The 3 Stages Of Creative Career Development

What holds you back—and how to elevate yourself to each new level.

Dear Writer,

Approximately 10 years ago (2013), I graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a degree in Fiction Writing.

I also graduated with:

• No portfolio (except for one finished short story and a dozen unfinished short stories).

• No idea how to make any money as a writer (besides getting a job somewhere like a magazine, newspaper, or coffee shop).

• No connections (outside of my classmates, many of whom I didn’t “vibe with,” I didn’t know any other writers).

• And maybe worst of all, no clue what kind of writer I wanted to become (all I knew was I wanted to make money “writing” and ultimately find a way to get rich).

Which means I had to do a LOT of experimentation to figure out how I was going to make this “my-dream-is-to-become-a-writer” thing come true.

Today, I am a full-time writer & writerpreneur.

In fact, not only do I get to do what I love every single day, but I have generated millions of dollars from the craft of writing. That’s rare! Doing what you enjoy AND making money doing it?! That’s the ultimate dream.

And it only took 10 years!

(You should hear that as encouraging and not discouraging. 10 years is a whole lot better than 50 years.)

Even still, I have been reflecting a lot lately on the whole journey, and asking myself how I can create resources to help other writers (YOU!) get there even faster.

• How could you achieve similar outcomes in 6 years?

• Or maybe 3 years?

• Or maybe 1 year?

This question is what inspired a recent post of mine…

Writer Career Paths: 9 Ways To Make $1M As A Writer

I wanted to lay out all the different ways you can become “a writer” so that you can be more conscious of which path you’re choosing, why, and over what time horizon you can expect to “make money.”

But regardless of path, something else has occurred to me lately:

The 3 Stages Of Creative Career Development

No matter which path you choose for yourself as a writer, you are going to have to go through 3 very different stages of creative career development.

Again, I want to be precise with language here: the reason I am saying “creative career development” and not “creative development” or “career development” is because I firmly believe writers today need to nurture both THE ART and THE BUSINESS of their craft. Isolated “creative development” doesn’t always lead to “career development,” and vice versa.

You need to practice both.

So, what are the 3 Stages of Creative Career Development?

And how can you grow through each one—and progress to the next level?

Stage #1: Beginner Exploration (1-2 years)

At the start of any new creative career, you are in Beginner Exploration mode.

This means:

• You don’t know what you don’t know.

• You have very little “working knowledge” and pattern recognition.

• You aren’t capable of discerning between truly helpful information & information that “sounds great” but doesn’t progress you very far.

Now, in the beginning, none of these things are really a problem.

One of the core benefits of Beginner Exploration mode is that, almost no matter what you consume or practice, you can make progress and quickly—and “quick progress” is very fun and satisfying. For this reason, I believe many people unconsciously choose to sporadically pick new habits and interests in their lives (instead of sticking with one for a sustained period of time) because progress is so immediate. It’s much easier to pick something new and amaze yourself at all the things you’re “suddenly learning” than it is to chip away at something for 50+ hours straight only to improve your skill in that area by 1% (which is what’s required in later stages of Creative Career Development).

For this reason, most books and resources designed to help Beginners tend to be more focused on “inspiration” and less focused on anything tangible or tactical.