11 Things No One Tells You About Being A Writer

Writing is hard. For those of us bitten by the writing bug, it’s also incredibly rewarding, frustrating, euphoric, and necessary.

I dabbled with writing on and off as a child and teenager. I got my feet wet by religiously keeping a diary since I was seven-years-old, when I received a fluffy green journal and matching pen set for Christmas. That was just the beginning.

I didn’t start writing my first book until I was 24 years old, but I had been thinking about writing for years. I had often dreamt about what it must be like to be Emily Giffin, Sophie Kinsella, Jill Mansell… It wasn’t until I was at the tail end of finishing my master’s degree that I started writing my first real book. I was already swamped with assignments, with two years worth of graduate-school exhaustion resting heavy on my shoulders, and I was desperate for a creative outlet.

At age 26, my novella A Coastal Christmas was accepted by a publisher, with a few others to follow in the subsequent months.

Here’s what I wish I had known when I got started writing:

One – Inspiration doesn’t always just hit you. You have to work for it.

How wonderful would it be if every day that you sat down to write, you felt flooded with inspiration, allowing you to write and write and write. For many of us, that’s not the case.

It’s easy to push your laptop to the side and tell yourself that you’ll try again tomorrow… if inspiration strikes.

Nope. That’s not what’s going to get your novel finished. Practice writing every day, at a specific time that is set aside for just writing. It might be challenging at first, but once you get into the routine of it, it becomes just that: routine.

Before you know it, writing will be as much a part of your morning/lunch/evening routine as your daily cup of coffee (or three).

Two – Sometimes, you don’t need a lot of time.

I used to give myself such lenient deadlines when it came to writing. A few hundred words here, a few hundred there. Then, I started reading about writers who average 3000 words per day. What was their secret?

Two takeaways I got from these writers was consistency with your writing (refer to the point above) and the expectation that one has of themselves. This leads to my next point…

Three – You typically have to raise your expectations of yourself.

It was no longer enough for me to just write whenever I felt like it. Once I started expecting more from myself, I began writing more.

Four – Re-writing is writing. Repeat.

On days where you really don’t have it in you to generate some new ideas, re-write. Go back over your last few chapters. Keep up your routine. Even though you might not feel as productive, remember that re-writing is every bit as important as the first draft… if not more so.

Five – If you persevere, you will develop incredible self-discipline.

Six – You will develop a thick skin.

There’s a lot of rejection in this business. When I first started sending out manuscripts, I would agonize over rejection letters. Now, they still don’t feel great, but I’ve gotten much better at handling them.

The silver lining about rejection is that the more you learn to bounce back from them, the stronger you become.

Seven – You are the sum of your daily habits. If you write everyday, you are a writer. Period.

None of this aspiring writer nonsense. Published, unpublished, self-published… if you write, then you are a writer.

Eight – People will ask you where you draw your inspiration.

If you’re like me, you’ll probably never have a good answer for them. It might take you a few failed attempts at trying to explain it before you give up entirely.

Nine – You will guard your laptop like a fiend.

I never used to backup my computer or save anything on a hard drive. I thought, what was the point? Ha. Ha. Little did I know, you will learn to backup everything.

It only takes a few mishaps before you learn this. In my experience, it has been all too common for that manuscript I was working on to mysteriously disappear before I had a chance to save the latest updates. You only make that mistake so many times.

Ten – It might take multiple tries before you get a finished product that you’re happy with.

How many authors have said that the first novel they wrote was terrible? I’ll give you the answer: most of them.

It takes courage to keep going and to keep writing. The key point is that all of these authors kept on writing, even after their first manuscript fell flat.

Eleven – Failure is part of the process. You don’t have to be a great writer to start writing. Everyone starts somewhere. But you’ll never know what you’re capable of without sticking out the bumps along the road.

Remember why you started writing in the first place. With each failure comes a new lesson.

Learn to love the lessons, learn to love the process.

Happy Writing!