How to Become a Successful Writer

If you really want to know how to become a writer, I can tell exactly you what to do in a single word: write!

Want to go one step further and become a writer who makes a living from doing what they do? That's easy, too: first you write a novel, then you sell the novel to a publisher, or publish it yourself!

Now for the more serious advice...

If you are anything like 99% of first-time novelists, you will be tempted to skip this information and get cracking on the meatier material: planning, writing, and revising your own novel.

Don't be in too much of a hurry.

Writing a novel is a long and not altogether straightforward process. To stand the best chance of reaching the finishing line and not quitting along the way (like 99% of people who dream of becoming a writer), you need to prepare for the journey ahead.

More specifically, you need to do three things...

Get Motivated. This will keep you turning up at your writing desk every day, even during any hard times.
Adopt a Professional Attitude. This will help you approach novel writing like a business (which, on one level, is precisely what it is).
Harness Your Natural Creativity. In case the previous point sounds too clinical, this one ensures that the artistic side of your personality comes shining through.

The articles below will teach you how to become a writer who is equipped for success right from the start.

1. Becoming a Writer Takes Motivation

Do You Have What It Takes to Succeed?

That's a very important question for would-be novelists, and it's one that you need to answer right here and right now. After all, if you have any doubts about your writing talent (or lack of it), how are you going to cope a month or two down the road when the initial enthusiasm has worn thin and you're confronted with a tough chapter in your novel?

This is the point at which many novelists abandon their dreams.

But if you believe in your talents, and your eventual success, you will have the necessary faith to push through the difficult times (and all writers, however experienced, encounter those).

How do you discover if you have what it takes?

Simply read this article on the Myths & Secrets of Novel Writing. (If you are afraid of reading it because you're scared what you might learn, trust me and read it anyway. I think you will be pleasantly surprised what you find. And it will do your confidence no end of good.)

Next question...

Why Do You Want to Become a Writer?

This one is even more crucial than the last, in terms of motivating yourself to write. You see, writing a novel to a publishable standard just isn't going to happen in a few short weeks. And although the work is fun and highly rewarding, there will still be a few tough times.

So why bother to become a writer? What do you hope to get out of it? What are the perks of writing fiction?

If your answer to these questions is "money," think again. As this article shows, it is perfectly possible to Make Money Writing Novels. But as it also shows, it probably isn't the best way to motivate yourself.
What is a good reason to become a writer? There are loads of them, and I explore just some of them in Why Write a Novel?

Succeed On Your Own Terms

It is a lot easier to get excited about a project (and excitement is one of the best motivators there is) if you stay true to yourself and do things your own way.

It is hard to stay motivated if you feel like you are not following your heart and your instincts.

Writing Novels With Honesty. This one is all about writing the novel that you want to write - rather than the one you believe you should write. Unless you practice your craft with total honesty and show your fellow humans what this world truly looks like through your own eyes, becoming a writer is actually something of a pointless exercise.
Breaking the Writing Rules. Yes, learning the rules of how to write a novel is important (I'd be out of a job if it wasn't). But once you have learnt them, you must then learn to break them. This article shows you how.
Be the Best Novel Writer You Can Be. The advice in this article is actually very simple but, like all simple advice, is easy to overlook in the rush and tumble of writing your novel. So don't skip it!

2. Becoming a Writer Takes Professionalism

When a lot of people decide to become a writer, they have a romantic vision of a struggling artist pouring out their soul on paper and not paying any attention to the commercial side of writing.

There is a little truth in this vision. After all, novel writing is a creative act, and pouring out your soul is precisely what you will be doing when you set your story down on paper.

But fiction is also a commodity. Writers create stories, readers read them, and there are all sorts of middlemen taking their cut along the way - agents, publishers, booksellers.

To create a product that readers want to read, you will need to be in touch with the artistic side of your personality (more on that lower down).
But to succeed in the fiction marketplace, you will also need to approach novel writing with a professional attitude.

Partly, this means turning up to any meetings with agents and publishers with your business hat on, not your creative one.

And partly it means being organized and efficient in your daily writing routines (because if you aren't, you are much less likely to create a product that anyone wants to invest in.

The following articles will help you become the professional writer you intend to be...

One of the first things you will want to do, having decided to become a novel writer, is set up your writing space so you have all the "tools of the trade" to hand. The Tools To Become a Writer tells you what you need - and also what you don't need.

Next, check out Becoming a Writer Takes Time. This article is about two things...

First, it is about taking your time and not expecting to reach the end any time soon. (By concentrating on one small task at a time, and not worrying about how long it will take you to reach the finishing line, you actually stand a much better chance of finishing sooner.)
Second, it is about making the most of your writing sessions (and, again, doing that will help you finish your novel a lot faster).

Finally, How To Write Fiction the Smart Way sets out even more strategies for ensuring that you don't succumb to the fate of many would-be writers - namely, starting in a whirlwind of excitement but then abandoning the whole idea of being a novelist halfway through the second chapter.

Okay, you can take your professional hat off again now. It's time to meet your inner artist...

3. Becoming a Writer Takes Creativity

So far in this section on how to become a successful writer, you have discovered how to...

Motivate yourself for the long journey ahead. You achieved this by deciding that you DO have what it takes to succeed, and by coming up with some compelling reasons for writing a novel (making money from writing is a worthy goal but not especially compelling).
Be professional. If you approach writing a novel like running a home business, you hugely increase your chances of success.

Now it's time to talk about the most important tool you have at your disposal: creativity.

The genius keeps all his days the vividness and intensity of interest that a sensitive child feels in his expanding world. Many of us keep this responsiveness well into adolescence; very few mature men and women are fortunate enough to preserve it in their routine lives."
- Dorothea Brande

The good news is that us humans are a naturally creative bunch. The bad news is that this creativity tends to get hammered out of us from middle-childhood onwards. Watch young children at play and you will see pure creativity at work...

They will while away entire afternoons playing imaginary games of cops and robbers or (forgive the political incorrectness) cowboys and Indians.
They will set up shops using discarded cereal packets and strips of newspaper for money.
A small copse of trees becomes an enchanted forest; dusty old rugs turn into magic carpets.

And then adulthood comes along and spoils everything. We put away our childish things and get on with the "serious" business of life - which for most people does not involve anything like writing a novel. And we are all the poorer for it.

Learning to make full use of your inner-creativity is vital if you want to become a successful novel writer. Not only will your creativity allow you to write a much better novel, it will help you to enjoy the process of actually writing it so much more.

The following articles reveal everything you need to know...

The first thing you need to do is Meet Your Writing Muse. This is the source of all your creativity. Without it, your novel will almost certainly be dry and mechanical.
And in How to Kiss Writer's Block Goodbye, I show you how to use everything you have learned to overcome the dreaded block that many writers suffer from.

And that is it.

Like I said at the top, please do take the time to absorb all the advice in the material above. I know you are itching to get going on this brand new adventure of becoming a writer, but what you have to understand is that writing a novel is a marathon, not a sprint.

Taking the time to prepare before you set off could save you a lot of wasted time later on.