Writing habits every successful author has

you've heard of The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People but let's talk about The Seven Habits of Highly Successful authors I have read and watched so much content about how famous authors spend their time and I love watching series here on YouTube where creators try to follow author's writing routines I think Christian Jones in particular has done a lot of these but let's be honest it's not just the ne Gans and the Octavia Butlers of the world that are successful authors in fact in this day and age a lot of successful authors are the ones who are self-published or Indie published who are putting out book after book after book and maybe none of them make them household names but all of them especially compounded do really well and allow this author to be very successful I am really privileged to know or have worked with a lot of those people throughout my career both in publishing and now as an author and so I wanted to share with you the habits that I see those people forming that I think ER contributing to their success number one they have a regular writing routine for most successful authors this means writing every single day or at least every weekday for a lot of them however when starting out they didn't have the time or resources to be able to write every single day but they would still create a regular scheduled writing session that is dedicated to that activity that consistency is really important not just for habit forming and for creating opportunity for us to gain progress but also for training your brain for Creative productivity I know for me when I sit down in the evening after work at my desk and I log onto a zoom Sprint with my writing group my brain is instantly in writing mode and it's a lot easier to get into it and a lot easier to be productive as a result so no matter how much time you're able to dedicate whether you're a parent and you've only got one afternoon a week where you don't have your kids or you can have someone else look after your kids or maybe you work sort of shift work and you have to fit it in every 10th day whatever it is if you want to write find a dedicated time to write and don't create pressure for yourself to write outside of that time that is your creative cocoon and you'll be amazed at how much having that dedicated time carved out helps with your productivity during that time the second habit is that they actually create rituals around their writing now I don't mean they're sitting there doing a seance right before they do their writing more so the the environment and the condition are created for optimal creative output so for example for me I sit down in the same place at roughly the same time every day that's that first tip we talked about the consistency but being in the same location turning on my fairy lights after a long day of work lighting a candle if I'm doing new words putting on my playlist opening up my writing tools I do all of that in the same order and again it's part of that training your brain of this is the transition so create rituals for yourself that help you kind of get in the mood for writing think of it like your creative foreplay habit number three they read and specifically read within their genre now I'm going to be really honest with you I used to not follow this rule before I put out my first book I didn't actually read a lot of contemporary romance and it wasn't until I embraced the genre and I immersed myself in it that I found myself able to write within that genre and you might be thinking if you didn't enjoy reading it why did you want to write within it and for a lot of people that's where the critic ISM ends I actually really empathize with people who are like I want to write something because I can't find this specific thing within the Canon as I'm able to explore it however I would challenge that by saying you just got to dig a little bit deeper because when I did start to dig I realized that oh it's not the romance books that everyone in my circle has been talking about those things aren't giving me what I wanted but it does exist out there and by reading within my genre I was able to have a better understanding of what are the conventions everyone is expecting what are the rules I'm going to be expected to play by what are the things that make me as a reader really excited by this genre if you don't read within your genre you can only ever have a negative there like I don't like this I don't like this and so I'm going to try to do something different it's not until you immerse yourself in that genre and you actually consume it as a reader that you're able to say I do like this I do like this and therefore incorporate those things into your our own work so make time to read again if you don't have tons of time to read that's totally fine this is a channel where we believe that audiobooks count as reading so if you need to throw on some headphones pop in those airpods and multitask in order to get reading done do that absolutely do that habit number four movement this is something that is seemingly unrelated but so so important and this is one of the things that you'll see as a really common thread in a lot of these like famous authors routines is physical movement Haruki Mami for example famous for running but most people incorporate some kind of movement into their routine for some people maybe that's having a walking pad under their desk and whenever they're doing a particular type of activity they walk for a lot of people it is some sort of going for walks outside going for runs outside for other people it's other types of exercise exercising your body is really important for mental health as well and neurological Health but it also is a really good way of somatically working through the Creative Energy that you have I've had some of my best ideas on walks I've had some of my best ideas when I'm doing something physical like cleaning my house or doing a DIY project and importantly I'm often having those ideas when I'm not already listening to an audiobook I've actually stopped listening to audiobooks on my dog walks because those are such good inspiring times for me that I don't want to dilute that with someone else's creative expression and sort of overwriting whatever I would be feeling in that moment that's a really wanky way of saying that I just need to be able to pay attention to my own thoughts a little bit better instead of drowning them out number five they have hobbies other than reading and writing most people that I speak to they have something else that they are interested in now this does not have to be an active hobby your hobby might be video games or your hobby might be dog training or whatever it is whatever you are interested in outside of reading and writing indulge that any hobby anything that we do just pure for the joy of it is on some level going to be tapping into the same type of energy that we're using when we write but instead of draining that energy it's going to be filling it back up so for me some of my hobbies include Dungeons and Dragons I really enjoy making these videos this is a hobby for me I really enjoy the Sims which sounds so silly but when I watch videos about it and I go in and I'm building things and playing the game it refills that energy for me I would go as far as to say that it's okay if you have very limited time to carve out time that you theoretically could be using for writing for some of those other hobbies and some people might disagree with me there some people might be like no every second that you have that you could be writing you should be writing I don't agree with that I think that that's a really good way to burn yourself out and to make yourself resent writing because you have to be filling that cup up if you're going to be pouring it out through your work I know that my hobbies make my writing a lot more fun habit number six they interact with other writers and this could be in any way that you want to it could be on social media it could be here leave a comment down below if you're a writer I would love to connect with you it could be joining a writing group either virtually or in person it could be going to conferences it could be talking to just one specific friend who you also know as a writer connecting with other writers is so so important because these are other people who just fundamentally understand you in a way that other people in your life will not and so when you're thinking about characters when when you're thinking about motivations when you're thinking about story elements when you're thinking about plot points these are people that will get it they're the people who will understand when you're in the querying trenches or you're waiting on a core piece of feedback and you're really nervous they're going to get that because they've been there or they also want to be there do yourself a favor take advantage of the fact that we live in a time where it's easier than ever to find other people who have the same hobbies and interests as you and find yourself a writing group finally habit number seven they subscribe to my YouTube channel like And subscribe I'm just kidding that was really cringe I'm sorry habit number seven is they use some kind of outlining framework I hear you pancers exist if you don't know what that means plotters versus pancers or planners versus pancers people who fly by the Sea they their pants they like to start a project without knowing where it's going these people absolutely exist and sometimes are successful but I guarantee you that of successful authors of people that are actively making a living from their writing especially in fiction at least 90% of them are using some kind of outlining framework there's a couple reasons for this first of all if you are a successful author that means that you are typically working with other professionals within the publishing industry on your work like yes you're the one who's writing it but you need to validate these ideas with your agent with your editor or if you're self-publishing you need to be able to validate these ideas in the market you need to be able to start working on packaging and things like that before you've actually finished the book and so having an line allows that collaboration to take place before you have actually written the piece itself and the second reason is because you write a lot faster when you know what's going to happen typically again this is a huge generalization but it tends to be correct when you look at the numbers and when I say look at the numbers I mean it because I did a study with some friends on this and we interviewed hundreds of authors now I have a lot of advice about outlining and about how to do it in a way that's going to be really effective and really productive but I'm not going to get into that here because I actually did a whole talk about this it's like an hour long very detailed with templates and everything at the Bournemouth writing Festival this past year and I have that entire session here on my YouTube channel so I am going to link that in the description you can watch that you can access the templates access the slides all of it from within that video and its description I want to know what habits you formed that you think are helping you with your writing because uh honestly this list could probably be a lot longer than it was so let me know in the comments if I've missed anything off or if you disagree with some of these if you think that they're irrelevant to being successful I really want to know what you think as always thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time bye-bye

Channel: Searching for Samantha

Views: 4,924

Keywords: writing advice, writing vlog, published author, writing habits, how to write a book, how to publish a book, how to write a novel, how to publish a novel, successful authors, famous authors

Id: rNIRvK32lRY

Length: 10min 52sec (652 seconds)

Published: Sat May 25 2024