How to Plan a Writing Career, pt. 2

Welcome to the continuation of the career planning series. This is part two of a multi-part series teaching writers how to plan their career through anecdotes, my personal process, and a healthy dose of supposition. If you haven’t read the first part, please do so here.

Caught up? Alright, let’s get started.

First, we’ll discuss the various tasks you’ll need to fit in to be a successful writer. But what is a successful writer? Ultimately, this is up to you. For the purpose of this series a successful writer is one who publishes a work that sells more than a handful of copies, either on their own or through a traditional publishing house.

To be a successful writer, you’ll need to write, which we’ve discussed. If you’re following along, you’re planning to write some number of books/year and know approximately how long that will take you. For our example its one 100,000 word book/year and 548 words/day which will take 30 - 60 minutes of writing.

The second thing you need to do is read w-i-d-e-l-y within your genre. I write fantasy predominantly, so that means reading a smattering of sub-genres such as urban fantasy, dark fantasy, epic fantasy, flintlock fantasy, etc. Notice that even though I am writing a dark fantasy novel I am not restricting my reading to that sub-genre. That’s intentional. Many writers advise this as a way to keep your ideas fresh.

You will often think of unique ways to apply one sub-genre’s tropes to your own that you would never discover if you stayed in one lane. You can gain even more by going outside your genre, but this is only recommended when you have an idea in mind, such as writing fantasy with thriller pacing. Or if you have too much time on your hands.

Now for some math.

The average reader reads 238 words/minute according to a meta-analysis of a 190 studies of reading speed. The average novel page contains 250 - 300 words. This means the average reader takes 1.16 minutes to read a page. The average novel is between 300 and 400 pages depending on genre. Since we’re using a fantasy novel of 100,000 words as an example, we’ll assume 400 pages. That means it takes 5.75 hours to finish this hypothetical novel. But who cares?

This is about planning your time. So, if you want to read one book a week in your genre (a great goal, but a little ambitious), you need to spend ~50 minutes each day reading. This goes up dramatically if the book length goes up. An 800 page book would take 100 minutes of reading a day to finish in a week. This is why aiming for one book a week is a bit much. Better to just read one hour a day and call it good. Or a half-hour, if you’d like to do one book every other week.

How are we doing? We’re writing for 30 - 60 minutes per day and spending about the same reading, which is 1 - 2 hours of work daily.

Next is craft study. This can take the form of reading craft books, listening to podcasts, watching youtube videos, or writing exercises. Not all of these are created equal. All media range in quality, so it’s not a matter of books being better or worse than podcasts or anything. Instead, you need to determine your writing level. That’s a whole other post, but for now assume one level per book written.

But how much time should you spend? This is up to you, but I recommend spending as much time on this step as you spend on reading within your genre.

At level one, you should focus primarily on generalist learning and editing. These are videos/podcasts/books on writing structure, common tropes, and rules (which I hate, but that’s another topic). If you’re balking at formulas and structure, I understand. I did too. But eventually I realized that my artistic integrity is not harmed by seeing how other people do it. However, slavishly following any given mindset, even your own, is a recipe for disaster.

At level two, start consuming media that is more specialized. Perhaps focus on character if you find that to be a particular weakness, or description, dialogue, etc. It’s ok to switch around during this phase to keep things interesting. This is also where writing exercises start to become more useful as your instincts develop.

Levels three and beyond mean you’ve spent over 1,650 hours writing, reading, and working on your craft in equal measure. That’s over 100 books in your genre, two completed novels (edited past the beta-read stage), and 550 hours of craft study, evenly split between general and specialized knowledge. You’re a badass.

By now you have a good idea where you stand on the various aspects of writing. Spend half your time on the things you suck at. Focus on your strengths for the other half. This keeps morale up by flexing your writerly muscles on the easy stuff, and sucking wind on the harder stuff. And it lets you lean into your strengths, honing them to a razor’s edge. Eventually, your biggest weakness will change and your focus will shift accordingly. If you’re concerned about your strengths becoming too ingrained, you can move onto just working on weaknesses, or two different weaknesses, but make sure to take care of yourself. It can be painful to be that self-critical for too long.

Where are we? We spend 30 - 60 minutes a day writing, (we’ll say 45 going forward), 45 minutes reading in genre, and 45 minutes working on craft. That’s 2.25 hours (2 hours 15 minutes) a day every day, 365 days/year. You don’t have to do it exactly this way. You can frontload your writing and do your craft and reading on the weekend if you like, or any combination you can think up. I prefer to do the craft work first each day, then my writing, then my reading. This is because whatever novel I’m reading will influence my writing if I do it first, and I don’t have time to clean that up every day.

You may also need to take days off here and there, especially if you have familial obligations and/or celebrate major holidays. Plus, some people just burn out if they do this kind of thing every day without rest. Figure out what works for you. The important thing is to figure out how fast you do things, how much you want to do, and how long that will take you. Then plan life accordingly.

That’s all for now. In part 3 we’ll discuss other aspects of successful writing careers such as website management, social media presence, and writerly relationships. I’m not great at those first two, so we’ll be working off my flawed personal experience and a lot of supposition. But that’s next time. Get back to writing.