Best Advice for Aspiring Writers

Today, I’m going to give you my best advice for aspiring writers. Let’s dive right in.

1. Claim Your Title as a Writer

First, there’s no such thing as an aspiring writer. Either you’re writing and you’re a writer or you’re not and you’re a dreamer. Don’t ever let the fear of claiming a title hold you back. I struggled with when to call myself a writer, an author, a poet. The secret I found — the sooner you give yourself the title, the sooner you’ll lose the fear of that title.

If you entered a restaurant without any experience in the field, and they hired you as a waiter. You wouldn’t call yourself an aspiring waiter until you felt like you deserved to be called a waiter. No, you’re given the title and you learn on the job. It’s the same with being a writer. Or an author or poet for that matter. In fact, you’re hired. Now go write.

2. Read

Read. A lot. Read in the genre you want to write. Read the big selling authors in your genre. Read the quirky ones few people know about, but whose stories you love. Read new authors. You’ll learn what’s trending in your genre. You’ll learn how big-name authors get away with writing things that new authors don’t. You’ll learn what type of writing you love and what type of writing you hate. Reading teaches you about techniques, pacing, setting, characters, and plotting. You’ll also learn what isn’t effective in writing. When you get pulled out of a story, stop and reread the section and examine what pulled you from the story. If you’re speeding through the pages, go back and find what hooked your interest.

There’s no osmosis that occurs when you read. You won’t absorb all the creative genius of another author by touching the pages. But your mind will pick up cues on how to craft a story.

Listen to audiobooks. When you hear a story you’ll pick up different things than you would if you were reading the story. Figuring out what doesn’t work in a story is as valuable as finding what does work.

If you haven’t yet found an author in the genre you want to write, keep searching. You don’t need an author to emulate, although, some new authors do this to learn how to write. Finding an author you love in your genre will help you guide your own writing. What do you like about that author? What are they doing in their writing that resonates with you.

3. Write

There’s no better way to learn the craft than on-the-job training, so write. And just like reading, write a lot. Don’t worry about how good it is or what you’ll do with the story after you’re finished. Just write. Start with a short story. Then, if you want to write a novel, write a novel. Again, don’t worry about what you’ll do with the novel when it’s done. A lot of new writers put all their hopes and dreams into their first piece of writing. This leads to doubt, writing blocks, all sorts of negative things.

Your first big hurdle as a writer is proving to yourself that you can write a novel. Once you’ve written your first novel, you’ve proven to yourself that you can. Which means that you can again.

4. Expectations

I already touched on this a bit in the last section, but it needs its own section. Wipeout all your expectations for your first piece of writing and your first novel. New writers tend to put all their hopes and dreams into the very first thing they write.

Let’s use our waiter example again. It’s your first day, you walk up to your very first customers and take their order. Would you expect it to go perfectly without any errors? Would you expect your first table to launch your career in the restaurant business? Imagine the whole restaurant coming to congratulate you on your amazing service skills. Then, someone asks you to come run your own restaurant. Does that sound realistic?

No, and yet this is the pressure that writers put on themselves. Hey, I get it, I put that type of pressure on myself too. And it made the journey harder.

5. Perseverance

I figured out this secret early on and it’s helped me stick with writing. Perseverance is the key to making it as a writer. All writers face rejection. All. Let that be encouragement that you’re in good company and you’re on the right path when you get a rejection. Do you know the real difference between published authors and those who didn’t make it in the field? The published authors kept going until they received a yes.

6. Attainable Goals

There’s a lot of wisdom I’d like to impart on new writers, but I’ll leave you with one last one for today. Know the difference between a goal and a dream and then set attainable goals. For example, as a writer, unless you self-publish, you have no control over whether you’ll get published. But you can control if you’re submitting your work for publication. You have no control over if you’ll win a contest, but you can control whether you submit your work to the contest.

If you have a large goal, break it into smaller goals that will help you work your way toward the bigger goal. This will allow you to see your progress and control the pace at which you work.