This Sunday begins one of my favorite writers conferences. It’s called Blue Ridge because it’s held at Ridgecrest Center in the mountains just outside of Asheville, North Carolina. It’s a great conference with lots of great writers like Jerry Jenkins, Steven James, Angela Hunt, and Diann Mills. I also enjoy the worship time and main speakers. My friend, Janet Roller, is leading the music this year. And lots of friendly faces will be there. Can’t wait! To find out more about the conference click here.

Tags: Blue Ridge, conferences, Writing
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#1. Commit time and money

#2. Network

#3. Deal with rejection

#4. Study the craft

#5. Seek wise council/advice/support

#6. Accept criticism

#7. Stay motivated (set reasonable goals)

#8. Understand the publishing business and keep up (it’s changing all the time)

#9. Learn to self-promote without being obnoxious

#10. Embrace all aspects of the writing process

For the next ten weeks (staring next week), I’m going to post about the ten things that I think every writer must decide to do if they want to succeed at writing. I don’t know that I’ll discuss each topic in that exact order but there they are.

And I know they look pretty obvious but you’d be surprised how many people I meet, writers, who say things like: “I don’t revise. I write a clean first draft.” or “I can’t self-promote. I don’t have the personality for that.” or “I used to have a critique partner but I don’t need one any more.”

Yes, really.

Now, you’re probably already wondering what I mean by “successful.” I believe success is a relative term and that for each writer the definition is unique. For some of us, being a success as a writer might mean selling a few articles each year. For another author, it may be to publish full length fiction with a particular house. Maybe, it’s to make enough money from writing to take your family on a great vacation each year. What I suggest doing before we even look at the 10 essentials is to figure out 3 stages of your writing career. Give yourself a year for the first stage, three years for the second, and 5-7 for the last. And be reasonable. For example, when I first started writing my first stage was to finish a manuscript, second was to get a request and the third to get a contract. Now that I’ve reached that first three stages I’ve changed my goals to match where I am with my career. And remember traditional publishing takes time.

If you’re thinking of going with an e-pub, then your timeline might be a little different…but there’s still a set of steps to climb and you will only become frustrated if you aren’t realistic about them. For example, if you don’t have a finished manuscript, then don’t set getting a contract for your first goal. That’s not going to happen. If you do have a finished manuscript but haven’t had a single request or haven’t even started to shop it around, then still don’t set getting a contract for your first goal. It’s very unlikely that will happen. In these cases, you’re much better off to state that you will finish said manuscript and revise. Or with the polished manuscript, you should say that “I will research agents and publishing houses and shop my manuscript to the following:…” These are realistic goals and ones that YOU have control over.

I’ll cover more about staying motivated and setting goals in another post, but I just wanted to be clear that “success” for the 10 essentials shouldn’t necessarily be “make the NY Times Best Seller list.” It should be what each writer can set out to accomplish individually. So, I encourage you to read along and make comments with me. Perhaps, you have a story to tell related these decisions and how you made them or committed yourself to them. Please share. I would love to hear.

Check back next week for my “chat” on committing your time and money.

Thanks, Kit.

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I know some people would wonder why someone who’s already written a novel or two would want to attend a workshop on writing. But I love hearing other authors talk about the writing process. It’s always so different than my own.

Saturday, Bob Mayer spoke at the Virginia Romance Writers April meeting. He gave an all-day workshop on novel writing. He covered everything from originating an idea to marketing the finished product. Of course, some of the material I’ve heard before, but I loved his CONFLICT BOX. It’s so simple but complete genius. All it is is a square divided into four sections. The top two section represent the GOAL and CONFLICT of the PROTAGONIST. The bottom two sections are the GOAL and CONFLICT of the ANTAGONIST. Now here’s the beauty of it–there can only be two things that work here. One is that both character want the same thing driving them into a direct struggle. The second is that they have separate goals but for each to reach his own goal  a direct conflict is created in the other achieving his. In other words, if one character’s goal doesn’t somehow cause the other character direct problems in reaching his own goal, then the story isn’t going to work. It’s a great visual for checking your storyline.

There were other solid points made about novel writing and he suggested a myriad of questions to ask yourself as you write. He also said that RWA is the most professional writers organization and I couldn’t agree more. All in all a nice presentation. And I loved that our RWA chapter allowed its member to attend for free. Gotta love that!

Tags: Bob Mayer, novel writing, RWA
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