The Evolving Writing Career

What’s on the iPod: Yes I Would by Frightened Rabbit

After all the nuptial hubbub this month, I’m finally settling back down into work routines. I’m lining up interviews for an article assignment and I’m doing some prelim work on a query I intend to send out today. Plus, the marketing and LOIs continue in earnest.

As I was sending out one of those LOIs a few weeks ago, I got to chatting with one of the people I’d contacted. Yesterday, we had lunch. We hit it off like we’d been friends for years. That’s what I love most about marketing — making new friends. We may never work together, but we’re definitely going to be friends.

I talked also with some writer friends in email who were discussing writer platforms. Truth be told, when I started writing children’s books, the idea of a writer having a platform was unheard of. You wrote a book. You submitted it. You held your breath until you got some kind of answer. You repeated the process.

If only that were true these days. Now, writers are expected to have the ability to get their work noticed, creating a buzz around your personal brand. Not your book necessarily, but you, the author. Tess Gerritsen does this well, as does Diana Gabaldon. It’s reaching out to the public and letting yourself become known, talked about, among other things. That’s the simplified version of a complex, interesting new way writers do business with publishers.

And it’s essential to know before you approach any publisher. But often, writers don’t know the expectations, or they do, but expect to be the exceptions to the new rules. News flash: your book may be fabulously written and knock the socks off the editor, but unless you’re able to prove you have a ready-to-buy audience, you may not get anywhere. Yes, exceptions do exist, but they’re as rare as unicorns these days.

The same goes for any change in writing or the writing business. I know people who were taught decades ago that using statistics to start an article was unacceptable. Yet I was taught in the late 90s in J school that it’s one tool writers can use to get the readers interested. Times, and needs, change. I’ve had several published articles that have started with statistics.

If you’re pining for the way things used to be, consider these facts:

Even television has evolved. Just try buying a big, bulky television with tubes inside. They’re long gone as better technology has replaced those relics. The same goes for antiquated ideas. If you’re arguing using words like “I was taught to never/always” then you could be working with outdated information.

Reality then is not reality now. Think that’s not true? Do you still call people on a cell phone the size of a cinder block? Remember the good old days of phones being connected to walls? With cords? You still use a phone, but the instrument has changed. The same thing goes for writing; you still write using words, but the rules have adapted to more modern interpretations. If you’ve ever started a sentence with a preposition, you already know things aren’t the same as they were back in high school English class.

If you don’t adapt, you die. If you don’t roll with the changes and continue to fight against the changing tides, you’re going under. Learn to transition your career and your habits to match what’s expected by the majority of clients. That’s not to say learn to take less money for your work — the opposite should be true since you’re now expected to do a lot more for that money. The changes you’ll adapt to in grammar and punctuation rules, in marketing expectations, in writer platforms, etc. are necessary to the survival in your writing career.

Whining is boring. Seriously, get off your duff and learn your trade. Yes, you’ve learned it years ago and have always managed with that knowledge. But guess what? You’re about to become obsolete because of your resistance to learning new things. Find out who expects what of you, how to deliver it, and how you can amend your current practices to best serve your clients’ needs without having to reinvent the wheel. And please, stop boring your friends with tales of the golden days when freelance writing was alive and you had no gray hairs. That just makes your gray hairs much more noticeable.

Writers, what changes have you had to make in how you do business in just the last five or ten years?
What’s been the most surprising industry change for you?