Organizing: Strategizing Your Writing Career
* Strategy is hard work.
* Strategy pays off massively.
Strategy is hard work because it will never really end. If you’re going to succeed in your writing career, you will need to be continually refining your Strategy. Having a sound strategy doesn’t guarantee you’ll be successful, but it makes your success much more probable.
The reason Strategy is important is because in your writing career, you’ll be asked to do far more things than you can possibly do. You will never, ever have time to do it all. A sound Strategy will tell you what to do yourself, what to hire somebody else to do, and what to let go.
My thinking on this has been shaped quite a bit by the book, THE E-MYTH REVISITED, by Michael E. Gerber. I highly recommend this book, which is not about writing, it’s about running an effective business. Writing is a business, so the principles apply, even though Mr. Gerber never mentions fiction writing in his book.
What is “the e-myth”? It’s the starry-eyed notion that just because you’re in business, you somehow magically become an entrepreneur. Anybody can strap on ice skates, but that doesn’t make them a hockey player. Anybody can start a business, but that doesn’t make them an entrepreneur. The minute you make the decision to write a novel with the hope of selling it someday, you’re in business. But you’ll only be an entrepreneur if you take action to do so. And most writers don’t.
So what makes you an entrepreneur? For the full story, I recommend you read THE E-MYTH REVISITED. One essential task that entrepreneurs do is to plan their business from the very beginning as if it were already large and successful. Then they make a strategic plan to get to where they want to be.
The very first step on this road is actually the scariest. This is the step that causes most writers to dig in their heels and say no. Here’s where most writers screw it up and never, ever get it right. A crucial thing that every large and successful business has is an org chart — a simple document that tells who does what, and who is accountable to whom.
I know exactly what you’re thinking right now. Why the heck does a little one-person business need an org chart, when all you want to do is write fiction? The answer is that you want to do more than write fiction. You want to make money. If you don’t want to make money, then I’ll agree that you’re not in business and you don’t need an org chart. But if you do intend to make money from your writing, then you’re in business and you CAN’T do everything that you’ll need to do to thrive. You will eventually
need to hire somebody. At which point, your little business will be an organization.
You might as well get off to a good start. It takes all of about ten minutes and you can do it right now. In fact, I’ll give you a prototype org chart below. All you have to do is type your name in every slot in the chart, and you’re done. Then for the rest of your career, you’ll be looking for ways to hire out the roles in your business that you can’t or won’t or
shouldn’t do.
Every time you hire somebody to play a role in your business, you can delete your name from that slot in the org chart and type in that person’s name. Now you instantly know what they do and to whom they report. The larger your business gets, the fewer roles in the org chart will have your name in them. That’s fine. That’s great in fact. The fewer roles you play, the better you can play the one you really want to play — the role of writer.
As you get more successful, you’ll have people to do your admin work, your accounting, your marketing, your legal work, and a miriad of other things. You CAN’T do it all yourself and be successful. So you might as well get the structure of your business correct from the get-go.
Here is a prototype org chart for your business as a writer. It’s like an outline. Each person reports to the person one level up.
* Chief Executive Officer: You
* Administrative Assistant: You
* Chief Operations Officer: You
* Writer: You
* Editor: You
* Graphic Designer: You
* Literary Agent: You
* Customer Relations Manager: You
* Marketing Director: You
* Brand Manager: You
* Webmaster: You
* Blog Editor: You
* E-mail Newsletter Editor: You
* Social Network Manager: You
* Chief Financial Officer: You
* Accountant: You
* Manager of Accounts Payable/Receivable: You
You will probably always be the CEO of your business. You will definitely always be the Writer. But you can hire somebody else for every other role in the chart. As you get successful, you’ll need to hire people to do at least some of these roles. Here is the approximate order you might fill those roles:
* Probably your first “hire” will be to find a critique buddy to fill the role of Editor for free. Everybody needs a second opinion on their writing, and you typically pay back your critique buddy by playing the same role for her.
* Eventually, you’ll find an agent to play the role of Literary Agent, since very few writers are competent to be their own agent. Agents work for a percentage of your income, so they don’t get paid until you do. You don’t need an agent until you’re writing well enough to sell your work.
* Once you make your first sale, you may find it useful to hire an Accountant to do your accounting and file your taxes. Part time, of course. A few hours per year, but they’d probably be the most hellish hours of the year if you had to do them yourself.
* Before your first book comes out, you’ll need a real webmaster to build you a web site. You’ll pay an upfront cost and then there’ll be ongoing expenses at a much lower rate.
* After you’ve written a few novels, you may find it useful to hire a freelance editor to help you shape your story ideas before you show them to your agent. You pay for this on a project basis — it isn’t a full
time job.
* When the e-mail starts arriving in your in-box in the dozens per day, you’ll very likely handle a Customer Relations Manager to answer the easy e-mail. This will probably never be more than a few hours per week, unless you become massively famous.
* If you get asked to do a lot of speaking, you might hire an Administrative Assistant to help you deal with the details, plan your trips, and handle the routine administrivia that most writers hate, hate, hate. Once again, this is strictly a part-time job.
* If your books start doing well, your publisher will expect you to up your game in marketing, social media, and blogging. Unless you really excel at these, you mayhire out some or all of this work to a Brand Manager, aSocial Network Manager, and a Graphic Designer. You may
even hire a Marketing Director to keep all these people under control.
* If you do extremely well, you’ll find that your blogand e-mail newsletter are just too much, and you may hire a Blog Editor and an E-mail Newsletter Editor.
* If you’re making so much money (and spending so much) that the bookkeeping gets to be a hassle, you can hire a bookkeeper to cash your checks and pay your bills (your Manager of Accounts Payable/Receivable).
These won’t happen all at once. But as your career grows, it’s entirely possible that you could end up hiring somebody to play every role except CEO and Writer. Those are your jobs.
It’s worth repeating that most of the people you hire will be working for you only part time. They’ll be independent contractors whom you pay an hourly wage or a fixed fee or a percentage of earnings to do the crucial support tasks that will keep you on task.
Which is writing.
Your main job will always be to write. And you can’t write if you’re worn down with all the roles that a successful business requires.
One of the most important things you can do to make yourself successful is to simply begin acting RIGHT NOW as if you’re going to be successful someday. As if you’re going to need to hire all those people. If you don’t plan for it, then either it won’t happen, or it’ll happen in a weird, wild, willy-nilly way that makes it hard for you to manage.
Don’t do that to yourself. Plan now for success. Because someday, you might be immensely successful. It’s easier to set yourself on the right course now when you’re small than to do a course correction later when you’ve built up a lot of momentum in the wrong direction.
Here’s your homework assignment: Paste the above org chart into your word processor, restructure it as an outline, and type in the correct name for every role. Then print it out and hang it where you can see it every day.
That’s your future. May it be wildly successful.
