7 Ways To Wreck Your Career

Unusual title, isn’t it? Choosing the negative instead of the positive.

But sometimes we have to hear the “what not” in order to grasp the “how to” in our writing journey.

We all make mistakes as we develop our careers, whether we intend to be full time or not. Mistakes are good. We learn from them.

But some can be costly.

Here are seven actions I think you should strive to avoid.

1. Genre hopping. Or, not deciding on a specific path. Over times, readers come to expect a certain kind of book from their favorite authors. I may be tired of a “Rachel Hauck” book, but my readers are not.

When starting out most of us would write for anything or anyone, and that’s a great way to get started, boost your publishing resume, but be careful you don’t spread yourself too thin.

I was blessed to have an agent in the beginning who kept me steered toward trade romance and chick lit I also believe the Lord really watched over my steps. Several opportunities I wanted to leap at but the doors closed. Or I felt uneasy about and didn’t pursue.

Learning By Reading

I found a book that looked interesting to me on Barnes & Noble’s site.

A story set in the ’30s and had some element of football in it. So I downloaded it.

Devoured it. The story captured me. The writing… I didn’t spend half my time rewriting the sentences in my head or pondering why the character was acting without proper motivation.

I told Susie, “You have to read this book!”

And, as it was set in the ’30s and had football element to it, she was keen to give it a go.

Two days later she emails. “I’m mad at you! I stayed up until 2:00 a.m. reading that book.”

By now, I’m dying to talk to her about it because it had some fascinating elements. But she halted me from gushing on and on until she finished.

THEN, we had a long talk, breaking it down, decided what worked, what didn’t, why we liked it, how we could learn from this author.

Conference Is Coming! Are You Ready To Submit?

The ACFW conference is right around the corner!

And you’re ready! It’s time. Really time. You’ve been writing and rewriting this book for eons. Or at least it feels like eons. You want to submit it, get going on your stellar writing career. Time’s a wastin’!

Maybe you haven’t been working on it for eons, but you went to a conference or two, and you’ve heard an editor say she was really looking for the next great romance author to groom and you have just the story.

Or finally, one of the BIG PUBLISHERS is actively seeking speculative fiction and your space navy story is ready for the picking.

Perhaps your story has been through a critique or edit of some kind. A reader (mom, dad, sister, best friend, hubby, wifey) LOVED it. They want more! Now.

So you rush your baby off to an editor or agent. Maybe some of you rush it off to someone like me or Susie here at My Book Therapy.

To Go Indie or Not To Go Indie

The world of publishing is in an upheaval.

Amazon, the “book” web site we all used to peruse for our books is doing all they can to command the publishing world.

They say they believe books are to be affordable. They claim to care about both the reader and the writer. But not much at all for the publisher.

So there’s been price wars between the Big 5 and Amazon. With Barnes & Noble somewhere in the middle.

Word is traditional publishers are trying to preserve literary excellence. And trying to uphold the hardback.

Of which they’ve been trying to do since 1939 when the paperback started taking over publishing.

So it’s price v quality again. The aristocracy – the hardback v. commoner – the paperback.

Publishers are being swallowed up like minnows by big fish Hachette, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster and Penguin Random House and Macmillan.

While they are trying to hold onto the old way of doing things — or so it seems — Amazon continues to innovate.

Recently, they came up with Kindle Unlimited. For $9 a month, you can borrow all kinds of books. But the Big 5 have been excluded from this feature.

Breaking Down the Basics of Tension

All right. You’ve read my post before on tension but I’m not sure I can stress it enough.

Tension is key!!

TENSION! TENSION! TENSION!

I’ve been doing some reading lately, amid deadline fever, and found the tension to be on this low side.

The stories were good. Well written. Great characters. But at some point, I found myself skipping pages because I just couldn’t wonder around inside their heads my more.

Here’s the deal. This is just the truth. Tension talks.

The more your characters dialog, the more likely they are to say things that make one another mad, or reveal a secret, perhaps say something embarrassing or something controversial and an argument starts.

Dialog is the gas pedal for tension.