When Creating A Writing Plan

writing plan

What's your writing programme?

When I offset started writing, it was a spontaneous affair. I was a teenager, lying on my bedroom floor; I think I was talking to someone on the phone, and I'one thousand certain music was playing on my boombox, as it e'er was. There happened to be a pen and a screw-bound notebook (for schoolwork) in front of me, and before I knew information technology, I had written a poem.

In the years that followed, I continued to write spontaneously, and frequently. But I rarely polished anything, and I never submitted my piece of work for publication.

Non until I started this web log.

In the years after I started Writing Forward, I wrote and published several books on the craft of writing. I put out a science-fiction novel and a children'south affiliate book. I submitted my poetry, and even got some of it published.

But information technology wasn't this blog that made all that happen, although feeling accountable to a readership certainly helped. So what made the difference?

I developed a writing plan.

A Long-Term Writing Plan

I write a lot of different things: fiction in multiple genres, nonfiction, and poetry. The projects I want to stop are innumerable. I'g swimming in notes and ideas. In social club to actually execute whatever of my ideas, I need a long-term writing plan. Otherwise, I'll detect myself fluttering effectually from projection to project without ever finishing annihilation.

No 2 writers will have the same long-term plan. Your programme should be based on your goals, your skill level, and the realities of your life — how much writing you tin do in a given day, calendar week, month, or year. Yous might set up out to write your first novel in a year but discover it takes 2. From there, you can programme more than accordingly. Or you might launch three different book series with a programme to finish the beginning serial before finishing the others, only to find that the second series sells improve, so information technology makes more sense to focus on that one. This is why a flexible programme, especially at the beginning, is essential.

It's not always easy to stick with a long-term writing program. New ideas crop upwards, and sometimes we want to drop everything to explore them. Make certain you classify time in your schedule to work on projects and ideas that fall outside of your main writing programme.

Here are some tips for establishing a long-term writing plan:

List your goals. What practice you want to achieve with your writing? Do you want to land an agent? Become your work published in literary magazines and journals? Do you want to be a full-time author, or is writing something you want to do on the side?
List your project ideas. Include everything from verse to blog posts to books. Then put them in society. Which one will y'all finish first?
Plant a realistic schedule. I recommend always keeping one project in principal focus — that's the next project you lot'll complete or in some cases, a project that volition take a long time to cease. But you tin can piece of work on other stuff simultaneously, equally long equally you lot allow for information technology in your schedule.
Be reasonable and build in some flexibility. If you set unrealistic goals or brand your plan too rigid, everything could fall apart when y'all miss one of your deadlines. Be sure to pad the time you need to finish a project.
Document your long-term writing programme. This is when you write down your plan and brand a commitment to it.
Revisit your plan occasionally (especially after you finish big projects) to make adjustments. This is how yous learn what you can truly accomplish and how much fourth dimension you lot demand to accomplish it.

Projection Plans

Although some writing projects are brusque, like writing a blog post or a poem, many projects are rather big undertakings, such equally writing a volume (or a series), developing years' worth of content for a website, or getting enough poems published to eventually put out a collection. I find that each projection needs its own program.

Creating a programme for a specific project is pretty simple:

Identify the goal of the project. What does the finished product look like?
Break the project into major milestones. For a volume, this would probably be an outline, research, first draft, rewrite, etc.
Don't forget the business side of things. Do you need to compile a list of agents? Will you need to line up an editor or a cover designer? What kind of marketing will y'all need to do?
Break the major milestones into smaller tasks. Writing a typhoon, for instance, is a big undertaking. Tackle information technology chapter by chapter or scene by scene.
Establish a realistic timeline and document your plan. Commit to it.
When you lot finish your project, review your program and learn from it and so you can plan better next time.

What's Your Writing Plan?

A plan doesn't guarantee success, simply I've constitute that having a plan — and writing it downwards — makes success a lot more likely. Take you e'er put together a long-term writing plan? What about a project plan? How did information technology piece of work for yous? Share your thoughts past leaving a comment, and keep writing.

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