I feel like a bit of an idiot writing this chapter. After all, I have yet to take my own advice and have yet to "start" my career as a writer. I "think" I understand what you need to do to be a successful writer, but that is clearly an opinion that lacks the experience of actually having attempted it. Never the less, after scouring the internet and coming up with my own personal "plan to success", I figured I'll share it with you. Even though I've yet to follow my own plan, perhaps someone else will put it to the test and move towards success. So here are the steps towards becoming a published writer.

Someone once told me that the difference between a writer and a person who has a hobby of writing is whether they've actually completed a manuscript or not. That is absolutely the first step you must do to become a writer, and it's a step I'm betting 90% of Wattpadders have yet to accomplish.

Writing a Manuscript sounds hard. I mean, creating a 20,000 word plus novel takes months. Editing that novel takes even longer. Making sure the novel is any good takes even longer than that. By saying "finish a manuscript", I'm already setting a bar so far in the future that you can't even see it... unless you take my advice from the chapter "how to start your first story."

In that chapter, I mention something that should seriously change the way you write. Start small. Do NOT write a novel to start. Don't even write a novelette. Make your first publishable manuscript a

That story, even after being published, can be rewritten and expanded into a larger novel. There is absolutely no reason you can't turn a short story into a long one. The Simpsons started out as a clip in a variety hour show and now look at it. There is nothing wrong with expanding an idea you already started into a new medium.

The point is, you can write a 10,000 word story in less than a month, and you can edit, refine, and repair that story to your heart's content. Heck, you can even rewrite the story if you find it necessary. Get a finished manuscript; that's the goal. Once you have that manuscript that you're happy with, now's the time to get it published.

Once you have one or two completed manuscripts, your next goal is getting published. Some of you might twist your brows in confusion. "I thought we need to find an agent!", you might say. However, I'm not talking about getting a publisher and publishing a novel. I'm not talking books. I'm talking journals.

Do you know how scientists write up their experiments in a peer review journal? Well, English Majors do the same thing with short stories. A lot of famous novels started out as short stories submitted to writing journals. So what am I talking about? What are these mysterious writing journals?

Things like the New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Threepenny Review, Zoetrope, One Story, Antioch Review, AGNI, Barrelhouse, Cincinatti Review, The First Line, The Georgia Review, Boulevard Magazine, Camera Obscura, Crazy Horse, Story, Vestal Review, Flash Fiction Online, Black Warrior Review, The Sun Magazine, Virginia Quarterly, Ploughshares, Shimmer, Daily Science Fiction... to name a few.

Find one that fits the criteria of the stories you want to publish. If you write fantasy, find a fantasy journal. If you write romance, find a romance journal. Each one has their own criteria, word limits, and cost money to submit. The cost is only from $10-$30 for most, so if you feel your manuscript is publishable, submit it out to a journal or two.

In science, it is considered rude to apply the same manuscript to more than one journal at a time. I'm not sure if writing journals hold the same rules, but you might want to submit once and wait a month or two for an answer. If you're lucky, you'll receive a response as to why your story was rejected. And believe me, your story WILL be rejected. For example, the New Yorker has an acceptance rate of 0.00004%. Not every journal is that bad, but choose the journals you want to waste your time/money on carefully.

While you're waiting on getting your writing published, use this time to create other writing opportunities. Submit writings specifically for competitions. These can be online competitions on sites like Wattpad, but you may also want to look into other more specific competitive sites that focus more on writing and less on social aspects.

Try to win a few awards for writing. I know that's easier said than done, but you'll earn nothing by leaving everything on your desktop. Instead, get specific goals (submit a two-page flash fiction on lobsters by Friday), complete that goal, and then keep trying until you win something. Most award programs won't charge you for applying, so it can't hurt.

You can also create your own online presence. You can start a blog, run through facebook, whatever you want to do. You can do something popular in order to drive up traffic to your site. I personally translate a popular Japanese web novel. Everyone who loves that webnovel goes to my site, and that led me to posting my own original web novel too. Of the thousands that visit my site for the translation, a few have come to like my original works and stick around and read those. It's helped me build a bit of an online presence I previously didn't have.

Another thing you can do is become a member of writing societies. Writing societies exist just like science societies, and while membership might be a bit (think a couple $100), if you have any seriousness for writing, you should be a part of at least one or two societies. If you're in college, it's easier to join a society since you might get a student discount. Put out a few bucks and join the ASJA, or the AHCJ, or the Author's Guild, whatever fits your style of writing that you meet the qualifications for. As a member, your access to information and opportunities may increase. Plus, you can put your membership in an author's society on your resume and further make it larger.

This is literally the way to start out becoming a published author. It's all about putting more opportunities into your resume. You write short stories, you get them published. You join societies. You win awards. You establish credentials... And only after you've established credentials, then you...

Now that you actually have credentials, you need to start completing a larger manuscript. It doesn't need to be a "completely ready to publish" manuscript, but if an agent asks you to send him what you have, it should be refined enough that you don't cause an agent to roll their eyes. Basically, the more polished your novel, the easier it will be to get an agent.

I'll leave the finding and picking an agent up to you. I really have little advice on this. You obviously want someone who is motivated to help you, and you want a contract where he isn't going to take advantage of your work. Picking a good agent might be the most important thing you do in your writing career. So take your time and only send packets to the agents you want.

You should write a custom cover letter for your agent. You should have your CV which hopefully has a published work or two on it, a society, and maybe an award. You should have examples of your writing as well. And obviously, you should have a copy of your manuscript ready to send. If you're having trouble finding agents, your society might actually be able to get you a list of trusted agents.

Read reviews, if you can find them, and find out who your agent is and what their success rate is in getting their clients published. Once you're able to get an agent you can trust, have a lawyer go over the contract. I know, this sounds like a pain, and you're going to be spending money long before you start making money.

You must accept right away that writing books is something you do on the side, at least for a while. In the meantime, you'll have your real job. Your real job might be a writer for a website, or a writer for a newspaper, a writer for scientific articles, or a bus boy at IHOP. All of this adds to your resume (IHOP not so much). The point is, there is a big difference between getting a book published and securing a source of income as a job.

Unless you're self-publishing on amazon/Wattpad and strike rich by writing something so popular that a publisher scopes you and offers to publish your work, it doesn't usually work that way. Yeah, a few wattpadders have "won the lottery", and their book's popularity has gotten them agents and publications, but note that IS the equivalent of winning the lottery, with about the same odds. For the rest of us, the only option is the long and expensive way... to gradually build up our credentials until we can convince an agent to take us on.

After all that, you'll finally...

At this point, my advice is going to grow a little vague. With luck, you've got an agent who's decent and will walk you through the steps towards submitting manuscripts. Many publishers will NOT take manuscripts that don't come through an agent. Most of the time (but not always), you'll need a finished manuscript before a publisher is going to accept your writing.

Which publishers you pick will be dependent on what you're writing, and what your agent wants. How the manuscript gets edited will also depend a bit on your agent. With luck, they have an editing guy and you submit your work through him. Most professional editors are quite expensive, and I can't promise you that by the time your work is done, you won't have to drop a few hundred dollars hiring someone to edit your entire manuscript.

In the end, that is hopefully the point of having an agent, so that they can walk you through the steps. An agent will likely have a repertoire with publishers, and will be able to talk to and convince them to give your work consideration at levels that a simple author could never obtain. However, even with them, you still need to...

Even with an agent fighting for you, accept rejection. The point of building your resume and getting published involved putting your work out there, and getting it thrown back at you. Some may give you advice on how to improve, others may just slap your work with a giant NOPE. At your discretion, you may choose to make changes based on advice and rejection. However, submit, submit again, submit again, each time fixing what needs to be fixed, working with agents, editors, and publishers until you have the work that they're willing to put money into.

Your work will be rejected more often than not. The point is to keep doing it, keep trying. The greatest works got rejected numerous times by numerous publishers. This kind of stuff happens. Hindsight is 50/50, so you need to build up the toughness and the resolve to see your works critiqued, brutalized, and ignored by hundreds of people until you finally get that right combination that pushes forward your published work.

And that, my readers, is how you become a published author. Probably... I'll let you know what I get there.