OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
Everybody wants to know the best way to write, to publish, to market.
But although there are tracks to follow and experts to emulate, there really is no single right way to do anything in the author life. We will all have a different journey.
Imagine that you want to ski down a hill.
Even if you don't ski, hopefully you've seen enough Bond movies to know how it works! It's similar to our journey through life and also applies to writing, marketing and any kind of business or career.
Here's why.
(1) Your path is not a straight line. You have to zigzag.
Even though you know the general direction you want to head in, you can't direct yourself straight down the mountain, or you will certainly have an accident.
Even pros have to change direction and turn their skis across the slope. There is no direct path, so don't expect there to be.
There's also not just one path – everyone has a different route to get down, so you can try to follow other people's example but you will end up carving your own path. In my book, Career Change, I talk about all my various failed businesses before I found my true path as an author. It's a zigzag journey for us all.
(2) It's easier to turn once you're moving.
You need some momentum in order to turn on skis, so you actually have to get moving before you try.
In the same way, you actually have to start writing in order to have something to edit and improve. You have to start with a crappy website so you can learn how to make it better.
You have to start marketing somehow so you can learn what works for you and improve over time.
(3) You can't learn it all from books: you have to get on the slope.
You can't be a great skier by reading about it or going to seminars or watching YouTube videos. You actually have to put in the hours skiing.
The same applies to writing, publishing and marketing. People often assume that I have some kind of degree in marketing, but I don't. I've just been out there every day for five years learning on the slopes – emulating the pros, yes – but mainly doing it for myself.
(4) You're going to fall over and it's going to hurt. But you get better over time.
If you're afraid of falling over, you will never be a good skier. Because you will fall, it happens a lot and it has to happen if you're going to push yourself to get better and go on more advanced runs. So be prepared to fall, to fail, and to just get up again. Keep writing, keep putting your words out and keep experimenting with marketing.
(5) Some days, the weather is perfect and you can see for miles and the sun is shining and it's amazing!
This is meant to be fun!
Yes, being an author can be a career and an income, but it's also a passion. The reason we keep going back to skiing, keep going back up the slope, is that there is exhilaration and joy in the process, not just the outcome of getting to the bottom.
Some days, the weather will be perfect and we will have amazing runs on pristine, soft snow. Other days, the icy cold will make us grit our teeth to even manage one run and we wish we hadn't bothered. But we keep going back because we love it, and those amazing days when it all falls into place make it worth it!
What do you think about this? Does a zigzag journey accurately reflect your writing life? Please do leave a comment and join the conversation below.
Top image: Flickr Creative Commons ruapehu skiing by Airflore
Nice article. Some days it really isn’t very easy at all, is it? Still, I’ve always found that the worst day of writing is still a pretty darned good day.
On rare days, it’s just amazing. I need more of those days.
Indeed 🙂 50 words is still 50 words more than many people! And they all add up.
Love this article because my day job is at a ski resort. I love to ski, and love to write. Thank you for a great article. “The reason we fall is so that we learn how to get back up” -Bruce Wayne, Batman…and likely an avid skier. 🙂
Awesome day job!
this certainly resonates with me because I learned to ski late in life and I felt so humiliated about spending most of my time flat on my back while six-year-olds whizzed past me that I nearly gave up. But then, on that last day, it all came right and I swooshed down the slopes with the sun on my face and the wind in my hair…
Turns out, incidentally, that the boot hire company had given me the wrong size. No wonder I was in agony and having even more trouble than I should have had!
Great metaphor – you have to learn to make your own judgements in writing. Take the wrong advice and you end up in the wrong boots, struggling when you shouldn’t be.
And yes, there’s no substitute to picking yourself up and having another try, over and over and over again until it clicks and you have your own little “Eureka!” moment.
I also think writing is like learning to land an aircraft. Any landing you can walk away from us a good landing, even if a wing is hanging off and the undercarriage is broken. Any piece of writing you can finish goes in the log book.
Now you’re just showing off Henry 🙂 Landing an aircraft! That’s a skill most writers don’t have – but I like the analogy!
Yes, it does. I have written for years now. Started off writing novels, included reader letters and got success there. Wrote more novels, not getting anywhere. Writing letters was more successful. It is only now that I have found my feet with writing ebooks, and short stories and serial writing, that I am on that smooth path because I know what I want to do.
You have no idea how much I needed to be reminded of this today. Thank you!
I’m glad it was useful, Laura!
Great analogy, Joanna.
‘Who Trains Wins’ is the motto of your UK 22nd Regiment Special Air Service and it applies to life – especially to writing. The SAS know that real training is accomplished by doing it – actually going down the slopes many, many times – not by sitting in academia.
Like your success proves – it’s showing up every day and getting words out, connecting with others, and twisting and turning to improve your craft. You’re a leader and inspiration to many who feel that they’re skiing uphill. Thanks for putting it in perspective.
Thanks Garry – I have to remind myself of this every day 🙂
Loved this and did my own Hawaii take on it! http://tobyneal.net/2014/11/17/writing-like-surfing/ with a link back to you!
Aloha
Awesome 🙂 Did you read The Rise of Superman by Steven Kotler – loads of cool surfing stuff in that – about flow and getting to the edge. Amazing!
No, but I’ll look for it now. Thanks for the recommendation!
Living in Florida, I’ve never skied…but when I got to the part where you WILL fall and it WILL hurt, reminded me…it’s so much like horseback riding too – for all the same reasons! Great article!
I’m not a skier, but this is a fantastic description. A zigzag journey is definitely accurate. I’ve fallen so many times my bruises have bruises, but I’m getting up and each time, I learn something new. So here’s to us all becoming expert skiers!
Hi Joanna,
An inspiring article. How do you get the time to write all this beautiful stuff, besides your regular writing of novels which list of titles is also awesome. Wilsh all of us had such creative energy! Well, keep it, Joanna.
Thanks Paul – but most of my blog posts this year are chapters in my books, I am focusing much more on writing that can earn money 🙂 This chapter is in my book, How to Market a Book 🙂
And then Amazon throws some moguls at you… 😛
I love this analogy. I’ve been writing for 19 years and it makes perfect sense to me. I’ve never actually been on skis, but I’ve been zigzagging in my writing career for years. I’ve fallen down a bunch, but thankfully I get up every time.
You’re a gift to all of us, Joanna.
With every good wish,
Susan Gabriel
author of the novel The Secret Sense of Wildflower (historical/southern gothic/coming-of-age) –starred review Kirkus Reviews and voted a best book of 2012
Thanks Susan 🙂 I think we get better at changing direction without falling over time as well!
Love this analogy, if only because I tried (and failed miserably!) at skiing once. The only thing I would add would be that sometimes, someone or something totally unexpected comes from nowhere and throws you off your line, but if you’ve got the grounding (technique, knowledge etc), then you’ll get past it and correct your course.
As an aside, I found that early on in my writing career, I struggled with getting past the book-learning phase. Being a book-learner, I like to “know” how to do things before I try them, so I tend to read and research a lot more than I should before getting down to actually taking action.
I actually gave myself writer’s block from reading so many books on craft. I think I ended up being so overwhelmed with technicalities and grammar and form and what others said was the right way to write that I forget the main reason I wanted to write in the first place – to tell stories. I’ve since learned that we have an inbuilt sense of what makes a good story – listen to anyone at a BBQ or get-together and you can pick the good stories by the delivery. And that’s the end goal isn’t it? To tell good stories in a way that readers find interesting 🙂
I really loved this blog post, Joanna. As you know, I go to all these author events without being an author myself, and I always feel almost guilty there!
But I am a big-time skier, and I definitely dig the analogy, and especially points 2 and 3. That’s what NaNoWriMo is really for, in my opinion: getting people on the slope and starting to move. Even in startup life it’s so easy to stay on top of the mountain thinking and brainstorming for hours on how best to get down, when you can actually discover most of the ways only once you’ve started going down.
You’ll write a book one day, Ricardo 🙂 but in the meantime, business can be the ultimate creativity!