Go for the Long Game

Truth: It takes 10 years to become an overnight success.

So, if you want to extend your idea’s short game, you are going to need a long game that works … for the next 10 years.

This was why I quit writing Lu the first time. I did have a long game, and it looked something like this:

Write book.Get agent.Get publisher.Become a New York Times Bestseller.Rinse and repeat with Books 2, 3, 4 … to infinity and beyond!

It wasn’t a bad long game – not inherently – it just didn’t work for me, and because I didn’t know of another long game to play, I quit. I quit for 5 years. I grew up in those 5 years. I came into some confidence. I started making my own definitions and setting my own goals.

I developed a new long game, and it looked something like this:

Try anything. This is about following my curiosity and writing stories that haunt me, to a certain extent. I have a decent imagination for a 39-year-old woman and a lot of characters come and go. The ones who stick are the ones I write about because they interest me.Become a better storyteller with each book. This is about writing and becoming the best writer I can be – all of which comes from my genuine passion for developing this skill and before that, my love of reading well-written books.Be found by the people who are looking. This is about the business of selling books. On one hand, I need to know this business and not play the “God will sell my books” ignorance card. On the other hand, it reminds me that the girls and women I write for might find my books 3, 6, or 20 years from now – long past launch and that’s okay. Just in this past month, I received an email from a woman who recently read Lu and how the story helped her in the aftermath of her father’s death. Stories like this remind me of how Jesus will leave the group to pursue the one, and he sometimes uses the work he’s called us to in reaching that one. That’s Gospel success, which reverses our standard qualitative/quantitative metrics that what’s worthwhile always looks like a splash.

This is my long game. It’s worked well for the last 3 years, and I think it will work for the next 7, at which time I’ll re-evaluate this whole Beth Writes thing. Maybe then, I’ll be Beth Gardens. Maybe I’ll go back to Beth Makes Chicken Broth. Until then, I’m going to keep plugging away toward these goals and hopefully publish a few more books.

Do you have a defined long game that is helpful for you? That you can control? That you can start right now with where you are? That is clear enough to guide your work for the next 10 years but flexible enough to let you grow into that work?

I’d love to hear how you define this and work toward it! Comment below. I bet what you’ve figured out well help someone else in her pursuits this week.

We all have our space. Imagine you, unleashed, working for the glory of God and the good of those around you. This is what we’re talking about on the blog right now as I share the steps I took to envision, write, and publish my next novel, Louisa. Do you have ideas you don’t know what to do with or are you stuck somewhere in the middle? Start at the beginning of this series to get you going!