What Novelists Can Learn from Entrepreneurs
As a freelancer, I write a lot of content for business owners—which is actually very helpful as a writer, because there are some parts of the process where you kind of want to think like an entrepreneur. And I think I’m in one of those stages now. I've had the concept of a novel running around in my brain for a while, but I've been struggling to get it going on the page. Don't get me wrong—I've written a lot of words for it. I've built more of the world than I probably need to, created a bunch of characters, and had a fair number of false starts on the plot. It’s just all of that hasn’t yet come together into a cohesive book.
But this year, I've resolved to finally get the first draft of it written. And I know I can. I've written novels before, and all of the pieces are there. I just need some new strategies to put them into place. So I went back through my notes from a couple of recent relevant freelance projects and picked out a few things I'm going to adapt to my novel writing to help me get this thing in motion.
#1: Set SMART goals.
This one's prevalent in academia as well as the corporate world, so it's something I'd imagine most readers have at least seen. Just in case, though, SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. In other words, to set effective goals, you want to make sure you clearly define exactly what you'll do and by when, and that this is something you can realistically achieve that will move you closer to your ultimate objective.
Many of the writers I know are very bad at this. I'm including myself here. There's this temptation to say that creative projects need to happen “at the will of the muse” and you shouldn't limit them with metrics or deadlines. But “waiting for the muse” is also an easy way to write exactly nothing. Attatching actual numbers, dates, and other specific details to your goals makes them real, and you don't need to sacrifice any creativity to do so.
SMART goals also don't need to be complicated. My big-picture goal for the novel is: “Finish the full first draft of the novel by the end of 2026.” This checks all 5 of boxes: it concerns a specific work and defines what stage of completion I want to have it in by a defined point in time. And I've written many book-length manuscripts within a year before, so I know this is achievable, especially since I have a solid chunk of the worldbuilding done.
Of course, most business gurus would say it's best to set goals with smaller timelines than an entire year, which is why the second thing I'm adopting is...
#2: Break big goals into small milestones.
Writing a speculative novel is a big project with a lot of moving parts, enough of them that trying to wrap your head around it can feel overwhelming if you try to think about it as one massive entity. That same thing happens to entrepreneurs when they're trying to start a business, or scale it, or optimize their systems, or whatever other business-ey things they need to do.
The solution to this is to stop thinking of it as One Big Thing. Mark that down as your eventual end point, but then zoom in a bit and think through the various steps that you'll need to take to get there. Exactly what that looks like will depend on how you tend to write. If you're a plotter, the first step will be writing the outline, then those chapters you plot out can each be their own milestone. For pantsers, it might be more effective to break it down base on word count, setting milestones at every few thousand words. The point isn't so much how you subdivide the tasks, but just that you give yourself bite-sized chunks that don't feel as scary to tackle as a whole book.
I've used this strategy to help motivate me through long projects before. I'm typically a pantser, so my usual approach is to set word count goals. With this book, though, I'm actually doing a bit of broad-strokes outlining and plot planning before trying to start the next round of writing. I haven't outlined down to the chapter-by-chapter level, but I've mapped out the major plot points, and am using those arrival points as my milestones. Which actually leads nicely into...
#3: Use the right tools for the project.
If you're even peripherally connected to the entrepreneurial world, you know there is a seemingly infinite array of websites, apps, SaaS platforms, and other tech available for small businesses. There are so many because each one focuses on a slightly different area. The ones for startups have different features than the ones for big enterprises; some are all-in-one solutions while others are just for accounting, or inventory tracking, or automating your marketing—you get the idea. Just because a program works well for one business doesn't mean it's the right choice for another one. And the best tool for a new company isn't necessarily what they'll use forever. As the company gets bigger, or changes its focus, the best tools for them to use are probably going to change, too. Smart companies regularly audit their tech stack to make sure it reflects their current needs and look for ways they could use it more efficiently.
The same thing goes for writing. It's smart to have some go-to tools, but you don't want to fall into the trap of using the same tools just out of habit, especially if they don't seem to be working like they used to. That was the realization I had after a few false starts on this project. Clearly, my usual approach of “find it when I write it” wasn't getting me where I needed to go. Maybe it would eventually, if I kept beating my head against that metaphorical wall, but it seems like I might get where I'm going faster if I try out some different ways of getting there. Hence the switch to writing an outline: it's a new tool I haven't tried yet, and one that might be a better fit for the story I'm trying to write.
I'd say this goes for other types of tools, too. If you usually type in Micosoft Word but are feeling stuck, try handwriting for a bit, or use a different platform like Google Docs, or try cutting out the writing middle man entirely and speak your story into words using your phone's speech-to-text tool. At the worst, it's a way to come at the story from a fresh angle, and that can shake some new ideas loose. And, in the process, you might find a better tool for your writing process that you can work into your regular routine.
#4: Know your market.
My first impulse is to push back against this advice every time I hear it. My knee-jerk reaction is that “writing to a market” feels sales-ey and sell-out-ish. I want to tell the stories that excite me, not the things I think other people want to read. But I think this advice doesn't need to mean changing the story you're telling. Instead, I think it's about understanding who is most likely to read what you write, what other things they're reading, and how your story is going to fit in with the other fiction that's out there.
This isn't just something that comes up during the marketing stage, either. When you're stuck on a project, reading other stuff that's in the same area can help to spark ideas. I've been aiming to do this lately, curating my reading list to focus on novels that are in the same kind of genre-blurring, sci-f/fantasy territory. I'm also actively seeking out books that were published within the last year. It's a way for me to see what's going on in this corner of the publishing landscape right now, and also lets me get a head start on building my list of comps when I am done with the novel and ready to start querying.
#5: Focus on the things that will have the biggest impact.
Another must-do for any small business is to find its niche. Successful entrepreneurs know how to identify the specific value they offer to customers and devote most (if not all) of their energy to that most valuable product. On the other side, when businesses try to offer too many different products or services, or they try appeal to too broad of an audience, then they can end up sabotaging their efforts because their messaging is confusing, or they're trying to split their attention into too many directions.
Writers make this mistake, too. Or at least I do. And I've definitely been suffering from low focus on this particular project. The world I'm working in is a very fun one, weaving in elements of folklore along with sci-fi and post-apocalyptic aspects—which means lots of opportunities to fall down research rabbit holes, on top of the temptation to go overboard building the world beyond the scope of what's actually needed for the story.
And that ultimately needs to be the question guiding all of the effort I put toward the novel: What story am I telling, and what details does the reader need to enjoy that story to its fullest? Any world worth writing in is going to have far more interesting stuff in it than will fit in a single story. That's what gives it that feeling of a real place on the page and makes readers want to spend time there. But that can also turn into a trap, because it means there will always be new interesting corners of the world to discover if you let yourself keep wandering, and you can do that forever without ever actually producing a novel if you don't impose some limits on your imagination.
I expect this will prove the most useful of the strategies I'm adopting for me to finally make progress on this novel, because I think this is the main roadblack that's been keeping me from moving forward. Of course, I haven't written the damn thing yet, so I suppose there's no proof at this point that they'll help me at all. But I'm excited to take a new approach to this book, and I feel like I have a clearer view of how to move forward than I did on my last attempt at the novel, so in that respect I suppose they've already given me a boost.
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