You can’t manage what you can’t measure, is one of those business idioms that you’ll hear quoted a million times in your career, if you work in a corporation.
My tool of choice for tracking my progress is Duotrope’s Digest, a genre market tracking website. At first I just used the site to get feedback on short story market response times. The difference between Duotrope and similar sites is that they give users the ability to see their submissions up along side the market trends.
Before Duotrope, I used spreadsheets and slagged together information from a variety of websites and put it in a spreadsheet. I had slightly more flexibility in creating my own reports in that format, but I’m not looking to be a market research for a living. Do I need the information. sure. Did I need to play Sherlock Holmes? Not so much.
Another tool that I used with similar results to the spreadsheet was Spacejock Software’s Sonar, which is a fine tool with a much better interface than Excel, and a number of useful built-in reports.
There are those who would rather not have their submission information online. It’s a valid point, but as there is not a lot of risk of the information that they story being detrimental. That’s just my opinion.
The point to this whole thing? There are many different solutions out there to track your submissions and if you’re looking to make a living at it, you should get organized.
Duotrope's Digest
Posted in thoughts.
Tagged with duotrope, tracking, writing.
By jeff
– June 20, 2010
Yeah, that's me starting down evil cultists
It’s been about a month since I had DragonAge up on the big screen, but I’m happy to report that I’ve completed it some 100+ hours over the course of two months. I’m a swords & sorcery wonk, but this was easily the most engaging computer game that I’ve played in forever. As a writer, the plots, subplots, and dialog were impressive.
The replayability is HUGE, given that so much of the game focuses on your own origin story.
Posted in thoughts.
Tagged with computer game, distractions, DragonAge.
By jeff
– June 17, 2010
It’s been a little while since I’ve posted in a regular basis, but it’s apparent that the spammers out there like an active site. I think I would have expected that they were more interested in populating sites that were less frequently maintained, but I stand corrected.
Happily the spam software that I’m using protects me from seeing 99% of the spam postings, and even those that I do see are just to review.
photo credit:theimpulsivebuy
Posted in thoughts.
Tagged with blog, spam.
By jeff
– June 15, 2010
I’ve never claimed to be an artist.
Art is a noble endeavor and those that undertake it should be commended in their desire to advance the aesthetic. I don’t claim that I get everything that is tagged as “art”, but I appreciate the dialog that it starts.
What gets stuck in my craw is “artists” who claim that their being stifled by some external force. They cry, “Insert your favorite publisher here don’t understand me. If they were really innovators like they say they are, they publish my stuff.”
Ummm… no. I’ve been a product guy for more than a few years and the markets don’t owe you jack no matter how good/avant guard/unique/special you think you are. They (the markets… focus artists, this isn’t always about you and your art) have their own stakeholders that they need to satisfy.
If you’re looking to share your work, you can either put it out there yourself (create a website, do your own marketing, etc.) OR figure out what the people signing the checks are looking for. No one owes you a living.
The latter is accomplished by doing your market research and getting your read on. I’ve been doing this by loading up kindle with this month’s offerings from magazines that I like to read and wouldn’t mind getting published in one day. While it doesn’t guarantee me acceptance, it does give me a fighting chance to share my writing and moving one step closer to treating writing a paying gig. After a couple of weeks of research (in between writing) there are at least three markets that I have a good feel for the themes and tone that they’re looking for, which goes above and beyond anything that you’ll find in their submission guidelines.
JA Konrath deserves a big shout out for inspiring this post. If you’re a writer or a reader interested in how the publishing business works, go check out his blog at: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com
photo credit: Daquella manera
Posted in thoughts.
Tagged with art, JA Konrath, publishing, writing.
By jeff
– June 13, 2010
After a year without consistent results from all of our members the writing group that I belong to decided to take things to the next level. But where to start? We were stale. We needed a change.
We’ve always been supportive and have been there when one person or another has raised their hands for help, but those times were few and far between. We also had moments when most of us chose not to get that critical extra set of eyes on our work before sending our work out to the cold hard world.
Individual goal setting always seems to work, at least for a short amount of time, so why not on a larger scale, right? Right indeed. The results are nothing short of remarkable.
What did we do?
We set a deadline. One chapter or short story by the twentieth of the month. Reviews to follow: within two weeks of the date if possible. Advanced notice of any deviation from the plan.
The results
Entering into our fourth month now with a monthly deadline I’m happy to report that all of us have taken our writing and critiquing to new levels. Just a couple of observations include:
- Establishment of a standard critique format – This was largely provided by one of our members. Not everyone uses every part of the standard every time, but it always makes an appearance in some form.
- Critiquing that is more varied by member – You would think that with a standardized format, that we would have similar critiques, but not by a long shot. It appears that the format is having the opposite effect.
- Regular, high quality contributions – This was the goal, but we’ve really taken it to the next level. In some cases the submissions are a little more raw than we’ve done in the past, however everyone has been good about calling out the level of their own editing that they’ve done and if they don’t want one type of critiquing or another on their work.
Ultimately, the result has been better storytelling across the board that is that much closer to to getting published. I’m loving it. My latest critique on Chapter 1 of a novel that I worked on earlier this year is already getting me thinking about refining some of the main characters’ journeys.
What tips or tricks has your writing group used to take things to the next level?
photo credit: Mario Carvajal
Posted in thoughts.
Tagged with editing, goals, writing group.
By jeff
– April 28, 2010
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