Success as a writer

You want to be a writer, but you’re not sure where to start. Most likely, you’re not going to sit down at your computer and just start typing anything for no good reason. You must have a reason to write just like you must have a reason to perform any task you wish to complete such as working, driving, or even just waking up in the morning. Before you write your first word, you need to examine yourself and decide what you want to accomplish. In order to be successful, you need to know why you are writing, what you want to achieve, and how you’re going to achieve it.

- Why are you writing?

You have to know why you are writing before you can ever put pen to paper or press one key. Do you need to hand in an essay for your English class at school? Do you long to craft the best sci-fi novel of this century? Do you want to write a song to accompany your freshly composed music or maybe to inspire some new notes? Do you want to start a freelance writing career and need to write your first article to jump start your business? Do you simply just want to write better and more creatively?

- What are your writing goals?

Once you’ve decided why you want to write, you need to set your goals. For some of your writing reasons, this might be obvious. If you need to write an essay for school on The Great Gatsby by next week, then the finished essay by next week is your goal.

For some of the others, this may be harder to figure out. If you want to write a novel, maybe in your free time, you need to set deadlines. If you wrote for a magazine or had a literary agent, they would give you deadlines, but because you probably don’t, you need to set them for yourself and remain disciplined to complete them.

If you want to write a novel, you may decide you want to write it in one year. You will need to decide how much time you will need for each stage: planning, writing, editing, etc. Decide how much time you will devote to it, maybe 2 hours per day or whatever will work for you, and assign deadlines accordingly.

For the more the more vague ideas, such as starting a freelance career and writing better, you still need to devise goals, but in steps. For the freelancers, you might have your first goal to create 5 articles and have them submitted to magazines by a certain time. If you just want to write better and explore your creative writing skills, you can come up with daily goals to complete such as using writing prompts. Also, you could decide to have small goals starting with poems and short stories and work your way to a novel or screen play, whatever you desire.

Whatever you do, make sure it is clear. Don’t just jump into something without a plan and decide as you go because you will lose interest and drive very quickly.

- How will you stay inspired?

In order to achieve your writing goals, you need to stay inspired. The initial inspiration is the easiest to get. It’s that boost of confidence and excitement to start something. This could be that first novel you finally decided to start. You feel pumped and ready to write and you do write, but after a little while, you get frustrated when it starts to get hard, or may be you lose interest.

One of the best ways to stay inspired is to see success. Break of your larger goals into smaller ones and you will achieve more. If you are writing this novel, decide to outline it first. When you finish that, you have achieved some success and will stay motivated to continue.

Another way to get inspired is to know that you are doing what you should be doing. If you are doing what you’re supposed to be doing, you will feel write about it. As you go along with that novel, you will either feel confident about it or not. If you don’t feel confident about it, it will affect your inspiration and you won’t be able to finish it.

Keep at your writing, but know when it’s not working and move on.

If you really want to succeed at writing, you just need to keep doing it. Once you are able to answer these questions all you have to do is keeping it going and keep pushing for that success. Whether or not you’ve achieved success is up to you. If you feel the goals you’ve set out have been achieved and you feel confident in what you can accomplish, then you have succeeded as a writer.

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