Nothing makes you think about your writing career path like being interviewed. Where have you been, what have you accomplished as a writer and where are you going? If this is something you haven’t thought about for a year or more, you really ought to.
Consider why you write. What measure of success have you had since you started writing for publication? What steps did you take to get where you are? Are you enjoying the process? What aspects do you enjoy most? Can you rearrange your work schedule to spend more time doing that? What tasks or obligations bring you the most results (sales, attention)? What is stopping you from moving forward—making more sales, for example? What can you do to remove these obstacles?
Perhaps you want to sell more copies of your book. The obstacle to that seems to be that you’re not spending enough time promoting it. Maybe you’ve come to some dead ends with it—your promotional tactics are proving stagnant. You’d rather be writing than marketing. You’re tired of promoting your book. But if you decide that you really want to sell more copies—reach more people—an evaluation might reveal that some changes are in order.
Maybe you want to create a living writing articles. Let’s say you’ve been at it for a couple of years and you’re still not earning enough to quit your part-time job. Once you examine your way of working your freelance business—your approach—you might discover that you are not coming up with as many ideas as you were a year ago and are not submitting as many queries. Perhaps you’ve become lazy about finding new article ideas.
What more could you do? Research what’s news—what’s hot—in your area of interest. Or branch out into other topics. Also research publications. Magazines and ezines open, close and change their focus regularly.
I know some writers who are stuck on one topic written one way and are determined to get published in only certain major magazines. When they reevaluate their writing work, if they are astute, they will surely realize that they have two basic choices. Branch out and start writing about things other than your pet project or find ways to spoon-feed your message to your audience through, perhaps, a different approach and through smaller, easier-to- approach publications. There’s always a third choice, of course—give up.
You know the “if-it-ain’t broke…” concept. But what about when it isn’t working? Are you willing to take an honest look at your approach to your writing work and the results of your efforts as they are? Can you make necessary changes? For some of you, this means giving up the pen. You never wanted to be a writer. You don’t like writing. You definitely don’t like the constant need to promote. All you wanted was to be noticed or to make a statement or make a difference.
Sorry, but with all of the competition for books and articles today, it takes more than most people want to put in to realize even a minimally successful outcome.
Why don’t you respond to the questions posed at the beginning of this post and see if you can determine if you need to make some u-turns along your pathway toward writing or publishing success?
Drop in on tomorrow’s blog post. Sandra Beckwith will be guest blogger. She’s talking about the most important book promotion tools you need in your author’s toolkit.
For editing services and publishing consultations contact Patricia Fry at http://www.patriciafry.com
Check out Patricia’s online courses: http://www.matilijapress.com/courses.htm