For way too many years, I wandered, meandering from poetry to short stories to plays, then starts to novels in half a dozen genres. As I become the jack of all writing trades and master of none, I at least learned how to write and began to get some sense of what I might be good at. But in spite of contest accolades and critique group praise, my goal of getting published began to feel like mission impossible.
Until I found a focus to my work, or you might call it a vision. It didn't come all at once by any means. First, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to be a novelist. Then I refined it to author of commercial paperback (mass market) novels. Later, I refined it further, to fast-paced, emotional, suspenseful adult fiction. It took years and hundreds upon hundreds of pages written to winnow down my dream that much. Along the way, I made a study of the type of fiction I wanted to write, and of the heretofore neglected business aspects of it. Gradually (and I hope you're all much faster learners) I came to the place where my mission was to write fast-paced, suspenseful, and emotional commercial novels, which lead me to the romantic suspense I love to read (and write!)
Are you still forming or refining your authorial mission? Where is it you seek to take your readers, and what are the steps you need to take to reach that place? Because if you don't have a goal in mind, you could spend three lifetimes aimlessly drifting through the thickets, the deserts, and the quagmires of possibility.
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