September's IWSG Question: In terms of your writing career, where do you see yourself five years from now, and what's your plan to get there?
Well, 5 years is a long time for a serial procrastinator, but I do have some definite plans. First up is to get my long-gestating novel published, regardless of how that happens. Right now I'm trying to woo a pair of agents. Should they choose to pass, I have a pair of smaller niche publishers in mind who I think will give it a good home. Should they not bite, then I will self-publish by the end of the spring.
The next step in my 5-year plan is to keep working on my darkly erotic short stories and start hitting the anthology open calls hard. I already have one that I'm writing for right now, and I'm going to keep that up as a means of honing my craft and enjoying the creative process. There's something inherently rewarding in seeing an idea come to fruition in days or even weeks, rather than taking years for a novel to to come into shape.
Last step in that plan is to get off my ass, stop obsessing over the finished novel I've been shopping around, and start writing the next one (which is fully planned and plotted out). That blank screen is always intimidating, but I know the story will flow once I get started. I just need to throw something down on the page and know that I can always edit the opening later.
So, 5 years from now I see myself having 2-3 novels published and my stories in at least a half dozen anthologies or collections. I'll stop thinking about writing and actually doing it.
