Your writing career 2014
From Rick:
Those of you who have been following this blog for the past several weeks know that I’ve been talking a lot about marketing. You might be getting tired of it, and some might be getting discouraged (though I hope not).
The fact is that I have been taking the various articles I’m citing to heart and realizing that if I expect success as writer with my own works, I have to pay attention to their advice. This post, though short, is a motivational one for us and all of our readers.
Kris Rusch’s latest installment DISCOVERABILITY PART 5 hit home for me even more than her previous articles did. I told myself that if I want to achieve some degree of sales success, then I must develop a following, and I can’t do that with one or two or three novels, maybe not even with twice that number.
Some of the best advice I’ve heard is that you should push your novel out there, give it a bit of promotion, then let it ride while you work on your next one. Even if the first one hits, keep working on the next one. The good news for me is that I’m in a position to push several books out in 2014, one of which is nonfiction.
Now, before you think I must be a super-fast writer, I assure you that I am not. I’m a slow writer. So, how can I hope to have several books—good books—out in one year? Part of the reason is that I have a previously published novel that I can re-release. It’s in excellent shape, although I’m considering tiny revisions here and there to clean up some of the writing that got away from me the first time around. Then I have A Punctuation Guide for Fiction Writers that Scott and I are working on and that should be done in the next month or two and ready for release in February or March. Next, I’ll be revising my second and third previous novels, Vampires, Inc. and Vampires Anonymous. They require rewriting (some of it significant) to finish the story in two instead of the originally planned three novels. The framework is there, though, and they don’t require a complete rewrite. Finally, I have a completely new joint work that’s been going on for several years and which should be done by summer or early fall of 2014.
Overall, it’s a very aggressive plan and will take a lot of work, even though a significant portion of the work is already done. But I tell myself that I need to do this if I’m to have any reasonable expectation of getting my name out there soon. I think it can be done. Fortunately, I have good people working with me and my friends at 13 Thirty Books pushing me and keeping me on point.
Here at Write Well, Write to Sell we have in the coming weeks lined up several guest blogs with good writing and marketing advice, but we’ll also intersperse these with blogs on craft.
Scott and I challenge you all to set for yourself a reasonable goal of writing and marketing for 2014. Remember that you cannot publish crap and expect it to drive your writing career. If anything, it’ll have the opposite effect. Your output must be good. Better to have less good output than much bad output. Further, note Kris Rusch’s advice in her article link above: Write what you love. Tell the best story you can. Then, once you’ve finished that story, start a new story. Make it better than the first.
I say, truly, there is no better writing advice to help you achieve success.
Kris also says that if you don’t know grammar, punctuation, and spelling, LEARN THEM because they’re the tools of your trade! If one or more of those is your weakness, make improving those skills a priority.
Until next time…
–Rick