Three things I did this week to help advance my writing career

Writing is two things:

1. The part time job that doesn’t pay you
2. The full time job that goes home with you and consumes every thought in your head

Now, I’m not here to complain about these things; they go with the territory. But trying to build your writing career really does take an insane amount of time.

When I’m not at the day job or spending time with my family, I’m working on writing. And even when I am at the day job or with the family, I’m most likely still thinking about writing.

I’m sure if you’re visiting this site, your goal is the same as mine:

To achieve maximum success in your writing.

You know how much work you need to put in. You know that there are no shortcuts. You know that to make it writing, you’ve got to do a hell of a lot more than simply write.

So with that in mind, here are Three things I did this week to help advance my writing career

Set up Google Drive to track goals

I’m one of those people who believes in the power of setting written goals. I find that my time spent writing is more productive when I set daily and weekly goals. Some of these are routine, such as keeping up with the social media stuff, visiting my favorite writing blogs, or reading Theme of Absence submissions. Others are more arbitrary or project based such as word counts or revision goals.

I had all of this in a spreadsheet on my laptop, but that did me no good when I was on a computer that wasn’t my own. So what I did was create a spreadsheet in my Google Drive to track all of this stuff. I have my daily goals in one column and just put an X in the column next to it when the task is complete, and I can access it anywhere, whether I have my laptop with me or not.

Joined a blog critique group

Write Good Books doesn’t exist to push myself as an author. I have my author site for that. No, Write Good Books is a site about the craft of writing. My vision for this site is to eventually become a community for writers to share and grow together. Like I say in my about page, when writers help writers, everyone gets better.

So with that in mind, I joined a blogging community at Scribophile to share critiques, tips, and strategies with other writers who blog. I’ve already received some great feedback from it and look forward to building relationships with some of the other writers there.

Signed up for some interviews to push Holy Fudgesicles

Finally, I have to admit that I’m a little slow on the book promoting. This week I set up a couple of online interviews and will actively start looking for more. I know I have a ton of work to do promoting the novel, so this is a very small forward, but a step forward nonetheless.

Like I implied in the opening, writing really is the full-time job that consumes your life and eats away your free-time. But if you want it (and I want it more than anything, for those of you keeping track) every single thing you can do to help advance your writing career is worth it.

The three things I listed here barely took any time to do, but they help with organizing, platform building, book promotion, all of which are extremely important in the long-term.

What extra things have you done lately to help advance your writing career?

Leave a comment and let us know!