How to Become a Successful Writer In 13 Easy Steps (Step By Step)
How to become a successful writer is a question on every librarian’s mind who has slicking ideation and linguistic creativity, but often doesn’t know how to make a successful career out of it. However, becoming a successful writer has emerging meanings typically based on individual pursuits.
The individual pursuits are the writer’s evolving perception, ideas, thoughts, values, imagination, and vision (PITVIV) about things or a world. Writing in itself is a seeking for individual-unfolding personal imagination and reasoning for a given subject matter. Writing is a journey that involves the evolution of PITVIV, and the revolution of ideas around a given topic.
You are reading this article confirms that you are also in pursuit to achieve something through your writing, and thus, you are also trying to understand how to become a successful writer.
Some of us may want to become successful writers in terms to be able to tell our own unique stories to the world. The rest of us just want to utilize our proficient writing skills to get money and recognition.
Writing is a creative tool to develop a dialogue with a larger audience to tell a story as well as it can provide the means of income generation. Moreover, becoming a successful writer eventually requires charities about both economic objectives and our pursuits.
Thus, it is crucial to define what it means to be a successful writer and plan it strategically.
What does it mean to be successful as a writer?
Being a successful writer can be commonly understood in three different aspects. These aspects are a. successfully influencing the community through writing, b. getting published and successfully becoming a part of bestseller club, and c. earning money and achieving recognition through writing.
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Influencing the Community
Strategically well-planned writing and association of our inner pursuits eventually make a writer successful. Successful writers of the generation, including Stephen Hawking, Noam Chomsky, J. K. Rowling, Arundhati Roy, Sidney Sheldon, Dan Brown, Yuval Noah Harari, Veronica Roth, and all the significant others have had a strategically well-planned narrative in their writing. Irrespective of the genre of writing, they all tell us a unique story of their own. They reflect their PITVIV world through their chosen genre.
J. K. Rolling historically sold over 500M copies of her best-selling novel series harry potter, which further hauled in $25 billion in revenue since 1997, $8.5 billion at the box office through film series, (if you include worldwide revenue from The Crimes of Grindelwald), $7.7 billion in books translated into over 76 languages, and another $9.3 billion from toy and DVD sales. However, she admits the reason behind her popularity as,
I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It’s totally for me. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity.
Following inner pursuits in writing is an essential part to be a famous and successful writer. The first and utmost important thing to be a successful writer is to decide on what you want to tell, and your grand narrative. When you are enough clear about your niche and what PITVIV you want to project from your writing, your grand narrative will start taking shape. Further, the selection of topics and issues will help you to reach the targeted audience.
Those pursuits of becoming a successful writer vary according to the sector you come from, and the subjects you are willing to write about. To become a successful writer, one must know a targeted audience and be able to relate to them.
Some of us define to be a successful writer in a manner how many lives they touched.
Being Published Author ranking in Bestseller!
As we establish that writing or creating content is your storytelling, we need to understand how to reach the audience, our readers, and become a celebrated successful writer.
In a competitive market of content creation, strategizing writing goals as getting published, getting ranked in different forums, winning recognition, increasing visibility are reflective of your journey towards being a successful writer.
This is probably the best way to celebrate the amazing writing skills you have. If you believe you are a good writer and your writing skills have improved, then your writing should not be limited to your diaries, google docs, or private notes on a phone.
Setting a higher strategic goal, like getting published as an author, getting recognition and monitory benefits are an essential part of keeping motivation for writing. It helps you to grow as a successful writer.
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Money and Recognition
The writer may not fall into stereotypical career paths but a writer is an emerging regular income generating profession. Especially in the growing virtual economy, content creation and information generation have an increasing demand.
Your skills as a writer and as a content creator can help you to make a well-paid professional.
The virtual economy also pushed the boundaries of content publication and opened opportunities for electronic publication. According to the Digital Market Outlook, the total digital publication revenue worldwide is 22.05bn USD and forecasted that the revenue in the electronic magazine’s segment worldwide in 2025 will be around 5,302.7 million U.S. dollars. Almost in every field including technology and science, literature and culture, social sciences and humanities, writing and content creation will be on the verge in the future.
Considering such opportunities, writer as a profession surely has cutting-edge demand in all sectors. So, if you looking for money and recognition through your writing, it is your valid dream.
So far, we know what is meant to be a successful writer and we will gradually have clarity about our understanding of being a successful writer. Now it is important to understand the micro-foundation of content creation.
Micro-foundation of Writing.
The philosophical foundation of writing, content creation, storytelling, documentation is to pass on the knowledge to the next generation. Our culture, our societies, our families are very reflective of what we read in newspapers, books, or watch in films and television. Whatever content is written or virtually available out there is very relevant to what we think and believe as a society, as culture, as human beings.
Writer or content creator as a profession is a unique opportunity to document psychological, emotional, and logical expression in a variety of forms. Fundamentally, a writer or an author is a documenter of human evolution in diverse aspects of life. And that content will be used in the future as a reference.
Thus, it is important to understand the micro-foundation of becoming a successful writer which not only helps you to connect with the audience but also nobly contributes to the history of things.
Linguistic relevance
Linguistic relevance is defined as the use of language, vocabulary, and phonetics in a way that the readers would relate to it personally. Linguistic relevance does not mean excluding the old writing styles or framework but it demands to be updated in writing styles, vocabulary, emerging emotions, expression of aesthetic, logic, and perception into words.
Change in meaning of words over a time is known phenomenon in linguistic. Many words, for ex: Nice- today we take ‘Nice’ as a compliment, however before it used to mean ‘silly, foolish, simple”. Awful-it is used to be “worthy of awe” for a variety of reasons, but today it is bad expression. Many of such words have changed over a while, its meaning has been changing continuously.
Our modern lingo has accelerated the rate of change in the meaning of words and expressions. It is because of limitless access to information from the internet which crosses the cultural and linguistic boundaries. It is crucial that a successful writer, orator, or storyteller, closely must understanding the details of such linguistic changes.
Evolved semantic
Writers and their readers have a wonderful and creative relationship. Maintaining linguistic as well as semantic relevancy is important to understand the human phenomenon in general. Your writing should have at least one curiosity left behind which keeps the window for negotiation open. It must leave the reader with some questions unanswered, which ensure readers’ evolution in terms of meaning and experience.
The best way to achieve this relevancy in writing is the use of evolved semantic. Many social constructs, institutions, and characteristics like family, parenting, gender, marriage, relationship, neighbourhood, duty, justice, violence, etc. have evolving meaning in every generation. A writer must be able to capture those changes in his writing.
The task of having semantic relevancy for successful writing may sound time-consuming and need for head cracking reading. However, to capture the changing meaning of social and human stories one needs to interact and listen to people around. An opportunity to talk with someone, or visit somewhere, is an opportunity to reveal the meaning of things for people. Understanding the experience of people about something helps us in the meaning-making of those things.
Road Map to become a successful writer!
If you are already a writer and want to be a successful one or you want to start a new one or have switched a career to become a writer, the following is a road map that may help you in your journey to be a successful writer.
1. Decide your niche
In our pursuit of writing, we often have a lot of ideas to write about. Writing is a very addictive business. Once you decide to tell your story or reach your readers/audience, you generally have a lot of opinions and views on things to share through your writing.
It is a very common experience among most of us that sometimes we feel like writing about all that we observe, sometimes the genre which interests us are poles apart. This approach of arbitrary and incidental writing may have some consequences.
Multi-genre writing requires certain rigid strategies, planning, and goals to avoid confusion in your readers. However, having a niche interest for your writing as a beginner eventually will help you to grow your audience, and build an intellectual and emotional trust in them.
Niche need not be specific to details, but it must give the reader a common idea about your content. For example, one need not necessarily fix niches as content writing courses or personality development courses separately but can add them under one banner of Education. One need not necessarily talk about love, compassion differently, but can choose banner as human relation.
However, this is more relevant to a non-fiction writer. Fiction writers may decide on the perception or thought they want to convey through their writing.
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2. Network
Content writing or writing as a profession has become very competitive and strategically easy in the digital world. People are enjoying to share their views, opinions, and stories. Thus, it is important to reach, interact, and network with people. One should take an opportunity to talk with other writers, book authors, thinkers, and the community on social media platforms.
Networking not only helps you to reach a larger audience, learn from different people, understand different perspectives, find new opportunities, but it also keeps us updated in the content creation community.
3. Read
Reading is as essential as grammar in writing. As grammar ensures the meaning of full sentences, reading ensures meaningful content.
Networking done well will give you ample reading suggestions from different people we meet. Each one of us has some books, which connects to us in some way. When someone asks us about reading suggestions, some books are always on top of our list. Or maybe we know which book we shall suggest to whom. Thus, book sharing and exploratory reading help in growing ideas and perceptions about people and the world in general.
Reading and the shared interest among people helps in diversifying and developing our PITVIV.
4. Listen
Unlike networking and reading, listening is an effortless method to grow in our PITVIV. Listening is of immense importance in personal and professional development.
Speaking is a process of transmitting our thoughts into words, listening is a process of comprehending those words without judgment and enlarging our imagination about the same. Hearing as it comes to us naturally, careful listening is the act of awareness. Listening thus, help us to be attentive, well informed, and curious.
5. Research
If we understand our writing or content creation is one of the perspectives among many so, we have to back up our point, our views, and opinions with facts and data.
The research adds validity to your content. Your audience may not consume your work until it has factual validity.
The concept of content research is simply analyzing content available related to the chosen niche or a topic. This can further help in developing a unique narrative of your own.
6. Imagine
Imagination is paramount of importance in the act of creation. You visit a book shop and see hundreds and thousands of books lying on shelves. What makes these books different is an imagination adopted in writing them. Imagination is fundamental in creative writing.
Throughout history, people have created marvellous things with help of imagination. Famous thinkers and creators like, Einstein, Carl Jung, Henry Thoreau, Walt Disney, and many extolled the virtue of imagination.
Einstein famously said,
Imagination is more important than knowledge, knowledge is limited, imagination encircles the world.’
After networking, reading, listening, and contextual research; the imagination is the stimulation of writers’ mental faculty. It helps in enlarging our understanding of the topic or world in general.
Imagination is a faculty of forming new ideas, shaping the old ones, integrating the collected information and knowledge, visualizing and characterizing it in written words.
7. Write
The first step to becoming a successful writer is to keep writing. The only way to be a compendious and astonishing writer is to write and write more. Like any other creative skill, writing improves with continuous practice.
All the avid writers would know that writing sometimes comes naturally and spontaneously, and sometimes we need to put effort to translate thoughts into words. To gain a spontaneous articulation skill, one must practice writing every day.
The habit of writing every day without an excuse helps us to sort out our thoughts and ideas regularly. It also helps in articulation and structuring thoughts.
One can choose to write every day on current affairs, things one observes around, or any topic of interest. Thought and idea articulation is a skill, which improves by practice. You can use online documents, or private notes on your phone, or a notebook on your laptop to write regularly. If you manage to keep a record of your regular writing, you will be able to see your progress in the articulation of thoughts.
So, doesn’t matter what and how much you write, one must write every day in terms of becoming a successful writer.
8. Strategies
The agenda of strategic writing is to be comprehensive and appealing to the reader. Whoever, picking your book, or clicks on your website has the intention to do so. Your readers are looking for a comprehensive and convincing piece of information of their interest. Thus, whatever topic you are writing about shall be thoroughly elaborated.
Topic elaboration can be done by answering the five Ws and H. Five Ws and H are Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How respectively. Often check that all the five Ws and H are answered about your topic throughout your writing. It will help to ensure that you have communicated your subject fully and clearly.
Find out the best digital writing assistance tools and utilize them regularly. The tools like Grammarly, Hubspot’s Blog Ideas Generator, Milanote, Focuswriter, etc. not only improvise your writing but also help you to organize your creative thoughts and idea.
9. Publish
Traditional ways of publishing content have drastically evolved in the digital media age. The complex processes of content submission, world limit, plagiarism, copyrighting, referencing, and marketing have become easier, transparent, economical, and time-saving.
Digital media has provided numerous opportunities to fetch your content to a larger audience. To start with self-publishing, WordPress, Blogger, Medium, Wix, and Squarespace are some of the easy and efficient websites. Additionally, Many media houses use social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Quora, etc. to market fresh content and attract more content creators. There are calls for poetry submission, anthology, contract content creation, and numerous competitions going on all the year. You can carefully choose many such platforms to bring your thoughts and writing to your audience.
10. Market
Marketing in writing is highly strategic as well as creative. Readers are all the time looking for fresh perspective and creativity in content. In the hugely competitive market and well-informed audience, sometimes balancing the paradox of spontaneity and repeatability is challenging.
To be a successful writer, there are four fundamental approaches to creating a strong marketing value in your content.
Creative ways of content delivery– It does not matter how informative and well written your content is. If you deliver your content in the same craft for example: Posting a blog post on Facebook, or WhatsApp chat, after some days your audience will start ignoring or delay reading it. Thus, engaging the audience pre hand, by asking them some common questions, or sending them some thought-provoking poem/news/ideas will make them curious, and develop an interest in your content. Thus, to become a successful writer, delivery platforms, and delivery methods are of vital importance.
Creating positive emotions– Marketers have understood over the years that consumers are potentially involved in your content or product when you make them feel joy, hope, compassion, and a sense of pride. Doesn’t matter what is your niche, how critical the topic you chose for writing, creating a positive emotion in your reader is the best way to ensure your readers’ long-term engagement and free-hand marketing. This will help you to be an inspiring, favourite, and successful writer among your readers.
Ride them on an emotional roller-coaster-It is humanly hard to hold our readers on all smiling, all ‘feel-good’ content all the time. The human psychological mechanism of adaptation plays an important part in holding the reader on to your content. Your readers probably will not relate to joy, hope, compassion, and a sense of pride unless they feel the counter emotions in your writing. Celebration of positive emotions is only possible when you know/feel the effects of negative emotions. Thus, it is value-adding for a writer to embrace both negative and positive emotions. Ride your readers on an emotional roller-coaster, it will add emotional value to your writing and help you to be a famous and successful writer.
Surprise! Don’t shock–As a writer, helping your readers to grow in your perspective and value is a process. Your readers might not like a conclusion judgment or rigid perspective. Readers enjoy exploratory writing, where they figure out the answers on their own. Shocking them with the singular fact, or isolated perspective may not entice the reader to continue reading. Surprise the reader by revealing your quality content gradually. This will engage readers and hook them to your content, which will eventually help you to become a successful writer.
Once you ensure these basic marketing values to your content, putting it out in a world in form of digital media, print copies, social media channels will create a strong reader base.
11. Collaborate
In a primary day as a content creator or becoming a successful writer, one must collaborate with different artists and illustrators.
There are numerous fields of arts like calligraphy, digital painting, animations, photography, and poetry which you can collaborate with your content. Network and collaborate with different artists and share your content with the audience collectively.
This will not only add marketing value to your content, make it more engaging but also you will be able to reach a diverse audience. And your success in writing will accelerate.
12. Contract
While following your interest in writing, if you want to be a successful writer in terms of money, recognition, and a strong reader base, creating diverse and multi-domain content is a good way.
There are numerous jobs in content writing in almost every field which is feasible to digital media. Helping others to write their content or execute ideas through writing eventually helps us to groom our multi-domain writing skills and increase our reader base exponentially. This will also develop your writing portfolio, which further will be used in your content marketing. Contracting in content writing is a good way to earn money and recognition, and to become a successful writer.
13. Establish
Establishing as a writer is about confirming our grand narrative, being vocal about what we write, why we write, and our different motivations for writing on a larger platform.
Once you create your strong writing portfolio, when you develop your regular reader base who eagerly wait for your piece; being vocal about your writings, your values, and your views and opinion establishes you as a writer.
This stage in a writing career comes with a lot of social and personal responsibility. At this stage, your words are not just your opinions, but those are the catalyst that can influence social dynamics. However, establishing yourself as a writer does not guarantee success unless you write more and connect to more people.
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Conclusion
The above 13 strategic approaches constitute the roadmap to becoming a successful writer. Among the hundreds of tips and guidelines available on the internet to become a successful writer, finding your inner call for writing is itself a significant milestone. Since now you have a roadmap to walk on your journey to become a successful writer, answer yourself-Why you want to write?
