What kind of Career Author are you?


As you navigate the path to bestsellerdom, how best can you play to your strengths and overcome any weaknesses? Take our quiz to find out! The results may surprise you.

What kind of Career Author are you?

Question 1 of 13.

What’s your favorite kind of writer event?

1. Book signings for friends and favorite authors
2. Your monthly genre association meetings
3. Writers conferences
4. You’d rather stay home and write
Question 2 of 13.

When you attend a writer event, your strategy is to:

1. Hang out mostly with the people you know, and hope to meet some new people by way of introduction and/or happenstance
2. Chat up everyone there, from the caterer to the rock star authors
3. Introduce yourself to the big-name authors, and ignore everyone else
4. You’d rather stay home and write
Question 3 of 13.

When you’re working on a new book:

1. You set a deadline and a word-count goal based on that deadline and meet it every day, rain or shine
2. You have a lot of great ideas and you get to work right away but tend to lose steam somewhere short of The End
3. You clear the decks in November and pound out a NaNoWriMo first draft of a new book every year
4. What new book? You’ve been writing and rewriting the same story for months, years, decades
Question 4 of 13.

For critiques of your writing, you rely on:

1. Yourself, no one understands your story the way you do
2. Beta readers
3. The freelance editor you’ll hire, as soon as you finish
4. Your writers group
Question 5 of 13.

When you get feedback on your writing, you:

1. Hear only the bad stuff, and consider abandoning the project for another, better idea
2. Hear the good stuff and the bad stuff, cry today and revise tomorrow
3. You never show your work to anyone, except maybe your mother
4. Decide the feedback is just plain wrong and ignore it
Question 6 of 13.

You use social media to:

1. Post selfies of you and bestselling authors on Instagram and Snapchat
2. You don’t do social media
3. Friend/follow writers, editors, agents, and publishers on Twitter and regularly interact with them
4. Friend/follow writers, editors, agents, and publishers on Facebook and Twitter but rarely interact
Question 7 of 13.

Your online presence includes:

1. Your website, blog, newsletter
2. Guest blogs, Goodreads giveaways, and the like
3. All of – your website, blog, newsletter, guest blogs, Goodreads giveaways, and the like
4. None of – your website, blog, newsletter, guest blogs, Goodreads giveaways, and the like
Question 8 of 13.

You spend most of your reading time:

1. You don’t have much time to read since you’re always writing
2. Surfing for Ted Talks, interviews, reviews and blogs featuring bestselling authors
3. Reading research material related to your story
4. Reading widely and deeply in your genre
Question 9 of 13.

To master the craft of writing, you rely on:

1. Taking high-profile classes and workshops
2. Reading books on writing
3. The only way to learn to write is to write
4. Studying the masters in your genre
Question 10 of 13.

You’re in the market for an agent, so you:

1. Ask your well-published friends for referrals
2. Send out query letters
3. Introduce yourself to agents at conferences, classes, and other writing events
4. Stalk your preferred agents online and off
Question 11 of 13.

If you’re honest, you know that your biggest obstacle to the writing career of your dreams is:

1. Time
2. Resistance to revision
3. Fear of success/failure
4. Lack of confidence
Question 12 of 13.

Your idea of writer’s heaven is:

1. Dinner with a bestselling author
2. A writer’s garret in Paris
3. A weekend away with your writers group
4. A month at a writer’s colony like Yaddo
Question 13 of 13.

When you dream big writer dreams, you dream about:

1. Attending the Broadway premiere of a musical based on your story
2. Your acceptance speech for “Best Adapted Screenplay” at the Oscars
3. The New York Times Bestseller List
4. Not showing up to receive your Nobel Prize for Literature

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What kind of Career Author are you?

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