Setting goals is one of those human potential, secrets of successful people, business best practices that the artist inside us distrusts instinctively.
A rigid goal might subvert a process!
A goal might obscure the forrest for the trees!
Nowadays though, as working writers share their lives in detail, word counts, workflows, goals are all around us. Nanowrimo demystified the ‘pumping out a shitty first draft’ thing. Writers of my generation may have imagined a golden creative life that didn’t include nine-to-five agony, production schedules, meetings, outlines, external inputs. Writers blissfully pecking out masterpieces lashed only by beneficent muses… Ah. The dream!
The reality is now more visible.
So, tabling the dream of taking a month break from you day job to bang out a bestseller that makes you rich, what goals are left?
TL;DR. Live. Read. Research. Write. Get feedback. Edit. Submit. Repeat.
Every bit of writing advice you’ll ever get boils down eight things. (if we throw learning into living or researching. Heck. Maybe it’s nine things.) Do all those things and you’ll probably get wherever you are meant to go.
Bye now. Drive safely!
But if the devil is in the details, when does one attempt to do something like getting into SFWA, the Science Fiction Writers of America, or any other professional writers group with a difficult entry requirement?
Typically, this is after one has written a bunch of stories, gotten feedback, submitted a few to many places, maybe had a little interest, maybe sold one or two to non-professional markets.
All of a sudden you are looking for goals. Milestones.
What good is SFWA as a goal?
So I googled some generic business person goal self-help and read a ton of them. I translated them into SFWA specific thinking, but before we get to that we will answer an even more basic question.
How to Discover if you even want to Join SFWA.
Read a recent issue or two, or a story or two, from each of the SFWA qualifying markets at this link and ask yourself this question.
- How much of this work do I enjoy?
- Do I want my work to appear in these venues?
- Would my work satisfy these readers?
If your immediate and unambiguous answers are negative, you don’t like the work in these markets and you don’t want to be in them don’t focus on SFWA as a goal.
You can still submit to these places. The great thing about SF is that as consolation for that no simultaneous submissions rule of most major markets, SF doesn’t do reading fees.
Submissions cost you nothing but the response time.
Maybe you are a part of this scene, and you can’t see it. Never count yourself out. Knock on all the doors. But if you don’t read and don’t like what’s being published and collected today, don’t waste time and energy beating yourself up about not selling to these places. It may not happen.
This doesn’t mean you aren’t a real writer.
If you are naturally a long form writer, concentrate on novels, for trad or indy. Most short indy sells badly, so just write novels if they’re in you; if you are attending Short Story University, consider working in a single consistent universe so that the shorts might find an audience after your novels in that universe start selling. (Again, you don’t have to take my word for anything. Try selling your own indy short spec pic if you want. Amazon doesn’t charge for publishing, but ancillary costs, cover and copyedit and formatting can cost plenty, and the charges pile up high for every title.)
Advantages of setting SFWA as a goal include.
Clearer Focus: The nebulous goal of ‘becoming a real writer,’ or ‘becoming a pro’ can now be turned into concrete activities with their own logic, workflow, and timelines.
Time Management: Having committed to the goal, the more time you put in the better, obviously, but other time issues include submission strategies, the response times of varying markets, coping with the genre’s prohibition of simultaneous submissions, creating strategies for dealing with slow and moribund markets, etc.
Peace of Mind: Having decided SFWA is a goal, and you’ll be doing the reading, research and work involved resolves some of the existential questions about your writing. Like, should I give my stuff away for free on Wattpad, or the web or at Amazon? No, that won’t get me into SFWA. Should I submit my story first to a new market that says it pays well? No. Wait on that. You can try them eventually with stories that have been passed on the markets that will get you into SFWA. That new market may be certified…. Keep an eye on it. Read the first issues. See if its a place you want your work to appear. SFWA isn’t everything, you may still want to submit there immediately. But be mindful of this choices impact on the goal.
Clarity: See above. You are accepting that the SFWA community is doing work you think is worth doing, work you want to do, work you want to be a part of. You are particularizing your love of writing, and your love of Spec Fic as it is currently being written today. Focusing the activity toward this goal.
Straightforward Metrics: As your stories are accepted, or your indypubbed book is selling, you approach your goal in discrete measurable steps. With a single sale, you can gain access to SFWA as an associate member, and while you cannot vote on the Nebula, you will gain access to the private SFWA forums. Getting into SFWA as a voting member subsumes this intermediate goal.
Freedom from Doubt: Should I quit spec fit and write horror? Mainstream? You know I could just write novels. I should just write novels. Wait. Am I good enough yet? I don’t know. Oh, I want to join SFWA. I’m halfway there. I can include SFWA and shorts in my long term plan even as I work on novels, too…
Community Goal Support. (referred to in some business person lists as ‘ease of communication.’) Goal established, patch into networks of people who share the goal. This group will gather and share information about themed anthologies coming down the pike that are open to all, or closed anthologies that are open to people you may come to know, people who may invite you in, or tell you who to ask for a pass. People who will share their data points, about editors likes and dislikes, response times and strategies. Duotrope and Submission grinder makes some of this less vital than it once was, but there’s still no substitute for the word straight from the folks in the trenches.
So, that’s the pre-amble, the prequel trilogy / Triplanetary to my Getting Into SFWA series. Next: Finding Markets, Submissions Strategies, and Weathering the Storm.
