5 Cold, Hard Truths About Writing

Writing is a fun, painful, time-consuming exercise that can leave you drained and exhausted or just as easily pumped full of adrenalin and ready to run a 10K.

It’s crazy like that. But that’s okay. That’s what makes it cool. The art of writing is just as spastic as those of us who practice it seem to be.

One thing is for certain, though. And that is that writing isn’t easy. The frustrations that naturally come with the craft can easily cause new writers to get discouraged and stop. But if you can learn to accept these 5 Cold Hard Truths About Writing, those frustrations can be a little easier to deal with.

1. No matter how many shades of gray there are, you most likely will never get rich writing.

The stat that everyone throws around is that of all the books published in a year, 80% sell less than 100 copies. It’s crazy. One hundred copies. That’s nothing. The number of writers who do make serious money are very few and far between. But with that said, there’s nothing stopping you from making a decent living writing. You just need to keep working your ass off.

2. No matter how good your first draft is, you’ll have to rewrite it.

In fact, you’ll most likely need to rewrite it several times. Whether you know it or not, your novel is full of inconsistencies and plot holes. You can’t see them because you’re too close to the story and everything makes sense to you. But this is easy to fix. You just need to have another person (preferably not a family member) look over your story and find all of the mistakes. It will get better.

3. No matter how original an idea seems to you, everything you write has been written before.

There are no original ideas. Every new story is just a recycled old story with plastic surgery. But the good news is that if you put enough of yourself–your passions and experiences–in the story, you make it seem like it is a new idea.

4. No matter what you write, you’ll end up offending someone.

And I’m not just talking about hot-button issues like religion and politics. The world (the US in particular, it seems) is full of people who apparently have nothing better to do than walk around looking for ways to be offended. At some point, one of these people will stumble on something you’ve written and they’ll go after you. Usually this just means calling you a “poopy head” on the internet. Just laugh it off and wait for them to move on.

5. No matter how good your final draft is, expect it to be rejected. Repeatedly.

I’ve talked about my rejection stats before, and I’m definitely not the exception to the rule. Every writer everywhere can tell you they’ve been rejected over and over. The key is to learn from your rejections. It only takes one acceptance to balance out a hundred rejections.

So that’s it. Accept these cold, hard facts and you’ll be well on your way to reaching whatever goals you hope to achieve with your writing.

Did I miss any? Leave a comment!