The Reason Why Beginner Writers Feel Lost in The Middle of Their Journey to Become a Pro

Convoluted goals make you feel stuck even when you’re taking action

Photo by David Waschbüsch

You’ve been “consistent” for quite a while now and yet, it doesn’t seem like that consistency is bringing you any closer to becoming a professional writer.

You wonder, “Is it time to let it go or keep going?”

However, asking that question is premature.

You know you are trying. You are disciplined. You listen to advice. You were given a battle-tested roadmap to success. Things should work out…eventually…right? It’s just a matter of being patient with the results…right?

So then, what’s causing you to feel like you’re lost even when you’re doing something about it?

Because you have Convoluted Goals

It happens when your mini-goals are not complementing each other.

You finish one mini-goal (hoping it will lead you a step closer to achieving your main goal), only to realize that it’s taking you in a different direction. As a result, you feel like you are progressing but at the same time, it feels like you are barely moving.

I get this feeling a lot as a beginner writer who dreams of becoming a pro.

From picking a niche, figuring out what I enjoy, all the way to figuring out which skills I should learn, hacks or strategies I need to implement (to get me to my goals faster). As the cycle continues, the more and more I realize where convoluted goals are rooting from:

The more ambitious the goal is, the more sub-goals I set, and the higher the chances of getting them all spaghetti-ing together.

And the further I get into the journey, the more and more I realize that becoming a pro at something is not just about the skills — it’s also about adjusting your lifestyle to support it.

Here’s what I mean:

1. Which of your current priorities are you willing to sacrifice to get there?
2. How soon do you wanna get paid for your writing as much as your offline job?
3. Does your schedule make you look like you’re operating like a business or a hobbyist?

Gah! These questions put your ambitious goal to test whether you’re cut out for it.

But like a double-edged sword, they also help you become more aware of your actions: are you doing things for the sake of doing it? Or perhaps, you’re confident it’s moving you closer to where you wanna be?

In other words, the same set of questions helps you re-map the things you’re already doing.

The clearer the roadmap, the easier it is to make the connections between your sub-goals (such that they all lead to the same ambitious goal), and the less confused you’ll be when you’re in the middle of your journey. And you don’t do that by going full-mystery-solver mode to fix that. It takes one simple approach: iteration.

When you iterate, you level up your understanding — making the “unclear” a little clearer.

Said differently: you try, you fail, you learn, you apply what you learned and then refine your approach, repeat.

This cycle will continue until you get to where you want to be. That’s how it was for me as an online writer. The process of iteration got me going from…

• Writing I’m-the-victim stories to I’m-responsible-for-my-own-failure stories.
• Wanting to become a copywriter to becoming a ghostwriter.
• Crafting a weird niche topic (to avoid competition) to finding the overlap between what I enjoy writing and what others enjoy reading.

Throughout that process, I unlocked 3 frameworks that could help you avoid feeling like you’re going in circles in the midst of your writing journey:

• Clarity through Iteration
• Develop your own secret sauce (through iteration)
• Iterative Reflection

When you approach things iteratively, the question becomes less about whether you should pivot or keep going. Because you will get there. The question is more about “when”:

With everything you’re doing now, how long do you think it would take to turn pro?

Develop your own secret sauce (through iteration)

Last month, I attended my very first coaching call hoping to be given the “secret sauce” to success. However, I ended up getting the same solution I heard before:

“Try this approach and see how that goes. If it doesn’t work out, then re-adjust and see where that takes you. If that fails again, then readjust. Keep readjusting until you find out what works for you”.

In short: there is no “secret sauce”.

The hope was, with this “secret sauce”, I no longer need to screw around with things that won’t lead me closer to my goal. But the truth is, every teacher’s “secret sauce” was created based on their personal experience and unique circumstances. This isn’t to say you cannot use their “secret sauce”, however, it requires you to modify it to suit your unique circumstance.

The moment you “modify” their secret sauce to suit your unique circumstance, is the same moment you start developing your own secret sauce.

It’s the start of the transformation from being the student to the teacher.

Because if you come out successful, you’ll attract others who are in a more similar situation to yours. You have a better understanding of their struggles as someone who follows expert advice but doesn’t accurately reflect their unique situation. People tend to listen more to other people who are like them.

Here’s how I would approach it:

1. Pay attention to what you are resonating with.
2. Find the creators, teachers or experts (that make you wanna keep consuming).
3. Study them. Focus more on what they’re doing instead of what they’re teaching. Then, make theories out of those observations.
4. Test your theories. Apply what works. Re-adjust as you go.
5. Repeat Step 1 until you have full clarity on what’s working.

Now, a lot of that is easier said than done.

It takes time and a lot of effort — and patience. You won’t know exactly when you’ll get there. So I’d avoid setting deadlines that only put you under pressure. Because you could do all those steps but still wonder, “Am I wasting my time?”

It requires a good number of iterations to understand how to get to where you wanna be.

Clarity through iteration

Persuasion, psychology and human behaviours are topics that interest me.

That’s what drove me into wanting to become a copywriter. It’s the mix between writing and selling. Plus, it is where the money is! If the goal is to become a “pro writer” (someone who gets paid for writing), then copywriting is probably the fastest way to get there.

The whole idea made a lot of sense in theory.

Y’know what they say, “Strike when the iron is hot!”, so I kept going on that path and tried AWAI’s (a recognized copywriting association) copywriting program for $1 for one month. I was given access to roadmaps, tips — pretty much all the answers to my how-to-be-a-copywriter problems.

However, I ended up pivoting to wanting to become a content creator.

I did not continue the subscription.

Everything came to a halt when I realized I needed to find a client. Reaching out to clients made me super uncomfortable. The whole thing makes me feel like I’m begging. And when you’re a beggar, you’re not in the position to choose. I felt like I was signing up to be someone’s “Bitz”. But…you cannot make money from copywriting without a client! What in the world was I thinking?!

That idea of becoming a copywriter for more than a year was squashed…in a month…for one dollar. The point?

You don’t know what you’ll be into (in the next 10 years), what you should be doing, or what sacrifices you need to make until you experience the challenges and the trade-offs of achieving your goals. Whatever idea exists in your head, is just in your head until you put them out in the real world. You’ll never understand it until you test it in real life.

Through iteration, you refine your idea into its final form.

Said differently: Do more testing than theorizing.

That’s how I’ve gone from wanting to become a copywriter, to a content creator, to a ghostwriter. Why?

As someone with a 9–5 non-marketing or writing-related job, I didn’t have the time to pump out content. And if I can’t pump out content to make money, then perhaps I can write for someone — a client. The desire to get paid as a writer is strong in me. If that means overcoming what makes me uncomfortable, then I have no choice but to do it.

Today, I’m much more open to the idea of sending cold messages to potential clients.

It was a full circle moment — something that would’ve never happened if I kept imagining things in my head instead of taking action and iterating on what was working.

Taking action is critical but it would be more powerful when you pair it with iterative reflection.

Iterative Reflection

As a beginner writer, it’s so easy to get distracted with all the different solutions that are out there. I’m not talking about scammy courses and all that. I’m referring to super-valuable content where — all you need to do is take action and results will pour in.

The problem is, there’s an overwhelming amount of them that it’s so hard to choose a starting point. Now someone would say, “Don’t overthink it! Just pick one and go all in!”, which makes total sense to get you out of analysis paralysis.

However, that horse-blinder-on attitude could also take you to a destination you didn’t want to be in:

• You built a business to find freedom, but it feels more like a 9-to-5 job.
• You carved time out for yourself to show your commitment to building your business, only to feel lonely because you had no time for friends and family.

That has been my experience from trying to make money on the side from my “creative outlets” (creating digital art and writing) and other interests.

I thought I had it all figured out, only to realize I was doing something wrong. What should feel like a win felt more like I was “going in circles”: I’m moving closer to one sub-goal but I’m also moving farther from another sub-goal. This is confusing because both sub-goals should lead to the same main-goal. But how come it seems like they’re not connected?

I was too focused on taking action that I failed to reflect iteratively.

You do it by periodically asking yourself, “Why in the world am I doing this?!”

This is critical because the answer to that question evolves over time.

As you test your theories (from experimenting and all that), you learn new insights about your journey you haven’t considered before. Therefore, you need to frequently check if what you’re doing now is still appropriate.

Because your answer today may be different tomorrow.

Here’s a set of questions you need to ask to apply Iterative Reflection:

• Based on everything I learned so far, do I still want this?
• How much longer can I tolerate feeling like I’m not progressing?
• Am I acting like the kind of writer I imagined myself to be?
• This skill I’m learning or topic I’m exploring: where does this lead to?
• How does focusing on this line up with everything else I’ve got going on?

None of these questions invite knee-jerk type of answers.

It may take a couple of days, a week, a month, who knows? The point is that with these questions, you force yourself to act more intentionally — the opposite of mindlessly following a “success” roadmap, a mentor, a hack, or a strategy.

The more you act intentionally, the more you act like a leader worth following — something a pro-writer would do.

So the next time you are feeling lost in the middle of your journey, apply one of these frameworks to get you out of your funk:

• Develop your own secret sauce: to get you on the path of continuous improvement.
• Clarity through iteration: to get you to experiment and further your understanding.
• Iterative Reflection: to avoid doing things that no longer make sense to you.

They say “Slow and steady wins the race”, I say, “Don’t think about the race. Just iterate.”