For Women Who Want to Write - Chapter Three

Chapter Three: A Consideration of End Goals

One of the things that trips up new writers is writing with an ego-driven end goal in mind. They want reassurance that they’ll get a book contract, sell the story to Hollywood, go on book tours, earn tons of royalties, etc., before writing their first sentence.

I’ve been there. We’ve probably all been there. If this is your goal, it’s fine. I would never throw shade on someone’s dream. And it could happen for you.

The issue here is two-fold. First, having this kind of end goal puts enormous pressure on what should be an enjoyable process - the creative process - and if you are fairly new to writing that’s more than enough to trip you up. You’ll delay, procrastinate, kick yourself for starting “slow,” and wonder why you’re having trouble if this is truly what you want to do.

Second, you may not have considered what your unique end goal actually is.

When I was growing up, the big author dream was to get published by Random House or Simon & Schuster and be sent on book tours and get on the New York Times bestseller list. If you’re my age, some traces of this may still exist in a corner of your brain.

There’s nothing wrong with this, if this is truly your dream. You should be aware though that the publishing industry has changed to the point where it is unrecognizable from what it once was. Mergers and acquisitions have reduced the number of major publishing houses and the rise of self- or indie publishing as a viable and accepted option has eroded the perceived prestige of “being published by a NY publishing house.”

So, in order to clear this potential obstacle, please think about what your personal end goal may be with your writing. This is solely to remove any pressure it might place on you right now and not to box you into making a decision that you can’t change later. You can always change what your end goal is.

Do you want to “write to market,” in other words, for commercial success, or is your goal basically the personal satisfaction of seeing your work published out in the world in some form?

Your end goal, right now, may be to simply publish your writing on a personal blog. Or it may be to become a New York Times bestselling author. For now, honor your writing and creativity by taking the time to develop your stories in an interior process and protect them by not talking about them yet. And always remember that you decide what your end goal is and that you can change it at any time.

Finding Your Unique Voice

Your unique voice as a storyteller will take time to emerge, and if you choose to show your writing to others, they will see it before you do.

This is because - just as you don’t know what your voice sounds like to others unless you hear yourself in a recording - you can’t recognize the “feel” of your writing as a whole.

But it’s always there. Each writer has a unique style of expressing their stories and characters and you are no exception.

At the beginning, the development of your unique voice, your own storytelling style, needs to be protected. You want to develop characters and story ideas in your own way.

For this reason, I suggest at least at first that you not use AI. I have no opinion on whether writers should use AI in general. It’s an individual choice. But using AI to come up with plots and characters or to write actual text as a beginning writer can affect your storytelling voice before you’ve even discovered what your individual storytelling voice is.

As a side note, if you are interested in being traditionally published, all of those contracts now include clauses prohibiting the use of AI (I recently signed one such contract with a small publisher). And Amazon KDP - Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon’s self-publishing platform - currently requires you to state whether you used AI either to write your book’s content or in an assisting capacity, for example, using the grammar checker Grammarly.

You’ve wanted to write for years. You may want to see what your own brain is capable of first before turning to artificial intelligence to aid the creative process.

The Final Obstacle to Starting

A certain self-consciousness can arise when you begin writing a story. Even if you try to ignore thoughts of what your partner, family members, friends, or children are going to think when they read it, this can stop you like a brick wall.

There is a way to write freely and without caring about the opinions of others. We’ll discuss the simple and foolproof solution for this in the next chapter.

Helpful Tips – End Goal Considerations and Finding Your Voice

• If your end goal is to write to market, study the market. The publishing industry has been in a constant state of flux for years and will likely be changing even as you write your first story. Keep up with changes regarding the New York “Big 5” publishers (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan) and in your chosen genre (romance, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, etc.). In particular note the hot trends - and how these trends can suddenly shift.
• If right now you are focused on writing for sheer personal expression, there are no limits on the kind of story you can write. Experimental stories that are three pages long, a re-visioning of Beowulf set in outer space... Or perhaps closer to the mainstream, take an established genre and explore the sub-genres within that genre. For example, I write romance, but it’s male-male and not male-female romance. The choice is yours.
• Whenever goals are brought up, discussions of hard work and write every day and other must-dos inevitably follow. All that may come later. Right now, at the beginning, lighten up. You’ve barely begun on this incredible journey of discovering the stories inside you and the storyteller that you truly are. Later on, you can establish a work schedule and get all left-brained about it, but for now, enjoy this exploratory period and the sense of having a wide-open writing horizon before you.

Exercises

1. Take a notebook or journal and write down what all of your dreams of being a writer have been. Let all the images and feelings come up again and write them down.
2. Read what you’ve written. Add any new ideas that arise in your mind. Think of your end goals and if they have changed from before. Consider the new technologies that exist today and how you could use them to your advantage. For example, you can write serial stories that are published episode by episode on Kindle Vella, Wattpad, and similar apps. Some writers publish their stories or essays on Substack, which can be monetized through paid subscriptions. Investigate these sites to see if any of them are suitable for what you might want to do.
3. When I use the term “finding your voice,” I don’t mean that you have to look for it. Your voice as a writer is inherent and specific to you and will emerge as you continue to write. As you grow as a writer, your voice will strengthen. It’s not something to worry about. If you are curious about the concept of voice, try this exercise. Write a paragraph-long story, a simple one with a beginning, middle, and end. Then take five authors who have strong, recognizable styles, and rewrite the story in their “voices.” This can give some insights as to the uniqueness of a writer’s voice.

Next chapter will be posted tomorrow