David posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:
If an unpublished writer, with a completed and polished but still unsold novel, and maybe more novels (and some non-fiction ideas) in various stages of development, has severely limited time to put into writing (let’s say 10 hours or less per week), how will that time be best spent? The way I understand it, these are the demands for a novelist’s time:
– writing
– craft development (the words)
– art development (the story-telling)
– story research
– market research
– querying
– industry research (queries, proposals, agents, trends, etc.)
– publishing industry relationship building
– platform building
– self-promotion
– marketing education/development
– idea capturing and future work development
– critique group
– probably something else I’m missingHow would you rank these in importance for an unpublished writer?
Randy sez: Holy Smokes! That’s a hard question, and one we all face. A lot depends on where you are on the road to publication. If you haven’t read my article, “Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Author!” then you should probably read that first. It spells out the various stages you pass through as you go from novice to pro.
If you’re a Freshman, then you should focus on craft first. Learn the skills of writing good fiction. You do that by writing a lot, by getting your work critiqued, and by studying the theory of fiction (from books or lectures).
If you’re a Sophomore, keep doing that, but also start learning a bit about the industry and also how to write a proposal.
If you’re a Junior, your craft should now be very good. Keep improving it, but now begin to focus on how to sell your work. You should be going to conferences and meeting agents and submitting your work. This is hard and scary and can be crushing (if you have an attitude that you must succeed instantly or your life is a failure). But it’s necessary and all published authors go through this stage.
If you’re a Senior, then all of the above, but now you need to be also thinking about building your platform. This may be public speaking (for a few authors) or a blog (for others) or magazine articles (if you prefer print to the web) or podcasting (if you’re good at talking) or some other way of building your platform. Or you can do as the vast majority of writers do, and simply skip the platform-building altogether. You won’t die if you do this. You may end up with a GREAT publisher who promotes you effectively. But the odds are than any publisher will work harder for you if they think you’re already working hard for yourself.
So the answer to David’s question is this: “It depends on where you are. You can’t master everything all at once. So focus on where you are right now and do the things you need to do to get to the next stage in your career.”
If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.
Thanks for giving us permission to not master everything at once. I’m sure I don’t know anyone who would try to do that, but still.
What Randy said in another post that stuck like a dart into this spinning psycho is to determine your biggest strength and your biggest weakness and work on those. That gives me something to focus on that may actually produce measurable and needed results.
Sincerely. I’m not asking a rhetorical question. Why oh why do people think they can expect to be a paid professional writer by putting in less than 10 hours a week?
If someone said they wanted to be a professional tennis player or golfer or baseball player or tuba player or engineer but they had 10 hours a week or less to devote to learning and practicing, they’d be laughed out of school.
I worked for 25 years as a technical writer and I’d often hear an engineer say he’d write the software manual himself, but he was just too busy.
I never said to these guys, “Sure, yeah, I’d write the program myself but I don’t have enough hours in the day.”
Can someone explain this attitude to me?
Thanks,
Andie
Randy sez: The 10 hour per week figure is the number of hours that I recommend writers should strive for to reach the status of being a “Junior”. Without at least this level of effort, they’ll be totally unprepared to sell a book, if and when an editor decides to buy it.
But at the “Freshman” level, 10 hours per week is unrealistic for most writers, who are starting from a dead stop. For them, I recommend that they work up to 5 hours per week over a period of months. I don’t consider a writer a “Sophmore” unless they’re writing at least 5 hours per week.
Once you sell a book, you are going to need to start putting in closer to 20 hours per week. At that point, you’ll be getting some compensation for it, but as Morgan points out, not a whole lot of compensation. Early in the game, writing is a sacrifice. There’s no way around that fact.
I can answer the question about 10 hours: partly its because most authors are not paid a lot (maybe a thousand or two, more if you’re lucky) so most writers also have day jobs. Then you add in family time (yes, your spouse and children want to spend time with you), so that leaves a couple evenings and maybe the weekend to write. Ten hours equals about two hours 5 days a week. That’s not bad considering the other responsibilities most people have in life.
As a stay at home mum, with a three-year old and a ten-month old; housework; a marriage; church commitments, including co-ordinating a theatre restuarant evening; creating a church weekly newsletter; tenor drumming in a pipe band… I don’t have a whole lot of time left over for writing: about three hours a week at present.
Fortunately for me I’m only a Freshman and so I need to build up to 10 hours. Sure, I’d love to be a professional writer… eventually. I’m not so naive anymore to believe it’s going to happen immediately, or without hard work on my part. (Thanks Randy!) In terms of goals, my short term goal is to make it to Sophmore in a year (no more than two – life tends to get in the way with little ones!). My long term goal is to be a professional writer.
Perhaps the key word in your question, Andrea, is ‘expect’ – it’s not that I don’t want to be a professional, just that I know it’s not realistic for me at this point in my life. I can work towards it, but I certainly don’t expect it.
Randy:
Thanks for answering my question. It’s been awfully difficult to find 10 hours per week of late, though I’d like to think of myself as a “junior” nonetheless.
Andrea: What do you expect? Someone with a fulltime job who wants to break into writing to quit and live on air? Or work 80 hours per week?
Dave