Ten Lessons I’ve Learnt on my Journey to Becoming a Writer

I’ve been refreshing my website recently and it’s made me do some deep thinking about my writing journey.

I’ve come up with this list of my top 10 lessons to becoming a writer. I hope you find them helpful!

My Top 10 Lessons to Becoming a Writer

1. Stamina. Becoming a writer can take a really long time, so endurance is vital.
   
2. Develop a daily writing habit, as one of the hardest parts of writing is simply sitting down to write.
   
3. Deadlines and accountability make the process a lot easier, so find a way to put them in place. 
   
4. Feedback is essential – we can’t figure it all out ourselves. Set up a support network of friendly writers, and do some feedback swapsies.
   
5. Personal development is surprisingly important. If you’re too afraid of failing – or if you worry too much what other people think – you won’t even get started.
   
6. Build your resilience. Feedback can be tough to take, so plenty of resilience as well as your support network come in handy for this.
   
7. It’s not just about writing. There’s also rewriting, rewriting, rewriting! So use that feedback to help you figure out your next draft. 
   
8. Self confidence is just as important as resilience, because you also need to sell yourself, and this can take up half your time (yes, really!) If you don’t have enough confidence, you’ll give up at the first ‘no’. 
   
9.  Listen and learn from other more successful writers.
   
10. There are no guarantees that you’ll make it, so make sure you love doing it! After all, being creative is fun!

I hope you found my top 10 lessons to becoming a writer helpful!

How about you?

What lessons have you learnt on your journey as a writer? Let me know if there’s anything I should be doing differently!

Is there something in your writing that you’re struggling with?

Get in touch as I might be able to offer a useful suggestion in a future email. You can also just say hi – or give me some feedback, share a tip, or tell me how your writing is going – I’d love to hear from you! 

Thanks so much for reading! If you’re new to my list, I’m Katy Segrove – animation writer, children’s author and writing coach.

I help committed writers go from procrastinating and blocked to writing every day and selling themselves too.

New to my blog? Sign up and get a helpful email each week or so. I share tips on all aspects of writing, productivity, habits, blocks and different ways of selling yourself and your writing. You’ll also get a free 7-day writing course. 
 
For more writing tips, or to find out about my one-to-one coaching check out Pick Up Your Pen

Looking for some friendly motivation, come to my free monthly Writers’ Meetup – the 2nd Tuesday of every month at 7.30pm UK time.