• #1: TIP Figure out what you want to achieve from the writing courses you’re taking.

Grab a pen and paper and actually take the time to write down the answers to the following questions BEFORE you go on to the next tip.

What do you love?

Figuring out what you love is the single most important item you have to decide when you’re getting ready to write.

Are you passionate about the idea of creating tales of magic, or amazing technology, or stories set in the midst of historical events? Doing what you love is what gives your life joy and meaning—and you do not EVER discount your passion in order to shoehorn yourself into a vision someone else wants you to fit.

What sort of stories, screenplays, novels, or other fiction do YOU want to write?

Do you want to write fantasy or science fiction, horror or romance, suspense or mystery fiction, something experimental, something no one has done before? You need to know whether you’re a potential genre writer or a potential literary writer—because if you’re a genre writer taking courses for writing lit fic, you’re not going to learn what you need to know.

Who do you want to write for?

Do you want to write for kids, teens, or adults; religious readers, science-oriented readers or some other special reading demographic; do you want to write for folks who love a good story, or for readers who find plot and meaning in fiction distasteful? Not all courses are suitable for any writer: there are courses for writing kid fiction, courses for writing religious fiction, courses that teach storytelling skills that are broadly applicable to most writers, and so on.

How do you envision spending your working days as a writer?

Do you want to make money from your writing? Or do you think writers who get paid to write have sold out? There are two broad philosophies about the creation of art—”The Best Art Pays Its Creator While Reaching People To Whom It Matters,” and “The Only Art Is Art Born Out Of Poverty And Suffering.” Each of these base camps has splinter groups, but now, figure out which of the two broad philosophies is closest to yours. Do you want to work for money, or do you want to work for free?

And what sort of work do you want to leave behind as your legacy?

Hard, cold fact time. You don’t get forever to make up your mind about what you want to do, to do what matters to you, to live the life you want to life, to find joy, to find love, and to leave behind something that tells the world you were here, and that while you were here, you mattered.

There is not dress rehearsal. There is no second chance. All you know for sure you have is this moment, and if you aren’t living the life you want to live and doing what you love, you’re wasting your life.

What do you want to create? What do you want someone else to remember you for? What do you want to say to people now, and to people who won’t even be born until long after you’re gone. There’s no guarantee you’ll do something that matters to anyone but yourself—but if you don’t try, there’s a guarantee you won’t even live a life that matters to you.

I was twenty-five when I decided I wanted to write for a living. Seven long, hard years later, I started selling my work. One year after that, I quit my day job because I got a three-book deal, and I’ve been writing for a living ever since. I haven’t gotten rich yet, but I have thousands of saved letters and e-mails from readers who told me what I wrote touched them, helped them…in a few cases saved their lives. I won’t know if I matter to anyone when I’m dead—but I know I’ve mattered now.

And the books I’ve written and left behind matter to me. I’ve written what I love.

 

• TIP #2: Before you spend money, make sure any courses for writing you consider will teach you what you what you want to learn.

This tip may seem obvious, but huge numbers of would-be writers end up in courses that don’t teach them how to do what they want to do. For example, folks who want to write genre fiction (fantasy, science fiction, mystery, suspense, romance, horror, and so on…) spend small fortunes going to colleges and universities renowned for their writing programs, only to discover the courses for writing they’re offered in these curriculums will only teach them how to write the single sort of fiction that school promotes (generally lit fic)—and they don’t have any interest in spending their lives creating such books. Frequently, they don’t even read or like the genre being taught.

Worse, they discover that their professors loathe genre fiction, and detest all writers who want to write it. During their time in school, they have to write fiction they hate to get grades to pass their courses—and they come to hate not just their assignments, but writing in general. I hear horror stories from many of my students who graduated college no closer to their goal than when they entered, or who dropped out and decided to give up because they couldn’t see how to get from where they were to what they wanted, simply because their professors would not or could not teach them how to write the sort of fiction they loved.

 

• TIP #3: Do the work—writers write.

Here’s the single biggest mistake I see my own students make in taking my courses for writing fiction: They read the course materials, watch the videos…and that’s it. They don’t do the writing. If you are buying courses for writing any sort of fiction whatsoever, and you aren’t writing, you’re wasting your money. You cannot learn how to write a book or a short story or any other form of fiction by reading about it. You can only learn by doing it.

 

• TIP #4: Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

This ties into the tip above. The only way to start writing work good enough to publish is to write a whole lot of work that isn’t. I’ve sold more than thirty novel now…but I spent seven years and got over 100 rejection slips before I sold anything. Writing professionally was not something that just fell out of the sky for me.

 

• TIP #5: Write what you love. Don’t waste your time writing for someone else’s style or genre.

Don’t allow anyone to tell you that you need to be writing in a different genre, or telling different stories, or writing about different characters. What you’re writing has to matter first to YOU. And no professor, no instructor, no professional writer (and this includes me) has any business telling you that your core content—the thing about writing and storytelling that you love—is crap, or a waste of time, or not “really art.”

If you love it, it matters to you. That makes it the MOST important part of your goal.

Writing teachers who actually sell can tell you how to make your work more salable—and if you’re taking any courses for writing salable fiction, you need to listen to what they have to say about that. But if someone in a position of presumed authority tells you that all romances are garbage, or all erotica is garbage, or all fantasy is garbage—and this is what you love and want to write—you need to leave. You cannot learn from someone who does not respect your goals, your passions, or you.

 

• TIP #6: Set goals that will help you, not break you.

You have to realize right now there are NO courses on writing any sort of fiction that can teach you how to be the next Stephen King, on Stephanie Plum, or J.K. Rowling.

Remember that Stephen King, at that time the most successful writer in the world, tried to duplicate his own success under a different name. He wrote the same excellent books. He had the same talent, the same drive, the same knowledge of the field selling his work as Richard Bachman that he had selling as himself.

And his Richard Bachman books did all right, because they were good books. But they were not hit by the same luck fairy as books that bore the Stephen King name. Stephen King was master of the publishing world. Richard Bachman was a solid midlister.

If your goal is to be a New York Times bestseller, you’re aiming for a goal you can’t control, and cannot achieve by merit. You can only achieve it by luck.

You can, however, have a career creating good books. I have.

Real goals are goals you can control.

Here are some example goals that will actually help you succeed with any courses for writing fiction that you take.

• Write daily.
• Write a set number of words.
• Submit one new short story a month.
• Submit all rejected stories to new markets within one week of getting them back.

Create real goals for yourself, and don’t waste your time on hoping the luck fairy will spit on your head.

• Persist.

If you don’t take anything else away from these tips, brand this one on your heart and soul.

Persistence is the single most critical difference between the published writer and the unpublished writer.

The unpublished writer doesn’t finish stories, doesn’t send them out, doesn’t keep writing when he received rejection slips. Somewhere along the way, the unpublished writer quits.

The published writer kept writing until he finished work. He revised it. He sent it out. When he was rejected, he sent it out again. And while he was waiting to hear back, he kept working, creating new stories, new novels, new screenplays—whatever it was he’d decided he was going to sell. The published writer may have faced hundreds of rejections before getting the first acceptance, but he did not quit. He kept learning, kept telling new stories, kept improving.

And that’s how he became published.

You can do this.

 

 

 

 

Holly Lisle