How To Effectively Manage Your Writing Career By Maximizing Your Resources

Resources include time, money, skills, and outside help. Writers have all of these resources [at different levels] at their disposal. They are the managers of their careers and like any good manager they must know how to best utilize their resources.
1. Editing and use of correct grammar in your script.
You may already have this skill and find it easy to accomplish. However, not everyone can say that. Keep in mind that spending time in an area that’s not your strength and thus taking time away from your strong area may prove unbeneficial. You can easily outsource a good proofreading of your script to get feedback and/or correct any errors in grammar. It is of course extremely valuable to be great with grammar, but some people simply aren’t. You need to get to the level of being proficient, but rather than spend more time being perfect, outsource to a proofreader.
2. Networking and staying in touch, building your Hollywood rolodex.
You must learn to make connections, make an impression, and make lasting relationships. You will need to do this yourself ultimately, however, you can outsource things like finding who the people are that you should target.
You can have someone else do research on pitchfests and events to attend. You can outsource the sending out of query letters, follow-up notes or postcards. You can have someone else updating your database or creating and updating a simple contact system for you.
3. Writing a query letter.
Writing a query letter is more in the realm of marketing versus the crafting of a story. It is important for you to develop the ability to craft a pitch over time as mentioned above – but you can easily outsource that responsibility or get assistance to help you achieve it.
However, writing a query letter is more than the pitch; it also includes understanding how to present the commercial and marketable aspects of the script.
4. Identifying the best production companies, producers, agents, and managers to target for your script.
This time-consuming task is one of the most readily outsourced. This task has less pay-off for doing it completely on your own. If you are a marketing expert you know that marketing research can be time consuming and very involved if done accurately. There is no equivalent to having experience and knowledge about a particular market. A marketing expert that has spent significant time working in a market has experienced an immersion that can only be equaled if someone dedicates the same amount of time an energy within that market.
In order to properly market a script, research must be carried out to determine the production companies that might be most interested. Also, there are factors that help make a particular script more commercially attractive to certain companies. The actual research on these production companies and the analysis of the best marketing strategies for attracting their interest can readily and easily be outsourced to someone else.
You say, “I can do that, why outsource?” Well, good managers always have a good understanding for time, scope, and money. If you have the time, ability, and skill-set to accomplish the scope of your screenwriting project then by all means do it yourself. If you don’t, then you might find it more effective to get some help. Your time may be better suited in your strongest areas or better yet, working on completing the next screenwriting project.