Whenever I give a workshop at a writers conference, I always leave time for questions at the end. At Mad Anthony, during my session on how to avoid sabotaging your writing career, a writer stood up during the Q&A and said that he didn't have a question but an observation: All of my key points were in fact lessons that apply to all occupations (or even all facets of life), not necessarily publishing itself.

How observant he was! And he found me out! At the end of the day, I'm delivering a fairly simplistic philosophy packaged as writing instruction. This week, I'll be discussing the various way writers sabotage their careers, and I think you'll see the broader lesson underlying each one.

SABOTAGE #1: ATTEMPTING TO GET PUBLISHED TOO SOON
There are two primary ways in which this happens:

• Submitting less than your best.
• Submitting your work without knowing the market (publisher, agent, and/or audience).

Submitting less than your best work is by far THE NO. 1 REASON that writers fail in their fiction submission attempts. With so many people trying their hand at novel writing these days, competition is fierce, and agents/editors can be choosy. Are you submitting your absolute best work? You aren’t doing yourself any favors by circulating work that’s only halfway there. Have patience and conscientiousness to submit your best.

Submitting your work to the wrong market (or not understanding your audience) is the No. 1 reason nonfiction work gets rejected. More than 90 percent of the people who query/pitch me do not convey a good understanding of who would buy their work, much less an understanding of the audience that my particular company serves! I want to sign the authors who understand the market better than I do—and why shouldn't I want that? All editors want authors who bring value to their line, rather than trying to bring authors up to speed on what the market needs.

Know if there’s an audience/market for your work and what it looks like.
Then exhaustively research the companies/agents you submit to.

This same rule applies to published writers—they are not an exception!

The greater life lesson here? Always put forth your best work, and always understand and appeal to the needs of others if you want to partner with them.