Lecture Lesson for the Week of May 13th, 2019

[Sunny Irene Roth]

Lesson for the Week of May 13th, 2019

Creating a Five-Year Writing Plan for Your Writing Career

Irene S. Roth
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Creating a five-year writing plan can be hard. So, I will spend the rest of this month and the next discussing this.

Most of us, especially working writers, have a difficult time to plan our writing, even in the short-term.

However, to be a successful writer, we must all plan our writing ahead of time. We must all know where we are going so that we can just proceed step by step as the months turn into years.

Also, unless we are mindful of where we are going in our writing career, both short-term and long-term, we won’t be able to get there. This is because we won’t know our destination. Once created, your five-year plan will be your road map to success in your writing career.

This week, I will keep the written part of our lesson short. This is because I would like you to spend some real time brainstorming where you want to be in the next five years in your writing career.

Some writers find it helpful to create vision boards for their writing careers.

Other writers like to just create a simple document outlining their goals for the next five years.

So, take some time this week to do some brainstorming on the next two years of your writing career. Use the rubric that I attach to this lesson to start thinking of what you would like to accomplish.

If you have little idea past the next few months where you would like to be in your writing career, don’t worry. You will have to do a bit of reflection to derive your goals. But this is so much fun. You get to dream a little. You will imagine what your best accomplishments would be in your writing career. That is after all what accomplished writers do all the time.

And we can all be accomplished writers.

To derive your ideas for what you would like to accomplish in the next 5 years and set concrete goals, you may want to do a mind mapping technique. Mind mapping is a popular technique that can be applied in a variety of situations and settings. Writers and students can make sense of complex topics and structure their revision with mind mapping. Businesspeople can manage projects and collaborate with colleagues using mind maps, and any creative process can be supported by using a mind map to explore ideas and build upon them. Writers can also use mind maps to ensure that they know where they are going in their writing career.

Mind maps allow for greater creativity when recording ideas and information, whatever the topic, and enable the note-taker to associate words with visual representations.

So, here is your assignment for this week:

1. Schedule two or three fifteen-minute sessions (or more if you need be) to create a vision of your writing career for the next five years. I spoke about that last week in our lesson. So, if you did the vision board, you may want to post this in your lesson assignment.

2. Schedule a mind-mapping session of 30 minutes to an hour. During this time, take out a sheet of paper. Write Five-Year Writing Goals in the Middle of it and draw a circle around it. Then draw five vertical lines down left and right, and up and around the circle. Write 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 and draw circles around each. Now you are ready to do a mind mapping of your next five years. I will write out what I mean and attach a .jpeg as another attachment with this lesson.

3. If you are unfamiliar with mind-mapping, please google the method and you will find a lot of books and resources about it.

4. Post the mind-map you create in with your assignment as an attachment, as well as your rubric for the remainder of 2019 and 2020.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Irene R. Roth

 

[Mel Corbett]

I won’t subject you to my handwriting.

I didn’t do a vision board yet, but I do have a written 5 year dream/vision thing --

We have a maid that comes at least three days a week to clean our house for us and the dishes don’t pile up (paid for by writing earnings). I’m making solid income from my fiction and Cillian is interested in how I earn my living and creating for himself.

I write like a crazy woman one or two weeks a month and then take the rest of the month off from heavy wordcount days. I have a bank of novels outlined and can produce six novels a year. I’ve got a strong backlist from the previous five years of publishing and each novel feels better to me craft wise than the last.

I’m looked up to in my field and I speak with confidence on panels at conferences. I could write a book on 'how I done it', but that’s up in the air.

I’m writing books that make me happy and light me up and connect me with my audience, who understands that like Emma I struggle with dealing with people, but I do the best I can and limit my interactions to when I’m happy and will respond once a week. Thanks in large part to my fiction earnings, all our student debt is paid off, the credit cards are out zero, we’re well on our way to paying off the house and Stevens doesn’t have to work like a crazy man anymore. Also, we can afford any repairs that our house might need.

 

[D.L. Gioe]

My five year goal is to get four books out into the world - the two I've already written, plus two I've not yet started. One will require quite a bit of research, so it's at the end of the timeline.

One of the things I struggled with on this is that I know our goals are supposed to be reasonable and under our immediate control. BUT admittedly when I think about publishing those four books, I imagine them traditionally published. Which is outside my control. This exercise forced me to really examine how I feel about self-publishing - and in the process I decided that if the two I currently have drafted don't end up connecting with agents, I'm open to indie publishing options. Indie publishing has scared me in the past because I feel it will require me to learn so many things that sound scary - how to copyright something, get an ISBN number, effectively market and build and audience...EEEK! But I'm willing to at least consider it now, and to put the duration for my consideration into a timeline, with an end date. If I haven't found an agent for these two novels by year's end, I'm going to self-publish.
(There, I've said it), which I feel will mentally free me up to really focus on some of the other writing I want to do.

And by the way, I can't WAIT for NaNo this year! Book # 3 is starting to itch!

 

[Lauren Watson]

I'm revising my 5 year plan and sending directly to Irene. I appreciate seeing so many styles of planning here!

 

[Mel Corbett]

Okay, I might be a bit overzealous and probably will need to re-evaluate and spread things out a bit more. But, at least it's a clear plan. And it has the start of a production schedule.