Helpful tips to creating a successful writing plan.
When I first started writing, my plan was very simple. Write, submit, and get published, repeat. What a beautiful plan. Believe me it worked great in my head, but in reality your plan has to be a lot more detailed.
I set to work on a bigger, better plan. I started to submit to contests and continue writing still holding on to Plan A. That little fantasy is hard to let go of. Contest are great but then I found myself writing stories in a short period of time for a specific contest that were, to be honest, not as good as they could have been if I just wrote, then found a contest. Here comes Plan C.
Plan C started to take shape. I had been doing my homework. Reading about this and that. Talking to different people about what their plan of attack was. Those were very interesting conversations. Their plans ranged from my Plan A fantasy, what you need a plan? To a full time assault on the publishing world. I had already been at “you need a plan?” but I didn’t have time for a full assault, darn day job. I needed to find my middle ground and my happy space fast. I wanted to feel good about myself and my plan in the morning.
I write primarily children’s fiction, short stories, middle grade chapter books and a little adult short fiction and non-fiction. I looked at that and asked myself “What can I do with that?” I mulled it over for a while, then BAM! Like a Mac truck. Magazines! There are a lot of magazines that cover a lot of different topics. I was dancing in my seat. I just ignored stairs. Once I got over my apparent greatness. I remembered I was writing a plan and coming up with one great idea does not a plan make.
I asked myself, “What is my ultimate goal?” that didn’t take me long to come up with. I want to support myself as full time writer. Knowing that cleared my head so I could chart my course to that end.
How do I do that? Well I have my ultimate goal but I didn’t have a by when. Then some real heavy duty math came into play. One year was to short of a time but ten years to far off. I came up with a date just a bit over three years. For me that was a reasonable amount of time. The nuts and bolts of the plan. I pulled out a medium spiral note book with a hard cover so I could write my plan. A little tip in writing a plan is have short, mid and long term goals so you have mini victories a long the way but still have your eye on the prize. Have your plan in a prominent place so you can refer to it often I refer to mine a lot. It really keeps me focused.
Remember your plan is your guideline. It is not set in stone and it will most likely change. You don’t want to miss an awesome opportunity because it’s not on your original plan.
Following my plan I accomplished my goal of becoming a full time writer. My smaller goals and path changed along the way but my ultimate goal remained the same.
Now it’s time to get you started on writing your plan:
Happy plan writing and enjoy the adventure.
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