Against Motivational Advice on Writing
Enough with the bullshit gurus.
We’ve all seen it pop up in our daily digest, no matter how hard we’ve tried to purge it: and let’s face it, we’ve all clicked on it at least once. It’s the inevitable motivational article by some or other self-proclaimed “successful” writer or blogger, who is invariably never one of the great authors of our time, or even a middling one.
Let me state that up front: there is no magic formula that will make you a successful writer, overnight or ever. I’ve been a professional writer — as in, someone who gets paid for writing, regardless of the amount — since the early 2000’s. I got paid for blogging. I got paid for magazine articles and novels. I got paid for copywriting. I know the ropes. And I can tell you that anyone who promises to share secrets that will improve your writing career is bullshitting you.
So I’m not going to.
What I am going to do is explain, as clearly as I can, why these articles are bullshit which serves the only purpose of flogging bullshit books and bullshit guides about writing. I wrote this as a response to a story, but I will repost it here.
First: there is no direct correlation between success and the quality of your work. Plenty of great novels out there go unnoticed because they don’t hit that lucky spot at the intersection of quality and what people want to read at any given time. Also: marketing, self-marketing, publishers’ firepower. It’s got nothing to do with how well you write. Everything to do with a combination of luck and being in the right place at the right time.
Second: there is no direct correlation between how much work you put in and the amount of money you get paid to write. Setting aside the question of blogging vs fiction writing (two entirely different things), discipline is good and practice makes perfect, what makes a difference is being bold and versatile. Putting yourself out there, securing gigs, delivering your stuff on time, being accurate. Fiction, however, is an entirely different story. Pun intended.
Third: so yeah, let me go there. Blogging and writing novels are two different things that require different dedication and different skills. Blogging requires consistency, fiction requires technique as well as inspiration and talent. Anyone who can string two sentences together can be a blogger. Not everyone can write novels. I’ve done both and there’s simply no way that the two can be lumped together into the same set of generic motivational advice. That kind of article is homeopathic: it does absolutely nothing for you. At best, it will motivate you to open that Word document again. At worst, it will make you feel like someone who doesn’t believe in themselves enough to make it. Ask any good writer what motivates them, and guilt will be nowhere on their list. Ambition, compulsion, imagination, paying the bills, yes. Guilt and performance anxiety, not so much.
So by all means go ahead and write, just don’t kid yourself that simply keeping at it will make you rich, or successful, or both. There is no magic formula that will make it happen. Write if you feel like it, don’t if you don’t. There’s a very small chance that writing will make you rich, so unless you need to do it or enjoy doing it, don’t do it at all.
That’s it for now.
The Writing Cooperative is a community of people helping each other write better. Become a member to join our Slack team, get fresh eyes on your writing, and participate in the 52-Week Writing Challenge! Only $3 a month.
