You’ve heard the cliche: everyone thinks that they can be a writer. Or that writing a book can’t be that difficult. But anyone who has tried to write a book will probably disagree.
Writing is hard, except when it’s easy, and even then it’s still pretty hard.
For me, writing this month has been slow but steady. Book 3 is chugging along at 15k words right now (hopefully 16k by the time you read this). Definitely not where I wanted to see my word count but it’s a start. Every book begins with a start. And then you have to keep building and adding onto it, until you finish it. For most of us, myself included, this means writing a book is a marathon and not a sprint. It can be hard to keep that in my head.
I want to be a full time writer now. I want to bang out a novel every month or every other month now, but I’m not there yet. At most, I’m a halftime writer. I write fairly consistently but not 40 hrs a week–which is where I would ultimately like to be.
3 Stages Of Being An Author
- Beginner: you’re working on your first story, or maybe your second story, writing when you can but not overly consistently
- Amatuer: maybe you write consistently but you don’t write a ton, you’re averaging a book a year
- Full time: you write multiple books a year, you put in 40 hours a week, you treat writing as your full time job.
A lot of people spend a long time at stage 1. I spent four years at stage 1 calling myself a “writer” but not managing to finish anything. It took me 18 months to write Duality and about 8 months to write the sequel, The Convergence Theory. I thought by the time I would start Book 3 I would be at stage 3 already but I’ve discovered that I’m really still at stage 2: writing more consistently but not putting in enough hours to call this my full time job.
That’s OK. I don’t have to be at stage 3 right this minute. Maybe I won’t get to stage 3 for a couple more years and a couple more books. That’s fine. The important part is that, just like when I’m writing a book, I add onto my writing habits a little more and a little more.
I’m not going to start busting out 10k words a day this week. Or next month. I’m not going to reach my 85k word draft goal by May 1st but I will make it by June first, which is a huge improvement over TCT’s timeline.
Building A Writing Career Begins With Good Habits
Just some thoughts to chew on if you’re feeling discouraged.
- Set goals and meet them, but if you aren’t going to meet one, don’t become so discouraged that you give up or ignore the deadline altogether
- Have patience, both with your work and yourself
- Increase your time commitment, word goals, and publishing milestones steadily–remember the tortoise
- For 75% of authors, making a living is all about building a backlist (eg 10+ published titles), building a backlist takes time
- Even though this is a marathon, don’t hesitate to do tiny sprints here and there to encourage yourself
- Don’t stop writing.
Do as I advise, not as I do. Trust me, I’m not good at always taking my own advise no matter how good it is. That’s another reason I’m still only at stage 2 😉
Questions About The Blood & Bone Trilogy/Timestamps/Prompts
I’m opening the floor this week to questions about my books (Duality as well as the unpublished sequels), as well as timestamp requests (something you wanted to see more of from the first story or what came after? Give me a prompt and I’ll write you at least 500 words. This is open to pre-story events, porn, and secondary characters as well). Least a comment below or hit me up with an email 🙂
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