Jim Denney on Hanging in There

I read the following advice from fellow novelist Jim Denney on one of the authors' groups I'm a member of and thought you'd appreciate it. It's straightforward and dead on.

Traci

If you want to be a published writer, you must have a deliberate PLAN for getting published, and you must stay FOCUSED on that plan. You must persevere through all sorts of obstacles, including rejection, self-doubt, and the distractions that eat up your time.


Write every day, and write with the single-minded intention of getting your work published. Don't treat writing as a hobby; pursue it as a calling or a cause. No matter how busy you are, build a daily discipline of writing AT LEAST an hour a day with the express intention of selling what you write.


Every time you write with the intention of being published, you force yourself to think like an editor or a reader. You learn something about your craft you could never learn any other way.


Persistent, daily effort produces the habits and discipline of a writer. These essential habits and disciplines are:


1. Write every day.


2. Persevere through distractions and obstacles.


3. Write quickly and with emotional intensity.

(No obsessive-compulsive perfectionism in the first draft!)


4. Set ambitious but achievable goals.


5. FOCUS! FOCUS! FOCUS on your goals!


6. Finish everything you start.


7. Submit everything you finish.


8. Believe you can do it.

(When self-doubt shows up, ignore it and keep writing.)


JIM DENNEY, author of the Timebenders series

(including BATTLE BEFORE TIME and LOST IN CYDONIA)