How a writing CV helped me plan my career
A humble Google doc, colour coding, and the mother of all checklists. Buckle up, things are about to get cellular.
A few weeks ago, I was in a bit of a rut. It’s not the first time. As much as I love that my novels have made up part of my income for the last few years, it’s no secret that being an author is often a story of multi-hyphen careers and not, as it turns out, landing a million-pound book deal and moving to a small castle somewhere in the Surrey hills with a wood-panelled study and a series of woodland creatures that help with domestic tasks.
A lot of people dream of becoming a full-time author. It used to be my dream too. However, in 2018 when the teaching year ended and I threw myself into my (subsequently abandoned) first novel ‘full time,’ I was pretty miserable. I had gone from speaking with hundreds of young people a day to absolutely no one and it didn’t suit me. The more directionless I felt, the less writing I did. The further I stepped away from my 37.5 hour a week contract, the worse I felt about my decision to pursue a career as an author, whatever that looked like.
I’m a person who works best with a clear destination in mind. I expect you are too, if you found your way to this post. Being an author has been unexpected and wonderful, but when I first ‘got serious’ about writing, I simply couldn’t afford to cross my fingers and hope for the best. I needed a way to systematically make my chances of success more likely. What made the biggest difference? A simple excel sheet that tracked ever goal and decision. Below, I’m sharing a template. I’ve even included a blank one that you can download yourself. It’s not the lofty ‘muse’ we hear so much about, but it is practical and I still use a version of it today.
Before we get into it, I think it’s time for some brutal honesty. The phrase ‘full time author’ used to haunt me like a ghoulish carrot on a stick that I subsequently used to beat myself with. How did one become ‘full time’? Did you count it in hours? In income? In book deals? On social media, each time someone gleefully announced that they were going ‘full time,’ I used to resent my own thin slither of the publishing pie. But here’s the thing. When someone says they write ‘full time’, it can mean any of the following:
Had a full career in a normal job first (law, marketing, business) and can afford to step back to write full-time
Can write full-time because their partner is a big earner and there’s no pressure to provide equal financial contribution
Retired
Juggle a number of ‘writing related’ jobs, some of which includes writing books
Genuinely got an amazing book deal (smallest percentage)
The overwhelming majority are working around ‘normal’ jobs, sometimes quite a few jobs. These might be regular, contracted jobs with sick pay and annual leave, or they might be freelancing and writing amidst client work, chasing invoices, and worry over feast and famine months of varying workload. There are also writers with caring responsibilities, disabled writers who work around their health demands, writers who parent, and writers who find themselves in between jobs.
Being an author is a job, sure, but it’s not as simple as that. Why do people never celebrate being an author part-time? Because it may be a part-time job, but it’s a full-time identity.
Since 2019, writing takes up full-time residency in my head, but before I started earning money from it, I didn’t know what I could legitimately call myself. After one book, two books, three books, I was still—on paper—a part-time author. For me, it looked like working three days a week for an education charity and using my evenings and non-work days to write my books. After being made redundant during maternity leave (it can happen!), I made the decision to go freelance and am just starting out on that journey, but this big step would be a whole lot harder if it hadn’t been for the choices I made back in 2019, most of which I can pin down to my career planning excel.
I came across it again a few weeks ago on my Google drive. A simple, colour-coded document with strikethroughs, names, and dates scrawled across cells. Unlike regular career planning, I used this document to set out my dream lifestyle and the habits that I thought would help me achieve it. Some of it stuck, some of it didn’t, but it was all there. It had the one thing I desperately needed: a clear sense of direction.
How is a writing CV any different from a regular one?
It has to work for you. A writing CV documents your credentials, which look different for the writing world (more on that later) but ultimately this document is a tool. It helps you map your next steps and encourages you to record purposeful actions that you’ve taken towards becoming a professional writer.
I’ve outlined the categories below and have included a few examples, but they are just that. Examples. The writing lifestyle that makes me happy might not make you happen, so tweak, tweak, tweak away.
Events attended
These can be anything from online pitching events, to conferences, to regular open mic spots. Turning up to things can be a huge reason to celebrate. Quite often, a contact might be mentioned, or you may have spoken to someone whose organisation you want to remember. Before it slips out of your head, write it down. It’s useful for following up later, but if you reach the stage where you want to submit to an agent, you may want to mention some of these events as a way to say ‘HEY, LOOK AT ME! I’M SERIOUS ABOUT THIS AUTHOR THING!’ Obviously, you’ll be more subtle than this when it comes to it.
Contacts
This is a super important one. The contacts space is reserved for people who you’ve either spoken to or been directed towards. Lots of events have networking time built in, or you might meet someone in the queue for a canapé (who am I kidding, it’s a bowl of mixed flavour crisps for the most part). I pitched my novel when it was only 15,000 words in an ‘Agent 1-1’ session. The agent represented the wrong genre entirely, but invited me to send it in to his colleague. I wrote this down as a next step to make sure that I capitalised on that opportunity. His colleague didn’t want the book in the end, but being asked to send my manuscript in at all was a huge deal for me.
Checklist for building an author profile
Okay, so this section is more ‘how do I do this author thing beyond putting words on a page.’ A huge credit goes to Melissa Addey for outlining what that might look like. I highly recommend her workshops (she does a lot online too), which are hugely informative and practical – something super important to me. As you can see, I didn’t get round to doing a lot of these things. If I had crossed off everything on this list, I would be an A* Author Swat, but there is such a thing as being very busy trying to become an author at the expense of writing the actual book. Of this, starting my writing CV was most important, especially this part:
‘Notice where the gaps are and go about achieving these.’
Writing CV
Okay, so here’s where the CV part comes in. Essentially, you’re documenting proof of your writing credentials. This can include:
Blogs (e.g. Substack, newsletters)
Online and print magazines that have published your work
Interviews you’ve contributed to
Podcasts you may have been featured on
Conferences, open days, or agent 1-1s you have pitched at
Open mic sessions you have read at
Writing courses you’ve attended (and received feedback from)
Competitions where you’ve placed (honourable mentions, longlists, shortlists)
On this I listed everything I thought counted. Where there were gaps (at the time I hadn’t really attended any conferences or pitched my work anywhere) I went about to find opportunities where I could do just that. This led to me pitching at the London Writer’s Summit and applying for a mentoring scheme (which I didn’t get) and the Comedy Women in Print prize (which I came runner-up in).
It's never to early to start your writing CV. Like I said, this document is to help you, not beat yourself with. If you don’t feel like there’s anything to add to it yet, don’t worry, because through doing this task you’ll see where you might want to channel some energy.
The big aims and ambitions list
Oh boy, yes. The operative word here is ‘big,’ but the key is in how each item is broken down. Through writing a CV, I bet that you’ll have a better understanding of what you’d like that same CV to look like in one, two, or five year’s time. But how do you get there?
Small. Measurable. Achievable. Relevant. Time-bound targets.
I used to use SMART targets with my students at school. Sorry for the comparison, but essentially we’re just older, saggier versions of our teenage selves.
Teenage you: I can’t revise. There’s too much to do.
Older and wiser you: You’re tackling too much. Make your target smaller.
Teenage you: But I have no idea how to break it down.
Older and wiser you: Make an assessment of everything you need to cover and choose one or two named tasks to tackle at a time
Teenage you: EURGH but I have a life I want to live! I have to work at the weekend because Nandos won’t pay for itself.
Older and wiser you: Exactly! So make it achievable. Don’t say you’ll study for five hours and burn out when two and a half hours means you’ll be happier and get more done.
Teenage you: But after this I have a whole essay to write.
Older and wiser you: That isn’t relevant right now, so work on THE next thing you have to do. What is your immediate next step?
Teenage you: I don’t know, I’ll figure it out sometime soon.
Older and wiser you: You won’t, you daft cow! Set a deadline or it won’t happen. You can shift it if you HAVE to but otherwise it just won’t happen.
Wow, haven’t we matured! Or, have we? I’d encourage you to be as specific as possible when filling out this ‘how’ section. If it helps to add your deadlines onto a calendar, do that. Resources can be books, sites, people, or a space that you need access to. Then, we’re left with a sweet, sweet ‘completed’ column. The benefit of making your aims as targeted as possible is that you’ll have so many more things to tick off as ‘complete’. It’s baby steps, always.
Habits to develop
Again, this may look different for every writer depending on what your week looks like. These habits are small, but all of them are working towards nurturing your life as a writer. Yes, this whole post is about being a writer in some sort of professional capacity, but that’s not why we get out of bed every day. These habits are for our tender little writing soul, but are also contributing to the big picture. I will caveat my example by saying that it’s quite simply too intense and to be honest, it hasn’t proven to be sustainable. If I was to write it again, I’d add ‘go for a walk a three or four times a week with no earphones, just your thoughts.’
We want happy writers, here. Your habits have to work to make your body and soul feel good. Hunching over a desk for hours and hours only guarantees that you’re the moany friend who makes too much noise when they get up off the floor.
Books to read
If you take the Hermione Grainger approach to writing, you’ll be convinced that reading every book about writing is a sure fire way to increase the likelihood of your success. I wish this were true. However, it really won’t make your situation worse. There are a bunch of books on writing (some are better than others – I tell you which are worth your time here) and jotting down titles that are recommended to you or that you’d like to swat up on as homework can really help. As an industry, the more you learn about craft, productivity, and the business of publishing, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to tackle it’s many challenges later down the line.
Yesterday I launched my first workshop since last year! I’m not going to lie, I’ve been itching to do another since I emerged from the fog that is newborn baby days. This time, I’m trying something a little different. For the first time, I’m holding a Pay What You Can workshop and it’s all about Getting Ready to Submit to Agents. I believe that everyone should be able to give themselves the best shot possible when it comes to sharing their story with the world, financial barriers aside. Much of what is contained in this workshop has come as the result of my own triumphs and challenges, as well as my experience mentoring and offering feedback on submission packages. It’s pre-recorded, but everyone who signs up can submit a question that will be answered during the workshop.
In addition, I’ll cover the following:
The practical steps behind putting a submission package together
Comparison titles and why you need them
How to compile a list of 'dream agents' to submit to
Whether you can capitalise on trends in the publishing world
When things go well: etiquette and next steps
When things go wrong: taking stock and reassessing
Tickets are available here. I really hope to see you there!
Anyway, back to today’s theme. I’m sure that you already have a bunch of stuff you can fill a writing CV with. Here’s to the next step. Paid subscribers can access a career planning template below.