3 Questions All Writers Need to Ask Themselves.

 Being writers in the modern, hectic world we live in, is a blissful experience. That is without the crazy deadlines, constant amendments and endless work we surround ourselves with but on the whole, it is enjoyable.

The world of a writer

Working as a writer is different to working as anything else, the job is largely non-described, for most management is non-existent, and in general, the reason people write is not money.

Being a writer is about something more, something larger. No matter what discipline of the industry you’re part of, you are always working for something bigger than you or me. You’re working for change.

Change in people.

Change an industry.

Change in a country.

Or even, change in the world.

We work day in, day out, in the hope that what we produce, might hopefully change someone or something, somewhere in the world.

We don’t work for change.

We work to make change.

Have you got what it takes?

Anyone can be a writer. It doesn’t matter what walk of life you come from; writing doesn’t discriminate. Writing is one of the few jobs, where there is no job description.

This is, however, a bless and a curse. Having such an open career is great for diversity and opening options to people. But the problems lie in the motives people have. Earlier I said,

We don’t work for change.

We work to make change.

This observation may not have made sense at first, but let me explain.

We don’t work for money (or, ‘change’ as some people call it). Instead, we work to make change, and that is our motive. Problems occur when people reverse these meanings. They care more about their bottom line, then the world around them.

Luckily, people who work for the sole purpose of money soon throw in the towel from not earning the money they dreamed of making. The writers who make the real money are the ones who cared about making change first.

We shouldn’t think money is the problem, we need money to survive in the world, but we need to ensure we’re working for something bigger than ourselves rather than ourselves.

Are you willing to work for something bigger than yourself?

If you are willing to work for something bigger than yourself, are you willing to work with no recognition?

You won’t become famous by becoming a writer. How many famous authors can you name compared to music artists? A significant portion of authors is not recognised and celebrated as much as they should be.

This is part of being a writer, particularly at the beginning. Don’t start writing if you’re only interested in fame. As I’m telling you now, you will lose interest before you become famous and it’ll be a waste of your time.

Are you willing to work with no recognition?

Are you prepared to be always learning? Writing is as much about writing as it is about learning.

To improve our writing, we must learn about writing. We have to know about grammar, spelling, structure, style and more. This process never ends, there isn’t a day, where we say we know everything. With endless combinations of words comes an equal number of opportunities to practice. These opportunities are what we can learn from.

It’s not just our writing we learn; it’s everything we write about too. How could we produce a report without first learning about the subject(s) of the report? How could we write a book without learning about the characters we intend to write? The list goes on, but the point is, whatever out subject, whatever our format is. There is something to learn.

Are you prepared to be always learning?

Are you ready to become a writer?

Ask yourself these three questions, and you’ll soon find out, what your motives are and if you’re a good fit for writing. Here are the three questions again.

Are you willing to work for something bigger than yourself?

Are you willing to work with no recognition?

Are you prepared to be always learning?

If you answered ‘Yes’ to all of those questions, then let’s get started. There’s no better moment than the one we have now. Start writing today and if you’re stuck with what to write about then check out my article below for ten ideas for new writers.

10 ideas for new writers

Becoming a new writer can be scary. Trust me I’m still working on becoming a writer.

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If you answered ‘No’ to any of the questions above, don’t give up. Remember, writing is about learning.

I’ll let you in on a secret. I started writing for the money, but relatively quickly after beginning, I realised it would take a long time before I made the money I thought I would. So, I faced a choice.

Keep going, forget about the money and see what happens.

Give up now and find something that pays better.

I elected for option one. And, I’m glad I did, if I had given up, I wouldn't have developed the love for writing that I have now. I always thought that I hated writing, but in fact, once I started and gave it some time, my interest turned into a full-blown love affair.

I fell in love with helping people and trying to change the world. I can honestly say, writing has changed me and my priorities in life.

So, what I say to you if you answered ‘No’ is not to give up and keep going. Give writing a shot and see what happens, you might fall in love with it as I did.

Finally…

I hope this article has shed some light on the world of writing and whether or not it would be a good fit for you. Writing is unlike every other job, writing takes dedication, love and care and only with these will we get the change we crave.

To change the world, we must first learn to change ourselves and our writing.

To improve, we must change and to change we must practice, and our practice needs to be habitual. We need to be writing every single day if we are to become as good as we desire. The easiest way to do this is to make writing a daily habit and making daily habits is something you can learn about in my article ‘How You Can Have Successful Habits in 3 Easy steps!’.

How You Can Have Successful Habits in 3 Easy steps!

We all have habits. Both good and bad. And, we all want to improve on the bad ones, don’t we?

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Thank you for reading!

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