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How To Find Writing Success By Leaving Your Niche

time to move on

Dr Pat Aitcheson
The Writing Cooperative
7 min readMar 3, 2019

Do you feel like a prospector looking for gold?

You know success is out there but you’re not finding it no matter how hard you dig. You see others strike it big and assume they’re luckier or got a bigger shovel.

You could have the perfect tools and focus on your goals, but it won’t matter if you’re digging in the wrong place.

People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.
Thomas Merton

The Double-Edged Sword of Focus

You work hard, eliminate distractions, and focus on one area. This can be good and bad at the same time.

Take gold prospecting. Digging a one hundred foot mine shaft will keep you busy, whether the gold lies there or not. If there isn’t any gold, all your work will be in vain.

The same can be said for your writing.

How do you know where to invest your effort?

You need to go wide and then deep.

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Published in The Writing Cooperative

Medium’s largest collection of advice, support, and encouragement for writers. We help you become the best writer possible.

Written by Dr Pat Aitcheson

Writer, physician, lifelong learner dedicated to telling the stories all around us. Free guide Unleash Your Creativity at 2squarewriting.com. Words are magic.

Responses (5)

What are your thoughts?

I really like the idea of blurring the lines between genres. I write fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, but I’ll have to think about combining them…

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I’m working on the blog part now and after that, who knows? Lots of great ideas here, though. Thanks!

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Right-on, Dr. Pat. ‘Wide and deep’.
Makes sense.

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