If you’re wondering why I haven’t posted this month, it’s because I’ve started and stopped a half dozen blog topics. For the last four years, my posts have been about selling a book. With that done, I’m sort of stuck for what to say.

Perhaps a little bit of advice for those awaiting their own Call.

I know I’ve said this before, but I’m repeating myself because it’s important.

Whatever you sell, you will be expected to product more of the same so make sure you see yourself building a career at it.

As an unpublished author, I dabbled in historicals, paranormal, YA, but my first love was short contemporary. If I’d sold in any other genre, I might be so busy writing historicals, paranormals or YA, I might not have time to write the thing I loved until I’d established myself. (That single title I finished this summer, I’m pretty sure I won’t get time to revise it until the end of the year.)

Have ideas for other books of the same type you’ve just sold. My agent wanted blurbs on the next two books I’d written for Desire. She sent those blurbs off two days after I sold. I received a one book contract with Silhouette Desire. If I’d sold to Harlequin Romance, I might have been given a 2 book contract. Or with a single title, a three book contract. Start thinking now beyond the book you’re trying to sell.

Treat your writing as a career. Figure out how fast you can write and revise a book. If it takes you a year to finish a book, you are going to have a harder time building a name for yourself. Set deadlines and meet them now. You will learn your strengths and weaknesses and learn how to work around them. It will be less stressful later when you’re writing one book, revising another and have edits to work on for a third.

Have you done any of these things? Have they made a difference in your attitude? Are you ready to sell a book?