Today’s been an interesting day. I’m waiting for tech support to get back to me on one project, so I’ve meandered.
I set up some document templates so that I’m ready to write.
Then I browsed Fiverr for a few ideas I had plus a logo designer. (More on these things once I’ve done the work.)
Then I had to look up some flexibility drills. As wonderful as being a writer is, sitting for hours in front of a screen is pretty rubbish for your health. My knees are giving me trouble, my hamstrings are rubbish, my shoulders are knackered and my lower back is a pain as well.
I was sitting there trying to stretch my hamstrings out when I remembered someone who I used to chat to quite regularly. They’d written about how they were going to build a yoga app. I wondered how that had gone, so I went to look them up.
Their site no longer existed, and instead it was this weird one-page thing which had some strange motivational speech about never giving up.
Surprisingly, this quasi-non-story leads me to the topic of the day, which is a very important topic for writers and online business-people alike.
Flitting Between Projects Is Not Good
I know I’ve written about this before in One Project At A Time. It bears repeating though.
When you write for a living, and especially when you’re a freelance writer who can write about a new topic (or ten) on any given day, it’s really easy to get a form of “business ADHD” where you flit from one project to the next without really ever finishing any of them.
I’ve done this. You’ve done this. It’s easy to get a “grass is greener on the other side” illness when It comes to writing projects. You really need to concentrate though. Here are some reasons why:
- Unfinished project = no money for said project. It is literally a waste of time and money.
- You don’t learn about actually being in business. In a lot of cases, if you never start a business even though you have lots of ideas, then you’re using new ideas as an avoidance strategy.
- There are things to learn at every stage of a business. If you stick to starting up, stopping, repeating you’ll miss out on a lot of these lessons. Then, when you hit the jackpot idea, you’ll lose it due to not having developed those skills previously.
There’s another reason which is going to have its own section.
To Be A Successful Business-Person, You Just Have To Stay In The Race
Writing is in some ways a terrible business to get into. The barrier to entry is low, everyone thinks that they can write, and nobody respects someone who says, “I’m trying to make it as a writer.” Every day there are a fresh crop of people trying to make their money by writing.
What separates professional writers from non-professional writers? Lots of things. But among them is the fact that nearly all of the people I mentioned above – people who try writing – are going to drop out really quickly.
A lot of them will never finish a manuscript, never start an online profile on a freelancer website or send out a CV to a company for a writing position. A lot of them will finish a manuscript and wait for it to grow money, and a lot of them will give up after having no success for two months. That takes care of ninety percent.
Then five percent will write for a few months and maybe get a profile on Upwork. They’ll get sick of the $5 jobs and think that there’s no money in it. Or they’ll send out their novel and get an advance offer for $2000. Then they’ll go back to their job and occasionally go on forums to talk about how there’s no money in writing.
99% of would-be writers quit. I started freelance writing less than two years ago. I wonder how many people got their first job/wrote their first chapter on the day I started, and how many of them quit.
Writing isn’t a job where you make loads of money in a starting position like a doctor. It’s cumulative. Most people drop out of the race. (I’m sure you’ll find that’s true of any business, but I’m not experienced enough to say.)
Final Thoughts
Here’s a test: Pick a list of ten blogs you read or ten authors you were reading five years ago. Go and check how many of them are still updating their site or writing books at the same rate they were five years ago. This isn’t a judgement exercise: It’s just to show you that most people drop out of the race pretty quickly.
If 90% of businesses fail within their first two years, then it only takes lasting two years to be in the top ten percent. The bar is really low when you think in those terms.
The top two ways people will fail are:
- Never starting a project or following through the initial stages because of “grass is greener” syndrome.
- Not staying with a project long enough for your competition to disappear leaving you the sole victor.
If you can avoid those mistakes, then you will be one of the best by default. If you can be better than the rest of the survivors, then you’re really doing well.