Maximum Writing Success is a Good ‘Different Direction’
Show them what you can do as a writer
The other day I read a news story online. This report was about a person who recently lost their job.
The company wanted success for their group and that was not happening with the leadership of this person, week after week and month after month.
“We thank him for his time and we are going to go in a different direction," was their response.
That got me thinking about success in general, and how a writer sometimes needs to go in a different direction in order to find success.
Sometimes you need to go in a different direction to achieve more. That’s just plain reality.
Your maximum effort may not be what is going to work for you. Even with great talent, hard work, discipline, determination and skill, it could be other factors that are out of your control that are resulting in a lack of success.
One of the most difficult things to do is to realize that the circumstances are not working for you or your team at that moment. It’s not a question of blame or pointing fingers. It is what it is and there is no way around it.
The first step for a writer, just as in any other profession, is to set a goal for yourself. That is a starting point.
As an example, take an American football team. One basic goal is for a team to make the playoffs that year. That’s a good goal. Another goal could be to win the division. That’s always a good thing. Now if you have had plenty of success recently, those two goals, if achieved, may not be successful enough. Some teams want to get to the Super Bowl and nothing else matters.
What is your definition of success as a writer? You can define that in terms of your time on Medium.
- Do you want a certain monthly income?
- Does feedback from other writers matter a lot to you?
- Are you looking for certain publications to accept your work?
- Do you compare yourself to the very top writers and strive for that level of success?
A Different Direction
If you are not finding the success that you envisioned, then you might need to take yourself in a different direction.
Here are some bits of wisdom that can help:
- Be yourself. That’s right, it matters for you to be the writer that you are. If your passion is to write about certain topics, then keep doing that. If your natural inclination is to do short stories or long stories, then do that on a regular basis.
- Change things. For me, some things didn’t work and so I just stopped doing them and stopped wasting that time. Without naming names, I will say that it didn’t help me to do promoting and sharing on a certain major website. I had to accept that it wasn’t working and so I stopped completely.
- Look at the numbers. Make sure to check your stats to see what works. Like a sports team, you want and need success, and wins or losses are the numbers that are plain to see. This doesn’t mean that you should repeat the ideas behind your popular stories, not at all. But if a theme is that your most successful pieces of content were from when you were writing from the heart, that understanding can help you find more success as a writer.
Going in a different direction can be a great thing, either for you personally or for an organization. Sometimes success is simply not happening and changes need to be made. It’s a great chance for everybody involved to move on and find success in different ways.