Let’s face it: there’s a lot of advice out there if you want to be a “successful” author.
You have to write a hook-filled, conflict-driven, character-driven, plot-driven, well-edited, cutting-edge, and unique story, that still fulfills recognizable tropes and universal fantasies.
You’re probably feeling the pressure to write faster, as well. While somehow building platform (we’ll get to that in a minute.)
Then there’s getting published.
If you want to pursue traditional publishing, you need to jump through a million hoops, showing you understand the market while simultaneously showing you stand out from it. In a good way.
Want to go the self-pub route? That means you need to learn the nuts and bolts of being a publisher. Getting a cover, getting editors, formatting, distribution, publication scheduling, pricing.
It can be daunting.
Marketing: the final straw.
Whether you go the traditional route or the self-pub route, marketing is on everybody’s mind these days, and the burden falls on the author. For someone who just wanted to write books, suddenly you’re trying to figure out filters on Instagram, and whether you’re using hashtags correctly. Or how to go viral on TikTok. Maintaining a Facebook group that seems to have the same five people posting and which seems to throttle you at 100 views unless you put another $10 in the slot machine, as it were. You need a website, a newsletter. Maybe a Patreon? Merch?
Now it’s not just daunting. It’s overwhelming.
Stop trying to do “everything.”
I have seen writers who haven’t completed a manuscript set up a website, create four different social media accounts and set up a newsletter because “you have to have a platform.” They’ve shelled out money for logos and have decided their tagline, but don’t have a game plan for their next book, much less subsequent ones, besides “selling a lot of books.”
I’ve also seen writers who have taken six different courses (which I myself have been guilty of!) then try to apply all those different approaches onto the next manuscript, determined to make this one the one that launches them into greatness.
You can’t – and shouldn’t – take every single bit of information you’ve gleaned, from reference books and courses and on websites, and then try to incorporate it all into your writing career, especially not all at once. That’s the path of madness.
Basics and base lines.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what’s worked for other people. The only thing that matters is what will work, naturally, for you.
Yes, that can mean casting about a bit, trying different things. But with any scientific experiment, you don’t try eighteen different variables and see what happens, because you’ll never know what element caused what result.
You also don’t need everything. Remember when I quoted Becca Syme’s “Question the Premise?”
Yeah. That applies here.
Do you really need a website right now?
Do you need to plot down to a scene level – or do you just think you have to?
Is there something missing? Or are you just trying things because you’ve been told you should?
Be a writing scientist.
Maybe you really do feel like things need to change.
Maybe you’re not selling as well as you want. Or the books that you’re writing are getting painful feedback. Or you haven’t finished a book.
These are all valid concerns.
That said, if you do feel you need something different, something else, ask yourself these questions:
- What is the end result you’re looking for?
- What are you going to try?
- How are you going to see if it worked?
If you want better beta feedback, you’re not going to build a website. (Or at least, I wouldn’t recommend it, but you could try.) If you want to complete a book, joining another four online groups and one more course on craft might not be the best use of your time, either.
In fact, I would go a bit deeper than “I want people to like my books.” Be clear. “People are saying there’s not enough conflict. So, my end result is beta feedback saying that they’re drawn into the books, that they like the conflict, that they enjoy the books.”
Then you work on that, however you want to approach it. But you’re going to use one approach to start.
You’re not going to incorporate this course’s big thing (“Story Energy Juice!!”) and that book’s guiding principle (“Big Guns Conflict”) and that other website’s advice (“find each character’s secret animal!”) Nope. Not doing that.
One approach. See how it works. Rinse and repeat.
“But that’ll take forever!”
Will it, though? (Remember: Question the premise!)
It’s the difference between running full bore, but without a sense of direction… and doing a slow jog in a straight line.
The key here isn’t applying as many approaches as possible. The key here is calming you down and getting you into a groove. Seeing what works for you and then leaning into it.
You’re not learning “the best way” to write, publish, and sell.
You’re learning your best way.
And that, I promise, will make all the difference.