Purple Prose:
goals

©Stina Lindenblatt

On Monday, I talked about creating your writing goals for 2013. Now, I’m going to show you how to turn them into your business plan. If you’re planning to make money with your writing, you need to start thinking of it as a business. And all successful businesses have business plans.
When you create your goals, think about the following:

Product: This is your book.

• What do you need to do to create a query-ready book? Figure this out for each story you plan to write next year.

• What’s going on in your genre?

• Are you approaching the tail end of a trend?

• Is your genre saturated and difficult to break into?

• What are agents and editors saying? What are readers saying?

• Is there a less saturated genre you love that you might want to focus on instead?

• Of course, the only way you can answer these questions is by reading LOTS of books in your genre and following industry blogs, so . . . what are your reading goals for next year?

• This includes books and workshops to help you improve your writing craft and knowledge related to anything dealing with publishing (e.g. creating a website, social networking for authors, creating your author brand).

• Start researching services (editors, cover designers, book formatters, website designers, etc) early in your planning process. If you spread it over a few months, it won’t be so daunting, and it will give you time to find the right person. This applies to researching agents, too.

• If you’re querying next year, who are you planning to query (agents or editors)? How many queries are you planning to send out with each batch, and how often will you be sending them out? When are you planning to write your query and synopsis?

• If you’re self publishing, research what you need to know to be successful. Some great resources to check out include: Smart Self-Publishing by Zoe Winters and Self-Publishing Attack by James Scott Bell.

• Are you planning to use Facebook? Twitter? Pinterest? Come up with goals that you can live with and that will enable you to have enough time to write.

• How’s your website working for you? Do you have one?

• What are your marketing plans for before, during, and after your book launch? You might not be releasing a book next year, but it wouldn’t hurt to start brainstorming ideas for the future. Some agents and publishers want to know your marketing plans before they sign you. Make your life easier and plan ahead.

• How much have you budgeted for your business next year? By planning ahead a year or two in advance, the costs can be spread over that time period, and it will feel less intimidating.

Do you create goals every year? Have you created business plans for your writing career?

©Stina Lindenblatt

It’s that time of the year when we reflect on what we have or haven’t accomplished this year, and we plan for next year. No, I don’t mean the dreaded New Year’s resolutions. Most people fail to achieve those. I’m going to go one step further and have you think about your business plans.

Now, a few of you are freaking out because we are writers. Business plans are for, well, businesses. But if you’re planning to make money with your writing, you need to start thinking of it as a business. And all successful businesses have business plans. A strong business plan will help your book achieve the level of success it deserves.

The good news is that business plans aren’t much different than the usual goal setting we do each year. Only this time, I want you to delve a little deeper. It doesn’t matter if you’re planning to self publish or traditionally publish your stories—or if you’ve just written your first first draft—if you want to be taken seriously, now is the time to start planning. And it’s easier to do it now than a few weeks before your book launch.

Step One: Brainstorm

What do you want to accomplish next year? Sorry, landing an agent or having your book become a bestseller doesn’t count. Those are dreams, not goals. You have no control over whether an agent or readers will love your book. Goals are achievable, unless you get lazy and don’t do them. For example, losing five pounds is achievable, unless you don’t exercise and don’t decrease your caloric intake.

Step Two: Dating

Figure out by what date you want to accomplish each goal. It’s not enough to say, “I want to write a novel next year.” When you do want to achieve this by? Also, this goal is not specific enough. Do you mean you want to finish the first draft by October 1st, or do you want to have a novel ready to query by then?

Step Three: Division

Break down each goal into manageable tasks and give them dates by which you want to accomplish them. For example, say you want to set up your website by April 1^st.

Goal: Set up website (April 1^st)

• Determine author brand (January 15^th)
• List ten authors who write similar stories to me. (January 20^th)
• List the things I like and dislike about their websites. (January 25^th)
• Research website designers (February 15^th).
• . . . .

On Wednesday, I’ll be discussing how you can turn your regular writing goals into business plans.

Did you write your goals for 2012? Are you close to accomplishing them? Have you thought about your goals (business plan) for next year?

I’d like to introduce you to my new best friend.

That’s right. My new best friend is a corkboard, and it’s become my savior when it came to restructuring my WIP. I love it so much, I’m going to use it this summer to plot out my next novel.
This is how it works:
· Each index card represents a scene.
· On one side of the card, write a sentence or two about the scene.
· On the bottom, indicate what emotional change(s) your POV character goes through during the scene.
· On the back, write the GMC (Goal, Motivation, Conflict) for your POV character. If you want, you can write them for all the characters in the scene, too, though you might have to do this on additional index cards and pile them underneath the main one.
Now comes the fun part:
· Pin the index cards in the order you think the scenes should go.
· Play around with them, and see if there’s a better way to sequence the scenes to make your story stronger.
· Don’t be afraid to toss away scenes that aren’t working the way you first envisioned.
Obviously, this is ideally done BEFORE you write your first draft. But even if you’ve written your first draft (or your third or fifth draft), you can still use this tool. When Laura Pauling (the queen of story structure) told me I should move a few scenes around in my WIP, I thought she was insane brilliant. But after playing around with the corkboard, I not only moved those scenes around, I moved several others and tossed a few in the recycle bin (but this is only because my story problem/goal had changed).
While moving a scene might sound daunting if you’ve already written the first draft, after plotting things out on the corkboard, it’s not so scary after all. You can see how much better the story will be, and the rewrites won’t be so painful (at least that’s what I keep telling myself).
You can’t see it in this picture, but the cards are organized according to Act, and the key element of the act (e.g Catalyst, Debate, or Dark Moment*) are indicated on the appropriate card.
Have any of you used a corkboard (or the software equivalent) for plotting out your story (either before the first draft (plotters) or afterwards (pansters)? And if so, do you have any other tips to share?
(* refers to the elements in Save the Cat by Blake Synder)
<<<3

Next week, I’m going to NYC for the RWA conference (and family vacation). Since I have a gazillion things to do before I leave, this will be my last post until July 11th. After that, I’ll be posting Mondays and Wednesdays until September 5th.

I miss you all already. :)

XOX

I can’t believe it’s now 2011. After reading Roni Loren’s blog this weekend, I realized I need to set some writing goals for this year. Heck, I even blogged about it last week on the Query Tracker blog, so I have no excuse.

And now you can hold me accountable to them. Right?

Writing Goals

• Query my YA novel, Still.
• Edit my new YA. I finished the first draft of Shot in the Dark before Christmas Day. Yay!
• Query Shot in the Dark later this year. (Of course, if I land an agent with Still, I won’t have to worry about writing another query. Le sigh.)
  
• Start planning and researching my sexy romantic suspense novel. I’ve already been working on some ideas.
• Have first draft of SRS completed by the end of the year—if not sooner.
• Write first draft of YA novel, End of Forever. (Yep, it’s already outlined and planned)
• Continue to read non-fiction books on writing and challenge my writing.
• Attend the LA SCBWI conference in August (anyone else thinking of going?).
• Attend the monthly RWA meetings in my city.

Reading

I’m not setting any specific numbers. I read whatever mood I’m in.

• YA (my list of books for this year is already long).
• Romantic suspense
• Erotic Romance. I’m pretty fussy about this one. I’m interested in erotic romantic suspense more than anything.

So, what are your writing and reading goals for this year? Are you going to be attending any conferences this year?