It seems like a pointless question with an obvious answer - people read novels to learn and to be entertained.  However, the relationship between reader and book is a little more complicated and interesting than that.

Like writing, acting has taught me that humour is hugely subjective. Some people will find you hilarious even when you’re having an off day and feeling about as funny as a Cathy cartoon. Conversely, you can be putting Bill Bailey to shame and some people will still think you suck. The fickleness of an audience is not, therefore, unique to writing. I have addressed this before, so we shall move on.

In my mind, the primary thing that glues acting and writing together is dialogue. Although a great actor can deliver a clunky line convincingly, it helps tremendously if it sounds like something someone would actually say in real life. Try saying this out loud:

“Shane, I knew you were not one to be trusted, especially after you managed to overthrow the prison guards that dark and starry evening despite your shrivelled hand which was the unfortunate by-product of your ne’er-do-well experiments in Mr Casey’s secret underground laboratory.”

Even Russell Crowe would have issues with that one. A phone would be thrown. (As a side movie-related note, Inception is a very good theory lesson for writers; it’s an interesting film but has some of the most unwieldy dialogue you’ve ever heard. Even Leonardo diCaprio looks like he’s having a few ‘what the hell am I doing?’ moments. But I digress.)

You may have heard that reading your whole piece out loud is a great way to get a feel for it. This is true, and it’s especially true for dialogue.  Even if you can’t bring yourself to go through all 142,459 words of your sci-fi masterpiece out loud – who has the time and the vocal chords? – just do it for the parts that are meant to be spoken. You will very quickly pick the difference between, “I just cannot believe that Steve would have committed such an audacious act,” and, “I can’t believe Steve’s audacity.”

Are you ready to take it a little bit further? Act out your scene. Yes, you will feel like a tool the first time you do it, and it’s better to be at home alone rather than with company or in a cafe, but it will help you more than you’d think. Can your character have actually walked from here to there while saying this line? Can someone feasibly carry all the things you’ve described without staggering? Is it possible to actually have an intimate conversation with someone while cantering across the moors? OK, the last one may be difficult to verify unless you have a couple of horses - lucky you – but just the simple act of moving around will do two things:

1) it will determine if the action is ringing true, and

2) it can also give you a better idea of what kind of gestures or movements your characters would be doing in this situation.

There have been several moments where I’ve dithered over what to describe during a scene; acting it out immediately tells you, in the most natural way, how the character is or could be physically reacting. Actual movement will give you choices you may not have thought of initially and you choose from there.

An excellent example of how an author failed to do this is from my book club. We were discussing our tome du jour when one book clubber revealed that a pivotal love scene had confused her so much that she physically walked through the steps described, out of sheer curiosity. In addition to providing her husband with some entertainment, it also proved to her that the hero could not have seduced the heroine as the author depicted, for one simple reason: he did not have three arms. In addition, she revealed that at this point she would have abandoned this book for good – I threw mine across the room when I’d finished it; a first – had she not had to finish it for the book club.

As a writer, this is anathema. Don’t hand your reader material which makes them pause, frown, go back, re-read, frown some more, re-re-read, mutter, “That’s not actually possible,” then start Googling references to back themselves up. Don’t give them material to turn Book Club Night into Mime Night.

In short: never give your reader an excuse to stop reading. They may not pick your book up again – though they may act out scenes from it in a pub, to the bemusement of staff and patrons.

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Lia Weston’s author website: www.liaweston.com

Lia Weston’s bio page

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Writing Novels in Australia
www.writingnovelsinaustralia.com

It was no surprise then when I didn’t hear back from the publisher. Unsure of what to do next with Mexican Kimono, I set about writing short stories and taking creative writing classes until, much later, I signed up for the AusLit 20 week novel development course. I learned so much from Steve Rossiter, and from the other writers, about planning a novel, editing, defining the focus and managing the pacing to hold the reader’s attention.

My novel needed a lot of work. What, you ask; it wasn’t perfect after a two month flurry of writing? How little I knew about real novel writing. It was missing action and tension throughout the middle. It just rambled on, but it took me a long time to realise that. Steve told me time and time again, until finally, I understood. I rewrote it from the very first line. When I edited it again, I tried to think of it as someone else’s novel. What would a reader think? What would a fellow writer say? I cut out a lot of parts that I loved - killing my darlings, as the saying goes – and it was so much better. The novel started to take shape and had a much clearer focus. I remember Steve saying, “It’s called Mexican Kimono, yet there’s no mention of the kimono throughout the middle of the book.” Oops. Another critical error.

We wrote chapter outlines. I recommend this to anyone whose novel has stalled, or is finished but lacking something. Try to sum up each chapter with no more than two sentences. Tricky, but invaluable. It will become a quick-to-read reference for you and will help highlight missing plot points, places to add tension or suspense, and parts that are redundant and can be deleted.

After the 20 week course finished I shelved Mexican Kimono. I had reread it so many times I practically had it memorised. I went back to short story writing. Six months later I pulled it out and read it with fresh eyes. It was markedly improved. The editing I’d done with Steve made me love the story again and inspired me to try again to get it published. My main character, Samantha, is narcissistic and impetuous but she’s funny. I wanted people to read about her, so off I went again on the journey to publication.

I tried a few of the big name publishers, knowing it’s rare to be pulled out of the slush pile (urgh, I dislike that term!). Nothing. So I stopped dreaming of pillows and started thinking realistically. I had a little chat with myself, like I always do in these situations, and said, “Self, it’s time to get real, banana peel.” After kicking myself for speaking like a five year old, I decided to try digital publishers. I sent my novel to Australian e-book publisher, Really Blue Books, who describe themselves as the rogue e-publisher and e-book seller of the modern era. They’re forward thinking, and dynamic, but most of all, have a wicked sense of humour. Mexican Kimono is quirky and funny, so I deemed them perfect for me and hoped they’d feel the same. They did! I signed the contract for my first book three years after I wrote it. It will be available at the end of the year. I’m excited about the prospect of marketing, blogging and everything that comes with digital publishing these days, and about people reading my book. Well that’s better than all the pillows in the world!

Never give up on your novel. If you’re stuck, do a chapter outline, you’ll be surprised how helpful it is. Put your story aside if you’re too close to it, but just for a few months. Then pull it out, dust it off and read it like you’re an editor. Be critical. Don’t be afraid to cut your favourite parts if they don’t move the story forward.

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Rebecca Raisin lives in Perth, Western Australia.

Rebecca Raisin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaxandwillsmum

Guest Articles

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Writing Novels in Australia
www.writingnovelsinaustralia.com

In March this year, with House for all Seasons on the shelves only three weeks, I got another shove in the deep end when asked to take part in a writers’ festival as a ridgey-didge published author. Not only did that mean people were paying to hear what I had to say, but I found myself on panels and in the company of amazing authors including shortlisted 2013 award nominees: Jessie Cole, Druscilla Modeska, Katherine Howell, Carrie Tiffany, Romy Ash and Cate Kennedy.

I was suddenly a little dinghy amid an armada of author greatness; an insecure wannabe bobbing around on a busy sea of sleek, ocean-going schooners that I couldn’t possibly keep up with. Of course, I didn’t; they were way ahead of me. So I slipped in behind, happy to follow their lead. Riding in an author’s wake has lots of positives. It’s sort of what I’ve been doing for a while now and while chatting at the festival I advised other aspiring authors to do the same. That is: identify an author you admire and make them your mentor - officially or unofficially. Follow them, and watch what they do and how they do it (but not in a creepy, stalker kind of way).

How did my festival gig go? Well, after working myself into a stress mess in the lead up, I have to confess… I have a new addiction, and for once it’s not bad for me. It may even be good for me. (I’ve heard one author say that she makes more money from appearances and workshops than she does from her book sales!) I love that festivals help you connect with readers and inspire other writers to follow their dream, and I look forward to one day giving back by mentoring others.

Right now, my mentor is teaching me that those highest of highs can be scary places but they can also reward you with the best views. Even though I still hate the water, perhaps that teacher at school did teach me a valuable lesson. I am not so afraid to dive in the deep end, which is just as well, as the deeper you get into this publishing business the scarier things can seem. The scariest stage has to be the self promotion but self promote you must because, as debut author Lily Malone states in her recent blog post The Art of Self Promotion, “You can’t sell a secret.”

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Jenn J McLeod’s author website: www.jennjmcleod.com

Jenn J McLeod’s bio page

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Writing Novels in Australia
www.writingnovelsinaustralia.com

There is a huge amount of information available for writers on the internet but sometimes you have to go to a real person and interview them if you want the inside view. I have a friend who is quite senior in the human resources department of a big multinational company. I asked him what would happen to an employee accused of planting porn on a colleague’s computer leading to that colleague’s dismissal. He said if it couldn’t be proven then nothing could be done officially, but that person would be passed over again and again in favour of others, shunned at the pub and become so isolated they would eventually leave. Hmm… that’s a tasty little nugget to store for possible future use. I have never worked in such an environment, so I don’t really know what goes on there and I need the nuances of real human interaction rather than the public face.

At a writing conference a few years ago I attended a session given by a senior police superintendent. The idea was that he would talk about police procedure for writers. He replied to a question about writers accessing information on procedure with the answer, ‘You don’t access it unless you get to know a police officer.’ At this point I felt a certain smugness, as I knew a police officer - a homicide detective, no less. His boy and mine played soccer. There is nothing like a windswept soccer field in the early morning to foster friendships.

He’s a hard looking dude. He makes you want to confess straight up or offer your DNA on spec. However, he was very kind in answering my pesky and endless questions about police procedure. In fact I’m surprised he didn’t put a block on my emails. I’m very aware of the irritation factor I could present, so I don’t harass too much. But I need to know.

Other soccer friendships include a chemistry forensics professor, an international law specialist and an academic nuclear physicist. I have doctors, lawyers, scientists of various types, artists, actors, singers, teachers and more on my private sources list. Invariably, these experts shred my imagined scenes or plots with precision and leave them lying in a heap, and I have to keep re-working and re-thinking.

For example, I wanted a character to be in a long coma but be revived unharmed, and I wanted to put him in that coma with opium. No can do, comes the advice. You can have your coma but not without brain damage and the opium won’t be detected as opium, but as morphine. A spanner in the crucial spoke of the plot. Fiction provides room for creative license but not to completely contradict reality. Besides, factual errors rarely escape the All-Seeing Editing Eye.

The big test will come when I want to research a character or scene and I don’t know anyone in the field. I like to think that with the right approach people are happy to share the facts about their occupations. I have favourite café near the law courts where barristers come to drink the excellent coffee. Some of them sweep in, briefs under the arm, hair swept back, as if the café is their courtroom and we are the awestruck jurors. They order and talk loudly and are generally very pleased with themselves. I sit like a small, alert parasite in the corner jotting down every move, every gesture. But would I approach one? Yes, I think I would if I needed to. Because I know these guys would just love it.

Always be polite when asking to delve into somebody’s professional life, and take a refusal graciously. Just because you’re a writer doesn’t mean you can access all areas. Assure them they will not be identified as a source unless they want to be and if that’s the case then full acknowledgement will be given. I like to interview then go away and think about their answers and return, if possible, for specific details. Flowers, wine, chocolate, jam, books or a combination of two or three are always good gift to have about your person when interviewing sources. And when it’s all over, a signed copy of the book as a token of appreciation.

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Phillipa Fioretti’s author website: www.phillipafioretti.com.au

Phillipa Fioretti’s bio page

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Writing Novels in Australia
www.writingnovelsinaustralia.com

Strategic thinking is something I have to make an effort at to do well. Some people are natural schemers and planners. I’m not. I’m more of a wanderer. This shows when I play card games or chess. I enjoy the interaction but usually get beaten by someone who thinks more than a move or two ahead. I’ve had to learn to think ahead for my writing.

Who are the unsung of the book-publishing world?  The librarians and booksellers, who give advice and make recommendations to their members and customers. The people who are in their jobs because they love books.

You can connect with Writing Novels in Australia on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.

The purpose of these Month In Review articles is to:

- provide a handy list of links to the articles for the past month, then to

- relate some of the content of these articles to my own novel writing to help novel writers and other interested people discover the month’s content and gain some insights into ways the month’s content can be engaged with in a practical context.

Articles for April 2013

Prose Cliches And Originality When Writing Novels by Greg Barron

Proofreading A Novel Manuscript by Phillipa Fioretti

What Makes A Bad Writer (And How To Avoid It) by Lia Weston

Life As A Newly Published Novelist by Jenn J McLeod

Why Have A Literary Agent? by Alison Booth

Finding Inspiration For Your Stories by Kelly Inglis

How Long Does It Take To Write A Novel? by Onil Lad

The Business Of Being A Novelist by Helene Young

Starting A Novel With A Great First Sentence by Ben Marshall

This month’s articles and writing my novel

Helene Young wrote: Has it ever been enough to simply write a unique and compelling story? I suspect not. In today’s climate with the debate raging over the longevity of books, and traditional publishing versus self-publishing, it’s even more crucial that a writer has a game plan. […]
As a writer you are both product and producer, so you have two briefs to write for your business plan. Before you can do that, however, think about defining what it is you want from your writing career.

Lia Weston wrote: What makes you a bad writer is refusing to deal with criticism.

Helene makes a good point that writing a story is not sufficient to get lots of people reading your story. If this is to happen, word has to spread somehow. Maybe you or your agent will get publishers in multiple countries to publish the book in particular countries or languages, with each publisher investing in a marketing and publicity campaign and ongoing support for your novel. Maybe your agent will find you lots of publicity opportunities. Maybe your existing family, friends and acquaintances will buy your novel or read a free copy you give them then blog about it, review it on bookseller websites and recommend it to their family, friends and acquaintances. Maybe you will do lots of interviews and guest articles. Maybe you or your publisher/s will buy some advertising. Maybe a journalist from your local newspaper will write something about you.

The bottom line is that this has to happen somehow if you’re going to find lots of readers, so it’s worth considering in advance how you can help this happen. This is important for novelists published by major publishers but crucial for self-publishing novelists, as you don’t have major publishers working behind the scenes to market and publicise your novel (not to mention major publishers’ extensive established business relationships with distributors, retailers and media outlets, and their extensive networks of contacts on social media sites and email-lists). In general, publishers want their novelists to be pro-active in connecting with readers – so the publisher can amplify your efforts and you can amplify the publisher’s efforts to publicise you and your work, creating a win-win situation.

Whatever you do for marketing and publicity, don’t irritate people with unwanted appeals for them to buy your novel. The more people you reach with this tactic, the more people who will make a mental note to avoid you, so they don’t encourage you to keep annoying them, and to not work with you in the future, because your sales tactics would be a liability. If you want people to discover your novel, do an interview, a blog post, a guest blog post, a social media update about how you’re going with your work-in-progress, put an image of your newly-confirmed cover design on a social media site, or a photo of newly-arrived proof copies of your book, or photos from your book launch, or any number of other things that people will find interesting and from which they will gain some value. Think what you’re offering other people, not just what you want from them. If your social media updates and photos, blog posts, guest blog posts, interviews, etc are valuable to other people, many of them will click through to your author site to discover what you’ve written and how they can buy it.

It’s also worth considering what your novel itself offers readers, not just what it offers you as the writer. Of course, your novel can be very meaningful to you and also offer something valuable to readers. You don’t have to sacrifice one for the other.

Taking my novel-in-progress as an example, it’s meaningful to me as an exploration of human behaviour at a very significant turning point in world history – the German invasion of Poland in 1939, which brought the Great Powers of Europe into conflict and precipitated World War 2. It also personally interests me to go beyond the typical textbook and history book accounts of this setting to investigate the day-to-day human dimension of life in Poland in late 1939. However, this novel is intended for teenagers (and adults) and I know that some, or maybe most, readers will care much more about the characters and the personal conflict they are working through in the story than the historical setting and its significance in world history. Luckily, I also have an interest in storytelling which transcends time and place while still being firmly situated in a specific setting. The story’s appeal would be much more limited if it hinged on a reader having a pre-existing interest in 1939 Poland. The novel will offer readers a story of friendship, family, adolescence, adventure, loyalty, courage, suspense, historical drama, a catalyst for readers of Polish or German ancestry to learn more about their family history, and more. It’s up to each reader which aspects appeal to them more strongly or less strongly. If the historical significance of the story rates as a non-issue for a particular reader, maybe they love stories of adolescence and friendship, or maybe they love stories of loyalty and adventure. Part of the personal appeal for me is also to provide a novel that lots of readers can connect with strongly and which can be a catalyst for further independent thought.

So I’ve thought about the story but how will I find readers?

Some things I have in mind include:
- a blog with things like history articles to provide extra resources for readers interested in the historical setting and its significance in relation to World War 2, to the history of Poland and Germany, and to world history; character profiles; my research methods and resources used; my writing process; study/discussion guides for schools, writers and writing groups; and more
- social media pages/profiles for readers and writers to connect with me and the book online, so they can stay up-to-date with these additional resources and other news about me and my novel
- interviews and guest blog posts for book blogs, other authors’ blogs and group blogs for authors

These are the kinds of things any novelist can do with little or no financial investment and with little standing in the industry or public profile, regardless of who publishes your novel. If people are searching for the kinds of resources I offer, they might come across them through search engines. If people like the resources and news I offer, they might ‘Like’ or share it with others, who might also ‘Like’ or share it, or connect with me or the novel on a social media site. Of course, there are also options like arranging author profiles in national newspapers, book tours, library and bookstore events, paid advertising, literary festival and writers’ conference appearances, and so on, but these tend to require having the appropriate contacts, some level of industry standing or public profile, or financial investment.

Whether writing your novel or connecting with readers: Be creative. Assess your options and come up with a plan that works for you and your readers.

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‘Month In Review’ Updates

For more articles on writing novels you can check out Writing Historical Novels and Writing Teen Novels.

You can connect with Steve Rossiter on Facebook or on Google+.

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Writing Novels in Australia
www.writingnovelsinaustralia.com

“The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm.”
Ray Bradbury’s classic, Something Wicked This Way Comes, starts with some Bradbury genius - tension, era and intrigue painted in one stroke.

“There are plenty would call her a slut for it.”
Margo Lanagan’s start to Tender Morsels hints at her narrator’s education and background, at the theme of sex, and raises intrigue about what ‘it’ might be.
“I was sitting outside the Commodore’s mansion, waiting for my brother Charlie to come out with news of the job.”
Patrick De Witt makes an unassuming start to The Sister’s Brothers with a sentence that sets up the brothers’ relationship and gives a mild sense of intrigue.

“The Austrian horses glinted in the moonlight, their riders standing tall in the saddle, swords raised.”
That’s by Scott Westerfeld from the first in his Leviathan series.  A few brief brushstrokes to give you a sense of place, theme and tension.  He promises war, and that’s what you get.

“Quentin did a magic trick.  Nobody noticed.”
With those sentences, Lev Grossman begins his novel, The Magicians, with hooks that establish character and the self-deprecating tension of the first-person narration.

“I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen.”
Ransom Riggs begins his tale, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, with this first line.  It hints at intrigue, but it’s exposition rather than action, especially as he doesn’t follow immediately it up with an example of an ‘extraordinary thing’.

“I belong to Mister Splinter’s circus.  I do the murders.”
That’s the first line from my unpublished novel, The Pricking of Thumbs.  I wanted to establish a lot, quickly - generating intrigue, and hinting at the darkness of the novel.

“Conor was awake when it came.
Patrick Ness: A Monster Calls.  Simplicity and clarity begin this emotional tale. Trying to squeeze too much into a single first sentence without equally effective follow-up is, obviously, pointless.  Each successive sentence must build on the first.

“The smuggler held the bullet between thumb and forefinger, studying it in the weak light of the storeroom.  He smiled sourly.  ‘Just imagine,’ he said. ‘Imagine what this feels like, going through your head.’”
Chris Wooding’s start to the first in his Ketty Jay series, Retribution Falls, drops you into a life-and-death situation, and establishes style and story.

“Jasper Jones has come to my window. I don’t know why, but he has.  Maybe he’s in trouble.  Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.  Either way, he’s just frightened the living shit out of me.”
Craig Silvey’s novel, Jasper Jones, hints at the ambiguous relationship between the narrator and the subject, is reasonably active and creates intrigue.  It raises more questions than it establishes character or place, but it’s no bad thing for a beginning to make the reader want to know what’s going to happen next.

So far, so Young Adult, which has been my primary focus recently.  Turning to other areas…

“All it took was a single glass of orange juice laced with hydrochloric acid.”
Graham Farmelo’s biography of Paul Dirac, The Strangest Man, let’s us know we’re about to embark on a train crash.

“The taxi’s radio was tuned to a classical FM broadcast.”
A low tech start from the deceptively simple, beguiling prose of Haruki Murakami’s IQ84 works to ground the reader in the known world before everything gets surreal.

“He was tall, about fifty, with darkly handsome, almost sinister features; a neatly trimmed moustache, hair turning silver at the temples, and eyes so black they were like the tinted windows of a sleek limousine; he could see out but you couldn’t see in.”
Joe Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

“At a certain village in La Mancha, which I shall not name, there lived not long ago one of those old-fashioned gentlemen who are never without a lance upon a rack, an old target, a lean horse, and a greyhound.”
The sublime Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

“In the long unfurling of his life, from tight-wound kid hustler in a wool suit riding the trains out of Cheyenne to geriatric limper in this spooled-out year, Mero had kicked down thoughts of the place where he began, a so-called ranch on strange ground at the south hinge of the Big Horns.”
Annie Proulx expects readers to focus hard with her first sentence of The Half-Skinned Steer, which is perhaps a tad shorter than her usual start.  Her dense prose obliged me to re-read it three times.  Is it effective to make the reader work harder?  Not so much for commercial fiction perhaps, but rich prose requires a different mind-set and provides different rewards.

If we’re looking at contemporary commercial novels - especially for YA and genre fiction - then we’ve got a clear pattern for the opening lines; signal clearly to the reader that they’ve begun a story that will go somewhere interesting, raise intrigue and perhaps expectations, hint at the flavour or style of the storytelling, say something about the character of the narrator or protagonist, hint at the world they’re in, and don’t waste a word.

If we’re looking at literary fiction, pretty much anything goes because, arguably, the reader is already more committed than genre readers and, as mentioned, seeks slightly different rewards.

Whether we choose a workmanlike row of words or create sentences that shine like a distant torch guiding us from our quiet place of reading to a land of adventure, the story is the thing.

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Ben Marshall’s author website: www.benmarshall-wordpirate.com

Ben Marshall’s bio page

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Writing Novels in Australia
www.writingnovelsinaustralia.com

Has it ever been enough to simply write a unique and compelling story? I suspect not. In today’s climate with the debate raging over the longevity of books and traditional publishing versus self-publishing it’s even more crucial that a writer has a game plan.

Years ago my husband and I looked into buying a Brumby’s Bakery Franchise. We started a Queensland Government small business course and lasted two weeks. The paperwork, the regulations and the red tape were enough to make me weep. The one thing I did learn was the importance of knowing your product and sticking to a budget.

As a writer you are both product and producer, so you have two briefs to write for your business plan. Before you can do that, however, think about defining what it is you want from your writing career.

Is it fame and fortune and a place on the New York Times bestseller list like Stephenie Meyer? Is it truckloads of money like JK Rowling? Do you want to earn enough money to pay some bills and allow yourself to loll about in PJs (and drink too much coffee…)? Do you write for the sheer pleasure of putting words on pages and evoking powerful emotions in your readers? Or do you write because the characters simply won’t leave you alone until you tell their story?

Let’s base this discussion on the premise you want to see your book published and you want to make some money – whatever the amount.  Once you’ve written your book you have to put on your salesperson’s hat, with its bells and whistles, because when you’re pitching to an agent you’re selling your personal qualities, along with your work, so that they can on-sell this to a publisher.  It’s kind of like a wholesale market.

Once your book is published you are then selling to your readers. That’s the retail end of the business. If you’re planning to self-publish then you’re skipping the first step and increasing the amount of work you’ll need to do in the second step.

I know selling isn’t easy, as I did one of those gigs trying to flog discount cards at the Brisbane Ekka when I was fresh out of school.  Swallowing glass would have been easier. The good news is that when you’re passionate about something, and as writers it’s all about passion, then it’s a little easier to sell your stories. Most of us struggle with the me, me, me, part of selling ourselves, but if you plan it right you can let other people do that me, me, me’ing for you.

There are numerous blogs about ways to increase your presence in social media and in the public gaze. Joanna Penn’s blog has some excellent information, so I won’t bore you with my ideas. What I do want to stress is that you need to have a plan with a budget and you need to be realistic.

A budget can be a simple as a word doc with bullet points saying you expect to earn ‘x’ amount of dollars and therefore will spend ‘y’ amount, leaving ‘z’ in your wallet.

In anticipation of a stellar career you could set up a simple spreadsheet, you could invest in a business course, or you could speak to your accountant about establishing a system for taxation. Your accountant should have lots of good advice about tax deductions for writers.

It’s easy to go overboard with promotional products, giveaways, advertisements and attending conferences - probably even more so if you’re self-published. Traditional Australian publishing houses bear the responsibility of advance review copies and selling to bookstores, freeing you up to do blog posts and social media. Either way you need to decide how many of your hard earned dollars you’re prepared to spend. You will have some idea of income if you’ve received an advance. If you’re on a royalty only contract then make a conservative estimate of sales. It’s far better to find extra money at the end than a great big negative…

My husband fondly refers to my writing career as a self-sustaining hobby, as I made the decision to plough most of what I earn from my first three books back into promotional opportunities like attending conventions, conferences and free library talks. That’s an easy choice while I have a day job to pay the bills but it’s not right for everyone.

Whichever path you choose the sooner you have a plan and a budget the sooner you will treat your writing like the business that it is. Writing stories is the fun part. When you put on your business suit, metaphorical or actual, that’s when the hard work begins. So, do yourself a favour and take thirty minutes of your time to write down your business plan for this year, for five years and for the next ten years.

Keep it simple, keep it realistic and then do your best to stick to it.

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Helene Young’s author website: www.heleneyoung.com

Helene Young’s bio page

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Writing Novels in Australia
www.writingnovelsinaustralia.com