Hey Everyone!! I hope you’re all well, sorry it’s been a while, life’s been pretty darn hectic recently. Welcome back to another blog post from A.P Writing, this weeks focus will centre around what’s important when trying to achieve our writing goals. Writing, as with most things in life is full of ups and downs, In the next few hundred words I’ll detail what I do to stay motivated, hopefully you’ll find it useful.
Be Confident
I’d like to start this paragraph with a question. How successful will we be if our subconscious thoughts are full of nothing but negativity? The answer is probably going to be not very far at all, personally I think confidence directly affects our performance. Now I’m not talking Conor McGregor’s bordering on arrogance kind of confidence but you must always believe you’re good enough. It’s not always easy staying confident or even being confident in the first place but with practice you’ll start to feel a little more at ease with your writing. I’ve had terrible confidence issues in many things throughout my life but I’d go as far as to say that my writing holds none. It’s perhaps my most confident area in fact, somewhere where I’m comfortable and positive about things. There’s a few reasons for this but ultimately it comes down to the work I put into writing, it’s my dream and the harder I work the more confident I become. If you find yourself full of doubts just ask yourself what’s stopping me? You’ll probably find it’s a lot less than you first thought.
Persistence is also hugely important, having that never say die attitude will help us all greatly when things are looking a little bleak. It’s a tough old world the writing industry that’s for sure, with the emergence of self publishing through companies such as Amazon the landscape is incredibly competitive. There’s thousands of new books published every day, staying persistent and working hard will make your work stand out. It would be easy when we’re having one of those de-motivated days to just give up, how can we ever be better than all these other writers right? But you see that’s where we will be different, we’ll be persistent, whether that’s reading everyday, writing anything for the practice or working on your projects after a stressful day at work when all you want to do is rest, hard work pays off.
Set Targets
Perhaps one of my weaker areas but still a very important one when looking to progress, setting clear targets will help us in the long run. With a target to achieve it gives us something to aim for, in my experience it can become quite disheartening when we’re working hard on things but have no end goal in sight. Of course everyone is different and we all have certain strategies that work for us, some individuals may not need to set targets to get the best out of themselves, I unfortunately am not one of those people. If we have one huge target such as one day being a successful writer then we have to ask ourselves how are we going to get there? Setting smaller targets will allow us to break that large target down and make it feel far more achievable. One thing I will say however is treat these targets as guidelines, I recently sat back and did my yearly review of the targets I set for myself last August, I hit some and completely missed others. My current writing project AOKTKC was meant to take me 12 months, I’m now 14 months into writing it and anticipate the first draft taking another 4-6 months, am I upset though? Absolutely not. I’ve worked hard all year and that’s what counts, I’ll touch on this a little later on in the post but there’s no rush, I’d rather take more time and produce better quality writing than stress and rush my work. I did however identify areas in which I could improve and therefore set new targets aimed at improving those areas.
Honesty is the best policy
If you feel something isn’t right or working out for you when it comes to your writing, change it. This could include a multitude of things and be applicable at differing stages of a writers career. Listen to your gut at the end of the day, if the story you’re currently working on feels more like a chore than a release then perhaps it’s time to put it aside for now, focusing instead on something that stirs your passion. Be honest with yourself, just because you’ve put something aside for now doesn’t mean you wont go back to it again in the future. I find if I’m writing something and it’s becoming monotonous it strips the enjoyment right out of things, my creativity suffers and this is where those ‘Am I really good enough?’ doubts creep in. Personally I always take on board everyone else’s honest opinions as well, that doesn’t mean I always agree with them but sometimes advice and criticism, when constructive can be very useful.
Determination is KEY
Stay devoted, reaching our end goal will be no easy task, there’s going to be times when all feels hopeless and we want to give up, when we’ve been rejected for the fifteenth time and making a career from writing seems impossible. Well all I’ve got to say is DON’T GIVE UP, try remembering in those situations why we started in the first place, use those thoughts to stay driven and determined. For every dark night there’s a bright day after that, and yes for those of you out there wondering, I did just quote Tupac, but I feel his words are very apt. We will face dark times full of rejection letters, (unless we’re super lucky of course) and gloomy days but eventually we will get there, we’ll achieve what we set out to do.
What Inspires you?
For me, the answer to that question branches off in many directions, but ultimately it’s the work of other writers I’ve read over the years that’s inspired me most. The idea of earning a living doing something I love inspires me greatly. Also it’s often life’s little surprises that inspire us, finding out I’m going to be a father motivated me hugely, I want to make my child proud. However inspiration can come in many forms, if you find that writing relaxes you and that’s your inspiration for doing it then keep going.
What’s the rush?
This is more of a personal opinion but the more we rush things the more room for mistakes we create. Again this could be relevant in lots of different situations, getting a book published, creating a blog post, writing a chapter, or working on an assignment if you’re still in education, why rush? When the time is right to unleash our work on the unsuspecting world we want it to be the best possible example that it can be, sometimes we don’t get a second chance. Liken it to building a brand for ourselves with the work we produce, we want people to keep coming back. I’ll end on this point, honestly at the moment it feels like I’ve got very little to show for all the effort I’m putting in, but I don’t rush, instead I tell myself that one day all that hard works going to pay off, and that’s my mind set moving forward.
As always everyone thanks for taking the time to read my blog post, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll be back real soon with another.
Adam
A.P Writing 