Taking the Plunge

Dare I admit that I've sent out a submission?

 

Patting myself on my back here. I really did! Pinching myself now.

See, if you're like me and the whole self-confidence or lack thereof is an issue, it's not easy to share such a milestone. But there you have it, I've sent a partial out, and you betcha that I'm praying all over it, and praying for a healthy dose of toughness, too.

They say you're not a writer until you've received a hundred rejections. Well, maybe not a hundred, but you know what I mean. Now I've only received two rejections so far in this near nine-year writing journey of mine, and to be honest, one I sent in those very early years when I was way too naive so I don't consider it a serious submission. And I thank the Good Lord for it being rejected!

The other I sent in a rush because I heard this particular house was "hurting" for manuscripts. Now, that story I'd spent a good number of years working on, so the rejection that came did hurt, even if I suspected it would be the outcome despite the years of work I'd done on it. Deep inside I knew I still wasn't ready for publication nor was my writing at that time.

But this time, I feel like this story has real potential. I'm guarding my heart and running through a slew of reasons why a rejection might come back. Not near touching all of them here, but here's a small sampling:

• Your getting there, but your writing just isn't strong enough yet.
• Not a good fit for our readership. Your heroine's too sassy.
• Your characters are two-dimensional. 
• Your plot is weak. 
• Sorry, already bought a similar one.

Need I go on? 

So as I prepare myself for my next rejection, I'm also preparing myself for a miracle! I like to burn candles at both ends it would seem.

I continue to polish and re-polish this manuscript as I wait, and will move onto a new project soon--a sequel to this story. And I'm looking forward to taking Deborah Raney's ACFW Loop Course, The Business End of Writing.

If you're interested in joining me in taking this homework-free course, you can sign up by going to www.acfw.com and logging on. Click "Get Connected" on the top bar. Choose E-loops and subscribe to the ACFW Course Loop.

Hope to see you there!

 

  

Surrendering to Him,   

 

Eileen

Applying Business Principles & Practices to your Writing Life Series: Vision Statement

Post # 1 in series: Vision Statement

The Business Side:

The Wikipedia definition of vision statement is: A vision statement plays a key role in an organization. The goal of a vision statement is to clearly articulate an aspirational statement about what the company wants to be longer term.

There are various views on how long a vision statement should be, and how far it should look into the future. Generally, the statement is meant to span years and would only be revisited quarterly or annually. Developing a vision statement should take some time, and as a result, you may want to revisit it more frequently when you first create it, and tweak it as needed.

Vision statements are meant to align an organization. These high level statements can help employees make difficult decisions, by simply referring back to the company's vision statement and asking: how does this option align with our companies vision?

In some organizations visions are cascaded down. There is an overall company vision, and then each area creates their own vision to align with the company's overall vision.


Applying this Principle to your Writing Life:

One of the biggest gains a writer can attain by creating their own vision statement is "focus". Once you know where your writing energy is to be focused, then you will know whether or not to spend time on a given project. A well defined vision statement that takes into account your values (we'll be discussing this in a later post), can basically act as a filter in determining which projects to take on, and how much time you should allot to them. A vision statement can be related to a priority list in some ways. If a certain challenge doesn't in some way fit into an element in your vision statement, then you need to either adjust your vision statement, or confidently decline working on the project.

Some steps you might want to go through to create your Initial Writer's Vision Statement:

1. Consider all that you do right now that is writing related. Take a few minutes to run through your daily, weekly, monthly tasks, and list all that could fall under your writing umbrella.
2. Now, ask yourself why you do each of those items that you listed under your writing umbrella.
3. Analysing your reasons, consider if it is worthwhile to continue? (Keep your values and morals in mind here. Not everything worthwhile that you do will necessarily be for personal or financial gain, and yet still, it may be important and something you feel called to do.) If you can justify doing something to your satisfaction, then you'll want to include it somehow in your vision statement. If you can't justify it, then resolve to stop wasting your time on it. Perhaps it's to be taken up in another season of your life, just not in this one. Create your actions list (what you want included in your vision) according to your findings.
4. Now, is there something you've been WANTING to do, FELT CALLED to do right now, or in the near future, but just haven't felt you had the time to incorporate into your life? If so, go over # 2, and # 3 above for it, and discern whether or not it should be included in your action list for defining your vision statement. This may be where you look longer term, what you aspire to do. If it's something you feel strongly about, then you'll want to add it to your vision statement to help you start setting the plan in motion.
5. With your action list available, and everything justified in your mind and heart, go to creating a writer's vision that encompasses all the items on your action list in a generic, yet definitive way.

As an example, here is my vision statement.

"To share inspirational stories in a published format, support and promote fellow writers, continue to learn and grow as a writer and in faith, and to share personal reflections and knowledge that I've gained along the way, all in a Christian perspective."

You'll notice that the wording is sufficiently generic enough that I can fit many of my projects that I hold dear to me under each high-level concept, but it also gives me a clear perspective of what I want to spend my time on under my writing umbrella.

Now it's your turn. Try your hand at writing a vision statement for your writing life. We'd love to read yours, so feel free to paste it into the comment section. Next Monday we'll be coming back to this series to discuss Values.

Blessings,

Phil and Eileen

Applying Business Principles & Practices to your Writing Life Series: Introduction

A bit of background: Together, my husband and I have over 30 years of experience in the business world. This includes working for small companies and very large companies, in positions ranging from entry level to Assistant Vice President. As many of you know, I have been working on learning the craft of fiction writing for nearly five years at some level or another, so this series is helping me, too. These posts are intended to share some of the ideas, principles and practices we learned in the business world (mostly my husband's part), and then show how we can take these concepts and apply them to our writing life (mostly my part), making our writing time more efficient, productive, and rewarding.

For this series, the business principles and practices posts will be divided into two sections:

Firstly: Strategic

The purpose of the strategic items is to outline the fundamentals of what the business needs to achieve. These are the overarching items that are set at the highest levels of the organization to help guide decision-making. For us writers, these high-level concepts will help us gain focus and direction in what we write and how we promote our writing, etc. The items we will cover in this part of the series are:

Vision Statement
Values
Brand
Mission Statement
Wrap-Up Strategic Post: Vision & Values in Action

Secondly, We'll take a look at some of the Tools required to make a business work.

After the strategic items have been set, we need to figure out how to move forward in line with these items. To do that, we'll covered the following in this section.

Goal Setting
Measuring your progress
Planning
Brainstorming
Presentation skills

In each post we'll explain the business concept, and then show how you might apply it to your writing life. Whether you dabble in writing, or look at it as your profession, I believe this series will help you define your focus, and increase your productivity.

If there is a particular business practice or principle that you have heard of and would like discussed, but is not outlined above, please let us know, and we’ll see what homework we can do to incorporate it into additional posts.

We're looking forward to sharing this series, and pray that you will gain much from it.

Blessings,

Phil and Eileen