How to Build Systems so You Can Reach Your Writing Goals

Stephanie Morrill is the creator of GoTeenWriters.com and the author of several young adult novels, including the historical mystery, The Lost Girl of Astor Street (Blink/HarperCollins). Despite loving cloche hats and drop-waist dresses, Stephanie would have been a terrible flapper because she can’t do the Charleston and looks awful with bobbed hair. She and her near-constant ponytail live in Kansas City with her husband and three kids. You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and sign up for free books on her author website.

This post is the third in a series about goals. In case you missed it, we talked two weeks ago about stating our writing goals. Even those big ones that we can't control 100%. Then last week, I talked about recognizing and documenting our personal writing rules.

Today we get less dreamy and more boots-on-the-ground. We're going to examine each goal, identify what we do now to action on achieving it, and building systems so that we make sure those actions happen. Working on these steps feels like constructing a ladder so we can more easily climb to where we want to be.

To make this post super accessible, let's use a goal that many of you have mentioned to me, that you would like to be traditionally published by the time you graduate high school. (Those of you who are interested in self-publishing, we're going to talk about that too.)

First, let's start brainstorming actionable items:

If you want to take action on your goal, the place to start is assessing what you have control of. To get traditionally published, you'll need a few things in place:

1. A stellar manuscript
2. An agent (probably) and an editor (definitely)
3. A platform (likely)

This is an overly simplistic list, but it'll serve our purposes for today.

Let's take these one-by-one. If you don't yet have a stellar manuscript, that's the first thing you need. (It's basically impossible to get a book published if you don't have the book written, right?) There are lots and lots of actionable items that I could list on this one alone, but for time's sake, I'll include a few. Assuming you've already written the book, your actionable items might be:

• Do at least two rounds of edits. If you're feeling overwhelmed by edits, the Go Teen Writers book was written to be a helpful guide through that process.
• Ask several friends to read the manuscript and give you feedback. Ideally these are friends who know a thing or two about story structure, grammar, and writing. But before I had writing friends, I received several very thoughtful critiques from friends who simply enjoyed reading, so receiving their feedback can still be helpful. (I also received some very bad, damaging feedback along the way, which is the nature of opening yourself up for critique.)
• Continue to study the craft of fiction by reading books, listening to podcasts, taking courses, or reading blog posts.

Obviously, this isn't an exhaustive list of everything you need to do to write a fabulous, shelf-worthy book. We have several fairly detailed series on the blog about writing novels from beginning to end, so maybe start with the Looking for Something Specific tab if you're wanting a more extensive list of posts on that subject.

Onto agents and editors. There are lots of different ways to look for these seemingly illusive people. Most of the time you need an agent before you can gain access to editors, but not always. Writing conferences are the easiest place to get direct access to agents and editors, but if you live somewhere rural or can't afford to travel, that may not be an option. Here are some ways you can take action on finding an agent or editor from home:

• Lots of agents have blogs or are active on social media. This is a great way to learn about their personalities, tastes, and what they're looking for. 
• You'll need to know how to explain your book in an interesting sentence or two, so you can work on that. You should also have an idea of where your book fits in the market. What other books are like it? What established authors do you have a similar style to?
• You could take part in (or stalk) an online event like #pitmad 

Again, these are just a few ideas to get you started.

Lastly, if you want to be published traditionally, you need to have some kind of internet presence. No publishing house will expect you to have a ridiculous number of followers, but like editor Jillian Manning said when she was with us back in May, it's concerning when she searches for a writer online and finds nothing. 

• If you haven't yet, at least reserve your website name, which should be yourname.com. If you can't get that, you can add "books" or "author" to it, but it's best if you can get your name.
• If you haven't already, and if your parents say it's okay, pick a social platform and focus on growing it and learning how to use it well. Don't put pressure on yourself to be everywhere, but be somewhere.
• Start your email list. This is a metric publishers care more and more about. If you want to see what kinds of things authors talk about in their emails, start by signing up for a few lists. Like maybe mine, Jill's, and Shan's. *Wink, wink*

These suggestions are all items that will help you move closer to your goal of being a published author, whether that ends up being in high school or after.

Maybe your goal is self-publishing. While many of the suggestions above still apply, here are some other ideas that are unique to indie publishing:

• The indie author community is a generous one. Find the experts. Read their books, listen to their podcasts, and take their tutorials.
• Follow indie authors on social media. When you find authors you really like, buy their books and see if there are ways you can help them out. Like being on a launch team or writing consumer reviews.
• Look for Facebook groups or blogs dedicated to indie publishing. Not only can you connect with and learn from other authors, but this will also be a good way to find freelance editors and designers.
• Work on growing your platform, same as if you were trying to be traditionally published. You will need ways to tell people about your books!

Once you've brainstormed a list of ideas for taking action on achieving your goal, you can start to find space for those tasks on your calendar. The easiest way I've found to do that is to build systems:

Create systems:

Meeting a big goal always involves making regular space in your schedule to chip away at the tasks. You can't spend a day building a social media presence and then mark it off your list forever, right? Instead, it's better to come up with ways that you can make a little progress on a regular basis.

Using social media as an example, the system you build could be something like, "In the five minutes that I wait for my bus to arrive, I'm going to look up an author I like and follow them on Twitter." That's a system (or the start of a system) you're putting in place to build your following. Donald Miller refers to this as "adding something to the plot" of achieving your dream or goal.

Or if you have a personal writing rule that involves learning more about the craft, maybe instead of listening to music while you clean your room, you instead listen to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast. We're just looking for little habits we can change that will help us chip away at our goals.

Even though new systems can feel stiff and difficult at first, it doesn't take long for them to start making your life easier. My system for getting books written is that when my baby naps and my kids are at school, I write. I never think about turning on the TV instead of writing during my designated time, unless I'm really sick. That hasn't always been true for me, but because I've been working my system for almost ten years now, writing is a habit and watching Gilmore Girls reruns isn't.

What are some ways you can take action on your goal? Do you need to develop a system to help?