If You Want to be a Successful Writer…
Ignore All the “If You Want to be a Successful Writer” Stories
Yes, I know: sometimes they’re helpful. Especially when you first start to write, or if you’ve just decided to “get serious” about your work.
I used to do it myself here on Medium.
But then I noticed something. Two things, really:
- Many of those stories, whilst containing useful information, were little more than click-bait designed to sucker you into signing up for somebody’s writing course — for which you had to pay money — and
- I was spending more time and energy reading stories about becoming a “successful writer” than I was spending actually writing.
So by all means, read some of the stories. But read them within a critical eye. What are the author’s credentials? Are they a Medium authority with a large following? How often do they publish? Is theirs advice useful, orange is it primarily designers to get you to sign up to pay money to take a class?
Why pay money when there are free classes available online from institutions such as Harvard, MIT, and Yale?
Above all, don’t let these stories occupy so much of your time that there’s no timely left for you to write.
If you want to be a successful writer, ignore all the “How to be a Successful Writer” stories.
Including the one subtitled “Ignore All the ‘If You Want to be a Successful Writer’ Stories.”
