Category: Writing

Every writer must become an entrepreneur?

Neera 1 Comment

Do you know why most of the writers don’t succeed?

It is not because they are not good writers or because they can’t find time to write or they don’t put enough effort in their vocation.

Most writers don’t succeed because they refuse to see themselves as entrepreneurs.

Their thought process goes like this: I am a writer, I just want to write. I do not want to learn marketing, build an email listing, or deal with the publishers. 

So they keep writing and hoping that one day a publisher will like their work and will give them the break. Their book will be published, it will become an overnight bestseller and they will be rewarded with the name and fame they so much deserve and soon royalties will start flowing.

I can almost guarantee you that it is not going to happen. 

Writing is such a laborious, challenging, unrewarding activity that you will not be able to sustain it without some kind of payoff whether it is in the form of money or just recognition. The sooner you accept that sooner you will be able to establish yourself in this booming industry in the proper way. 

Only then you will be able to wholeheartedly commit to your passion. And the way to ensure that you do get paid for your efforts is to become an author entrepreneur.

Why you may ask? 

Here are five reasons:

  1. There is too much competition
  2. The conventional publishing industry is dead.
  3. People’s reading habits are changing
  4. The self-publishing industry is booming
  5. Entrepreneurship is not as hard as it sounds

There is too much competition.

Conventional publishers are flooded with manuscripts. There is little chance a publisher will get to read your manuscript and publish it over established writers who are also churning out new books regularly.

The conventional publishing industry is dead.

The conventional publishing industry was dying a slow death and COVID 19 pandemic has hastened this process. Perspective Publishing reported in March this year that in Italy 18,600 fewer titles will be published, 39 million books will not be printed at all and 25,000 titles will not be translated. Many publishers are concerned about whether they will be able to survive the COVID 19 crisis. If this is replicated in every country then the publishing industry will be badly hit.

People’s reading habits are changing.

More and more people are moving to eBooks and audiobooks. The sale of eBooks and audiobooks has dramatically increased since the lockdowns started in March. This unexpected event has brought a behavior shift in the reading habits of people which is expected to stick.

The self-publishing industry is booming. 

It is the way of the future. It is also the way to get properly rewarded for your effort. Typically, a new author gets paid $5000 advance for their first book if a publisher likes it and is willing to print 5000 copies. The publisher will not print any more copies until all previously printed copies are sold and he has recovered his money. Then only he will print the second batch. Typically the royalties even for the established writers range from 10% to 15% of the retail price of the book. 

You can earn the initial deposit by selling just 500 books at $10 each by self-publishing. That too without printing a single copy. 

Wouldn’t it make sense to become an entrepreneur and publish your own work?

Entrepreneurship is not as hard as it sounds.

Howard Stevenson, a long time professor at Harvard Business School, recounts the story of a senior faculty member describing the field of entrepreneurship to a young person: “You peel it back layer by layer,” the faculty member said, “and when you get to the center, there is nothing there, but you are crying.”

In other words, there is nothing much to be an entrepreneur and yet so many people are so scared of being one.

In the writing world, an entrepreneur is a writer who makes income from her writing. To be able to do that she needs a platform to establish herself. A platform is literary her ‘stand’. It is her ‘genre’, her ‘viewpoint’, her ‘take,’ all blended into one. Her platform is also her ‘shopfront’ from where her readers can access her work.

And she needs to do that much before she has published anything. Developing skills to write the quality of stuff that people pay to read can take many years, so does develop the skill to promote your work.

Joanna Penn is a successful writer-entrepreneur earning a six-figure income from her writing. You may not have read her books or may not have heard her name but she is the shining example of how the twenty-first-century writers can establish themselves as writer-entrepreneur.

Joanna says, “the author business model is a marathon, not a sprint.” She started writing in 2006. It took her five years to develop her writing skills. In 2011 she left her job to become a full-time writer. It took her another four years to start making six-figures income. Today she is generating income from 25+ books, a blog, a podcast and a number of other sources. Click here for her author timeline from the first book to multi-six-figure income.

What one thing can you do today?

Have a look at the sites of writers of your genre and find out how they have set up their platforms. Joanna Penn, Jeff Goings, James Altucher, Shuanta Grimes, Danielle Trussoni, have all set themselves up as a business and have a platform to stay in touch with their readers and generate interest in their books.

Then start working on building your own platform.

Photo by Fa Barboza on Unsplash

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The healing power of writing

Neera 1 Comment

I was never set out to be a writer. For about thirty years of my early life, I had no intention or reason to write anything other than work-related reports, emails, and resumes.

Then in the summer of 1999, I discovered writing quite accidentally.

I was recently employed by a multinational company after finishing my degree in Information Technology. Previously I was a Biochemist and was finding it extremely hard to get any jobs in my field after a seven-year gap to raise my children. Being employed again was really reassuring.

But that assurance didn’t last long.

Nine months later my company was overtaken by another big Information Technology company and many people were retrenched. New to the Information Technology environment where mergers and takeovers are a norm, I feared for my job and accepted a six-month contracting position in a government department.

When I handed my resignation, I was invited for an Exit Interview (another new thing for me) where a senior manager (a very nice fellow) asked the reasons for my leaving.

I had none. Except that I might lose my job.

I later learned they had no intention to do so.

The new company was bigger and better with more career advancement opportunities. Had I tried to win a job with the company from outside, I stood a very slim chance. And here I was letting it go just because I was afraid that they might fire me.

I realized what a big mistake I was making.

I was swapping a permanent positing with a six-month contraction position. Without thinking any further, I rang the contracting company and said I was not joining. Then I went to the senior manager who interviewed me and said I was not leaving.

That started a chain reaction.

In short, I was told that my resignation was approved and it cannot be reverted. The contracting company said they will try to get in touch with the department to see if they could get me back the contracting job I had declined but there were no guarantees.

A day before I had two perfect jobs, today I had none.

And it was no one else’s fault but mine. Here I was, on the last day of work, feeling humiliated and stupid.

I berated myself. How could I be so stupid? Why didn’t I first find out whether I can retract my resignation before saying no to the contracting offer? I went for a long walk but that didn’t help much. My inner talk was not letting me rest.

I couldn’t face my colleagues either. They all knew what I had done. In hindsight, they would have been sympathetic had I let them but I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

This was when I noticed a blank A4 size writing pad and pen on my desk.

Without realizing I picked it up and started writing whatever was going through my head. The same thoughts were going in circles, on and on, again and again. Writing them down helped break the cycle.

I wrote for an hour without looking up. I had filled three sheets in that time. The handwriting was messy because of the emotions but I was beginning to feel better. As if a lot of weight was lifted off my chest. I got up and made myself a cup of tea and got back to writing.

This time I was able to see things in a positive light.

Maybe the department hadn’t hired another contractor. The wheels of the public service turn slower than the private sector. Maybe the contracting company can find me another contract soon. Maybe I can start applying for jobs in the open market now that I had a little bit of IT experience under my belt.

As it turned out, I did get the contract position back. The next week, I was sitting at the new job, with twenty other contractors who were hired at the same time as me to work on an aspiring new IT project. All my worries, humiliation, and self-berating long forgotten.

But I didn’t forget what the act of writing did for me on that day.

We all face times in our lives when we want to hide our face and curl-up in a fetal position. Sometimes even that doesn’t help.

We all face times in our lives when we want to hide our face and curl-up in a fetal position. Sometimes even that doesn’t help.

Writing has the power to bring us out of the dark places by breaking the cycle of depressing thoughts. 

Writing helps us work through your thoughts and emotions, regulates our feelings, and teaches us to express what we’re going through.

In a classic experiment, James Pennebaker, PhD., University of Texas, assigned healthy undergraduates to one of four groups. All were asked to write for 15 minutes for four consecutive nights. Three of the groups were asked to write about some traumatic event in their lives; the fourth group wrote about some other trivial topic. All four groups were then tracked for the next six months and researchers found that the three groups who wrote about traumatic events had fewer visits to the health center.

Doug Foresta in an article on Psychotherapy.net writes that he was interested to find out how his clients tell the “story” their lives. According to him, it typically goes something like this: “I’m a horrible loser, and I keep doing the same thing over and over and I don’t want to but I can’t stop.” We usually tell the worst version of our life story.

He then advises them to imagine the blank page as a safe space where they can try new ideas and new stories about themselves without being judged. He asks his clients to explore who they would be if they didn’t feel so stuck in their problem.

Writing is a powerful tool to bring clarity in thoughts.

When you start expressing your emotions on paper suddenly the horrible story of being stuck is revealed to be just that, a story. And since stories are written, they can be revised, especially if we are the ones who wrote the story in the first place. Writing then becomes an empowering act that sparks creativity and imagination.

What can you do if you find yourself in a hole?

Next time you feel stuck or going through the bad patch try writing to get through keeping in mind the following:

  1. Write nonstop for at least 15 minutes. Pick a thought and write till it finishes. If the next one interrupts, start writing about that. The idea is to take it all out.
  2. Don’t worry about the language. You are allowed to leave sentences unfinished, use clichés, abbreviations, and even foul language if that helps. Keep in mind that this writing is for your eyes only. No one must see it unless you want them to.
  3. Experiment with the medium. You don’t have to write by hand although they say there is a direct connection between your hand and brain. Typing on a computer or even a mobile phone is fine too if it works better for you.
  4. Don’t edit yourself. Part of the exercise is to access your feelings and you can’t do that if you’re constantly redirecting yourself.
  5. Write for a few days or even weeks. If the problem is lingering and you are still seeking clarity, carve out 10 to 15 minutes and write regularly. You don’t have to do it every day, three to four-time a week is all that is needed.
  6. Reread… but not right away: It’s a good idea to go back and see what you’ve written. You will find patterns in your thinking you weren’t aware of before. You will also find in there the solution you were looking for.

Photo by Louis Hansel @shotsoflouis on Unsplash

What kind of a writer are you?

Neera

Have you ever wondered why it takes you a long time to write a single blog post whereas you can fill pages and pages in your journal in no time? Or why is it that you can’t get around to finish your novel which you were so passionate about when you started and now that you have all the time in the world but you keep procrastinating.

As beginner writers, we start so many projects and never get around to finish them. Many times we quickly lose interest in ideas that excited us so much when we first conceived them. We waste countless hours over many years wondering why doesn’t our desire to write translate into a career.

Well, you might think it is because you don’t have time to write or you’re not a good writer or writing doesn’t pay well hence there is no reason to pursue a career in it.

But that is not the reason writing is not working for you.

You will be surprised to know that the answer lies in figuring out what kind of writer you are.

My writing idol, Shaunta Grimes, came with an interesting theory in an article on Medium (an online magazine). She claimed that every writer falls into one of five archetypes. Knowing your archetype will help you determine what kind of writing you should be doing in order to excel at it. According to her, understanding your archetype makes you a better writer and more importantly a happier writer.

I must admit, at the beginning of her article, I was skeptical. I didn’t think I would fall into any one category because my writing is all over the place. I write fiction, non-fiction, diary, journals, blogs, articles. There was no way I could fit into any of those archetypes. But as I continued reading I not only began to agree with her but was surprised to find that I belong to the same archetype as my her.

Not only that, all this time, I wasn’t even aware of my own strength and interest as a writer.

So what are these five archetypes?

They are:

  • Hesitater
  • Skipper
  • Spiller
  • Teacher
  • Artist

This is how Shaunta Grimes describes them:

The Hesitater is one that has trouble getting started. They want badly to be writers and they think about it a lot, but for whatever reason, they can’t seem to get the momentum going to actually pull the trigger and start writing with any real consistency. Facebook Groups for writers and MFA programs are full of Hesitaters.

The Skipper are those who skip all over the place — they write about one topic today and another one tomorrow. Their happy place is having an assignment. Skippers are often journalists, freelancers, ghostwriters, or copywriters — working for a paycheck or with a contract and always knowing that they’ll be paid for their work.

The Spiller put a strong emphasis on being confessional. When they write, they spill their guts on the page. Often their purpose is healing and they want to let readers know they aren’t alone in the world. There is someone else out there feeling what they feel or who has experienced what they are experiencing — and that matters to them, a lot.

The Teacher writes with a strong emphasis on teaching. They want readers to come away having learned something. As a result, they have trouble writing about things that they’re not either an expert or strongly invested in learning. The Teacher needs an audience who expects to hear from them on a regular basis. On many levels, it’s the connection that feeds them. Because if their goal is to teach, they want to know they’re reaching other people and they’re learning from them.

The Artist’s main focus is the craft of writing. If the Spiller writes mostly for themselves and the Teacher writes mostly for their audience, the Artist writes mostly for their muse. This writer crafts their work and presents it to the world, much in the same way that a fine artist might hang paintings in a gallery. They tend to be focused on their readers individually. They want to entertain and delight. Lyrical, literary, poetic prose is this writer’s happy place.

Every writer falls into one of five archetypes by Shaunta Grimes.

It turns out I am a Teacher writer. Whatever I write, I write with the intent to explain. My utmost passion is to teach others what I have learned. My diaries and journals are full of things I tried and implemented in my life, whether they are personal development, meditative and spiritual practices, writing or sketching skills.

Shuanta Grimes is also a Teacher writer. She writes from her personal experiences and she writes to teach. And she is full of ideas.

Like her, I am also getting bombarded by ideas — my own ideas as well as other people’s ideas. So many ideas that it is hard to keep track of them. That is why I believe blogging is a great platform for Teacher writers like me because we are so excited to share what we’ve learned. It enables us to write fast and publish prolifically.

Teachers are the writers who seek to build a community. We have our readers at the top of our mind when we write. Without readers, we feel that there is no purpose for our work. Teachers need students, after all.

Even when a Teacher writes fiction, their desire to reach out to the reader and share their ideas is apparent. They can’t help teaching what they’ve learned. Children’s book writers are often Teachers. Shuanta Grimes writes fiction for children. It is understandable to teach children through fiction. But I write fiction for adults, and even in my writing, I am teaching through my characters. There are several other teacher writers writing for adults. Diana Gabaldon, Helen Garner … are to name a few.

Now the funny thing with these archetypes is that you jump from one category to another at different times. I was a Hesitater for a long time, then for a period, I was a Skipper, and now along with being a Teacher, I am also a bit of Spiller. A lot of my writing is confessional. Over time I have learned that writing is great therapy and I am not afraid to spill my guts out in order to heal and in order to teach. Writing has made me fearless to an extent.

Now the question is what kind of writer you are?

It might be possible you are an Artist writer, with a strong focus on the language. My friend Moria falls into this category. She writes beautiful well-crafted sentences. Another of my writing buddy, Fiona, describes nature as Shirley Bassey sings Diamonds Are Forever, boldly and beautifully. I, on the other hand, do not possess that kind of command on the language. But I do not let that stop me from telling stories I want to tell.

You might be a Hesitater or a Skipper, in that case, you know where you stand what you need to do to get to where you want to go. As Shuanta says both Hesitater or a Skipper is the interim phase before you move on to be a Spiller, Teacher or an Artist. Once you know your archetype you will know what to write and how to establish your writing career.

Read her full article to learn more.

Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash

Why writers write, even when they can’t make a living out of it

Neera

Patti Miller’s article in last weekend’s The Sydney Morning Herald is depressing. Although nothing she says is new, most writers are already painfully aware that they can’t make a living from their writing and hence they need to look at other means in order to survive, she fails to give hope to new writers.

In her article, The writer’s life: belly dancing to make a living, Patti lists the paid jobs she did since she left school in order to support herself while writing. The list is exhaustive – nanny/ house slave, waitress, housemaid, nurse-aide, artist model, women’s center organizer, arts event organizer, university lecturer, TAFE teacher, writing workshop tutor, manuscript mentor, and editor.

She surveyed more than 50 well-known published writers and found that all of them, at various times, had to supplement their income from other sources.

She then raises the obvious question.

If writers cannot earn a living from writing then why they are doing it.

A fair question. An important one too.

But she fails to satisfactorily answer it. At least not to my satisfaction.

Earning money is not the sole purpose of choosing a profession. There are many professions other than writing where the money is not good but people still choose them. All the artists and academics fall into this category, so do the people working in the emergency and health services.

There are many reasons, why writers write.

I am reading a book by Meredith Maran, Why We Write, where the author has interviewed twenty writers, a mix of genders, genres, ethnicities, and ages, and asked them the same question.

Their responses are impressive at the least and touching at the most.

Terry Tempest William gives his reasons as “I write to make peace with the things I cannot control. I write to create fabric in a world that often appears black and white. I write to discover. I write to uncover. I write to meet my ghosts. I write to begin a dialogue. I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things differently perhaps the world will change.”

Armistead Maupin wrote, “I write to explain myself to myself. It’s a way of processing my disasters, sorting out the messiness of life to land symmetry and meaning to it… Sometimes I write to explain myself to others. Thirty-forty years ago I told my folks I was a gay through the Tales of the City character Michael Molliver.”

Mary Kerr writes, to connect with other human beings; to record; to clarify; to visit dead. “I have a primitive need to leave a mark on the world.”

Kathryn Harrison said, “I write because it’s the only thing I know that offers the hope of proving myself worthy of love… I write, also, because it’s the apparatus I have for explaining the world around me, seemingly the only method that works.”

David Baldacci goes to the extreme, “If writing were illegal, I’d be in prison. I can’t write. It is a compulsion.”

Writing is a compulsion too for Gish Jen. She goes on to say, “Writing is part and parcel of how I am in the world. Eating, sleeping, writing: they all go together. I don’t think about why I am writing any more than I think about why I’m breathing. Its absence is bad, just as not breathing would be bad.”

George Orwell wrote a whole book “Why I Write” to explain why he writes. He gave four reasons which pretty much encapsulates everyone else’s reasons too:

  1. Sheer egoism. “To be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown-ups, etc.”
  2. Aesthetic enthusiasm. “To take pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story.”
  3. Historical impulse. “The desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.”
  4. Political purposes. “The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself is a political attitude.”

But I think for many of us writing is a vocation, a calling, a life’s work.

And when you start pursuing your calling, it is not easy. It is rich and fulfilling but not easy.

Your life’s work causes you more pain than ease, but it is worth it.

It provides you with a purpose, an opportunity to make a difference, a legacy to leave behind.

We write because every one of us is searching for a purpose in our lives. A purpose that is beyond material success. A purpose that could justify our existence in this world. Writing provides that purpose.

It allows us to make a difference, a real difference in our lives and in the lives of other people.

Think about it, how much other people’s writing has helped you understand life, show you the way, guide you out of misery and help you become a better person. This is what you are trying to do with your writing – help others.

Your words can make things easier for someone else is big enough a reason to continue to write.

That is the reason the writers will continue to write even if they are not able to make a living out of it.

Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash

5 Benefits of writing by hand

Neera

If you are in the same age group as me, then the chances are you have ditched writing by hand in favor of typing. And if you are a millennial, even greater chances are that you have never written by hand since you left school. But if writing is your vocation then you should seriously consider writing your first drafts by hand.

Even then some people can’t resist the invitation of a blank notebook and a fancy pen and I am one of them. To me a pen and paper are magical. Give them to me any time and I will be lost for hours.

Each morning, I get up, brush my teeth and settle down to write. Of course with my favorite Uniball pen and my daily diary with lovely botanic print. I have a rule – not to reach for any digital device until I have written three pages.

Of course, I developed this habit from Julia Cameron’s classic book The Artist’s Way where she recommends writing three pages in longhand. “Pages are meant to be,” she says, “simply, the act of moving the hand across the page and writing down whatever comes to mind.”

I found writing by hand a great way to access anecdotes and information from my subconscious. The things that surface, sometimes my conscious brain is not even aware of them.

Here are five proven benefits of writing by hand.

1. It helps access long-stored memories

There seems to be some special connection between the act of writing by hand and the memory vaults of our brains. Moving one’s hand across the page seems to open multiple locks at the same time.

Sometimes my hand can’t move fast enough to capture all stories that keep pouring out. Then it doesn’t matter how I capture them – whether in fragmented sentences, incorrect spelling, or unfitting words – as long as I capture write them. Because if I don’t, they will get locked up again.

2. It enhances mindfulness and creativity

According to a study performed at Indiana University, the mere act of writing by hand unleashes creativity not easily accessed in any other way. A high-tech magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) shows that writing by hand increases neural activity in certain sections of the brain, much like meditation.

“This is perhaps the true magic of a pen,” writes Nancy Olson in Forbes, “it transports us to unexpected places, on wings that require no more than a timely shot of ink to keep them aloft, destination unknown. And in the process, the mindfulness writing engenders encourages calm and creativity.”

3. It results in better composition

Research reveals that students who write essays with a pen write more than those that used a keyboard; they also wrote faster and in more complete sentences.

4. It prevents distractions

Working at the computer is full of distractions. The easy access to the internet, email and pop-ups keep tempting you to stop mid-sentence and do a little check. Half-an-hour later when you get back to finish that sentence, the train of thought is gone. But when there is only a pen and paper is in front of you, you tend to go deep inside, and what surfaces even surprises you.

5. It helps retain information better

In the process of writing, a particular area of ​​the brain is used, the so-called reticular activating system (RAS). It acts as a filter – it blocks the processing of extraneous information. By drawing letters with a pen or pencil on paper, we better concentrate and force the brain to consider what we write carefully. Virginia Berninger, a psychologist at the University of Washington, explains the differences between the pen and the keyboard: “You make more movements because each letter has its own set of elements, and working on a computer is monotonous – you only need to press a key each time.”

When you write things out, you create spatial relations between each bit of information you’re recording. Handwriting activates parts of your brain involved in thinking and working memory, and allows you to store and manage information. The movement associated with the pen and your hand can help you encode and retain information long-term.

The Benefits of Handwriting vs. Typing 

Many people get frustrated by the slowness of writing by hand and reach straight for the computer. Typing might seem a fast way to put words out there and spell-check and in-built thesaurus provides additional support in polishing your work but they take away the trance-like state you enter into when you are writing by hand.

But that is where the real writing comes from – from your subconscious.

Think of writing by hand as meditation. Your writing may not sound spiritual or even meditative but it is a valid form of meditation that helps you move from fast to slow, from shallow to deep, and from the logical brain to an artist’s brain. It gives you insights you never would have reached with your conscious brain.

Give it a go.

Not just give it a go, build a solid habit of writing by hand.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

5 Reasons why writers should show their work

Neera

In my early days as a writer, publishing anything with my name on it was the biggest challenge I faced. Self-doubt and lack-of-faith in my own creativity were limiting my growth.

I couldn’t understand why I was underestimating myself so much. This was not the case when I was in school.

In school and later in college, I would write an assignment and submit it for appraisal without any qualms. My writing skills were rudimentary then, yet I never underestimated myself.

When I chose writing as a hobby and started writing articles and stories I was too scared to share anything even though my skills as a writer improved a lot since the college days. The more I wrote, the more I got scared of sharing my work.

Why?

The answer lies in expectations.

In school, I had nil expectations from myself. As a middle-aged writer, I want to write like a professional.

My skills might have improved but so are my expectations.

When I understood that, there was no other way for me other than face my fears head-on.

I started a blog and began putting my work out there. Even though no one was reading it, but the act of ‘publishing’ my work did wonders for my confidence.

Here are the five benefits of showing your work.

1. Showing makes you accountable

When you are regularly showing your work, whether, through a blog or through writing groups, it keeps you accountable. We all are guilty of breaking promises to ourselves, but we do whatever we can in our power to keep the promise we make to others. This year I have promised my readers that I will put out two posts every week. Now I plan my posts in advance and schedule them for the days I know I am traveling or busy with other activities. Similarly, I have never missed a submission to my writer’s groups.

When you show your work regularly you keep track of how far you have come and where you’re headed. The accountability forces you to do the work you should be doing.

2. Showing helps you improve

It is very easy to get slack when no one is watching. Your diary writing can get sloppy but the piece you are submitting for critique or the post you are writing for your blog has to be your best effort. You are bound to get better and you are bound to improve.

When I was newly married I didn’t know how to cook. I learned cooking following recipes from books and got better at it by receiving praise from family and friends.

Think of your writing as cooking. If you cook something you will not stash it in the fridge or throw it in the bin. You will share it with your family and friends. Often they will praise you which will inspire you to cook frequently try different recipes. And if they make suggestions for improvement you will make sure to incorporate it next time you make that dish.

The same goes for writing. Keeping your diary or stories in the bottom drawer is akin to keeping your cooking in the fridge. Incorporate feedback from readers and writing groups help improve your writing just like it improves your cooking.

3. Showing inspires you to do more

Your portfolio grows one piece at a time.

One poem, two poems… three poems…ten poems.
One story, two stories… five stories… twenty stories.
One article, two articles… ten articles… one hundred articles.

When you see it growing, suddenly you start seeing your own potential. Your faith start building and you want to create more. Quality doesn’t matter in the initial stage but quantity certainly does.

Whether you’re a poet, fiction or non-fiction writer, it’s time to stop worrying and start sharing.

4. Showing help develop an ongoing connection with your readers

Writing in isolation is limiting. As soon as someone starts reading your work and provides you some feedback you develop a connection with your reader.

When I started blogging, for months, nobody was reading my posts. Then one day I received a comment from my gym buddy who was also blogging, I was over the moon. Soon we started commenting on each other’s posts. That simple act created a valuable feedback loop.

You can also share your process of writing – what are you learning, what are you experimenting with, your challenges and how you are overcoming them.

By sharing your process you reap the benefits of self-promotion without icky feelings. People are often just as interested in how you work as much as the work itself. By sharing your process, you invite people to not only get to know your work, but get to know you — and that can lead to new readers, new projects, and all sorts of other opportunities.

5. Your work is your resume

If you want to be a professional writer, you got to have a resume. Austin Kleon suggests a different kind of resume in his book Show Your Work:

Imagine if your next boss didn’t have to read your resume because he already reads your blog.

Imagine being a student and getting your first gig based on a school project you posted online.

Imagine losing your job but having a social network of people familiar with your work and ready to help you find a new one.

Imagine turning a side project or hobby into your profession because you had a following that could support you OR

Imagine something simpler and just as satisfying: spending the majority of your time, energy, and attention practicing a craft, learning a trade, or running a business, while also allowing for the possibility that your work might attract a group of people who share your interests.

Blogging is a great way for writers to show their work and improve as a result.

Since watching my own improvements I have become an advocate of blogging for writers.

Blogging allows you to write for others which forces you to polish your work as you go. I never edited my diary pages nor I rewrote journal entries, but I faithfully edit my posts multiple times. The fact is that I spend more time editing my posts than writing them. As we all know the mantra of writing is – ‘rewriting.’

Blogging also makes you get used to writing to deadlines, build a readership, experiment with different types of writing and get feedback.

But if blogging is not what you want to do, then there are other ways of showing your work. Writer groups provide a safe, friendly and encouraging environment to share and receive feedback. Online writing forums, social media and writing under a pen name are other ways to share your work.

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Photo by Nicole Geri on Unsplash