The Plan

Great things have been happening in the writing community. Lots of people I met years ago as a new writer who weren't published or agented are one or the other or both today. Misha Gericke recently announced her plan to earn $7500 month in royalties consistently in five years time which led to me finally admitting to the world in writing what I told my husband months ago was my next goal. I want to write my way into a million dollars. I asked Misha to start a linky for her plan, so we could all join in and support each other as we work our way up the ladder. She did and she put together the list in a way that let's every person set their own goal! So a new writer can aim to simply finish a book or send a query. Once they've reached that goal they can set a new one. This is basically another example of what we already know the writing and blogging community to be. Amazingly supportive and encouraging. So here's the link! Set a goal and join in.

The Plan
Earlier this week when I voiced my goal, I promised to have more of a plan today. The truth is we can write our hearts out (and we usually do) and how it's perceived by the world is up to the world. So having a firm plan on making a million dollars in an industry that thrives on subjectivity feels like making a plan to win the lottery. You're banking on luck.

But I'm not a gambler and accomplishing a goal without a plan is a lot like taking a rod trip without a map. You'll probably end up somewhere. It just might not be the place you were looking for. So I'm going to come at this with what I know. Things I can control. The more books I write, the more chances I have for a million dollar deal. The more books I release the better chance I have at making a million dollars in royalties. (Consistent strong sales of multiple books could mean I wouldn't need one book to sell like Twilight). I'm aiming to write four books a year. This means I have four months left to write 1 and 3/4 books with a 1200 mile move peppered in between. Wish me luck.

Here's what else I know. Supposedly, at a million words you become an expert writer. If we count only fiction written since I got serious in 2010 (no nonfiction and no God awful shorts written like journal entries) then I'm sitting on 432,000 words. This does not include the 20k I have on my current WIP. I'll make that entire deposit once I write "The end." If you were an engineer, doctor or lawyer, once you obtained that kind of experience you'd get a pay raise. I'm guessing this is at least partially true in writing too. I understand no publisher is going to pay based on my experience but theoretically the more you do something the better you become. I should hit half a million by the end of this year. Probably more but since one of the books left on my slate is part of a novella series I'm not sure if it will be full length yet. Writing 4 books a year, even at 50k is 200,000 words per year. Assuming I finish this year off at 500,000, I should hit the million word mark in 2016.

I think my current plan is to write four books a year, reach a million words, and better manage current products. Once I hit a million words, I'll re-address this to get a picture of where the additional experience has gotten me and what I can do to get closer to the goal--a million dollars by 2024.