Be a Good Writer and Live the Writing Dream
Do you make so little money selling your books that you are reluctant to admit it to your friends? Don’t “real writers” make good money at writing? Well, a good writer, one who writes for the long haul as a career can make excellent money. But it takes work, perseverance, training, networking, and focus. This is what makes for a good writer who, in time, makes a living or at least a decent income at the profession.
The difference between good writers and bad writers has little to do with skill. It has to do with perseverance. Bad writers quit. Good writers keep going. That’s all there is to it. – The Difference Between Good Writers & Bad Writers
I have been a good writer most of my adult life, although I only began getting serious at it in the last few years. Before that, I had a full-time, extremely demanding and stressful job which required most of my attention, as well as a family life to maintain. I had this idea that I could work full time and still write – and hoped to eventually fulfill my writing dream – but by the time I got home from work I was too exhausted to get much done. In other words, all my creativity went into my job and there was little to nothing left for writing (or anything else for that matter).
Making the Writing Dream a Reality
In 2013, I decided to quit my job of 20 years and my career of 33 in order to try my hand at professional writing. It was to fulfil my dream of becoming an author. Now I needed to learn how to make money writing a book.
The key to fulfilling your dream to become a writer is to do the work.
Living the writing dream has turned out to be hard work, and over the last few years I’ve concluded that all good writers understand this fact sooner or later. In order to be a successful writer with a long-term career, a person musst be willing to put in the effort, which can be far more exhausting and demanding than any full-time “real” job – at least at first.
To be a professional writer (and any other kind of professional artist) you have to devote more than your a little bit of time or part of your day. You must devote your essence, your creativity, and, as they say, your “all” to your craft. You can’t play, at least not for long, as a hobbyist or amateur, if you want to earn a living from your royalties.
How to Make a Living as a Writer
What does that mean? You can’t give up. Sure, after a few months of not getting sales or the first time you get a sucky review on Amazon, you’ll want to go back to working a “real” job. If you do that, you don’t have what it takes to be a professional writer.
Writing for a living offers a ton of advantages – you get to choose when and where you work, and with whom. The Five Most Realistic Ways to Make a Living as a Writer, Glen Long
In order to make it, to be a professional, you have to keep going. Professionals understand it takes time, massive amounts of energy and utter dedication to make it.
Sure, some books (or articles or stories or whatever you writer) won’t sell. Take a good look at them. Do they need better promotion? Did you write something that has no market? Don’t look too long – sometimes things just don’t sell. The thing to do is promote what you’ve written or put them aside – then write more.
Learn to write fast. For me, the secret to writing thousands of words per hour is to dictate and to be sure not to edit while writing. Dictation works great these days, so I just speak my words into the microphone, then come back and edit on the second draft. Regardless of whether you dictate or not, editing while writing is the enemy of writing fast, and it also leads to writers block.
Everything else can be learned or gained over time with experience. But to be a professional writer whose books, articles, stories or whatever is selling, you must write. You must write a LOT and you must learn to write fast. The best way to learn to write fast is to write a lot. Write every single day, ignore writers block, and shed anyone from your life who gets in your way.
Fulfilling the Writing Dream
So, if you treat writing your book as a hobby, don’t be surprised if you never make good money at writing. On the other hand, if you act like a professional – walk the walk, so to speak – you can, over time, build up a steady passive income from your own self-published books. Then you are well on your way toward living the writing dream.
Richard is the Owner and Senior Writer for The Writing King, a bestselling author, and ghostwriter. He’s written and published 63 books, ghostwritten 40+ books, as well as hundreds of blog articles.
