My Last, Best 10 Tips on How To Make It As A Writer

Hi, guys. This little series on writing I've been doing here has been a blast for me, and I appreciate your indulgence on it. (Uh, let's see; so far we have: How To Make a Living Writing; How To Make a Living Writing, Part Two; Writing: Don't Get Me Started; How To Write, Part Three, and the not-entirely-popular How To Write, Part Four: Why You Should Give Up Trying to Find Your Own Voice.) Before I stop boring everyone with this stuff, though, I thought I'd offer these final Top 10 Tips For Actually Making It As A Writer, since ... well, since I sure could have used this stuff, once. Anyway, here are those tips, in no particular order:

Take it seriously.  It's just about impossible to make a living writing, so doing so means Fanatical Focus. When I decided to start making a living a writing, I wrote (for free, for all kinds of local publications) every night after work for four to six hours, and throughout every weekend. Six months into that I was offered my first job as an editor; three months after that, I was making a great living as the main entertainment features writer for (then) new website of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Lesson being: Sweat pays. 

Decide right off what kind of writing you want to do. Journalism? Fiction? Nonfiction? Magazine articles? Plays? Poetry/song lyrics? Each of these fields has its own rules, outlets, primary players, processes -- and each is filled with talented people who are totally dedicated to only that form of writing. Decide what you want to write, and immerse yourself in that kind of writing. You can really only swim in one pool at a time.

Learn to think before you write. So many writers think that beautiful thoughts come from beautiful words. Wrong. First have the clear, beautiful thought, and then let the only words that can express that thought naturally attach themselves to it. That's how you get a style. Put developing a style first, and at best you'll end up as a writer with a nice enough technique, but nothing to say. The world has plenty of those. Never forget that the only point of writing is to serve thought.