Hard Truths About Writing That You Need to Hear
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When you tell people that you write, regardless if you do it as a hobby or your career, you likely gloss over some of the hard stuff. The hours you've spent staring at the blank page, the self-doubt over how people are going to receive your story, and your anxiety about whether you're even a good writer or not.
As rewarding and as powerful writing is, it's also something that is extremely challenging. On my website, I try to not stray away from talking about the hard parts of writing and the obstacles that many writers face. As an editor, I want to help you through those roadblocks. Sometimes it’s through writing advice articles or tips on how to query with a positive attitude. But sometimes, I just have to be real.
In this article, I'm going to talk through some hard truths about writing that I think are important for any aspiring author or writer to contend with. Being aware of these things is only going to help empower you as you embark on your writing journey and become even stronger in your craft.
Your Story Will Not Be for Everyone
The first hard truth about writing is: your story just isn't going to be for everyone.
Many writers dread rejection, especially from their readers. Some dread the idea of getting bad reviews or negative comments on a piece so much, they refuse to share their work and give up on getting published altogether.
This fearful mindset stifles you as a creative. At the end of the day, as a writer, you have to accept that no matter how polished, compelling, and engaging your story is, it is not going to resonate with everyone.
And it's not supposed to! Even best-selling and award-winning books have negative reviews, I promise you – just go to the Amazon page of any widely known book and you'll see a host of one-star reviews.
I think it helps to frame this situation from your own perspective. Surely there has been a book recommended to you, either by a friend or by a reviewer, but after you picked it up, you realized you didn't like it. Maybe you didn't even finish the book, and that is completely fine.
Writing is a subjective craft, just like other forms of art. What one person finds moving and inspirational is not what another person is going to find beautiful. That's just the nature of being human and responding to art.
Once you embrace this fact, your writing journey will be a lot less hindered by fear and anxiety around critique. In fact, you’ll get stronger as a writer, as you’ll be able to objectively process and utilize critique of your work.
It’s Difficult to Live Off of Writing
The next hard truth about writing is that it is very difficult to make a full living off of writing alone. This point is very important for anyone who aspires to make a full-time salary on just their creative writing.
Unfortunately, whether you choose to self-publish or go the traditional publishing route, it is very difficult to earn enough money to support yourself just from book sales. That's because book sales are quite difficult to predict and, depending on whichever publishing method you go with, you're only going to earn a fraction of the profit on each of those sales.
Keep in mind that with traditional publishing you're going to have an advance, which is an advance payment against future royalties that you retain no matter how many copies your book sells. While it’s not an ignorable amount of money, typically the advance is not going to be enough to support you for multiple years. It might end up being the equivalent to your current salary, but it’s still a one-time payment that you typically get through installments. That means it’s not going to replace the need for another source of income, at least not for multiple years.
That's not to say that writers don't make a living off of writing. Of course they do, and when I worked in the publishing industry, there were several authors I worked with who wrote full time and supported their families on that income. However, there were many more cases of writers who had other jobs or other sources of income to supplement their writing income.
Keep in mind that it is completely normal to have a day job or a side hustle while you pursue your writing career. No one expects you to drop everything to become a writer, especially if you're a debut writer publishing your first book. And you can certainly see success with your writing career while balancing another type of work.
So, if you are in the process of getting your book published, set realistic expectations for yourself regarding the profit you make off of it. That way you won't be crushed if the book is released and you don't meet a certain expectation.
Your Draft Probably Needs Major Editing
The next hard truth about writing is that your story might need major revisions. I know that for a lot of writers their worst nightmare is having to rewrite their story. In fact, in many cases, revisions and edits feel more grueling than the initial write itself.
As a structural and developmental book editor, I work with writers on the early drafts of their manuscripts to assess big-picture elements. This includes pacing, plot development, character arc, and point of view. I will often make revision suggestions that do drastically alter some of those elements of the story, such as adding or omitting a character's point of view, starting the story at a different point, or even cutting a subplot or secondary character completely.
These types of revisions might feel daunting, but with all the writers I work with I encourage them to see the potential for what the story can become and where it can go. If you feel strongly about retaining the story in its current form without doing any type of big overhaul, then you might actually be preventing your story from reaching its maximum potential.
In my experience, the most successful authors are those who embrace the revision process, see the value in it, and understand how it unlocks new opportunities in their work. I believe in the mantra that “writing is rewriting,” and if you conceptualize it that way, you'll grow in your craft.
Publishing Is Time-Intensive
Whether you decide to traditionally publish or self-publish, it is going to take a significant amount of time, effort, and energy.
Publishing is, by nature, a very slow and time-consuming process. On the traditional end, you have to first query literary agents and get an offer of representation, which can take anywhere from months to upwards of a year. Then you're likely going to work on rewrites with your agent, which could again take months. After that, your agent is going to present the manuscript to editors at publishing houses, which typically takes at least a couple of months for them to review and make a book deal offer. Once you do have a book deal, the book itself is not going to be scheduled for publication for at least a year or two out.
Self-publishing can seem deceptively quick — after all, the timeline of publication is in your control. But there are a lot of things you have to do to prepare your book for self-publishing. You have to set up a marketing plan, get a cover designer, ideally work with an editor to get through the different rounds of edits you need for a polished manuscript, format the pages properly for whatever platform you're publishing on, write the copy that goes on the book jacket as well as the online description, and so on.
While you might feel eager to see that finished book in your hands — and believe me, I know how exciting that part of the publishing process is! — I recommend not rushing the publication process. Allow it to take the time it needs, because that is going to give you the best output. You’ll feel the proudest of your work when you feel like you didn’t have to rush any of it.
There Is No Shortcut to Becoming Successful
The last hard truth about writing is that there is no shortcut or secret formula to learning how to be a successful author.
While there are many articles online about the key to best-selling books, in truth, there is no repeatable, infallible, and perfect formula to suddenly becoming an outstanding writer. Writing is a skill, and it’s something that you will only get better at by putting in the time and effort. Because it’s a craft, writing is something you can always work on and improve, which is part of the beauty of it!
It's unlikely you're ever going to reach a point in your writing career where you feel like you've got it all figured out. Just like how every visual artist has their own technique for putting a brush to canvas, every writer has their own technique and process for composing a story. That's why I say there is no secret formula to writing a great story.
For example, some authors swear by the pantsing method. That’s where they write the story as they go, no outline or pre-thinking ahead of time. Others swear by plotting, where they meticulously outline every single beat in their story.
But I truly believe that the best and, frankly, only way to learn how to write is to go through it yourself. Embrace and develop your own individual process. That's what makes you an artist at the end of the day.
I hope this article helped you think about your craft and the writing process in a new way, shedding some perspective on some of the hard truths about writing you might encounter on your journey.
Thanks so much for reading and happy writing!