Habit - A recurrent often unconscious pattern of behavior that is acquired through frequent repetition. An established disposition of the mind or character.
7 Success Habits For Writers
1. Read books in your genre. Whether you write suspense, romance, sci-fi thrillers, or children's books, you need to keep in touch with what's selling. This isn't only about kicking back and relaxing with your favorite novel. It's necessary research on your market and it strengthensyour talent. My critique group recently commented on improvements they could see in my suspense novel with character development and dialog. I credit alot of that with studying other books.
2. Maintain a constant flow of positive input. Yesmore reading, or listening to tapes and Cd's, which I prefer. The main person that must believe in you, is you. There's alot of negative language tossed around in this world. One of the shields you can use to deflect any that comes your way is the personal development material you absorb. Breaking into fiction is challenging. Keep your attitude positive by reading Mark Victor Hansen, Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, Jack Canfield, Bob Proctor, Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie. Anything by these guys and many others will help keep you focused and your attitude positive through multiple drafts, rejections and rewrites.
3. Study how-to books on plotting, characterization, setting, attention grabbing introductions, unexpected twists along the way, and the grand finale! Fiction takes more than an active imagination. It requires that you take time to learn your craft.
4. Attend conferences. When you send your manuscript to an agent or editor that you personally met at an event you have a much better chance of moving that book higher up in the pile of stories mailed in to be considered. If they requested it, even better. But at least you'll be able to write on the material when and where you met them. You also get to network with other writers and participate in great educational workshops.
5. Make writing goals. Decide when you want to complete your book. Then figure how many chapters or pages you need to complete weekly and daily to accomplish your goal. If you're serious about seeing your stories in print you must schedule it like any business appointment, only this one is with yourself. Make your goal realistic according to the other responsibilities in your life but not so easy it's not challenging. It's good if you have to stretch a little and the reward will be well worth the effort!
6. Visualize your book on the shelves in Barnes And Noble. See the crowds of shoppers at your book signings. How tired is your hand from personalizing all those copies for your loyal fans? How off the charts exciting is it when you receive that first call from an editor informing you they want to buy your manuscript? One of my favorite disciplined fantasies is me and my laptop traveling to Colorado, Maine, Vermont, Spain, Greece, Italy, wherever my characters playground is for my latest novel. I recently went to the doctor and my blood pressure, which is always normal, was slightly elevated. There was no medical reason and I wasn't nervous. I was exhilarated because on the way there I had been visualizing about an upcoming mystery writers conference, my suspense novel completed, an editor calling and a bunch of other exciting images rolling around in my head! Turned out to be an interesting lesson. When you see your future as a best selling author it should be so real and feel so amazing that it has a physical effect on your body! That will help propel you to reach "The End" AND "The Beginning" of your new life!
7. Participate in social media trends. This is a huge topic and will appear in future posts. One of the most important benefits of blogging, video, and social networks is that they give back some of the power to us. There used to be alot of smaller publishing houses and less competition. Now those have either been bought or merged into conglomerates which have made it difficult for first time authors to gain an initial foothold. Now we can go online and have a published voice in a matter of minutes, reach a global audience, build a loyal following of readers, and make valuable contacts without even leaving our offices. It takes time, but less than mailing off a manuscript and waiting four to six months for a reply.
Each of these habits support the most important one, writing. Fingers to the keyboard, creating colorful characters and developing page turning plots. Nothing replaces that. If you've adopted some unproductive habits try replacing each with one of the suggestions listed here. Just one a week can turn things around and help you produce outstanding results!
What other habits have you found beneficial to your writing? Please share!
Comments