How To Get Published: Eight Surefire Steps For Writing Success

How to get published? That’s the big money question for writers. Writing is fulfilling in and of itself, but every writer ultimately wants to learn how to get published.

A lot of writers think getting published is a matter of luck. Or it’s a matter of knowing the right person. Or it’s a matter of simply being born a brilliant writer.

Although all of the above will help you get published, you don’t have to have any of these things. You can LEARN how to get published.

When you follow The Eight Steps Success Plan For Writers, you’ll no longer wonder how to get published. You’ll BE published.

Here’s The Eight Steps Success Plan For Writers:

1. Create a successful writer’s mindset.

To have a successful writer’s mindset, you must know where you want to go with your writing. A goal of getting published isn’t enough. You must have a laser-focused intention. Use visualization to keep that intention at the forefront of your mind.

You must also take an inventory of your beliefs about writing. Any negative beliefs about writing will get in the way of your publishing success. Turn any negative beliefs to their opposite and make them positive beliefs that will serve you.

Once you have your intention, which you nurture with visualization, and your positive beliefs, you’ve established a success mindset that will help you get published.

2. Develop the habit of journaling regularly.

Journal writing isn’t just for memoir writers. Every serious writer MUST keep a journal. It is a tool that will improve your ability to notice the events in your world. Good writers are good observers.

It is also a tool that helps you mine your emotions and thoughts. Writing is revealing. If you don’t understand yourself, your writing will seem flat and uninteresting. Get to know yourself, and you create a goldmine of emotion and thought that will make your writing rich.

Creating rich prose is a key to how to get published.

3. Practice writing daily.

The other way to improve your writing daily is by doing a daily practice. Writing is like playing a musical instrument. You must practice in order to improve.

The easiest writing practice to do is timed writings. Choose a length of time (at least 5 minutes; more is better). Set a timer and just write.

The only rule to timed writings is don’t stop for any reason. If you can’t think of anything to say, write, “I can’t think of anything to say.” But KEEP WRITING! The flow of words limbers up your creative pathways.

4. Understand your strengths and weaknesses and write to your strengths.

Every writer has specific strengths and weaknesses. For example, my style is spare and direct. I wouldn’t do well as a literary fiction author. I am better suited for genre fiction and direct nonfiction.

Discover what you do well as a writer and be okay with what you don’t do well. When you know yourself as a writer, you can choose the projects with which you can have the greatest success.

5. Write with feeling.

Writing is all about emotion. If your writing lacks emotion, it will be flat and uninteresting. You must know your own feelings about what you’re writing, and you must also know what feeling you want to evoke in your reader. Keep these emotions in mind as you write.

6. Fill your writing with just the right details.

Detail is essential to great writing, but too much detail can bury good writing under a layer of distraction that turns the writing dull. When you learn to create the perfect balance of details—just enough, but not too much, you become a writer who can easily get published.

You can choose the perfect details by knowing what it is you want your reader to focus on. For example, in a scene with a man and a woman in a bar, you could focus on the details of the brawl going on behind them or you could focus on the details of their fingertips touching. If it’s an action story, you’d choose the brawl. A romance story would be better focused on the fingertips.

Some writers try and describe everything in a scene in great detail. This just bogs down the writing. Choose details carefully and then describe them well.

7. Make your writing hypnotic.

“Hypnotic writing” is a term created by author, Joe Vitale. It’s a wonderful term that explains how a writer must be able to write in a way that grabs and holds a reader. You must have the ability to mesmerize your reader.

You create hypnotic writing with the use of short phrases, the use of rhythm, and pacing. You also create it with perfect word choice and a constant awareness that your writing must be for the reader.

Understand that the reader always has in mind as he or she reads, “What’s in this for me?” When you write with that awareness, you can make word choices that will make your writing hypnotic.

8. Always have a writing plan.

An absolutely essential element of writing success is motivation. You must be able to stay motivated to start and finish your writing projects.

Many writers fail for lack of motivation. Procrastination and writer’s block are two common writing career killers.

You can avoid both procrastination and writer’s block by always having your projects planned out. Create a short term and a long term plan. List the projects you want to do this week, this month, and this year. Once you’ve created the list, get out your calendar and make a schedule for how you can complete your projects.

Creative people have a tendency to resist structure, but the irony is that structure can actually enhance creativity. So be willing to structure your writing time.

That’s it--The Eight Steps Success Plan For Writers.

These steps are not a quick-fix publishing solution. They won’t turn you into J.K. Rowling overnight. But The Eight Steps Success Plan For Writers will, if you work the steps diligently, turn you into a quality writer. It is also the foundation of how to get published.