Hi writers,
More often than I’d like, I come across an
online offer which promises to make you a bestselling author overnight.
Look at me! this salesperson says. Look at my success!
They have a sleek-looking website and an ebook designed to sell their product. They have a big smile on their face and a seductive story about how their book came to be.
How the idea struck like lightning.
How they were pulled from slumber by divine inspiration.
How they wrote frantically through the night and into the morning.
How the book arrived “as a download,” the words flowing through them and onto the page with no effort at all, and in a few short hours they had a book, a product, and a six-figure income. Voila!
If this story sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is.
It’s a very attractive fantasy to write a book and find success in minutes and without really trying. It takes the onus off of you. It skips over the writing process – the daily work and dedication, the planning, the sticktoitiveness so vital to completion – which just so happens to be the hard part.
Now, I don’t mean to be harsh, and I don’t mean to call these people liars. I suppose it’s possible it happened for them this way. And if that’s the case, good for them.
But what about the rest of us? What do we do to get our books written and successes found?
We do what Alexandre Dumas did, and countless writers before him and after:
He wrote 1500 words per day, every day of his adult life, and when he finished The
Count of Monte Cristo and hadn’t yet reached his daily quota, rather than stopping and falling short of his goal, he drew a line across the page and started The Three Musketeers.
No one can make you a
bestselling author but you.
What will you do today to move one step closer to that goal, to honor yourself as a writer? Click “reply” to let me know!
