Dear Writers, This Can Stop You From Giving Up

Writing success doesn’t come linear.

I hate to see aspiring writers give up.

It stings my heart to know that someone will never get a taste of the writing success they crave.

I went through the same rough patch in 2018.

I was uber excited to start my writing journey. I started a WordPress blog. I cold-called 100 local businesses a week just praying they’d hire me for work.

I even submitted my poetry to different magazines for prize money.

Nothing worked.

I deleted my blog (which got 50 total views in 6 months). I stopped calling companies to avoid being cursed out. And I lost my competitive fire to write.

What snapped me out of this 2-year rough patch?

The Valley of Disappointment.

I got this from reading James Clear’s amazing book, Atomic Habits. The Valley of disappointment is a diagram that looks like this👇🏾

You see, success happens on a different trajectory than you think — especially writing success. You think you’ll grow constantly. But writing success is the opposite of linear.

It’s a curved line (and exponential curve) that dips down below your expectations for a long time before you see your success skyrocket.

The problem with most writers is they’re unable to go through this valley of disappointment because of their impatience.

You need to walk through this valley head-on.

If you don’t, you’ll never see the promised land.

Everything changed for me when I wrote one article per day online for an entire year. I got little to no views and wrote some terrible stuff every day.

Immediately after that year ended, I had an article go viral.

Boom.

That’s patience and consistency my friend. That’s all you need.

When you invest the time, you’ll overcome that valley. And once you do, your writing career will excel.

Get my free writing guide that can teach you how to build a writing habit in 90 days or less here.