly-polished story every month to your writing group. Also, the goal must be challenging. If it doesn’t involve enough effort, we’re more likely to let it slip, and achieving it would be meaningless.

Your take-away: Set goals, but make them reasonable, and make most of them dependent on your own effort. Then get the puck into the net.

Pathway to Becoming a Bestselling Author

Now that the New Year is rapidly approaching, it’s a perfect time to discuss writing goals for 2011. What you want to accomplish next year may be dependent on where you are on the above pathway to becoming a bestselling novelist (or one with a loyal and growing fan base).

Newbie Writer

So you want to write a novel (or have already started one). Congratulations! The first thing you need to figure out is WHY you want to be a writer. Is it because you want to be the next Stephen King or J.K. Rowling? If so, quit now. You’re doing it for the wrong reasons. But if you want to be a writer because you hope to write stories that might one day be published and make a difference in someone’s life or entertain your readers, then welcome to the club. But before you join us, there’re some things you need to do:

• Read Read Read in the genre you want to write. If you woke up this morning and decided to become a YA writer, then you’ve got a lot of homework ahead of you. Same deal if you want to write a medical thriller and have never read one before. Of course, in this case, you might want to consider attending medical school first (or law school if you want to write a legal thriller).
• Read outside your genre. You might get some brilliant ideas for your story. Plus, you might discover a genre you never thought about writing before.
• Study nonfiction books on writing.
• Read blogs. A lot of writers are delighted to share their knowledge and writing tips in bite-sized pieces. This makes it easier for you to remember the pointers when writing and editing your novel.
• Analyze the writing of your favorite authors and see how it can improve your writing.
• Join a critique group or find some knowledgeable beta readers.
• Learn to research. Most novels require research, even if it’s just to make sure your characters aren’t stereotypes.
• Attend conferences. They’re a great learning and networking experience.

Querying Writer

You’ve written your novel and done numerous revisions based on feedback from your critique partners and beta readers. You’ve polished your novel until it shines, and have given it some much needed distance. Now you’re ready to query.

• Learn how to write a query and how not to write one. Many queries are rejected because writers did those things that irritate agents and editors the most. Don’t be one of these writers.
• Research agents. Don’t waste your time and theirs by querying the wrong agents.
• Write a query and have it critted by your critique group and by people who don’t know the story. And don’t forget to make sure it has voice. If it doesn’t, the agent might think your novel lacks voice, too. (Hint: It needs to be in the same voice as in your novel. Believe it or not, this mistake does happen.)
• If you’re just getting form rejections, go back and redo the previous three points.If agents are rejecting requested materials, figure out why. IF you’re lucky, they might give you a hint. For example, if an agent mentions the characterization wasn’t as strong as she would like, now’s the time to study some books on characterization.
• Start working on a new project. I can’t stress this one enough.
• Consider trying out a different genre. Maybe you aren’t cut out to write legal thrillers, but discover you can write a kickass romantic suspense.
• Attend conferences.

Agented Writer

Congratulations, you’re getting closer to your goal of publication, but you’re not there yet. When you consider how many agents represent your genre and how many editors are looking for it, well, the odds aren’t great in your favor of your book being sold.

• Keep reading books in and out of your genre.
• Continue to develop your craft. Just because you’re agented, it doesn’t mean you can stop learning and challenging yourself to do better.
• Start working on a new project so if your current book doesn’t sell, you’ll have something new for your agent.
• If your manuscript is only collecting rejections, study the reasons behind them. Unlike agents, many editors do provide some feedback as to why they rejected the book. See this as an opportunity to improve that area of your writing (if that was the reason for the rejections), especially if they’re consistent. Remember, your goal is to be a professional one day (i.e. make money from your stories). And professionals (physicians, accountants, lawyers) are always learning. It never stops. Which brings me to the next point.
• Attend conferences.

Published Author

Wow, you did it. You’ve made it to a place a lot of writers dream about. Of course, you still have a lot of work to do. You have to promote the book (which I’m not going to go into here) and write a new one. But just because yours is published doesn’t mean you can stop challenging yourself and pushing your writing to the next level. Keep studying those books on writing and attend conferences. Unless you’re an award winning author (I’m talking the major literary awards), you probably still have room to grow. Don’t be the foolish author who assumes he knows everything.

Bestselling Author

Okay, I know no bestselling authors are reading this, but hopefully you keep this advice in mind if you ever get to this point. Your fans might be forgiving, but that can only take you so far. If you start to ignore the rules, it might not necessarily work in your favor (though sometimes it can). How many of you have stopped reading books by your favorite author because the writing just isn’t there anymore? The writer has become lazy. Once your fans drop you, you have to work even harder to get them back—if you ever can. That’s why I consider the pathway to being a bestseller (or a much admired author) a two-way circle. It is possible to move backwards and not just forwards. Also, your first published novel might have been a bestseller, but it was mostly because of hype. Your next novel might not do as well if readers where disappointed with the last one.

Remember, no matter where you are on the pathway, you should never stop learning and challenging yourself to do better. Your readers will thank you for it. So where are you on the pathway, and what are you planning to do next year to help you meet your goal of being published (or keep being published)?

(Note: Because of the limitations of my graphics program, this graph is slightly misleading. Only under very rare instances could a newbie writer skip the querying step and go straight to being a bestselling author. And a writer’s first book might be a bestseller (i.e. they skipped the part about developing a fan base over a period of several books), but I couldn’t show that in my graph. Also, you might be published by a small pressed before landing an agent for your next book.)

Stina Lindenblatt writes romantic suspense and young adults novels. In her spare time, she’s a photographer and blogging addict, and can be found hanging out on her blog, Seeing Creative.  

Goals Make Dreams Reality: Guest Blogger Danyelle Leafty

Our guest blogger, Danyelle Leafty, has been an active member of the QT community for a while now. She is a positive, generous and talented member of our forum over on the main QueryTracker.net site.

Goals by Danyelle Leafty

A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you're fast asleep...

And we all have dreams, right?

I dream that one day I will be caught up on housework. That I will be able to cook gourmet meals that everyone will not only eat, but love to eat. That I will be able to find those important papers WHEN I need them, and not a week later.

And then there are other dreams--the ones I know can come true.

One day I will be published. I will be the best mom and wife I can be, because I will be the best person I can be--and my capacity for "bestness" will change based on a whole slew of things including atmospheric pressure, and it's okay. I will have a full, happy life, no matter what I get hit with. I will celebrate. I will find joy.

But how to turn these dreams into a reality? For me, the first step is positive thinking.

If I don't believe it's going to happen, it won't. (Except for rare cases like laundry, dirty dishes, and taxes.) I have to believe that, while things may not turn out exactly how I envision them from the beginning, that they'll happen. Because not believing in your own dreams is like slamming the oven door on a delicate soufflé. There is no substitute for believing in yourself. Your family can't do it. Your friends can't do it. Your associates and neighbors can't do it.

But they can help when the storm clouds roll in and you watch the waters begin to rise. They can help plug those tiny leaks in the roof that you hadn't noticed before. They can help fill sandbags and lay them out. And if worse comes to worse, they can bring along a bucket and a boat if you need to bail or make a quick getaway.

But something that really struck me, was the need for goals.

A dream is just a wish until it's written down. Then it becomes a goal and has a chance of turning into a reality.

To be honest, my publishing goal was modest. My goal is to find an agent that I connect with who will then find a publisher that will love my project. *clears throat* And then I will have to figure out how to find an audience who will be willing to help support my book habits.

But all that changed while I was at a writing conference. I was listening to a panel of authors that were all doing very well for themselves, one of whom happened to be Aprilynne Pike. They were talking about the pros and cons of having an agent and going with a larger or smaller press.

I perked up at this point, because if the agent plan didn't pan out, I was considering going with a smaller press. And then she brought up that GOAL word. Deciding where and to whom you submit to has a lot to do not only with the industry, but with your goals.

From the outset, she wanted to be a very successful author that reached a larger audience. (I can't remember completely, but she might have mentioned something about the NYT Bestseller list.) And a small press, with that goal in mind, wouldn't work as well as finding an agent who would then submit to one of the bigger publishing houses. This also meant that she had to write to that broader audience.

I thought this was brilliant advice, and decided to follow it. I've found that having a goal to be published by one of the bigger houses and possibly make NYT Bestsellerdom changes the way I look at writing. If I want to reach a broad audience, I can't just write for myself. Make no mistake, I still write from my heart, but I do so consciously. I have a story to tell (lots of them, actually), and darn it, I want to reach the most people I can. Not because I want my head on a postage stamp, but because I believe I have something of value, and I want to share. (That, and have you seen how many awesome books have come out lately? :p)

Having this goal has also shaped how I'm approaching the agent hunting as well. Rejections, while not a barrel full of fun, don't sting the way they used to. Because my goal has changed. I'm not just wanting an agent, I'm wanting to find my agent. The one who will believe in me when nobody else (in the industry) does. An agent who will get my work, love it, and help me take it to the next level. Not just someone who likes my work enough to take a chance. I finally get the whole falling in love thing.

So when those rejections come, its more like sitting in a shoe store surrounded by shoes and tissue paper rather than sitting against the wall at prom. The rejections aren't cute boys avoiding eye contact and shuffling past at high speeds, leaving me to wonder if I used enough deodorant or if I forgot to tame the unibrow. No, it's more like trying on a shoe and finding that it doesn't fit as well as I'd hoped.

But somewhere under all that tissue paper is the one shoe. The one that will not only fit, but will work so well that I will feel as though I'm walking on clouds because I can't feel the hard ground anymore.

So, back to dreams.

Want to have your dreams come true? Then pick the ones that must come true--that you will see through to the end whether it's bitter or sweet. Believe in yourself, and find lots of people (also called friends) that can help buoy you up and believe in you when your well runs dry. Write down your dream, thus changing it from a vague wisp of wonderfulness into something that can breathe in reality. Write those goals down to make them real and to remind yourself when you need it most.

Because goals not only have the power to change your perspective, they have the power to change the world.

Danyelle

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We appreciate Danyelle agreeing to be our guest today. You can read more from and about Danyelle on her blog.

The QT team wishes everyone a happy and productive week.