How to Not Fail as a Writer
It all boils down to focus
It’s the third month of 2024.
This means that we’re in the critical part of the year where many people are either on the verge of giving up or have already given up on their New Year’s resolutions.
I don’t blame them. I almost gave up in the very first month.
My New Year’s resolution for 2024 is to be more focused.
FOCUS.
This is something I’ve been struggling with for as long as I can remember. While I have a much better grasp of it today, it still isn’t at the level I truly want it to be.
Focus is the single most important thing to cultivate if you hope to succeed at anything in life.
It doesn’t matter if you’re building a multi-billion dollar business from scratch, writing a novel, or trying to beat a nightmarishly hard level in Candy Crush. You need unwavering focus to make it happen.
Focus means keeping your eye on the price while relentlessly working towards it without distracting yourself with anything else. I sorely lacked this kind of discipline when I began my online writing career over a year ago.
Now, while the title of this article is How Not to Fail as a Writer, let me start by talking about what it means to succeed as a writer.
Ask a hundred writers what success means to them and you might get a hundred different answers. Why? Because different people want different things, and success means something different to everyone.
It might mean one or more of the following for you:
- Making more money as a copywriter, freelancer, ghostwriter, etc
- Growing a quality community of readers
- Being a traditionally published author
- Making more money as a self-published author
- Becoming a famous author
- Having fans who adore you and whatever you write
- Having the freedom to pursue whatever you want
- Winning prestigious awards in your genre
- Traveling all over the world
- And so much more
These are all great, especially the ones that have to do with making more money. Seriously, who doesn’t like money? Certainly not me.
But…
I see all these as byproducts of success rather than success itself.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you aren’t successful if you have (or achieve) these things. No one gets to define what success means to you. So if that’s what it takes to be successful, then by all means go for it.
But to me, if I achieve all these things at some point, and then quit writing forever, then I have failed. Why? Because success means that I get to write for as long as I live.
It’s just a bonus if doing it brings money along.
This is all to say that if writing is your passion or life’s purpose, then as long as you never quit, you haven’t failed.
But as simple as it sounds, that’s not easy to do at all.
Sometimes I experience some very bad days and wonder if I would be better off just quitting it all and doing something else. And then I come back to my senses and keep going.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to keep going. They give up on their dream out of frustration. After all, it can be hard to do something when you don’t see the material success it brings.
So how exactly do you keep that dream alive long enough to eventually unlock the byproduct of success?
That’s where focus comes in.
I’ll share with you four ways to focus, and ultimately NOT fail as a writer.
1. Have clarity about what you want
After years of struggling with focus, I finally vowed to go all in 2024.
Thus began My Year of Focus.
Ironically, January was the month I was the most unfocused in my life. I was either so bored or anxious that I couldn’t write much. Worst of all, I got stuck in a perpetual cycle of doom scrolling on social media.
Listen, I basically screwed myself in the first month of 2024. And I knew that if I continued with such an utter lack of direction, I would regret it for the rest of my life.
So what did I do?
I went back to the drawing board to get more clarity on what I wanted for my life. This is something I do often, by the way, whenever I feel like I’ve lost my sense of purpose in life. This was no different.
First, why was I feeling so anxious about writing?
The answer was pretty obvious. My laptop at the time had gotten so slow that what should have taken me an hour to do took me close to seven hours or more. So, I felt this internal resistance whenever I wanted to write.
My mind and body worked together to wage war against me.
I needed to change my computer–it was the only way to eradicate this friction.
Thankfully, I did that on January 29. However, there were a few issues with the computer, and I eventually replaced it on February 1.
Finally, I had the perfect computer. And guess what, all my anxiety disappeared immediately.
One part of the equation was solved. Now I needed to get rid of the boredom that had taken over my life.
I was bored because I wasn’t writing the things I wanted.
I publish essays, personal stories, and articles on self-improvement and writing on Medium. I love writing about these things, no doubt. However, as a writer, I am a novelist first and foremost. Writing fiction, particularly novels, is what I’m most passionate about.
I may quit all types of writing someday. But writing fiction is something I will never tire of. I’ve always known this since I wrote my first short story at the age of six and my first novel at 13.
Unfortunately, I lost sight of this vision while focusing on everything else but that. I hated it. It wasn’t that I wanted to completely get rid of everything else. I just wanted fiction writing to be my priority. And since I wasn’t doing that, I found it hard to commit to the other things, including my newsletter.
To solve this problem, I scraped my entire writing system and created a new one with fiction writing at its core.
Suddenly, I had clarity about what exactly I wanted to do. And every morning, I wake up doing just that. No boredom. No anxiety. Just plain action.
If you’re struggling to focus, you’re either bored or anxious.
Boredom makes you feel like nothing is challenging enough, and therefore you have no desire to pursue anything.
Anxiety, on the other hand, feels like everything is way beyond you. So you’re too paralyzed by fear to even try.
The way to solve both problems is by having absolute clarity of what you want to do. Map out the vision of your life to the very last detail.
Once you’re clear on that, it’s time to get to work and make it real.
Which brings us to the next important step.
2. Have a system in place
Clarity is a great place to start. But that alone is not enough.
Just because you know you want to write novels, grow an audience, become a freelancer, or make six figures a year as a copywriter isn’t enough to make it real.
You must actively work on it to make that happen. This is what systems are for.
It’s easy to be distracted by seemingly important things all in the name of productivity. Because they seem important, doing them tends to stroke your ego since you feel like you’re being productive.
But let’s be real. You’re just wasting time.
Stop wasting your precious time. Focus only on the relevant things that move you a step closer to your goals. Do this by creating systems.
I used to obsess over my goals. Yet I had a hard time accomplishing them because all I had were the goals and not the systems to achieve those goals.
If a goal is a destination, a system is the map that takes you there.
Last year, I got better at execution because I adopted systems. But when I compare the things I accomplished last year to just February of 2024, I realized what a joke my 2023 had been.
I did more in February of this year than in the whole of 2023. This is not an exaggeration at all. This is a fact.
In 2023, I thought of my goals as a year-long thing. And because of that, I felt like I had a lot of time to work on them, thus doing very little for each month. Even in the end, I didn’t accomplish all my goals.
This year, however, I’m doing things differently.
Instead of just having one massive goal in mind and working on it with a half-assed focus, I have broken it down into smaller goals to work on monthly, weekly, and daily.
My grand goal for 2024 and 2025 is to make $2000 per month as a self-published fiction author, primarily through subscriptions.
I don’t just see it as a two-year-long thing and hope for the best. Instead, I’ve broken it down into smaller goals to work on each month, week, day, and further down to each hour.
No time will be wasted.
For example, my February goals looked like this:
- Revise and publish my novel, Her Witch, Her Demon
- Write at least two articles for The Write Network
- Write and publish love short stories. By the way, I send these stories to my fiction subscribers. If you’re interested, sign up for my newsletter.
I dedicated the first two to four hours of my morning (5 a.m. to 9 a.m.) to working on each of them. By the end of February, I had accomplished all of the goals. A very tiny accomplishment in the grand scheme of things, however, it was significant enough to push me one step closer to my grand goal.
That, to me, is a massive success in my book.
This March, I have two major goals. First, I’m going to promote Her Witch, Her Demon as aggressively as I can. Yep. Aggressive marketing.
Secondly, I will be starting Book 2 of Her Witch, Her Demon. My readers are obsessed and have been asking for the sequel. So yeah, I have to give the people what they want.
As you’ve probably already guessed, I have a system in place to work on my new goals for the month.
What about you?
What’s your grand goal for the year?
Once you identify it, break it down into smaller goals you can work on monthly, weekly, and daily.
Ask yourself:
What can I do today to get me 1% closer to my overall goal?
When you know exactly what to do, focus on nothing else but that. This is how you stay in the game long enough to achieve the success you’ve always envisioned.
3. Don’t be afraid to pivot
Two types of people fail as writers.
The first and most common group is those who give up too quickly. They start with the false impression that things will be freaking easy. But then once they quickly discover how full of shit they are, they lose steam and eventually give up.
You’re probably not in this camp because you’re still writing. Awesome. Once you keep at it for about a year, it’s likely you won’t give up. At least not without a fight.
And that brings me to the second group of people who fail. Those who stubbornly continue with the same tired tricks when it’s obviously not working.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying give up when something isn’t working. I’m saying change the strategy.
Just because it didn’t work out doesn’t mean you failed. It simply means you should try something else.
That’s what pivoting is. Do something else to get different results.
I’ve experimented with so many things throughout my online writing career.
I gave up on the things that didn’t work and I doubled down on those that worked. I didn’t fail. I simply learned.
Failure is giving up. As long as you’re still writing, you, dear reader, haven’t failed.
Unhappy with a topic? Then change it. It’s that simple.
Don’t be confined by a niche–you are the niche.
I didn’t know I loved writing personal stories and memoirs until I tried it. Once I realized how much I enjoyed it, I kept writing. And guess what, I had so much success with that on Medium.
No, success here doesn’t mean money. I’m not even eligible for the Medium Partner Program, so no. Not money.
But in this case, success means a larger audience, improving my craft, and becoming a more disciplined writer.
Currently, I have pivoted to fiction.
Well, it’s not really pivoting since this is what I’ve always wanted to write from day one. Unfortunately, I didn’t think fiction would do well on Medium so I didn’t do it as much.
It turns out I was full of shit. This short story I published in February even got Boosted and got quite a few readers to buy me a coffee. Now, I keep asking myself why I didn’t do this right from the beginning.
Don’t just write something because you believe that’s the only way you’ll get attention.
Do you enjoy what you’re writing? No? Is the outcome (money or ego boost) as important as the process (writing)? Also no? Damn, then why are you wasting your time doing something you don’t like?
Pivot.
4. Opt for simple rather than complicated
Oh God, I am so guilty of this.
As a beginner, I made things more complicated than they were.
For example, rather than publishing for free on online platforms like Medium, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, I wasted my money, time, and energy on creating a website.
There’s nothing wrong with having a website. But who’s going to read your work if you’re just a beginner who barely knows SEO?
No one.
Wouldn’t it be much simpler (and smarter) to focus on free platforms that have millions of users? I wasn’t that smart, unfortunately. All I had were a handful of readers.
But once I grew some sense and migrated to Medium, things became much easier. I had more readers in my first three months on the platform than I had on my blog in two years. I could have skipped all that bullshit by going straight to Medium in the first place.
Even when a website is necessary, it’s common for people to waste more time on things like logos, fonts, and themes, than on the writing itself.
This is exactly what I did. What the hell was I thinking?
All these are important, of course, but your writing must always come first. If you’re focusing most of your time on everything else but writing, then there’s a problem.
No need to get everything right at once. Do the simple things first. Later, when you gain more ideas or resources, you can focus on improving it. One step at a time.
Creating an email list is fairly simple, but we tend to over-complicate stuff. I know I did that. It became a massive headache at one point because I was juggling three email platforms at once. At the very beginning too, I felt paralyzed by which email system to use.
Don’t overthink it. Choose one and start.
If it’s too complex to use, find the easier one. There’s no law saying you should endure something that’s not working for you.
Getting overwhelmed from publishing everywhere online?
Trying to build an audience on five platforms at the same time, but seeing no growth after months and months of trying?
Why don’t you just start with one or two platforms first? See some significant growth before moving to other platforms.
How about that?
From experience, I think we make things harder than they’re supposed to be because it makes us feel like we’re actually doing something. We’re being productive.
But is that even productivity?
Does working on your business 12 hours a day mean you’re more productive than the person who works 4 hours a day? Not necessarily. It’s all about the quality of how you spend your time.
If in 12 hours you were tweaking your fonts and creating logos and rewriting bios over and over, for the next 7 days, compare it to the person who writes two chapters of their novel in only 4 hours for the next 7 days.
Who do you think is more productive?
It isn’t about how long you write or how complex your systems are. It’s about doing the things that truly matter for your long-term goals. And you do this by simplifying your systems as much as possible.
Not only do you free up more time to do other things, but you also feel an inner sense of accomplishment because you know that you’re doing the things that count.
Complicating things will frustrate you, eventually killing your writing dreams.
This is how you fail. Don’t let that happen.
Instead…
Be clear about your goals.
Break them down and take action with a system.
Don’t be afraid to pivot or try new things when they’re not working
And finally, simplify everything.
My paranormal romance, Her Witch, Her Demon is out now. Get it at a 50% discount until March 7, 2024.
