Things serious writers do

I’ve earned a good living for 35 years as a writer, sometimes a corporate writer, sometimes a journalist, sometimes a technical writer, sometimes a proposal/grant writer. I’ve won awards for fiction and nonfiction. I spend a lot of time with other writers and we talk a lot about writing. Over the years I’ve been asked many questions about writing, and many of you who read this blog email me with more questions. Because my secondary career is teaching, I can’t resist combining the two with some educational information about writing and being a writer. I’ll be posting a variety of focused “how-to” essays on various aspects of being a writer—some I’ve discussed before, some I haven’t. If you have a specific question, please leave a comment or email me. To begin, here is a list of things serious writers do:

• Read. A lot!
• Write EVERY DAY, even if you have a non-writing day job.
• Spend time on at least a weekly basis doing marketing research: identifying publishers, media, agents, whatever.
• Send out zillions of queries on a regular basis. David Wright, a freelance writer who specializes in, among other things, corporate histories for such firms as Harley Davidson and Snap-on Tools as well as nonfiction travel books, told me once he sent out multiple queries each week every month. Because he targeted the publishers through market research, he got positive replies from about a quarter of them. That is phenomenal!
• Write anything—it doesn’t have to be a brilliant first draft. Have a lot of projects going, including a journal. Write on at least one of them daily.
• Spend more time in the pre-writing phase than actually writing the document (thinking about the subject, the audience, the plot if it’s fiction, organization, and research). This, like your marketing efforts, will mean other people (besides your mother) will actually get a chance to read what you write.
• Spend time with editors, agents, publishers, and other writers.