How to be a good writer pt. 2

Set achievable goals.

Although you want to harness your productivity, it is important that you set realistic expectations and achievable goals for yourself.

Expecting to write huge amounts and then not meeting a difficult target will serve only to de-motivate you. If you do want to use targets to spur yourself on, start off with easily achievable ones and gradually increase

until you feel stretched but also know the target is still within reach.

Before you know it you’ll be meeting personal targets you never thought were possible.

Be very wary of having targets placed upon you by other people or customers who do not understand what you do, how you work or whether they are achievable. In many cases, this can be just a transfer of stress from the customer to you as their supplier.

Never be afraid to say no to an unrealistic goal. Don’t try to imitate someone else’s style. 

Every writer, either consciously or unconsciously, will have their own style. It’s fine to admire the writing style of another writer, but trying to imitate that style could be stifling and destroying your own natural style.

Very few writers adopt a conscious style. In most cases, what appears on the page is their own innate internal voice. It’s how they hear their own words when they write. 

Attempting to imitate a style can result in stilted writing that neither the reader nor writer is truly happy with.

To avoid driving yourself crazy, write in whatever style naturally occurs to you. Once you’ve been writing confidently for some time, you can experiment with changes to your style.

Never give up. 

As any writer will tell you, being able to handle rejection is an essential skill that needs to be mastered by every writer. No matter how good you believe your writing to be or no matter how good you’re told your writing is, you will, at some point, be rejected by publishers or agents.

Learning to deal with this rejection while not allowing it to adversely affect your motivation is difficult, but it is also essential. Your work can be rejected for any number of reasons. It could be that the publisher has a backlog of submissions and is not accepting any more. It could be that the agent specialises in a different genre and is not looking for your kind of manuscript.

Stay positive and whenever you are offered constructive criticism, take it on board and accept the comments. If you are sure that your writing is of a high standard and that there is a market out there for your

genre, then there’s every reason to believe that it will be picked up at some point by a publisher or agent who is looking for your kind of writing.