Deborah Cooke: Author

Yesterday, we used a simple strategy to make a Plan for losing ten pounds. The same scheme can be used easily to make writing goals more attainable.

The Idea

Many a writer comes home from the RWA National conference determined to sell her first book by the time the conference is held again. There are many writers all over the world thinking this week that they would like to sell a romance novel by next July, when RWA National will be held in Nashville, Tennessee.

But this is only an Idea. It’s vague. Left as it stands, it’s unlikely to happen because vague ideas are easy to dream about and harder to accomplish.

The Method

The method for selling a book is no more complicated than that of losing weight. It’s elegant in its simplicity:

Write a complete book manuscript that an editor wishes to buy for publication.

Let’s take that apart a bit, in order to make our Plan.

The Plan – Part A

The first half of the Method involves writing the whole book. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that a romance novel manuscript is roughly 100,000 words in length. Some publishers will wish for shorter books and some for longer – you can adjust the word count on the basis of your target market. But 100,000 words is a nice even number for our calculations.

In order to sell a book by next July, I think that book would have to be written by the end of 2009. That would allow roughly 6 months for querying agents and editors, for the manuscript to lurk in the slush, for decisions to be made. It could always take longer than that for a book to be purchased for publication, and it can happen faster, but again, let’s take an easy rule of thumb for our calculations.

In order to have a completed manuscript ready for submission by January 1, 2010, this author would need to write a 100,000 word novel and polish it by that time. It is almost August 1, so let’s round off again, and say that our author has five months to write that book.

We’ll assume she hasn’t started writing the book yet. She can spend the last 10 days of July on the synopsis, which will also be part of the submission package.

So, 100,000 words in five months is 20,000 words a month or roughly 5,000 words a week. Those are polished words, too. If she writes a whole book as a first draft then polishes the whole thing, she might actually write twice as much when all is said and done. But knowing that she needs 5,000 clean words a week gives her a concrete goal. Maybe she’ll break it down even more, and aim for 1,000 each weekday, then polish those 5,000 words into finished format on the weekend. The more specific a work plan the author can make, the better her chances of success.

The Plan – Part B

Now, let’s go back to the second part of that Method. We’ll have the completed manuscript this way – now we need to make sure it’s a manuscript someone wants to buy.

There is an element of subjectivity to an editor’s decision to purchase a manuscript or take a pass on it. That’s okay – that’s part of the power of editorial enthusiasm – and it’s not something we as authors can plan for, anyway. We can’t predict when lightning when strike or when an editor will fall head over heels for a story – all an author can do is make the book as compelling as she possibly can.

But there is a great deal that an author can to do target her submissions. There’s no point in sending a vampire romance to a house or an editor who doesn’t purchase books with paranormal or fantasy elements. Similarly, there’s no point in querying an agent with that same manuscript if the agent doesn’t represent that subgenre of work. So, while she is writing her brilliant novel (to be completed by January 1, 2010), our author can do her homework.

She can use the resources of the RWA website, if she’s a member, to find out which houses and which editors are buying the kind of work she’s writing. She can also use that site to learn which agents represent that subgenre. She can look on the website of the AAR for more information about agents. She can go to the bookstore and look at the works of other authors published her targeted subgenre. She can read a number of those books to see what is being done, and identify maybe what isn’t being done – this could be the key to making her work fresh and distinctive. She can read the spines of those books to learn which houses are publishing those books, and she can read the dedications to learn which editor or agent (or both) was involved with the project. Some authors list their agents on their websites. Some agents list their clients on their websites.

With a little bit of research, our author could have a solid list of who to query about her manuscript when it’s done on January 1, 2010. If she worked out a specific plan of attack for compiling this list, she would have an even better chance of success.

Because that’s how Ideas make their way into Achieved Goals, by way of a Method and a concrete Plan.

Give it a try. Take your Idea of choice, break it down, and chart out what you need to do to make it happen. I bet it’ll work.