A Writer’s Life: More About the Process of Going Pro

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about the first little steps of transitioning from full-time-student-looking-for-a-day-job to full-time writer, and I’m going to talk about it some more, this week. The process for turning into a professional writer is going to look different for everyone, but I’ll share bits and pieces of my journey, in case anyone else can find something useful for their own.

The last week of November, was the first full week of putting those first steps into practice—and they worked really well. I liked the results, and the way it looks to be a sustainable workload… and then Friday arrived, a disrupted day, where my work schedule fell apart in the morning and never really put itself back together, which left me in a bit of a quandary come Saturday.

I had words from Friday to do, and a book that had decided it wanted to go over the planned length, as well as a competition I’d been reminded about, and the tasks I had decided needed doing at the start of each month. Foremost among these was the legal requirement to upload anything I had published to the Australian National Library. (For those curious, it’s in the Australian Copyright Act.)

According to that requirement, I was well overdue, and I had slated the task for once I’d gotten my publish schedule for the end of the year back on track… which happened late last week, which meant Saturday was the day if I wasn’t to fall behind in other areas of my schedule.

Priorities-wise, the missing words weren’t too much of a problem, because I do a few extra every day, and they add up enough to cover the shortfall before the due date. No biggie there, unless I miss three or four days in a month, and then things get interesting, so I pulled up the administrative tasks, and set to work. It was educational, letting me know my storage system for covers and book files was exactly what I needed, but it took a while.

I wanted to either skip the competition, or put off making the entries, but I knew I’d be entering a few items and that the judges would prefer more time, rather than less—and it’s one of two competitions I hope to be entering on a regular basis. I bit the bullet on that one, and got the entries in. This kind of thing is going to be rolled into my submissions schedule, once the publishing schedule is on-line. More about that another time.

The first nine days of December consisted of more writing. I completed the young adult novel I wanted to release in January, and followed up on a novella that had been promised to me by Eleanor, under her pen name, Ellie Moonwater. That arrived this week, just as I started work on a chapter book in a series I started a couple of years ago.

This week, is officially my third week in December (although, in reality, it’s the second), and the priorities are shifting in ways I knew would happen, but hadn’t really taken into account time-wise. I need to finalise the publication process for December’s last release, and then push through January’s publications. After that I can finalise what I’m writing for February, and start on March… and I’d still like to add that chapter book into January’s schedule.

So, basically, there’s still a lot to learn about what writing for a living looks like for me, and most of that will come out in the doing. What I’ve learned these last few weeks is this:

Storing your files in a logical way that makes it easy to find them when you need them, and is vital to maintaining your workflow. Work out what works for you, and stick to it.

Consistency in your naming conventions is important for reader expectations, and for enabling you to maintain your product quality – I noted a few titling discrepancies that can be fixed by using a standard approach to sub-titles, and I’ll be implementing that approach.

Building in extra time for tasks, and working ahead where you can, is not a waste of time. Life can throw you curve balls at unexpected moments – and it will. By giving yourself a little more time than you need, and doing a little bit extra when you’re able, you can reduce the stress of deadlines and give yourself room to be flexible even when your workload’s heavy. I’ll be working on doing that even more as I move forward.

Uploading a final manuscript for pre-orders at the time you create the pre-order is vital for minimising stress and the chance of the wrong file being released to your readers. I will not be creating pre-orders until the final manuscript is ready to be turned loose. It prevents some of the file errors I’ve seen other authors suffer.

And that’s all I have, so far, beyond this: it’s all a learning curve, and the landscape shifts, so you have to be prepared to shift with it.