Are you successful? How do you define success? Success is one of those fill in the blank words that excels at nuance. People argue its meaning. So, I will offer my personal definition and see if it resonates with you.
For me, success is a ‘reward word’. I allow myself to believe I’m successful. This happens when I’m feeling pride about my efforts. It’s never a measurable result. So many rewards in life aren’t measurable. Can you place a monetary value on that cherished weekend you spent with a dear friend? How much money would you pay to keep that memory?
Money is easy to define. You can look in the bank and measure your success by the thousands, millions, and billions. The same is true of followers. If I have a MILLION followers then I MUST be successful, right? Depends. The marker and measure of success might come from others. Do lots of people listen to you and give you their hard-earned money? Then you may have the temptation to tell yourself you’re successful.
For me, the true litmus test is how happy, content and satisfied my emotions are. Success should provide positive emotions, yes? Do you THINK you’re successful but feel impatience, stress, anger, and disappointment? You may want to rethink your level of success achievement.
Most people desire positive emotions. Of course, life creates problems. But is your life, ONLY problems ALL the time? Then my suggestion is to reanalyze your definition of success. If money or fame or popularity is your definition, the research is out. That path won’t bring the greatest joy. Have you reached around 70K a year of US dollars? Depending on the cost of living in your area more money won’t equal more feelings of happiness and success.
So, when I say be a successful writer, I’m not talking about making a million bucks. If that’s your goal, there are plenty of hustle worthy gigs out there that will get you paid faster. I prefer the path where I’m following my passion. Writing about what I love and connecting with people who I can learn from and benefit. Going to sleep each night satisfied and content with my daily activities. Success. Regardless of how many zeroes follow the one in my bank account.
1. HABIT. Habits are the number one key to success. That word gets tossed around so often we don’t hear the word anymore. Like vegetables. If every day you replaced a dessert with a vegetable, how much would that benefit you? It’s a no brainer. What people don’t stick around to learn is HOW to transform that bad habit into a healthy one. It may not come easy, but neither is it as hard as we imagine.
Our brain thrives on habit. It creates cognitive ease, which is a nice way to say it promotes laziness. Our brain seeks to find the easy way for repetitive behaviors. So, we don’t spend too much of our cognitive energy on reanalyzing every behavior. Think about driving home from work. How much mental energy does that demand? It’s so automatic you can stress about work the entire ride home. Why? It’s the wiring of our automatic brain.
This habitual process is the same for a good or bad habit. Your automatic brain doesn’t have a moral compass. It feeds you back programs you’ve stored on repeat. The process is as simple as this: (Uh oh! Jonny’s stressed. The last time he got stressed out he ate a bowl of ice cream and felt better. Okay, let’s keep throwing the urge to eat ice cream until he does.)
BOOM! Next thing you know, you’ve fallen into the habit of eating ice cream every night. Then your belt won’t buckle. Then you’re stressed about gaining weight. And then your brain says (Uh oh!) And the vicious cycle continues. But the part of your brain that creates this cognitive ease habit doesn’t know it put you on a path to diabetes. It is helping you automate your life’s behaviors. This mechanism frees up the precious commodity of cognitive energy.
The key is to interrupt the process. Develop awareness. Steer that automatic habit generator the right way. Think of your habit maker as a little Roomba vacuum. It’s not smart enough to do more than act in automatic mode. Sucking up everything in its path. Sometimes it gets jammed up in the wrong spot. It takes a little effort to go pick it up and readjust its path. But once you do, it replaces the hard work. Here’s a great video on readjusting your habit.
When it comes to writing, you must make it a habit. Every day, Five times a week. Three times a week. Whatever the correct number for you is, put the effort there first. Don’t confuse this priority. Don’t get lost in judgement etc. The habit is number one. Period. If you are not in the HABIT of writing, you cannot be successful by any definition of the word. My apologies if this sounds too difficult. There is no easy way around this.
Do you only write when “inspiration” hits or get obsessed for a bit and then get distracted? The odds are you won’t become successful. The only way to move from hobbyist to successful is establishing a writing habit. Not a million books will help if you don’t treat writing like an athlete treats working out. Your daily writing habit will get you to your success goal faster than any other single thing you can do. HABIT first. Everything else after.
2. FEEDBACK LOOP. The next thing is sharing your work with others. I avoided this for years. I still remember the first time I shared one of my written short stories with a writer friend. I felt paralyzed by fear of rejection. I was so scared she would reject my story. And my dream of becoming a successful writer would get flushed down the toilet. I was sure she was going to say: ‘Don’t even bother using the pages of your manuscript for toilet paper. Your horrific words have corrupted the very fabric of those pages.’ Ha!
Looking back, I laugh at my insecurities. But. I understand the fear. It is such a vulnerable space. Sharing your inner world with people you care about to judge. Especially, if you grew up in an environment where your normal included overcorrection. But there is no way around this process.
No writer wrote in a dungeon until he was perfect and then presented his flawless copies to the world. Every successful writer uses Alpha and Beta readers to provide feedback. It’s how the human mind works. We get tunnel vision, fall in love with our own ideas, and overlook the flaws. Overcoming fear of criticism and learning to accept feedback is key. This will speed up the changes to the way in which you write.
You’ll never please everyone, and unfortunately, we endure in a world of some haters. It’s part of the landscape. They are the minority, though. With social media it’s much easier today to find a community. A virtual space where you can get quality feedback and improve your writing weekly or daily. But if you procrastinate for fear of rejection it will take you longer to hone your skills.
Although the writing process is a lonely business, if you want success, you’ll need readers. And readers live in a world with infinite choices. If you aren’t getting the feedback to improve your writing, the readers will find something else to read. Click here for a great book that shows how indispensable the feedback loop is.
3. TOOLS. Every craft requires tools. Carpenter. Artist. Writer. We live in a great age for tools. I often wonder what Isaac Asimov could have accomplished with today’s technology. If in his twenty’s he didn’t have to use an old manual typewriter. No one today would tell you to use an inkwell and quill pen. Imagine trying to submit that manuscript to an editor, agent or publisher. There are hundreds of software programs out there designed for writers. Where should you spend your money? Should you spend money at all? What do you need? I will share the tools I use only to provide you with ideas.
A. Microsoft Word. This is a baseline for me. There are many free word processor apps and programs out there. Many people recommend Google Docs. But I’ve found the $7 monthly subscription for Microsoft worth it. You get a program that has been around for decades. They update this ubiquitous program with easy to navigate features. The editing program will get as deep as you need as you learn to self-edit. The autosave function where it saves it to a cloud every minute is worth so much. I’ve lost work before because I forgot to save my progress. That gouges a pit in your stomach. They even have group bundles you can go in with your friends and it will cost about $3 a month.
B. Hemingway App. The free online tool works great. After I’ve fixed the obvious grammar and spelling issues, I drop my draft into this app. Helps me fix readability issues. You want your writing to be easy to read by as large of an audience as possible. This app helps you get there.
C. Text Analyzer. This free online tool helps me catch repetitive words and phrases. Repetition for emphasis is a good technique if used with deliberation. But many of us overuse the same words and phrases. This tool won’t tell you how many times you should use a particular word or phrase. It shows that you used the word “Important” 537 times. I like the perspective it gives me. And it’s amazing the things it helps me catch and become aware of. I use this tool to help me make a list of repetitive words. I focus on the individual sentences without getting lost back into the story. I can improve the readability. Then when I’m done, I can recheck for story flow. It makes everything much crisper, succinct and focused.
D. Analyze My Writing. Another freebie. There are many tools embedded in this one, but I like using the Lexical Density tab. It breaks down your entire manuscript sentence by sentence. This takes a lot of work, but the results are worth it. Once again, it won’t reveal what to change, only whether a word has lexical density. It helps me omit needless words and unpack the sentence, structuring it in a more succinct way.
My personal writing journey to success took many twists and turns. If I had to do it all over again, I would use this checklist to get me here much faster. Are you a new writer? Do you struggle with sentence structure, ideas, grammar, editing, and story ideas? I will be writing a future article to break down those steps.
Are you an experienced writer but haven’t made the commitment to yourself to act? Then use the above list to speed up your process and get there faster. You can do this! Your readers are counting on you.