You Can’t Possibly Succeed as a Writer – Until You Decide What Success Means to You

We’ve previously established that everyone who writes is a writer.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a relevant author who hadn’t been a lifelong writer – although it’s worth noting that many of them would only become authors posthumously.

They were the kind of people who never stopped using their writing to express themselves. They regarded writing an end, rather than a means.

Therefore our key point – if you make writing a part of your identity, then you’re already a writer.

The issues of authorship, profitability, and success are entirely different matters that will be scrutinized here.

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It should be made clear that you likely have a very long road of hardships ahead that you have to be prepared to withstand and evolve through if you want to become an incredibly successful, world-renowned author.

It should also be made clear that you can succeed right now, this very instant if all that you really want is to become a writer. As long as you keep writing, you’re a writer. It’s a subjective decision. On the other hand, being an author is an objective decision.

– Being a writer is framing your life within a winding road made of words, stretching far into the horizon; you just have to stay on the road and you’ve succeeded as a writer. It’s a process, rather than a set destination. It’s an inner game.

– Being an author is more akin to a staircase, with progressively taller and harder to reach steps. Succeeding involves climbing the next step. It’s a cumulative evolution that goes hand in hand with the writing process. It’s an outer game.

If you care about success, then you should think about what you’re really trying to achieve before you set out to achieve it.

This is just as obvious as it is an elusive concept. There is the paradox at play, in life as in writing.

This article will show you a possible staircase you can climb to succeed in writing. You can embrace this or come up with your own version. You can just as well make up your own steps.

Just remember:

You should always keep writing if you want to win the inner game of writing.

You should focus on climbing one step at a time, to win the outer game of success.

Table of contents

How to be the successful author of a simple note.

How to be the successful author of your personal journal.

How to be the successful author of your own book.

How to be the successful author of a profitable book.

How to be the successful author of a best-selling book.

How to successfully change the world with your writing.

Success: that elusive and often self-defeating idea.

This is your recipe to succeed in writing: keep on writing and you’ll keep on improving; every phrase you compose, every page you finish will add to your momentum and skill.

This is your recipe to succeed as an author: evolve one step at a time; skipping steps could make you stumble; conquer each step before you set sight on the subsequent step.

Let us break this down in incremental steps, hoping it could convey a healthy dose of perspective.

How to be the successful author of a simple note.

We all scribble notes all the time.

We write them at home, write them at work, we stick them on the refrigerator, on the computer screen, we scatter them around our vehicles, we use them as reminders to ourselves or as messages to our family and our friends.

Writing notes likely comes across as a silly endeavor, for anyone who aspires to the highest skies of creation. It’s most certainly not.

It’s actually the perfect place to start if you want to start making something useful with your writing. It’s the perfect first step. Think about it:

How effective are your notes? How clearly can you get your points across?

If your notes don’t always get the exact results you want them to have, you still have to keep working on this step.

Writing notes likely comes across as a silly endeavor, for anyone who aspires to the highest skies of creation. It’s most certainly not.

It’s actually the perfect place to start if you want to start making something useful with your writing. It’s the perfect first step.

If you’re looking to write a best-seller and you can’t write simple everyday notes that spark the exact intended results, you’re skipping steps.

Focus on writing successful notes and you’ll be a step ahead. It’s a simple and unassuming goal, true.

But it will add to your life quality, as well as helping you evolve in the writing craft.

Learn to write amazing notes that make things happen.

Surprise yourself with how better you have become at writing notes, compared to when you first noticed there was room for improvement.

Then you can move on to something a little more complex.

How to be the successful author of your personal journal.

Keeping a journal can be a great opportunity to keep writing regularly, and it will give you yet another opportunity to ask yourself:

“What am I really trying to achieve with this step? Which milestones should I complete that will allow me to deem my journaling efforts successful?”

Upon reflecting on these simple questions, you will once again find manageable goals that you will find be able to rely on to keep track of your progress.

You may find your personal journal (or blog, or even your social media) is a valuable opportunity to flesh out your ideas and try new writing styles.

Upon reflecting on these simple questions, you will once again find manageable goals that you will find be able to rely on to keep track of your progress.

You may decide you are simply concerned about filling up pages and volumes, purely as a training experience.

Having locked in on actual milestones and goals within this step, you will be able to track your progress and get a sense of how you’re faring.

You’ll also realize you will get a sense of direction, along with increased confidence in your abilities.

As you get a clearer notion of your journaling goals and you meet those goals, you’ll naturally start to want to feel like taking a bigger step.

How to be the successful author of your own book.

At some point, you will realize it’s time to start taking on bigger projects.

You will decide you want to get a book finished and published. At this point, you may want to take extra care not to skip steps.

Most people who write books are looking for their projects to succeed. It’s only natural.

When you reach this step, you will feel like you have something to say, and you will want to get some positive feedback regarding your work.

This is also the step where dreams are abandoned, and writing efforts are halted in the face of the cold hard reality slap-back.

Unless, of course, if you’re careful to define your success in a way that works for you.

At some point, you will realize it’s time to start taking on bigger projects.

You will decide you want to get a book finished and published. At this point, you may want to take extra care not to skip steps.

Simply finishing an entire book can be fulfilling on its own right. It’s a worthy goal that can make you content if you are following this iterative approach to simply create the best possible content, without overthinking or straining your writing hand.

Publishing a book is yet another major milestone. Period. If you can get your book published – even if you do it through a vanity press, even if it sells little to no copies, you’re already one more step up.

Sure enough, at some point, you will likely want people to read your book. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Just remember that many of the world’s most relevant books were often disregarded until long after the author had passed on.

Keeping this in mind, why not live in the present and leave your bigger future aspirations for the next steps?

How to be the successful author of a profitable book.

When you reach the step in the ladder leading up to authorship where you have already had a book published, it may be wise to pause and ponder.

There are many people out there who dream about getting their books published, never to succeed.

If you already have a book published, you already have some experience under your belt.

You’re already ahead of the curve. This is more valuable than you may imagine. You could very well regard it as a success, in and of itself. It’s entirely up to you.

You can also use that past experience to your benefit and now focus on the next step up: writing another book that is profitable.

It doesn’t have to be hugely profitable. Hoping for a best-seller is yet another way to undermine your creativity if you fall short of your desired results.

Instead, why now pace yourself and just focus on finishing another book – and taking what you’ve previously learned to make sure your next project will at least pay for itself?

There are many people out there who dream about getting their books published, never to succeed.

If you already have a book published, you already have some experience under your belt.

By choosing to define the current step in reasonable terms, you will have much better chances of getting reasonable results that make it easier for you to climb onto the next step.

It doesn’t mean you have to write a meek book, that you don’t really think no one will actually read.

It simply means you will decide to be content as long as your next book has positive financial returns.

It also means that when you complete this stage, you’ve already tricked yourself into actually finish writing two books.

Maybe it’s not still enough to turn your full attention to your writing, yet. So what?

All the while, many of the other aspiring authors are still out there, aspiring and walking around in imaginary circles within their fantasies.

All the while, you’re making progress. You can now confidently look ahead into the next step.

How to be the successful author of a best-seller.

If you already have reached the point where you have published books that at least paid for themselves and did not wreak your finances, there’s no reason to stop, is there?

As you reach this step, you will have ripened as an author. You will have a clearer understanding of what works and what doesn’t.

You’ll be much better at writing effectively in a way that holds the attention of an audience; having reached this step – the more you keep on writing, the more readers you’ll amass.

At this point, your pen name has become a brand name.

Once this skill has been acquired, it will be at last be quite reasonable for you to start thinking in terms of striking gold.

It will simply be business as usual to go from published author to best-selling author.

The next step up will then feel rather tangible and approachable.

It will no longer be wishful thinking to want to be a best-selling author, once you’re already an established author with a proven track record, and actual real-world experience finishing your book projects and getting them published.

It will simply be business, as usual, to go from published author to best-selling author.

At this point publishing books will be second nature, you’ll have readers who are already interested in your work, and you’ll have developed a strong grasp of what it takes to really get traction in a publishing venture.

At which point you can start really dreaming big – but only if it suits your idea of success, of course…

How to successfully change the world with your writing.

True writers are actually wizards.

They spin text that has a magic effect on their readers.

They imagine tales that are pregnant with the potential to change reality.

The most powerful of all literary wizards are never content to merely get noticed or be read. They likely want nothing less than to change the world with their writing.

However the cause may be – it’s neither wise nor reasonable to aim so high up the ladder until you’ve climbed all the previous steps.

True writers are actually wizards.

They spin text that has a magic effect on their readers.

They imagine tales that are pregnant with the potential to change reality.

But then again, there’s nothing keeping you from hoping your work could make a valuable contribution to the world. Is there?

Maybe you’ll get there, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll reap the rewards, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll live to see the impact of your work, maybe you won’t.

Does it matter? It doesn’t have to.

Just as long as you stay focused on the here and now, and make sure to climb one step at a time, you’ll enjoy the journey.

You’ll keep on writing. You’ll get your body of work done.

You’ll sit down in your old age, look back at the books you wrote over your lifetime, and you’ll realize your writing changed your world, to begin with.

And you’ll be content.

Success, that elusive and often self-defeating idea

What is the meaning of success in writing? If you ask a thousand different people, you may get a thousand different answers. Hopefully, at this point, the reasons why should be clearer.

Some people define their success purely in terms of their self-expression capabilities.

Others may point out they want to be influential and have their ideas spread like wildfire.

Some people may realize that success for them would be to simply get a book written.

Others may want to get it published. Yet others may want to have a best-seller. Some may want to make a reasonable living from their writing. Others may want to just be famous.

What is the meaning of success in writing? If you ask a thousand different people, you may get a thousand different answers. Hopefully, at this point, the reasons why should be clearer.

You see, success is an extremely relative term. One person’s success can be another one’s failure, and vice versa.

All things considered, it is up to you entirely to decide what you think is the meaning of success.

This is absolutely essential. But it’s not entirely obvious.

You need to first decide what your own definition of success is. So you can then align your efforts towards that end.

Unless you have a clear goal in mind, aimless meandering will be your likely destiny.

Having a goal in mind, you can chart a realistic course that makes sense to you; one that connects you to your own idea of success.

Clearly. Effectively. Decisively. Step by step.