What are some habits authors should adopt that can help make them successful?

 

Pamela Harty

Write something every day. Sometimes you might not feel like it, but it’s still important to set a word-count goal and reach it no matter what. You can edit bad writing, but you can’t edit a blank page.

 

Lucienne Diver

Don’t get comfortable. The best writers are those who don’t take the easy way or the first few ideas that come along, but challenge themselves to do better or do things differently. To do the thing that scares them. Authors can fall into ruts with certain themes or storylines, so it’s always a good idea to a) know yourself, and b) have others around you who will tell it like it is. Because you will miss things or have a bad feeling about something but hope that no one else will notice. Without someone to push you, it’s possible those things will get through. They may be perfectly fine, mind you. It may even be that no one will call you on it. Maybe. But if you can do better, you should. Successful authors aren’t just good, they’re amazing, and it’s hard work coupled with talent that gets them there.

Nephele Tempest

I think every writer should make a habit of reading their work out loud, or even having a friend read it to them. It’s amazing what you catch when you’re listening to the words instead of just seeing them. This habit will help catch repetition, missing or extra words, places where the sentences are all the same length or rhythm, and many other issues. Also, writers should read outside the genre they write in. Obviously you want to be up on your own genre, but it’s important to read other genres as well, including nonfiction if you’re a fiction writer. It’ll help you develop ideas and make your storytelling more well-rounded, and will help keep you from falling prey to whatever writing trends might be big in your genre at any given moment. 

Melissa Jeglinski

One good habit I think authors should have:

Follow through. If authors pose an idea to an agent and we take the time and effort to give feedback, the author should follow through with putting together the proposal or manuscript. Or at least ask for some help getting there.

Janna Bonikowski

It isn’t new advice, but READ. Anything and everything. See what’s out there. Explore books that sell well and books that don’t, books within your genre or outside of it. More important, form habits that work for you, not what other people think should work.

AUTHOR TIP OF THE MONTH

Kerry Anne King is the author of the Washington Post and Amazon bestselling novel WHISPER ME THIS.

No matter what, write the next book. If you don't have an agent yet, or a publishing contract, or if you're already published but your last book didn't sell and you feel like your writing career is doomed, write anyway! Remember when you first started writing? In the beginning it's something that feeds and fills us. Either it's fun, or it helps us manage our inner demons, or it allows us to express ourselves and make sense of the world around us.

But then, of course, we want to see our writing out in the world, and we want to be successful, and our wonderful love of writing collides with the publishing world. And publishing is competitive and full of rejection and really good at dream-squashing if we let it. Every author friend I have, myself included, has been at a place of despair with their writing career at some point.

Last summer I had two books release and neither one of them sold very well. Okay, let's be honest, one of them hardly sold at all. It was disheartening and discouraging. The voice of doubt that I could ever have any writing success got really loud. But hey—I'm a writer, and writers write, and I just kept on going. Wonder of wonders, WHISPER ME THIS, my eighth book out in the world, hit the Washington Post bestseller list and both of the Amazon charts, and readers are loving it.

The thing is, you never know when a book is going to take off. You never know which book is going to excite an agent, or get a fantastic publishing contract, or really hit the mark with readers. So no matter what – keep showing up. Build your craft, connect with other writers, and always be writing the next book.