As genre writers, we’re fortunate to have numerous professional development opportunities available to us—conferences, local chapter workshops, online classes, and more. The topics are so diverse that each whispers its own seductive benefits. So how do you wade through them all?
First, you plan. Stop reacting to what’s available and instead spend time assessing your personal and professional needs. Creating a yearly professional development plan can save you money, sanity, and time.
Second, identify your preferred learning style—auditory, visual, kinetic. Later, this will help you choose the best professional development mediums for you. If you don’t know your learning style, take this quiz for a better idea.
Identifying Your Strengths and Weaknesses as a Writer
Then I suggest you begin with two SWOT analyses. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
SWOT #1: Craft Skills
Even if you’re writing your tenth or hundredth book, take the time to assess your craft skills. Look at strengths and weaknesses first. For example, your strengths might be character development, setting, and plot twists. Your weaknesses might be structure, point of view, and sexual tension.
Once you identify these, don’t automatically assume you should focus your professional development efforts only on your weaknesses. Are your weaknesses areas where you’re merely competent, or are you getting consistent feedback—from editors and readers—that these craft areas need significant work? I argue that if you’re competent, you may decide those weaknesses don’t have any place in your professional development plan, simply because no matter how long you spend developing them, they will never morph into strengths. Instead, consider concentrating on further developing your strengths. However, if your weaknesses are holding you back from publication or some other career goal, then be sure to earmark those for your professional development plan.
SWOT #2: Business Skills
Repeat the process with your business skills. Here, the analysis of opportunities and threats is more critical. The publishing industry is in flux with no change in sight. Accept that and you’ll be more likely to thrive in this fluid environment.
Again weaknesses aren’t automatically transferable to your professional development plan. But do ask yourself which topics you’re under-educated about: Goodreads, building your email list, Amazon algorithms (aren’t we all?).
Identifying Your Most Urgent Goals as a Writer
After going through the SWOT analysis process, step back and look over your grids. Now, begin to plug your list into an Important-Urgent grid. Hmm…now we’re seeing some interesting results.
Obviously, the skills that are both important and urgent deserve a place on your next year’s professional development plan. Also pay close attention to that block including those items that are important, yet not urgent. Those are likely the skills you’ve intended to work on for the past three years. But somehow, Facebook always changes its rules or another social media outlet pops up, and you sideline the less urgent, yet critical skills.
Now take a discerning look at the items listed in your Not Important block. Do you really need to learn how to develop a major LinkedIn presence? If you hate Twitter, should you learn how to gather more followers? Only you can answer those questions, but I’d bet the answer is no.
For those items landing in the Not Important and Not Urgent box, it’s doubtful they have any place on your professional development plan.
Scheduling Your Goals as a Writer
Now, you have a solid list of professional development topics to pursue, and you might also be hyperventilating. How do you tackle all this? The reality is you probably don’t. Return to your list— is each item in your Important blocks critical? Can anything be moved to the Not Important blocks?
Now, you should have a manageable list of professional development targets. Schedule them by quarters:
- January–March: important and urgent
- March onward: important and not urgent
Only now do you begin looking for professional development opportunities. You might be tempted to grab every bit of information you can find on each topic and gorge. Don’t.
It’s time to create parameters for the important skills you’ve identified. List what you need to know about the topic, if possible.
Again, using our Goodreads example:
- What Goodreads is
- The rules and norms of the site
- Goodreads gurus
- Running giveaways
Now that you have a manageable list of need-to-knows, it’s time to search for places you can obtain the answers. Do you need a $500 day-long seminar in New York, or can you track down YouTube videos, podcasts, and messages on a writer loop? Gather your resources and estimate the time needed to study the topic and put the learned knowledge into practice.
Why a Development Plan Saves You Time
Perhaps you’re protesting that all this planning wastes time you could otherwise use to read every blog post ever written about Goodreads. Well, at this point, you’ve determined exactly what you need to know, so you’re able to immediately disregard half those posts as irrelevant to your professional development plan. Rather than wandering through the forest of information (aka the Black Forest), you have a target and a plan to hit that target. In the long run, planning will save you time.
Once you know how long it will take, prioritize your professional development plan in your weekly and daily schedules. You won’t ever get around to learning about new topics if you wedge it in between other projects. Perhaps set aside two hours each week for reading, research, and practice. Or you might prefer my technique, which is to read and study for thirty minutes each weekday morning.
I hope you’ll add a professional development plan to your yearly goals. And rather than waiting until December to begin the process, consider creating your 2014 plan during the fourth quarter of this year. That way, you’ll be organized and ready to work your plan on January 1.
Best of luck in becoming a better, more professional you!
Tell me your opinion: What weaknesses in your writing career do you need to work on?
