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Marketing and Publishing Checklists for Writers

Photo credit: Matthew Crisp via VisualHunt.com / CC BY

I’ll start with a confession: I don’t use checklists. I like them in theory, and I collect a wide range as part of my work—so I can share them with writers—and I even know that checklists can be critical in improving performance in certain professions (see The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande).

But I’ve always balked at using checklists in my day-to-day work.

Many years ago, when I worked for Writer’s Digest, I was the editor in charge of producing a special newsstand-only magazine on self-publishing. Part of the issue included announcements and coverage of the annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Award, but what I didn’t know was the magazine also had to include a special insert about the winners that came from the competitions staff.

The magazine went to press and was distributed without that insert, and I had never seen my boss so angry as when she found out. Her solution to my ignorance: create a checklist of every special insert required for each special issue. It was a pretty short list—it may have only included my situation, in fact. But I admired her attempt to create a repository of institutional knowledge.

And that, to me, is what a checklist is about. It attempts to formalize and put into tangible terms someone’s expert practice or knowledge, so that everyone can access and benefit from it. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. There’s a lot that a checklist is challenged to convey, such as: What are the exceptions or alternatives to these steps, if any? What skills are involved in proper execution of this checklist? If one step gets executed poorly, how does that affect success on the overall project?

When embarking on a process that is new or unfamiliar, often you don’t know what you don’t know. A checklist, at the very least, will help you recognize what you don’t know, so that many months later, you’re not beating yourself up for complete ignorance.

Without further ado, here are some of my most favored checklists, from sources I trust.

Marketing Checklists

Of all the knowledge areas in publishing, marketing is probably the most favored for checklists. It’s such a sprawling, unknown area that there’s incredible demand for a system to help make it all comprehensible and step-by-step. There are two authors I highly recommend for their expertise and experience in this area: Tim Grahl and Jenny Blake.

Book Marketing Plan: The Definitive Checklist by Tim Grahl

Tim says, quite accurately, “At any given time, there seem to be 1,000 different ways to market your book. It’s not only hard to know what you should be doing. It’s also hard to keep up with all the options that are available.” His checklist focuses on proven book marketing methods to help you build a customized plan.

The Ultimate Author Checklist for Online Book Marketing

This checklist is from the folks at Book Marketing Tools. It’s for self-publishing authors who are likely focused on selling their ebooks via Amazon. Download the PDF.

Pivot Marketing Tracker by Jenny Blake

This is a newly revised version of an old favorite that Jenny produced some years back that she called the 15-tab book marketing spreadsheet. Understandably, for many authors, the 15-tab version was just too much to handle, so the new marketing tracker, presented as a Google spreadsheet, may be less intimidating. It’s not so much a checklist as a way to track your marketing efforts across many categories, such as blurb gathering, advance copy mailings, podcast exposure, speaking gigs, webinars, giveaways, and so on. When you see what areas an established author focuses on to gain exposure, it helps spark your own ideas and methods for your own campaign. So, this tracker is best treated as an inspirational prompt and guide, not a recipe for your own plan.

Website Checklists

This is another area where authors tend to have little insight or experience, and need to feel some reassurance and confidence that they’ve included all the essential elements.

The Basic Components of an Author Website

This is my own informal review of what materials you need to prepare to have a professional author website. Many unpublished writers ask me what belongs on their site, and I try to address that as well. Read my post on author websites.

How to Build the Ultimate Author Website by Tim Grahl

Again, I’ll draw on Tim Grahl here, because he offers excellent, practical, how-to information on getting stuff done. Unlike my post, he goes through all the technical steps of setting up an author website, from start to finish.

The Ultimate Website Launch Kit Template by Jenny Blake

I’m like a broken record, but both Tim and Jenny really know how to put together great lists! Jenny’s kit is likely the most extensive road map you’ll ever find on launching a site. It may be too involved for the average author, but if you’re investing significant dollars into a website launch, take a look.

Self-Publishing Checklists

This is an area where I have seen little or no resource, which is why I created my own checklist for authors on the production and distribution process. The one drawback is that I don’t take you through any of the technical steps related to ebook production or the actual uploading process at Amazon or related service providers. It’s rather a high-level view of how to go from Word document to published book on sale. See The Self-Publishing Checklist: Editorial, Production, and Distribution.

Do you use checklists in your writing, editing, or publishing process? Have you found any that are invaluable? Please share in the comments.

Gifts for Writers: Tech Savvy and Traditional Options

During my school years (which extended well into my twenties), I was known by family and friends as a serious writer and editor. That led to a lot of book, pencil, pen, and stationery gifts—continuing over my lifetime, in fact—which are always appreciated and well-used if not surprising.

With the following list, I hope to offer some ideas that play into writers’ first loves, but also add something unexpected, especially for writers with some tech savvy.

Wrights Notes: customized notebooks

I’m picky about my stationery—most writers are. Wrights Notes sells notebooks that allow the recipient to customize the interior, choosing from lines, blank, dots, squares, to-do lists, wireframes, calendar, or even coloring pages. And yes, you can order them as a gift for someone.

Parc Slope Laptop Stand

As some writers are all too familiar, many years of sitting at a computer and leading a sedentary life can lead to serious back trouble. (If this describes you, then read my post on finding solutions to chronic back pain.)

When using a laptop, though, it can be difficult to retain good posture without a little help. The Parc Slope laptop stand offers MacBook users a safe tilt, to produce a better viewing height and typing angle. Check it out. They offer a range of stands and shelves for other Apple devices as well.

Evernote

Evernote has become my essential go-to application for short writing projects, to-do lists, idea brainstorms, meeting notes—and everything else related to my business. Some authors even use it for novel writing!

While the basic version of Evernote is free, it limits how much data you can upload on a monthly basis and syncs across only two devices. Nor does the basic version offer offline access, browsing of your history, or searching of PDFs or Office docs you may have added.

I’ve been an Evernote Premium subscriber for over a year, and I’m not sure how I ever kept myself organized without it. Highly recommend for every writer.

Canva for Work

Canva is another online application that is completely free to start, but offers substantial benefits with an upgraded account (called Canva for Work).

For those not familiar with Canva, it’s a way for non-designers to produce great design—especially digital design that’s critical for social media, websites/blogs, email, and so on.

An upgraded Canva account allows you to magically resize your designs for every social media site or occasion, organize your designs and share them with a team, and create and save brand kits.

Mod Notebooks

Here’s another notebook option: Mod Notebooks are paper-based notebooks (basically a Moleskine) that the company will digitize for you—at no cost—once you fill it up. As someone who has about a dozen notebooks with information that isn’t easily searchable (I can never find that thing I wrote from 8 years ago), I really wish I’d been using a system like this from the start. The digital version of your notebook is accessible via the custom Mod app, or you can sync your pages with Dropbox, Evernote, or OneNote.

Lynda

When I want to learn any kind of software or digital media tool, my first stop is Lynda. Its on-demand online video tutorials are well produced, easy to navigate, and a pleasure to learn from. I’ve learned how to use Photoshop, iMovie, Adobe Premiere, FinalCut, Audacity, GarageBand, and more, from Lynda. Gifting an annual subscription to a writer is like giving them a tech coach by their side.

The Great Courses

For lifelong learning that’s not about acquiring digital media skills, then a digital streaming subscription to The Great Courses is the best thing I can imagine as a writer. You get access to hundreds of courses instantly, which you can watch on any digital device, or through a Roku player. It’s kind of like binge-watching the best college courses in the world.

Categories and topics include history (The Black Death, The Irish Identity, A History of India); Science (Human Decision Making, The Aging Brain); Philosophy, Religion, and Intellectual History (Reading Biblical Literature, An Introduction to Formal Logic); Literature and Language (English Grammar Boot Camp, Writing Great Essays, and my course!); and much more.

Journal of the Month

This is a very unique type of magazine subscription service: every month, subscribers receive a different award-winning literary journal or magazine. But readers don’t know what’s coming until it’s delivered—so there’s a fun element of surprise. For those who subscribe to a range of publications already, not to fear: Journal of the Month promises not to send you anything that you already receive, if you give them a list of the publications in advance.

As a special offer to readers of this blog, Journal of the Month is offering a subscription giveaway. All you need to do is comment on this post or share the post on Twitter, and mention @JaneFriedman in your tweet. One person will be randomly chosen on Friday, Nov. 18. (This post will be updated with information on the lucky winner.)

Tweetspeak Poetry: Poem-a-Day Newsletter

In our digitally driven work days, this weekday poem newsletter from Tweetspeak Poetry provides an oasis and quiet moment of reflection. It’s also one of the greatest subscription deals ever: $5.99 per year. Each month follows a theme, and when given a chance, writers will find the practice of reading a poem a day to be life-changing—even if they think they don’t like poetry.

The Hot Sheet

This last suggestion is purely a marketing plug for my subscription newsletter for authors, The Hot Sheet. Every two weeks, journalist Porter Anderson and I round up the most important publishing news for authors and give it context, to reduce confusion and promote understanding of the sometimes volatile changes in the industry.

Do you have a go-to gift for the writers in your life? Share in the comments. And don’t forget: as a special offer to readers of this blog, Journal of the Month is offering a subscription giveaway. All you need to do is comment on this post or share the post on Twitter, and mention @JaneFriedman in your tweet. One person will be randomly chosen on Friday, Nov. 18. This post will be updated with information on the lucky winner.

Using Multiple Points of View: When and How Is It Most Effective?

Photo credit: silentinfinite via Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC-SA

Today’s guest post is an excerpt from Writing the Intimate Character by Jordan Rosenfeld (@JordanRosenfeld), published by Writer’s Digest Books.

Some stories require greater scope, more voices, or a different context than can be delivered through the eyes of one protagonist. When you find this to be the case, consider using multiple viewpoints. However, you must think about several factors before launching into this greater undertaking.

In a book with co-protagonists, each character should get approximately equal story weight. In other words, no one character is more important than the other, though one character’s story may seem to drive the action more than the others. Usually these multiples are written in an intimate POV, and each co-protagonist gets his or her own POV chapter or scene, in which we are privy only to that character’s thoughts and feelings. When your co-protagonists appear in a scene together, you still must choose which character’s POV to show it from. This has the potential to get confusing, so remember to imagine that each character possesses a movie camera. The POV comes from the person whose camera (mind) we’re looking through.

Using co-protagonists is different from omniscience, in which the POV can move between the heads of multiple characters in the same scene. Often in omniscient, the story has one protagonist, but the narrator still dips in and out of other characters’ thoughts, adding flavor, clues, and color. But ultimately we are still following only the transformational arc of one character.

Using multiple viewpoints can benefit your story in several ways. Keep in mind that when showing the vantage points of co-protagonists in one of the intimate POVs, you must start a new scene or chapter each time you switch.

5 reasons to use multiple viewpoints in your novel

Your story must be told from multiple perspectives. No matter how compelling one person’s journey, some stories are more deeply realized when several people tell the same story, adding different facets to the larger picture. Novels that have done this include All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, and The Hours by Michael Cunningham. This is especially true when each member in your cast of characters provides a unique piece to a larger puzzle: They might not understand each other’s lives, or they might clash against one another as a result of plot events.

Each character offers a unique plot thread or strand to the story. Multiple POVs only work when each POV character has a truly different story element to offer. They contribute new information, opinions, history, and clues that walk us deeper into the story’s heart.

Each character is compelling and has his own narrative arc. Sometimes writers confuse secondary or supporting characters for co-protagonists. A true co-protagonist must have his own narrative arc. He must be driven by his own unique goals and undergo a journey of transformation related to the larger plot. That’s a lot harder to do than just maintaining one character’s arc.

Your story spans a wide swath of time and history. Historical novels or stories that cover large time periods often feel limited when told in only one character’s POV. Since one character may also possess only a portion of the knowledge you need to convey, multiple characters can offer a feeling of depth and richness. But again, don’t bring in a new co-protagonist unless you are sure she is integral to the plot and carries her own arc.

Your book requires a quick and compelling pace. Multiple-character POVs have the power to make readers turn pages at a fast clip. As you end one character’s compelling scene at an unresolved point, you also create a yearning in readers to know what happens next. Repeat this technique with two or three characters and you create positive page-turning tension.

5 common problems with multiple viewpoints

Before you get too excited about creating a cast of co-characters, it’s wise to consider some of the potential pitfalls inherent to multiple POVs.

Readers don’t need the POV of the antagonist unless you’re redeeming that antagonist via his own narrative arc. I’ve read a lot of client manuscripts that try to “explain” the antagonist’s actions by offering several chapters from the antagonist’s POV. Unless you plan to redeem your antagonist so that he truly becomes a good, or better, person by story’s end, this is not necessary.

Don’t rehash the same scenes from different characters’ POVs. Don’t fall into the bad habit of writing the same scene from several characters’ viewpoints. Unless each rendition offers new and potent plot information, you run the risk of boring readers and slowing the pace of the narrative.

Don’t use new characters to offer narrative info dumps or explanatory plot information your protagonist doesn’t provide. A viewpoint character has to exist for his own story purpose, not just to offer up key plot explanations to carry your protagonist to the next stage of the journey.

Don’t add characters to create new subplots. Some writers feel that the best way to create a compelling plot is to include lots of subplots linked to more characters. More often than not, this leads to complications. The best plots arise from one character’s problem, past wound, or current challenge. Subplots must also rise organically, like spokes radiating from a central hub rather than a tangled web of overlapping and confusing stories.

The character arc of each co-protagonist should be distinct. New characters are exciting and fun to write, and it’s easy to dream up a team. But it’s a lot harder to develop a unique story arc for each character. If you can’t quickly think of how each character not only will play an integral part in your plot but also will experience a story-worthy transformation, you’re better off sticking with one protagonist.

Distinguishing multiple protagonists

To figure out how many co-protagonists to include in your story, analyze novels in your genre with multiple viewpoints. You’ll find that three is the average number of co-protagonists, but it’s by no means the rule; many novels have only two POVs. And while focusing on the struggles of more than three POV characters can cause readers to feel torn or confused, that’s not to say it can’t be done: Marlon James’s Man Booker award–winning novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, has no fewer than thirteen protagonists spanning seven hundred pages. He pulls this off by putting the viewpoint character’s name at the top of each chapter so readers have no doubt whose POV they’re in, and he imbues each character with a distinct voice. However, I prefer books in which readers can tell who the POV character is by his distinct voice and personality alone.

To determine how often to switch to a different viewpoint character, many writers use a formula wherein each co-protagonist gets a POV chapter or scene in a set rotating order: Protagonist A, Protagonist B, Protagonist C, all the way through the novel. Others might structure their scenes so one character appears more often than the others: A, B, A, C, A, B, A, C, or even A, A, B, C, A, A, B, C.

This is where scene trackers and plot outlines come in handy. When you’re juggling multiple protagonists, you will need more structural guidance to keep track of the arc and plot outcome for each one.

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to take a look at Writing the Intimate Character by Jordan Rosenfeld.

Should You Hire a Professional Editor?

Photo credit: Matt Hampel via Visual hunt / CC BY

Note from Jane: I’m proud to be a contributor to Author in Progress: A No-Holds-Barred Guide to What It Really Takes to Get Published, which features essays from the Writer Unboxed community. The following is a selection from my chapter on whether writers should invest in a professional editor before submitting their work to agents or publishers.

Writing and publishing advice can sometimes feel obvious or like common sense: Have a fresh concept. Take out everything that’s boring. Keep the reader turning pages.

But being able to truly see if you’ve been successful in writing a compelling work requires objectivity and distance than can be hard to achieve on your own—and this is where a professional editor comes in.

There are three primary reasons to hire a professional.

1. The learning experience

You’ll grow as a writer by working with an expert who can point out your strengths and weaknesses, and give you specific feedback on how to take your work to the next level. Sometimes, if you have an excellent mentor or critique group, you can learn the same things, but the process takes longer, or there’s more confusion and doubt along the way due to conflicting opinions. When you pay a professional, you’re partly paying for distance and objectivity. But you’re also paying to receive trustworthy and meaningful feedback and learning how to apply that feedback. This is a skill you’ll use again and again. You’ll begin to have an intuitive understanding of what kind of attention your work needs, and at what point in the writing process you need feedback.

2. The industry advantage

The right professional editor typically offers industry insight, experience, or perspective in your genre that critique partners don’t have. Assuming you work with someone with industry experience, you’ll increase your understanding of what a quality editorial process looks and feels like. Once a writer has experienced the work of an editor who can make their work dramatically better, they often stick with that editor for as long as possible—it’s an invaluable career relationship.

3. Submission preparation

The question of whether to hire an editor almost always arises just before or during the submissions process, as a way of increasing the chances of a book’s acceptance. For better or worse, this is the key motivation many writers have in seeking an editor—the learning experience is not acknowledged or becomes a side effect.

In query letters, I see more and more writers claim their manuscript has been professionally edited, and it’s no surprise. People inside the industry are known for emphasizing the importance of submitting a flawless manuscript. However, when evaluating such work, I find that it tends to be of lesser quality. This is quite paradoxical. Shouldn’t professionally edited material be much better?

Unfortunately, writers don’t always understand what type of editor to use, or how an editor is supposed to improve their work. This results in surface-level changes that don’t meaningfully affect the chances at publication. Less experienced writers also tend to be more protective of their work and less likely to revise.

How to honestly appraise your editing needs

When writers ask me if they should hire a professional editor, it’s usually out of a vague fear their work isn’t good enough. They believe or hope that it can be “fixed” by a third party. While a good editor can help resolve problem areas, it often requires just as much work by the writer to improve the manuscript.

If you’re hoping an editor will wave a magic wand and transform your work into a publishable manuscript over night, you’ll be disappointed by the results. But if you feel you’ve come to the end of your own ability to improve the work, you’re more likely to benefit. Writing teacher Richard Gilbert once advised, “The more frustrated a writer is with his own piece—meaning he has struggled hard with it on all levels and has turned it into an external object, a misshapen piece of clay he’s almost angry at—usually the more help an editor or teacher can provide.” I couldn’t agree more.

Before you hire anyone to edit your work, you should understand the different stages of writing and revising, the different types of editing available, and what an editor can and can’t do in terms of making your work publishable. (Here’s a quick overview.) It’s critical that you’re clear on exactly what level of editing or service will be provided. Perhaps it seems obvious, but I see writers do it all the time: never hire a copyeditor until you’re confident your book doesn’t require a higher level of editing first. That would be like painting the walls of your house right before tearing them down.

Or here’s another way to think about the editing process: don’t hire a rules-based editor—someone who will look for sentence-level errors—when what you really need is a big-picture editor, who will identify strengths and weaknesses in the work. Some editors can provide all levels of editing, but it would be a mistake to hire an editor to perform all levels of editing in one pass.

Knowing what type of editor to hire requires some level of self-awareness about where in the writing and revision process you’re at, and what you would benefit from. Unpublished writers who keep getting rejected may need to hire a high-level editor to receive an honest and direct appraisal of how to improve on a big-picture level. Some writers mistake a technically correct manuscript, one that follows all the rules, as the goal of editing. While the polish helps, no polish can make a flawed story shine.

Let’s return to the three reasons you might want to invest in a professional. The most important reasons are to learn and grow as a writer, to understand the role of the editor, and to become better at the editing process. Yet your true motivation may be to get closer to a publishing deal. Unfortunately, not even the best editor can guarantee you’ll get an agent or publisher based on their work. There’s no editorial formula that will transform your book into a bestseller. If there were, then you can bet the editor would likely be devoting her time and energy elsewhere!

Ask yourself: Will you be OK spending several thousand dollars on a high-level edit, maybe even twice that, if your work doesn’t succeed in getting published? If the answer is no, then you’re probably not in a good position to hire an editor. If you’re comfortable spending that much on long-term career growth—if you’re okay investing in making your future work better—that indicates a better and more appropriate mind-set.

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out Author in Progress.

Choosing Between Traditional and Indie Publishing

Those who regularly follow my blog are familiar with guest contributor Kirsten Oliphant. This week, I was a guest on her Create If Writing podcast, discussing traditional and independent publishing. Our 45-minute conversation is wide ranging and touches on:

Should you go with indie publishing or traditional publishing?
What writers need to have in place in terms of platform (either way you plan to publish, you need a visibility that will translate into book sales)
How and when authors should blog, and what they should blog about
My tips for managing different types of work throughout the week
Current publishing trends for both traditional and self-publishing authors

Go listen to the full interview. My thanks to Kirsten for having me on the show!

How to Find Publishers

This post was first published in 2011 and is regularly updated.

If you have a book idea or a manuscript, one of your first questions is probably:

How do I find a publisher?

Or, if you’re more advanced in your knowledge of book publishing, you may ask:

How do I find a literary agent?

The good news: there’s no shortage of resources for researching publishers and agents. The bad news: you can really get lost going down the rabbit hole of available information!

In the United States, the most comprehensive resource (published since 1920) is the annual Writer’s Market directory, which is also available and searchable online at WritersMarket.com. It features more than 8,000 listings of where you can get published and includes literary agents. While it does cost to purchase the guide (or subscribe online), you can often find it at your local library or bookstore.

Alternatively, you can find a range of free and paid resources online. Some of the sites and tools listed below offer submission trackers, community message boards, and interesting statistics gathered from official site members.

Here’s a summary of the most well-known and popular places to find publishers and agents.

Where to Find Publishers

Be aware that most New York book publishers do not accept unagented submissions, so sometimes “searching for a publisher” really means finding an agent (see next list).

QueryTracker. Free to start, with premium ($) levels.

Manuscript Wish List. Editors and publishers often post on social media what projects they’re actively seeking. This site aggregates those mentions.

Ralan. Free, focused on science fiction & fantasy.

Poets & Writers. Free, but serves the more literary side of the writing community.

Duotrope ($). Its strength is in detailing markets related to poetry, short fiction, and essays, but it also has book publisher listings.

New Pages. This is a curated list of markets popular with creative writing programs and instructors; it’s a good place to go if you’re publishing short stories, poems, and essays.

Where to Find Agents

Before you begin a search in earnest, be sure to read my post: How to Find a Literary Agent

PublishersMarketplace. Pricey ($25/month), but if you search the Deals Database at this website, you can study what books agents have sold going back to 2001, by category and keyword.

Manuscript Wish List. Agents often post on social media what projects they’re actively seeking. This site aggregates those mentions.

AgentQuery. Free, with excellent community message boards.

QueryTracker. Free to start, with premium ($) levels.

AAR Online. This is the official membership organization for literary agents. Not all agents are member of AAR.

For more information

Start Here: How to Get Published
Start Here: How to Self-Publish

Know of other resources? Let us know in the comments.

Do You Have Intention? How to Set Achievable and Meaningful Goals

Today’s guest post is an excerpt from Creative Visualization for Writers by Nina Amir (@ninaamir), published by Writer’s Digest Books.

The most successful people in every industry use goals as road maps to help them reach their desired destination. It’s no different for writers. If you don’t know where you want to end up—and you don’t care—you’ll arrive somewhere but not necessarily at the destination you intended.

Successful authors report that goals form the foundation of their success. But they don’t set goals and forget them like the New Year’s resolutions, as so many of us do. Instead, they review the goals regularly and evaluate their progress. They break goals into smaller action items and work on that to-do list daily.

As Pablo Picasso said, “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” You can create achievable goals. As you take action on your success plan, you’ll find your ideas and career manifesting before your eyes.

The key to acting on your intentions and accomplishing your goals lies in your personal investment in them. You must feel fully committed. Commitment turns your intention into daily action toward achieving goals.

How do you set achievable goals?

To make your goals more achievable and effective, follow the SMART criteria, commonly attributed to Peter Drucker and George T. Doran:

Specific: Goals should concisely and clearly define what you plan to do.
Measurable: Goals should be measurable so you have tangible evidence that you have accomplished the goal.
Attainable: Goals should be achievable yet stretch you slightly so you feel challenged.
Realistic: Goals must represent an objective toward which you are willing and able to work.
Timebound: Goals should be linked to a time frame that creates a sense of urgency or results in tension between your current reality and your future vision.

Identify three writing-related goals you would like to achieve, then apply SMART characteristics to your goals and review these daily or weekly. Here’s an example:

Goal 1: Begin blogging.

Specifically I will: Write and publish a post twice per week.

I will be able to measure whether I have achieved my goal in the following ways: I will have published a blog post twice per week.

This goal will stretch me in the following ways: I will have to learn new technology.

I know I can attain this goal because: I have learned new technology before and I meet my deadlines.

This goal is realistic because: I have set aside specific time each day to learn the technology and write two posts per week.

I will achieve this goal in the following time frame: By May 2017

Is your goal on purpose?

As you create goals, you should look at how they tie into your purpose. Goals that align with your mission increase your emotional commitment to them. Without this connection, you may never take action to achieve the goal.

If you make purpose-driven decisions about the goals you choose, the tasks you take on, and the opportunities you decide to pursue, you are more likely to remain focused and realize your ideas and career. Therefore, before you do anything—or say yes to anything—answer this question: Is this on purpose?

Discern if the goal, task, or opportunity aligns with your greater purpose—the reason you write or want a career as a writer and author. If you take action on a goal, task, or opportunity, doing so should move you closer to fulfilling your purpose.

Identify a few of your writing-related goals you feel the need to take on. Then evaluate them by asking: Is this on purpose?

Also, to the best of your ability, align your goals, tasks, and opportunities with your values. Your values are important to you, just like your purpose or mission. When you align your actions and decisions with your values, you become motivated to complete them, and it becomes easier to do so.

Are your tasks or opportunities moving you closer to your vision for your career?

Before you undertake any task or opportunity—or learn a new skill—pause and consider: will it help you make a quantum leap toward your goal, get you one step closer, keep you where you are, or impede your progress? Evaluate what tasks or opportunities you feel the need to take on, then judge them using this question: Does this move me closer to my goals—or my overall vision for my career?

Unfortunately, there are some things you might need to do to become a successful author or writer that you don’t want to do. These goals could feel like “have-tos” and “shoulds.” Are you setting some goals because you feel that you should achieve them—because they’re necessary to realize your goal or vision? If so, try to change your attitude: Decide that you want to achieve this goal because it helps you further your writing career and get you closer to the vision you have.

Don’t forget to prioritize your goals

You probably juggle multiple priorities every day, in all aspects of your life. However, you only can focus on one goal at a time, and doing so helps you achieve it. Maybe the deadline for an article assignment is fast approaching; that job becomes priority number one until it’s done.

That doesn’t mean you don’t take action toward other goals but that you spend the majority of your time completing the steps that allow you to finish your top-priority assignment.

Prioritize the goals you previously defined using the SMART characteristics. Which one do you want or have to accomplish first? That’s Priority number one. Which come second and third?

Break down your goals into two types: short-term and long-term

Short-term goals are those you want to accomplish in the next day, week, or few months. For example, maybe you want to finish a blog post or essay, send out query letters to agents, or get your website up and running.

Long-term goals are those you want to accomplish this year, next year, or even further into the future because they take longer to achieve. For example, releasing a traditionally published book usually takes more than a year. Completing a novel might take you more than twelve months if you count revisions and working with an editor. Developing a strong author platform is also a long-term goal.

With both types of goals, it’s essential “chunk down” the goal and create a smaller task list to help you make consistent progress. In other words, think of each goal like a huge rock you need to move. If you could use a sledgehammer to break off chunks of the rock so you ended up with smaller, more easily moved pieces, what would they be? Think of these chunks as small tasks or action items to include on your daily to-do list.

Download goal-setting worksheets

To help you set achievable, SMART goals and break them down into small action steps, download these free worksheets.

And for many more worksheets to guide you in the creative process, be sure to take a look at Creative Visualization for Writers by Nina Amir.

 

How to Get 10,000 Visits to Your Blog in One Day with No Platform

Getting traction for your online presence—especially a new website or blog—can feel like an impossible task when you’re an unknown writer. I remember how slow it was to build an audience for myself, even during the halcyon days of blogging, and even while affiliated with a well-known brand such as Writer’s Digest.

But there are specific steps you can take to have a wildly successful piece of content, right out of the gate, with no existing online platform. And I have a case study to prove the point: the story of my partner, Mark Griffin, who scored more than 10,000 visits in a single day due to a single blog post. (Speaking for myself, I almost never get that much traffic in a single day, despite hundreds of posts that bring in visitors!)

Here’s how it happened.

1. We identified a topic that would be deeply interesting to his audience.

Mark’s site is all about music, and he spends a lot of his spare time thinking about music, talking and writing about music, and listening to music. One day on Facebook, he helped someone identify a song based on a few snatches of lyrics, and it turns out this kind of puzzle is pretty common: someone hears a song on the radio, or they remember only a few details of a song heard years ago, but can’t identify it despite online searching and asking everyone they know.

Mark has a unique talent for helping people identify songs when no one else has been successful. He described his research process to me, and it struck me as something other people would be interested to know. I suggested he write a detailed article describing step-by-step how people can identify a song even if they know little about it. So he did.

2. We researched the right headline for his post.

Next, we wanted to make sure that his post headline was clear, direct, and used the same language as people who might have this problem. That is: If the average person was trying to identify a song they’d heard, and ended up at Google to find advice or resources, what phrasing would they use? Here are some of the things we tried doing:

We ran searches on Google for various key phrases and looked at the results—how were other headlines written?
We looked at how Google would auto-complete certain searches and took note of what keywords were suggested or related.
We used Soovle to look at auto-completes beyond Google.
We considered the keywords that needed to be included in the headline.

The final title we came up with: Need Help Identifying a Song? Here’s One Way to Find It. The key phrase is “identifying a song.”

3. He created an image perfectly suited to social media.

Mark took the time to source an image that fit the post (an old cassette tape), then made sure the size would be perfect for when the post was shared on social media. This was important considering the final step below.

4. He reached out to influencers with a larger reach.

Often, when Mark helps people identify songs, it’s within a specific discussion group or Facebook group related to music. When his post was published, he wrote a personal email to the owner of a popular music site (with a corresponding Facebook page with lots of followers). He reminded this VIP of his participation—that he’s the guy who has helped people identify songs—and that he’d recently written a post describing the research process that might prove interesting.

Right away, this VIP shared the article on Facebook. And that started a chain reaction of events.

In addition to hundreds of likes, hundreds of people also re-shared it on Facebook.
Other music blogs and websites saw the mention and shared it on other forms of social media.
Other music sites added it to their link round-ups that week.
A podcast caught wind of the piece and invited Mark to be a guest.
Several people contacted Mark for help with identifying songs.

And within 24 hours, more than 10,000 people had visited Mark’s blog.

While it might be easy to say the takeaway is “Get someone with big reach to share your stuff,” I believe that would be reductionist. First, the content was something that was high quality. Second, it was packaged to show off its best qualities (headline and image). Third, a VIP share doesn’t guarantee that other people will notice and share. In this case, there was a perfect fit between the content itself and the audience it was being shared with. Basically, Mark chose the perfect person to ask to amplify his message—he knew where to find his audience and he knew they would be interested. That makes all the difference.

The postscript to this story

Mark has had one other very successful post since then, but currently his site traffic rarely reaches more than 100 visits per day. Why? He posts about four to five times per year. Also, it’s now hard to find his post if you’re running a Google search, possibly because he’s not continuing to produce new content and his site authority is quite low (he doesn’t have that many inbound links to his site, mainly as a result of his low frequency).

Finally, Mark didn’t have a call to action associated with the post, or at his site in general. So the benefit to him was limited, although his point in writing and publishing at his site isn’t about monetization or career growth. He just wants to have fun and enjoy himself, which happens to make for pretty great content.

What Early Experiences Inform Your Fiction?

One of my earliest memories as a child is falling down and busting my forehead open on an enormous (and sharp) landscaping rock. My parents rushed me to the emergency room, where a doctor decided the wound required stitches. I was made to lie down, and a heavy cloth was draped over my entire face. Presumably this was done to ensure I didn’t see any huge needles—and cry or flinch—but I could hardly breathe. The cloth felt like a lead weight, and I kept sucking in the same hot, sweaty air. And then for a brief moment, my father lifted up the cloth and said, “Peekaboo!” and I experienced a moment of cold, fresh air. Then the cloth went back down.

I experienced other weird accidents as a child—getting stung by a nest of wasps, falling into a pool without knowing how to swim—and these moments have held in them the essence of life, before my own self-awareness had time to take shape. In his essay at Glimmer Train, Kurt Rheinheimer mentions these times as rich material for building fiction:

I have long felt that the most precious vein for material is from just before I knew who I was and what was going on. … I still experienced life only as it unfolded—with minimal if any awareness of the processes of living life—both my own and those of my parents and brothers and sister. And somehow those “pure” experiences have translated themselves into fiction better than anything else I’ve found.

Read Kurt’s full essay: Writing About Family.

For more inspiration, check out the latest from Glimmer Train:

Reading by Mark Fishman

Playing and Planning by Zehra Nabi

Story of My Stories by John S. Walker

A Key to Great Writing: Make Every Word Count

Today’s guest post is an excerpt from Keys to Great Writing by Stephen Wilbers, published by Writer’s Digest Books.

If I could teach only one key to great writing, it would be this: Make every word count.

Use words sparingly, as if you were planting a garden one seed at a time—not throwing out handfuls of seed willy-nilly, hoping a few kernels might land in the right spot and take hold. Get the full value out of every word you write. Recognize the power of a single, well-chosen word. Trust it to do its work. As a rule, the more economically you use language, the more powerfully you will deliver your message.

Wordy writers don’t trust a word to do its work, so they surround it with a few extra words for good measure. Writers who command language with energy and precision, on the other hand, understand the power of a single well-chosen word. It’s a question not only of habits of speech but also of orientation toward language. Wordy writers don’t fully trust language; concise writers do.

Nearly every writing handbook extols the virtues of concise writing. Not many, however, offer detailed advice on how to write concisely. What follows are a variety of editing techniques that will help you eliminate wordiness—and keep in mind that these techniques are meant to guide you in your editing, not in your drafting.

Edit for three types of redundancy.

Redundancy is a problem for many writers. As Joseph Williams points out in Style, there are three common types:

redundant modifiers (in which the modifier implies the meaning of the word modified, as in past memories, personal beliefs, important essentials, and consensus of opinion)
redundant categories (in which the category is implied by the word, as in large in size, pink in color, extreme in degree, and honest in character)
redundant word pairs (in which the second word reiterates the meaning of the first, as in first and foremost, hopes and desires, full and complete, precious and few, and—if I may drop the italics—so on and so forth).

Both Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway cautioned writers against the careless use of modifiers. The challenge in eliminating redundant modifiers, however, is that familiarity breeds complacence. The more frequently we hear and read certain word combinations, the more acceptable they begin to sound and the more likely we are to use them unthinkingly—not because they are the best, most natural, and concise way to say what we have to say, but simply because they sound familiar.

Isn’t that a true fact? (A true fact?) The end result—a phrase as redundant as a new initiative—is wordy writing.

When editing, look closely at your modifiers. Make certain they don’t repeat the meanings of the words they modify. (Aren’t facts always true? Don’t results always occur at the end? Aren’t initiatives always new?) If they do, delete them. There is no point in repeating the same idea twice. (Repeating twice?)

When a word implies its category, don’t write both the word and the category. For instance, round in shape, heavy in weight, and pink in color are redundant because we know that round is a shape, heavy is a weight, and pink is a color.

Redundant pairing became more deeply ingrained in English usage when the disenfranchised Anglo-Saxons began borrowing words from the Norman nobles (just as earlier Anglo-Saxons borrowed from their Roman conquerors and, before that, the ancient Celts borrowed from their Anglo-Saxon conquerors). The Anglo-Saxons thought the borrowed word sounded more learned, so they got in the habit of pairing it with a familiar native word. And here we are, more than nine centuries later, still pairing our words. (Who said habits of speech were easy to break?)

The following pairings are common in speech, where rhythm plays an especially important role in how we perceive language, but they should be avoided in writing:

any and all
basic and fundamental
each and every
few and far between
first and foremost
full and complete
one and only
over and done with
peace and quiet

Delete hollow hedges and meaningless intensifiers.

When should you use hedges such as perhaps and sometimes to qualify your assertion? When should you use intensifiers such as very and absolutely to add emphasis to your point? These are questions that must be addressed whenever you make a statement. How you answer them depends on your desired tone and point of view.

At times you will want to qualify or limit a claim by using a qualifier. Rather than “Commitment leads to success,” for example, you might write, “Commitment often leads to success.” At other times you will want to add emphasis by using an intensifier: “Commitment always leads to success.”

Whatever your persuasive strategy, take a close look at your hedges and intensifiers. Be certain they are making a genuine contribution. Like other types of meaningless modifiers, hedges and intensifiers are often totally unnecessary. In the preceding sentence, for example, the qualifier often effectively limits my claim and should be retained, whereas the intensifier totally serves no purpose and should be deleted. To determine when to use a modifier and when to omit one, try the sentence without the modifier and see if anything important is lost.

Even when a statement needs to be qualified or intensified, be careful not to overdo it. As with all modifiers, you can have too much of a good thing. Compare, for example, “I was rather surprised by your somewhat unexpected decision to come home” with “I was surprised by your decision to come home.” Also, compare “Never in my entire life have I ever been so totally and completely offended by such grossly obnoxious behavior” with “Never have I been so offended by such obnoxious behavior” or, depending on your ear, “Never have I been so offended by such grossly obnoxious behavior.”

Delete needless repetition.

When used as an intentional device to create emphasis, repetition can be a powerful tool. It can create emphasis and intensity. Careless repetition, however, not only wastes the reader’s time, but also diminishes the writer’s effectiveness. Compare “An important factor that must be addressed is the age factor” with “An important factor that must be addressed is age.”

Sometimes you must repeat an idea or thought to convey your meaning and to increase coherence between sentences, but again, watch for needless repetition. Repeating the same words within a sentence or within successive sentences will steal the energy from your style and make your writing sound flat: “There is no substitute for regular practice. Every coach insists on regular practice.” You can avoid this sort of deadening repetition simply by replacing the repeated noun with a pronoun: “There is no substitute for regular practice. Every coach insists on it.”

Avoid protracted introductions.

Sometimes we place undue emphasis on relatively unimportant matters before we get to the heart of what we are saying. As many writers of fiction know, the first few sentences of a draft, or even the first few paragraphs or pages, often turn out to be expendable. The story, they discover when revising, doesn’t really begin until later. What at first seemed essential was merely a warm-up for the writer, not something engaging to the reader. By all means, do your warm-up exercises if they help you loosen up and get things under way, but delete them from your final copy.

Original: It is important to note that we will open an hour early on Monday.

Edited: We will open an hour early on Monday.

Original: The first point that needs to be made in all this is that the swiftest traveler is the one who goes afoot.

Edited: The swiftest traveler is the one who goes afoot.

Trim sentence endings for closing emphasis.

Both in poetry and in prose, the words that come last carry the most weight. In poetry, it’s no coincidence that the rhyme usually comes at the end of each line. In prose, the function of the period is to punctuate the words that precede it. To write with emphasis, take advantage of a sentence’s natural stress points by reserving them for your most important words. You may find it helpful to think of these locations as reserved parking. Only “VIP” words can park there.

Because of their special importance, sentence endings should be managed carefully. Unfortunately, in both writing and speaking, we have a tendency to keep going after we have made our point. We seem to have trouble knowing when to stop, knowing when enough is enough. As a result, we fail to conclude with our most important words and allow our sentences to sprawl on after they have done their work.

To guard against this tendency, look for opportunities to trim sentence endings. If you reduce “Does it stink like rotten meat would smell to you?” to “Does it stink like rotten meat?” you do more than eliminate unnecessary words. You also move the VIP phrase, rotten meat, to the end of the sentence, where it receives the prominence it deserves.

As another example, consider this sentence: “Restructuring is not an easy thing to do.” The meaning is clear, but the sentence structure is at and unemphatic. To take advantage of the sentence’s naturally stressed position, place the VIP words at the end and you have: “Restructuring is not easy.” Or, if you prefer, “Restructuring is difficult.”

When you write a sentence that lacks energy, ask yourself: Have I concluded the sentence with the word or words I want to emphasize?

Certain words needlessly state that something exists. For example, sentences ending in words like experiencing, existing, happening, and occurring can usually be trimmed. These words are expendable because they state the existence of something that already has been named in the sentence, and once something has been named, the reader can see that the thing exists.

A sentence that rambles on past the word or words deserving emphasis is a missed opportunity. Consider this sentence: “We are continually looking for new markets to get into.” Eliminating the needless phrase, to get into, moves the VIP phrase, new markets, into the naturally stressed position: “We are continually looking for new markets.”

Limit personal commentary.

We live in an I-centered society, and our self-absorption sometimes leads us to inject ourselves into sentences where we don’t belong. Guard against a tendency to provide a step-by-step account of your thought process. Limit personal commentary.

Original: In reading this essay, I was led to rethink my position on freedom of speech.

Edited: This essay caused me to rethink my position on freedom of speech.

Original: I have a problem with your coming in late every morning.

Edited: Your coming in late every morning is causing problems.

Original: I seriously doubt that a drop of five hundred points in the stock market means all investors should change their asset allocations.

Edited: A drop of five hundred points in the stock market doesn’t mean all investors should change their asset allocations.

Original: The first thing I want to say is that whenever I encounter situations like this, I am reminded of Poor Richard, who, as I recall, said, “A fat kitchen makes a lean will.”

Edited: As Poor Richard said, “A fat kitchen makes a lean will.”

If you found this post helpful, I highly recommend taking a look at Keys to Great Writing by Stephen Wilbers.