If you are just starting out, now's the time to jump-start your career. If you have experience, it's a good time to improve your skills and increase your income. There are four steps you can take to insure your success. Before discussing those four steps, I'd like to outline how to sell just one written work.

Whether you're writing a script, book, article, or brochure, follow these three simple, but often-overlooked steps.

1. Choose your market first, and identify an editorial need of that market. Your market is actually two-fold: the person or company who will pay you for what you have written and the eventual readers of what you have written. What are the needs of both? Jot down ideas for your book, essay, article, script, etc.

2. If you plan to write a book, write the proposal first (not the book). If you plan to write an article, write the query first (not the article). If you plan to write the script, write it. In the film business, you must write the script first unless you are an established writer. To get an assignment to write a brochure, find a client first.

Remember that the query or proposal must be written with a specific agent, editor, publisher, or company in mind. The key is to focus on market needs and to fill those needs.

3. Once you get the go-ahead, now write the book, article, or brochure. Your odds of selling it are high.

The above steps apply in a general way to virtually every kind of writing. The core principle is to understand your market first. Even if you have already written a script or article or book, the task becomes finding the right market for it.

Of course, more important than selling a single work is your career. There are four steps that I recommend for moving it forward in a major way.

1. Discover your creative vision. Who are you as writer? Why do you want to write? Now is the time to find out.

2. Write with freedom and confidence. For this to happen, you need to continue to learn and hone your skills. This might mean taking classes and workshops (such as my Sundance Retreat) and reading books by those who have gone before. And don't forget to "keep writing"—writers write.

3. Identify key writing markets and sell to them.

4. Create a strategic marketing plan. This is where everything comes together. You plan your career. There is power in a specific and realistic plan. Writers have doubled their income in a single year by simply creating a plan and following it.