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The 7 Habits Of Highly Successful Authors

by Suzanne_Harrison

The more I read how the successful authors do it, the more I
realize that, like successful people in all walks of life, they
all do things in common that contribute enormously to their
success. So how can we learn from successful authors to ensure
our own success in 2008 and beyond?

We can start by adopting what I call �The 7 Habits of Highly
Successful Authors�. Adopt these 7 habits and you just may find
that 2008 is the year you break through your own writing
barriers!

1. Write about something you care about.

Whether you are writing fiction or non fiction, it is imperative
you write about something you care about. The successful authors
have some emotional connection to their content or story. If you
are writing fiction, then write from a place of emotional
familiarity. Your genuine experience will come through in your
writing and your readers will connect with that. If you are
writing a non fiction piece, choose a topic you are passionate or
enthusiastic about. After all, if you are going to invest your
precious time in what you are writing, you owe it to yourself to
write with passion, feeling and enthusiasm.

2. Take risks

Don�t be afraid to put your head, or your hands, on the chopping
block when you write. In the world of fiction, you will have no
doubt heard about creating characters that are �larger than
life�. That doesn�t mean they are giants, it means they go above
and beyond and take risks and make decisions that we would not
have the courage to take in our own lives. After all, it�s not
about what we would do when we are tethered by the restrictions
of polite behavior, it�s what we would do in our wildest
imaginations that make our readers sit up and take notice.

For the non fiction writer, it�s time for you to take a stand.
Take a view and stick with it, presenting your case with
conviction and vigor. No one listens to someone who writes
meekly, or with a wishy washy hand. Stick your neck out, and
don�t be afraid to get it chopped off. All the greatest
journalists are the ones who are not afraid to speak their minds.
Get into that habit and you�re well on your way to being that
next great journalist.

3. Plan

This is definitely the most ignored but equally the most
important phase of the writing process. Planning is essential to
the success of any undertaking and writing is no different. J.K.
Rowling spent 5 years planning the entire Harry Potter series
before she put pen to paper on a single word that appeared in the
books. If you are writing a short story, novel or screenplay,
planning the story before you begin writing is as essential to
your success as ink in your pen or power to your laptop. There
are some writers who claim to just start with an image or a
sentence and then the whole thing just unfolds before them, but
the writers who can do this with any degree of success are few
and far between. Take the time to plan out your story, at the
very least know where your beginning, middle and end are. The
more planning you do, the more enjoyable the writing process and
the less rewriting and editing you will have to do. The same goes
for non fiction pieces, where it�s always advisable to have an
outline in place before you write your article or book.

4. Write every day

Joyce Carol Oates said that she would write, even when her soul
felt as thin as a playing card, because somehow the act of
writing would set it aright. There are going to be times when you
just �don�t feel like it�, but like any other job or activity
that is important to you, you must still, somehow, sit down every
day and write. It has been said that it is by sitting down every
day to write that one becomes a writer. Stephen King writes every
day, including Christmas Day. Whether you are working on a book,
story, article or nothing, still sit down and write something
every single day. Even if you only write one page every day,
that�s 365 pages in a year and that�s a whole book, isn�t it?
When you are a writer, you cannot not write, and writing is like
breathing. You have an urge to put things down in print, so to
keep that fresh and alive, you need to turn that tap on every
day. It�s more than practice. It�s life.

5. Be prepared to work hard

I read somewhere once that John Grisham worked for 4 hours per
day and made $20 million per year. Whether that is true or not
(about the hours worked or the money he makes) doesn�t matter. It
is far more common to hear tales today of the world�s most
popular commercial authors working their proverbial butts off to
keep up with deadlines, promotional commitments and the ins and
outs of their everyday lives. Janet Evanovich gets up and writes
every morning at 5am so she can get a full day�s writing in
before she has to answer mail, emails and deal with her other
affairs of business, Jodi Picoult has a wonderful stay-at-home
husband who allows her the luxury of writing through school pick
ups and travelling for long periods to do research for her
novels. J.K. Rowling also said she (misguidedly) thought that
life as an author would be a Jane Austen-type of affair, sitting
in a room overlooking a field and writing in anonymity. Of course
her life is a whirlwind of book launches, movie premieres, media
commitments, school commitments, and of course she has a family
with three children. And while we all no doubt wish we had her
�problems� it is very obvious that in the early part of the 21st
century, the life of an author, successful or not, is a
hard-working life. We are either working hard to get noticed,
working hard to stay noticed, or working hard to avoid being
noticed. Any way you look at it, if you have an aversion to hard
work, you need to look elsewhere. Successful authors work hard.
Period.

6. Persistence

It is said that persistence outstrips all other virtues. I have
a card propped up on my desk that says, �Success seems to be
largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go�. Almost
every successful author I have studied has said that their
success is due, at least in some part, to pure persistence and
determination. If your manuscript or article is rejected, rewrite
it and submit it again. Or submit it to someone else. The first
Harry Potter novel was rejected by every major publishing house
before Bloomsbury picked it up for a song. Even so called
�overnight successes� have a story behind them about how many
times they were rejected, or how many novels or articles they�ve
written that have no value other than as fire kindling. The
authors that succeed are the ones who don�t stop until they do.
It�s that simple. Never give up. Winners never quit, and quitters
never win.

7. Let it go

And finally when you have written your article, book or
screenplay and have submitted it for publication or approval, let
it go. If you�ve done the best you can with it, let it go and
trust that it will make its way to where it needs to be. And
start something else straight away. Regardless of whether what
you have submitted is accepted or rejected, you are a writer and
a writer writes. Once you finish one manuscript start immediately
on another. If the one you�ve sent is picked up, they�ll be happy
that you�ve got something new already, and if not you�re well on
your way to finishing your next manuscript.

So those are the 7 Habits of Highly Successful Authors. Adopt
these habits yourself, and before you know it, you too will join
their ranks!

Suzanne Harrison is the bestselling author of 4 e-books and
courses on creative writing, short story and novel writing. She
is also the Director of Writers Central, the innovative online
creative writing school, dedicated to creating great
storytellers. Visit her at <a
href="http://www.writerscentral.com.au"
title="http://www.writerscentral.com.au"
target="_blank">http://www.writerscentral.com.au</a>

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