Month: March 2021

Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and failed people is the right mindset, skills, time, and stamina.

If someone in your industry is more successful than you, it’s probably because he or she has worked harder at it than you do.

Sure, maybe she is inherently more talented writer than you, had more opportunities than you, is more adept at networking than you; but consistency will always beat talent. Overtime those advantage counts for less and less. This is why the world is full of highly talented, lucky, network-savvy, failed mediocres.

Talent wins initially; consistency wills the long race.

Consistency comes with stamina.

Stamina is misunderstood, however.

Stamina is not the ability to sustain the prolonged effort as the definition as it.

Stamina is not even endurance. It is not the ability to withstand unpleasant or difficult endeavors without giving way.

Stamina is the ability to stay longest in the arena.

It is to prepare yourself, mentally and physically, so that you can stay in the game as long as it takes.

Having the stamina means knowing that you have a long road ahead of you. Your job is to figure out how best to manage it.

The tortoise had more stamina than the hare because the tortoise was consistent.

Stamina is utterly important.

Stamina is only possible if it’s managed well.

People think all they need to do is endure one crazy, intense, job-free creative burst, and their dreams will come true. They are wrong. They are insanely wrong.

Being good at anything is like figure skating — the definition of being good can make it look easy. But it is never easy. That is what people continue to forget.

More than anything else, you will need stamina for writing.

As an authorpreneur, you will be writing endlessly and for most of your life.

Take any successful writer. They write thousands of articles and dozens of books, that too with a day job, while raising a family and facing all the things life throw at them.

How do they manage that. The stamina they had developed in the early stages of their writing life.

A book takes several passes — first draft, structural edit, second-edit, third-edit. I know a writer who has done 56 edits on a single book. It takes even seasoned writers six to twelve months to publish a book. And they keep a steady frequency of their books.

But they don’t write ten hours a day.

You don’t have to write ten hours a day to become an authorpreneur.

Not even the bestselling writers do that.

But they write every day.

Find an hour or two in your day. An hour or two is all you need. In that hour or two, do write something. A sentence. A paragraph. A scene. An article.

You don’t even have to publish an article a day. Or a book a year. Don’t worry about all that. First, build the habit of writing every day. That is the stamina you need to build. Writing every day. Even if it is fifteen minutes to start with.

Toni Morrison wrote her books in fifteen minutes intervals. That is all she had with a family to raise and living to make.

It might mean you will not get to watch TV as much you are used to watching before. Or you will not get to surf the net as much as you used to. Or you will not be able to socialize like before. But who cares. You are doing something that is most important to you.

Fifteen minutes a day is insanely easy to find.

Even an hour or two is very manageable.

You can make that in fifteen minutes intervals. Fifteen minutes before going to work, fifteen minutes at lunchtime, fifteen minutes before dinner, and maybe an hour after dinner. Cut out that TV, and you will find all the time you need for your writing.

Guard that time with all your passion. Use it in the best possible way. Not to give output but to build stamina.

It is time a marathon runner spends running around the block every day.

No one is demanding anything from you in that time. No one is pressuring you to write something publishable. Write to build your writing muscles. Write to satisfy yourself. Write to practice putting your thoughts on the paper.

Put the hours in; build the stamina, do it for long enough, and magical life-transforming things will happen eventually.

Top Photo by Hert Niks on Unsplash

When I decided to make writing my vocation, for a long time, I didn’t know how the new model worked.

I understood the old model — writers wrote books for which they get paid an advance and then royalties for years to come. But that model was broken.

The new writers were doing different things. They were writing blogs, ebooks, self-publishing, and selling directly. They were teaching courses and even speaking at events.

It was all very baffling.

I started studying some of the successful writers. They were not the award-winning, world-famous top writers but ordinary writers that most people may not know about but who had built successful businesses from their writing. I bought their courses and started doing what they were teaching.

But even that didn’t help. Some lessons were easy to implement, but others didn’t make any sense.

Frustrated, I stopped following and took time to understand. It was then that I found there are five pillars of authorpreneurship:

1. Mindset
2. Time
3. Skills
4. Stamina
5. Strategy

Whether you are a fiction writer, a non-fiction writer, or a content writer, the five pillars are still the same.

In my previous two articles, I wrote about Mindset and Time.

Today I am going to talk about Skills.

Once you have developed the “mindset” and understood the “time” it would take you to become an authorpreneur; you are ready to concentrate on developing skills necessary for authorpreneurship.

Let’s get into what skills you are going to need.

Writing Skills

For a long time, I thought if I had a good idea, I could write a good article. But that wasn’t true. I soon discovered that having a good idea is one thing, and developing it into a clear, clean, concise, and compelling piece of writing is completely another thing.

I struggled at the basic sentence level. I framed and reframed sentences, taking hours to write a single paragraph, and still wasn’t able to come up with something worth sharing.

Converting your thoughts into a coherent piece of writing is something most writers struggle with.

So much so that many of them don’t get past this stage and give up.

It takes time to develop writing skills.

Time and a lot of effort.

You will have to write millions of words before you get any better at the craft of writing. And I mean, literally millions.

Writing a lot not only helps you craft better sentences but also clarifies your thinking.

That clarity will help you devise your message.

Because your writing will only get read if it has a message that is useful for the reader.

Derek Sivers, an American writer, entrepreneur, and founder of the CD Baby, an online CD store for independent musicians tell the story of two candlemakers. One candlemaker claims that he only uses the finest wax with the best quality wick in his candles. And he sells few dozen candles.

The other candlemaker claims that he only makes prayer candles — the type that you light while praying. And even though his candle quality is not as good as the first candlemaker he ends up selling thousands of candles.

Why?

Because purpose beats product.

Something we all writers need to learn.

Even if you write the best article in beautiful prose, it will not get read if it doesn’t address the reader’s problem.

On the other hand, even a badly written article that solves a problem will go viral.

The books that solve a problem sell many more copies than well-written literary masterpieces. Some of the best-selling books — Rich Dad Poor Dad, Fifty Shades of Grey, and the Harry Potter series are prime examples. They all serve a purpose.

Technical Skills

Authorpreneurship is initially is a one-person show. Besides writing you are going to need many technical skills as well. Skills such as to:

• Establishing a platform
• Building a mailing list
• Expanding your reach
• Self-publishing
• Marketing
• Building online courses
• Speaking (even these has technology involved)

The list seems endless and daunting.

All of these things are formidable for those of us who were not born with technology in our genes. But if you keep your creative hat on and learn them in the same way you would learn writing skills, you can master them too.

The trick is to start early and learn in bite-size pieces.

It also helps if you pick one thing at a time.

I started with building a website. All the knowledge was available for free on YouTube. Within weeks I learned all the features. Then I concentrated on writing blog posts. Posting regularly initially was a big thing. I learned to schedule my posts. From there, I moved on to set up a newsletter and so on.

Today, two years on, I have many skills that I wouldn’t have thought possible to learn in such a short time. Building on the past success, I continue to learn new skills all the time.

Summary

If you thought authorpreneurship was all about being a good writer, think again.

Like a professional in any field, you will have to learn several skills.

But the good news is, it is doable.

Rather than being baffled by the enormity of the task, think of it as a university course to be done over several semesters. Follow the approach of a university student and pick one thing at a time and nail it.

Before you know it, you will have an arsenal of skills that will be the envy of many writers who either wouldn’t bother or are too intimidated with it.

There is no rush. You are not in competition with anybody.

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash