Assuming I’ve convinced you by now that some kind of planning is in order when you write, today I’m going to talk about the boring types of planning.
If you do not intend to sell your writing, you can skip ahead to Part 2 of this post, Project Planning.
Part 1: Business Planning
If you intend to sell your writing, whether it be through indy-publishing, traditional publishing, or some hybrid of the two, you will need to do some business planning. Depending on how business-minded you are, you might start this process at various stages in the writing/publishing process, but it would be best to start before your write your first word. Of course, most of us are way beyond the first word by the time this aspect of writing rears its ugly head, so I’ll assume if you are reading this, you have just indy-pubbed your first book. Congratulations! Welcome to your crash-course in business management.
I’m not going to spend a ton of time on this matter, certainly not as much time as it deserves, mainly because there are already a lot of resources and information out there, stated by those far more qualified than me. However, I will say that (unless you plan to solely use traditional publishing, in which case you need a great agent and a good accountant) at minimum you will need:
- A business plan
- A marketing plan
- A cash-flow forecast
- A project budget
- A marketing-specific budget
Why?
Because writing a business plan will help you articulate exactly how you intend to reach your stated goal of selling your writing. What is your market? What market share do think you can capture? How will you do this? What is your product? What is your product’s edge against direct and indirect competitors? Where will you find the capital to prime the pump? Will your projected sales cover your projected expenses to keep the pump flowing? And so forth. These are some of the questions the business plan will help you answer.
In addition, writing a marketing plan will help you understand who your market is, where you will find them, why they might want to read your book, what message you need to craft to reach them, and how much money/time you’ll need to spend to be effective.
Answering all these questions upfront may seem like they will hinder the writing process. Won’t worrying about all these things cause me to tailor my product, in essence, selling out my art? Possibly. This is another reason why envisioning your ideal is so important. It will keep you on track as you negotiate both the business and creative aspects of being a writer.
But if you intend to sell your writing, you will need to answer these questions at some point. Why not start early? While you don’t want to compromise your art, you may actually find inspiration in the answers to some of these questions. Also, knowing the answers–say, that there’s no market for zombie romance, or that there’s a huge market and no competition for martian erotica, might be nice to know before you write that zombie romance. Perhaps you’ll find that the story you have to tell can actually be told just as well through martian erotica. (this is not to say that you should write to chase trends–you should write what you love. But you should know what the trends are so that you will not be surprised when no one wants to buy your zombie romance).
Granted, you’ll probably need to re-research some of this stuff by the time you actually finish that novel, especially if it takes you as long as it tends to take me. But the process of writing the business plan might actually help you get closer to defining your ideal outcome. You may think that selling your writing is the most important outcome, but when your business plan reveals that you probably won’t be able to sell that zombie romance, you might say, the heck with it, what is actually the most important thing to me is to write the best zombie romance in the history of the universe.
Ok, I’m done rambling about business planning; for more information visit the SBA, which has tons of info on business plans and financial documentation. You’ll notice that most of it is geared toward trying to get loans and therefore you may think it unnecessary. Consider this: you’re likely to be bankrolling this endeavor out of your own pocket, so it makes sense to ask yourself the same tough questions a bank would want to know before you go spending all your time and money.
Another great resource is The Business Rusch, which covers changes in the publishing industry and has a ton of business information for writers of all stripes. And, because kittens.
Part 2: Project Management Planning
This is perhaps a touchy subject in the realm of writing. It’s easy to say that the creative process is too vague and ethereal to apply restrictions to it. The Muse comes when the Muse comes, we’ve all said at some point. It’s out of my control.
Unfortunately, reality still exists. There are still only 24 hours in a day, and most of us have something pressing to be done for at least 20 if not 23 of those hours. Failing to schedule and plan how you will spend the 2 to 4 to 0.25 hours a day you have to write is potentially setting yourself up to fail.
If you’re writing purely for your own enjoyment, project planning may be less important. If you’re writing with the hope of selling your writing, you need to be able to produce a product on a deadline and stick to a schedule.
Another upside to planning, especially when you have limited time, is that you don’t have to re-orient yourself every time you return to writing. With a detailed plan, when you sit down you will know exactly what stage of the process you are in and what today’s work entails.
Granted, as with all things planned, the project might not happen the way you plan it. But the beauty of having a plan is to be able to look back at the plan, compare it to reality, then and both improve the plan and the outcome the next time around.
For example, for my first writing project, I didn’t have a plan. No deadline, no schedule, no goals. It took me ten years and ended up unfinished. For my second writing project, I had a vague plan with a deadline of two years. It took five years, but I finished the project. For my third writing project, I had a more specific plan with a schedule and a deadline of one year. It’s in progress so I can’t say how it will vary, but it looks pretty certain I’ll be finished two years from starting it. As you can see, the more specifically I plan, the closer the outcome is to the goal.
There are a variety of ways to plan a project, and you should pick a method that works best with your preferences and limitations, but here’s what any project planning method should ask:
- What is the final outcome (i.e., how will I know when the project is complete)?
- What is the overall deadline of the project?
- What are the stages of the project (i.e., planning, drafting, revising, editing, formatting, etc) and how much time will I need to devote to each stage?
- What criteria will I use to know when a stage is complete?
- What are the deadlines for each stage of the project?
- How much time will I spend each day/week/month/year working on this project?
- What factors outside my control might force me to make changes to this plan?
- What other factors might I need to budget time for that I’m not considering (writing classes, reading and analyzing other books, workshops, computer maintenance, etc)
It is really important to try to be realistic in your projections, because one pitfall of this kind of planning is to get into a cycle of negative feedback. If you have an hour a day to write and you estimate that you can draft 5000 words in that hour, you’re setting yourself up for failure. When your production consistently fails to meet your expectations, hopelessness can sabotage your efforts. Especially at the beginning, you have to be willing to weigh reality against your goals and update your plan accordingly. Eventually, you’ll be able to plan accurately because you’ll have enough data to inform your decisions.
This concludes the boring post on planning. Onward to the fun stuff in 101 TIWIK #49: Planning: From Brainstorm to Form
