I think I’d known all my life that I wanted to be a writer. Even as a child I would save up all my unused books from school and fill them full of stories plucked from my over-active imagination.
As an adult, my love of writing never faded, but I had no idea how to earn money from my writing, let alone how to earn a full-time income from it.
When the internet became popular, it made it easier to research and find the information I needed about how to be a writer AND how to earn money from my writing.
I did a course on writing and a course on website design because I quickly realised that a website plus great content were two of the most basic things I needed. And while my first website wasn’t great, it quickly began to earn me money.
So then I dived into more and more ways to make money from writing. I read how-to manuals as well as books about writers who were already successful and how they did it.
And eventually I saw a common thread between all their successes, so naturally I soon understood that it was what I needed to do too.
The most amazing thing was that it was so simple, yet so few want to-be writers do it. And it’s the one thing that helped me to earn all my income from my writing in the shortest time possible, and it’s what still keeps it going today.
So here’s the ‘secret’ –
You can’t make money writing if you’re not writing. This means you have to write every day. How simple is that?
To quote the famous motivational guru, Mike Littman, “In life and in business, you’re either consistent, or you’re non-existent.” So if you’re not consistently writing, you’re not consistently earning.
This is what I learned early on; Habits are hard to break, so create a daily writing habit.
If you don’t have anything to write, write in your journal. Just write about not writing and why you think that is. Or write about what you’ve been doing instead of writing. Or sit down and look through your ideas book (you do have one, don’t you?) or reread your previous work for more inspiration. Or find some writing from a great author and copy it out by hand.
Just don’t get distracted. Carve out your daily writing schedule and stick to it. Writing time means time sitting at a desk, being in your writing environment, and writing.
The legendary copywriter, Eugene Schwartz sat down at his writing desk at the same time every day and there he would stay for the next 3 to 4 hours and would only allow himself to either work or sit and do nothing. So eventually, no matter how reluctant he was to write, he’d start sooner or later, after which, it was easy to keep going.
And that’s what I do too. I keep to my writing schedule and guard it from distractions like a mama bear guards her cubs.
So if you’re not already writing every day, the time to start is now.