Welcome to the second installment of my November career planning series. Last week, I finalized my mission statement, which is:
I want to be able to maintain, or improve my current lifestyle through telling stories.
I also talked about one of the steps I need to take to get there:
Write regularly. Again, this doesn’t mean “Write every day” and yes, I know that this would appear to fly in the face of the NaNaWriMo philosophy. But remember, the surface goal for National Novel Writing Month is to write fifty thousand words during the month of November. That’s it. You could brain dump 50k in a single day and still “Win.”
Ok, well, *I* couldn’t do that, but you get the point.
The underlying goal is for you to spend a whole month developing a habit. Write regularly.
So the first part of my plan is to be writing regularly. The next part? I’ve got to get my work out there.
Sidebar: I am figuring that by now, you know that I’m not just jotting down “The End” and then shipping the thing off. There’s editing involved, getting feedback, *More* editing. Making the work as polished as I can.
Once I’ve done that, then I’ve got to get it out there. Submit short stories to Magazines, and anthologies. In the case of a novel, I send it off to Agents and open calls.
Both of these require me to be diligent about things like submission guidelines, researching Magazines, Anthologies, Agents, Publishers to see if they would be a good fit.
Once I’ve gone and submitted work, then the waiting begins, right?
Well, yes it does, but No it doesn’t!
I’ve got no control over whether or not someone likes what I’ve done, or if the piece works with them, or whether they *Just* bought something similar.
In fact, there is really only one thing that I’ve got control over:
What I choose to do next.
What will the next story be? And the one after that?
Do it again. Tell more stories. That’s the *Only* way that I’ll have a chance at reaching my goal. It’s the only thing I’ve got any influence over.
The next step? Get up and get to work.
See you on Thursday!
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