Commit, commit!
My normal emails are, as you know, long and baggy. They tell jokes. They digress. Sometimes (goat folding – pah!) they have no practical purpose whatsoever. This email, born as it is, in the clarity and cold of a New Year’s Day, is short and to the point.
Friends, it is time to commit.
What do you want to achieve, as a writer, in the next six months?
That’s not a rhetorical question. I actually want you to answer me. I want you to tell me – tell the world – what your intentions are.
I don’t want answers that may be unachievable. So, yes, lots of you will want to say something like:
“By 1 July 2021, I want to get a six-figure deal from a Big Five house.”, or
“By 1 July 2021, I want three books self-published on Amazon and a monthly income of at least $2,500.”
And sure, lots of you will have aspirations like those. But I want commitments that definitely lie within your capability. If you don’t achieve the goal, I want that to be because you haven’t done what you said you would do.
Put another way, we’re not, today, in the business of lifting a prayer to the universe. We’re in the business of building a To Do list that we will systematically execute.
So the kind of things I want to hear from you might be things like:
“I will completely my current manuscript. I will self-edit it hard. I will get a third-party manuscript assessment (from Jericho Writers, obviously 😊). Then I will submit the work to at least 12 properly selected agents. I will have the book out on submission to those agents no later than 30 June 2021.”
A newer author might make a commitment more like this:
“I will read at least three books on writing. I will watch and absorb all of the Jericho Writers’ video course on How To Write. I will spend at least 7 hours a week on writing, every single week. I will write at least 50,000 words of my current project. I will get beta-readers to look at 2x chunks of the book. I will commit to offering feedback to at least 12 other writers, so I contribute my share to the community. I will do all this by 30 June 2021.”
Someone who’s heading for the sunlit Land of Self-Pub might say something like this:
“I will complete my manuscript. I will get editorial feedback on it, complete my edits, and get the whole thing copy-edited. I will select a cover designer, deliver a brief, and get a quality cover that I’m happy with. I’ll research my metadata and make the choices I need. I will write and produce a lead magnet that will act as the basis for my mailing list. I will do all this by 29 June 2021.” [Why the 29th? Because self-pubbers always work harder and faster than trad authors.]
OK. You get the picture. I’m after specific commitments by you, that lie within your power to execute in the next six months.
Yes, you can simply write those on a sheet of paper and glue it above your computer, but public commitments work better. I want you to enter the public square and make your commitments visible to all.
I’ll do the same. So please make your commitments right here on Townhouse. (If you’re not a member, then become one. It’s fast and free to do so.)
That’s it from me. I promised short. Here’s short:
Make your commitment.
Make it here on Townhouse.
Do it now.
On Friday 2 July, we’re all going to check back on your promises. See how we’ve done.
Onwards!
I’ve found that I can find things to write about in rhyme on a regular basis, so I’m going to commit to writing a poem a day for the next six months.
I may also try to cull some dead wood from both the novels I’ve written, and who knows, I might even try submitting one to an agent or a publisher? On the other hand, I might just put them up on a self-publishing site to see what feedback I get and find out if the books are sellable.
I am so happy I decided to join Jericho – I’m looking forward to taking part in as many events as possible. Aims for this year:
1) Climb down from the cloud I have been sitting on for a couple of days and accept the publication contract for the first in my trilogy (or should that be triplets…), which landed in my inbox at the beginning of the week. Gulp. Yay. Eeek. Squeeeeee.
2) Complete the hard edit of the second in the trilogy – at 48k words, I reckon I’m halfway through. But it’s turning into a complete rewrite, so it’s proceeding at the pace of a lazy snail with a bad attitude.
3) Write something completely new. There’s nothing quite like the buzz of that initial creation.
4) Oh, and I need to decide on an ending for the first draft I all but completed in the autumn – bring on the January webinars!
Congrats Rachel on the contract and good luck with the rest of your trilogy! Onwards and upwards….. 😀
Thank you xx
Great way to start the new year! Congratulations.
Thank you! Doesn’t get much better . But as mine is a natural state of suspicion, I am now waiting for the doors to be thrown open and for someone to shout ‘Fooled you’ at the top of their lungs…!
Ha! I hope you let yourself enjoy being proven wrong about your suspicions.
Hi Harry. Your emails are a weekly tonic that remind me I’m not alone…in 6 months I would like to have worked my way down to at least Number 1…but hopefully lower down the list.
1. Self-edited my manuscript for Girl Out Of Tune sufficient for it to be ready to be submitted for a full assessment by JW. This process has already taken me many months and I feel like a sculptor, chiselling and polishing away, eternally looking for improvements. The point must come when I stop.
2. Identified a list of agents and revised my query/synopsis ready for submission
3. Worked through the changes to come back from the manuscript assessment. I realise this is a big one
4. Submitted to agents
5. As an aside, the book is partly based in the music industry and features a fictional band, with songs which I have been recording as I go along. I would like this process to be complete. One of my concerns is that if an agent/publisher gets hooked and says ‘love the story but wonder what the songs sound like’, I could have them ready.
Thanks for bullying me into making a schedule And let’s hope for a better year for us all in ‘21
Ed
By the end of June I aim to: have a complete, plot-hole-less manuscript, and have edited it to a standard where I can start sending it to beta readers. I also hope to engage with the writing community here and read and give feedback on other WIPs.
Simple really. Finish the 18th (yes 18th!) draft of my fourth unpublished book, start submitting again and get an agent. And yes, I’ve had an editorial review from Eve Seymour (I can recommend her – very good.)
Oh, your 18th draft. You have no idea the extent to which you have just made my day.😉
Good luck!
I’m going to get the audiobook of my first (MG) novel live by the end of January and self-publish my second by the end of June.
By July 1, 2021, I commit to having my YA novel Betwixt completed, revised, edited and ready to submit to agents. I also commit to publishing at least 6 educational learning guides for parents home-schooling their kids.
I hope to get an agent from my first round of submissions, in which case edits of first MS completed and publisher found by 30th June.
If no agent, I will review current MS, edit harder, get more reader/editor feedback, then query a second round of agents by end March. Then have agent and have completed their edits ready to go out to publishers by 30th June.
Meanwhile writing, editing and completing second MS to be ready to go out by 30th June.
Alongside these, and depending on feedback and results along the way, I will think about ideas for and possibly start another NF MS.
Love the ending of that email to commit 🙂
1. I want my poem ‘Bluebeard’ published by a journal I think is good. (I have only submitted it twice so far, so this is about submitting it).
2. To find an illustrator/screenprinter to illustrate my three poems about 2020
3. To enter the Bibliosomething competition I am procrastinating about
(Number one is with a view to getting the volume it is from published).
As a brand new writer I want to have the first draft if my first novel completed