Want a Writing Career? You Need 6 Things

Act Like a Succeeder, and You Will Succeed

While the act of writing is what constitutes a writer, there is more to a writing life than crafting stories. If you wish to make writing your career, there are a few more things you need to put into your future plans. 

If you dream of placing your work into the hands of readers, you must first be able to be seen by them. No one will be reading what you have to write unless you do the work to get your content easily accessible to readers. 

To do this you need six things. Three character behaviors and three tools. 

3 Character Behaviors Needed for a Career in Writing

Before you can make progress toward your big writing goals, you need to be firm on 3 character behaviors. 

I am calling these things character behaviors, because I believe these aren’t traits you have or don’t have, but they are behaviors you can learn to do and grow in. If these behaviors seem unlike you, don’t write yourself off as being incapable of making writing a career. 

Instead, take time to learn how you can practice them in your daily life. 

A Big Why

To make it anywhere in life, you need to know why you are reaching for your goals. This is the basis of motivation. 

Ask yourself: 

Why do you want to be a successful writer? 

For what reward are you working for? 

How bad do you want the reward? 

Without a Why, there can be no How and no Success. 

What do you want to achieve in your writing? A large readership? A bestselling novel? Your story adapted for a film? 

You need to know what you want, and why you want it. If you start your journey with a strong reason, than you will be less likely to give up when the road gets tough.

Writing Discipline

Now that you have the Why, you need discipline to make your dreams come true. You must plan how you will reach your goals, and be disciplined to follow through. There is no success with half-hearted tries. 

This is one of the hardest behaviors to learn, but it is the one which will produce progress. Without the discipline to act, there will be no reward. 

The good news is there are a lot of blogposts and online courses that can guide you on the how, but at the end of the day you are the one who must decide to take action. 

Decide to make your dreams a reality. Commit to the work. 

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Belief

Success is closely connected with how you think. If you believe in the success of a writing career for yourself, than success will be possible. 

Likewise, without any faith in success, you won’t have the discipline to achieve success. 

To have success, you must believe in success. With a little faith you can accomplish things you would have thought impossible. 

Give yourself the freedom to believe in your success. 

When I journal, I will often affirm my success in my goals. I will write down “I will succeed” and “I am succeeding.” Because when you believe you will succeed, then you are already succeeding. 

3 Tools to Begin a Writing Career

Now that you know what Character Behaviors you need to put into practice, here are 3 tools you need to build a writing career in today’s world. 

These tools are at your fingertips even now. All the knowledge and tools you need to become successful are accessible. There is no reason success cannot be achieved. 

Blog

A writer today needs a platform. Even if you are planning to pursue traditional publishing, publishers are more likely to publish your work if you already have a platform and a readership. 

The best platform to have is a blog. A blog is something you can own (unlike social media profiles), a way to make your writing accessible to readers, and a place to start building a loyal readership. 

What you decide to blog about is up to you. You can share stories, write for readers, or write for writers. Take a little time and play around with ideas you would like to pursue. 

A blog is surprisingly simple to make, but I will not go into details here. Instead, here’re some fabulous posts on how to create your own blog by Jeff Goins:

• “The Step-by-Step Guide to Launching Your Own Blog”
• “How to Start a Self-Hosted Blog in 8 Minutes or Less”
• “How to Build a Blog Site from Scratch”

Email List

If you have a blog, you need an email list. 

Email is a form of communication more personal than a comment on social media. An email list is where you will connect and build a relationship with the people who read and appreciate your writing. 

The cool thing about an email list is that these will be the people who will support you and follow your journey to success, and the ones you can entertain or help with their own success. 

When you pursue a career in writing, you need to make connections. You need peers in a community, you need influencers and mentors your learn from, and you need connections with your readers. 

An email list is how you will share you new book with your readers, gain support in your book launch, and gain insight on what to write about. Your subscribers will be the ones advocating your book to their friends, making book reviews, and helping you be a better writer. 

Like a blog, an email list isn’t hard or time consuming to set up. A couple of widely recommended emailing list providers are Mailchimp and ConvertKit. 

Outreach

Once you have a blog and an email list, you need to attract people to your platform to read and subscribe. How you do this is by getting your work in front of audiences already formed. 

Here are some examples of what this looks like: 

• Share your writing on social media, linking back to your website. 
• Guest post on other writers’s blogs which have similar content. 
• Publish on online platforms such as Medium.com and invite readers back to your website. 

Readers will not flock to your blog simply because it exists on the web. You must go out and find your readers. Figure out where they are hanging out, and introduce yourself. 

Once you do this a few times it will become easier, and the rewards of consistently practicing outreach will be worth the effort. 

Writing Success is Your Decision

Do you want to succeed in building a writing career? If your answer is ‘Yes,’ then you must act like someone who has already succeeded. Have your Why, be disciplined, believe in success, and use the tools in front of you. 

I have faith in your success, but your success is up to you. Make the decision to succeed and take action—there is no better time than now.

Writers, what do you think? Have you taken the steps needed to succeed in writing? What will you be doing today to further your success? Tell me in the comments. 

Featured photo by rawpixel on Unsplash