Every once in a while, I read something that’s like a light bulb coming on in a dark room. A really bright light bulb in a totally dark room.
I read one of those things on Friday, December 9, 2011. It was part of Randy Ingermanson’s monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine (which you can sign up for at no cost here).
It was in the column on organization and it had to do with organizing a vision.
With Randy’s very kind permission, I decided to post the column here rather than try to encapsulate it in my own words.
Organizing: The Vision Thing
By Randy Ingermanson
Last month, I talked about three essential skills you need if you want to succeed in any business — Vision, Strategy, and Tactics.
This month, we’ll look at Vision in more detail.
Different people mean different things by “Vision.” If you’ve ever read a corporate Vision Statement bogged down with baloney buzzwords about “creating value” and “leveraging competitive differences” and “managing knowledge,” then you know the hazard of vague generalities.
When I talk about Vision, I mean just this — something specific and difficult and worthwhile that you want to do or to have or to be.
Finishing a marathon or bringing clean water to a Third World village or getting your Ph.D. are all specific and difficult and worthwhile things you might want to do.
A house or a business or a racehorse are all things you might want to have.
A doctor or a grandmaster or a published novelist are things you might want to be.
Vision is personal. It’s up to you to decide what you want to do or have or be. Your family and friends might not get why it’s important to you. That’s their problem. Your problem is to do or get or become whatever it is you envision.
If you’re a writer, you need both a Vision for your career and a Vision for each individual book you write.
Why do you need Vision for your career? That’s simple. It gives you a clear and simple guideline for saying “yes” and saying “no” to everything that comes your way.
If your writing is any good at all, you’ll eventually be bombarded with excellent ideas from people about what you “ought” to do. Books you ought to write. People you ought to collaborate with. Projects you ought to join. Agents you ought to talk to. Editors you ought to work with.
If you have no clear Vision for what you want your career to look like, you’ll quickly get sidetracked with other people’s excellent ideas.
You need to be able to say, “Sorry, that’s not part of the vision I have for my career.” And you need to be able to recognize the rare opportunity that comes along that fits squarely with your Vision.
What’s your Vision for your career?
This really boils down to the following set of questions:
* What kind of books do you want to write? (The category or categories, the style, etc.)
* What kind of publisher do you want to work with?
* What kind of reader do you want to appeal to? (“Everybody” is not a good answer here.)
* What authors would you like to be compared to?
Maybe you want to write intellectual spy novels, published by a Big Six publisher, appealing to well-educated people who love John LeCarre novels.
Or maybe you want to write quiet Amish romances, published by a Christian publisher, appealing to Bible Belt readers who like Bev Lewis.
Or maybe you want to write young adult dystopic fantasy novels, published by a small independent publisher, and appealing to kids who like Suzanne Collins.
When you have a clear Vision for your career, you have instant guidelines on which kinds of writing books you should buy, what authors you should read, what storylines you should think about, what conferences you should go to, what agents you should talk to, what editors would be first on your list to meet.
Once you’ve defined the Vision for your career, you can refine that for each book you want to write. You don’t have to write exactly the same kind of book for the rest of your life. So long as the Vision for each book fits within your broad career Vision, you’ve got plenty of latitude.
What’s your Vision for the book you’re working on right now?
This Vision may be identical to your career Vision, or you might need to narrow it down even further:
* Exactly which category and subcategory will this book fall under?
* Can you name five to ten publishers who would be suitable publishers for this book?
* Can you narrow down the target audience for your book? Can you envision one particular reader who would be perfect in every way for this book?
* Which best-selling novel would you like the reviewers to compare your book to?
You either see the value of having a Vision or your don’t.
If you do, then take five minutes right now to write down your Vision for your career.
Don’t worry about making it profound. Worry about making it specific.
Don’t worry about whether it fits other people’s ideas of what you should work on. Worry about making sure that it fits YOUR idea of what you want to work on.
Don’t worry about getting it perfect, because you can always improve it later. Worry about getting it down on paper where you can be inspired by it every day.
If you survived writing your Vision for your career, take ten minutes and try to focus that down to a Vision for the current book you’re working on.
This will usually be a bit more specific than your career Vision, so it will take a little longer.
That’s it. Fifteen minutes of hard work can keep you on track for years.
Carrie’s Thoughts
The paragraphs that struck home for me are these.
If your writing is any good at all, you’ll eventually be bombarded with excellent ideas from people about what you “ought” to do. Books you ought to write. People you ought to collaborate with. Projects you ought to join. Agents you ought to talk to. Editors you ought to work with.
If you have no clear Vision for what you want your career to look like, you’ll quickly get sidetracked with other people’s excellent ideas.
You need to be able to say, “Sorry, that’s not part of the vision I have for my career.” And you need to be able to recognize the rare opportunity that comes along that fits squarely with your Vision.
I don’t have to worry about getting ideas from other people. I have more than enough ideas of my own to cause multiple derailments on the track of any project. Just ask my brainstorming partners!
But the Vision Randy talks about can help sort through my own ideas just as well as the ideas presented by other people.
Here’s The Light Bulb
I’ve been a painter all my life. I’ve been painting for money since junior high. I have learned what I like to paint and what I’m good at. My Vision for painting developed over the years with little or no effort on my part beyond all those things I was sure I could do but for which I had neither sufficient interest nor aptitude. The work was done, but it was work and, in most cases, it wasn’t my best.
Writing is the same way. I could tackle every idea I’ve jotted down, but there are many for which I have neither sufficient interest nor aptitude and which will detract from more worthy ideas if I pursue them. The value of knowing my writer’s Vision is in helping me divide the sheep from the goats when it comes to ideas.
I intend to take the suggested amount of time this weekend to write a vision for my writing career and a vision for my current novel.
I’ll check in next week to let you know how that turned out. Stay tuned….
Credit Where Credit is Due…
Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, “the Snowflake Guy,” publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 29,000 readers, every month. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.
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