I’ve talked a lot about the writing and marketing experts who want to sell me their fabulous plans to make me a best-selling author or a bazillionaire overnight.
I’ve snarked about many of them.
It’s tricky because I always want to learn how to be better at my craft. But, there are no easy solutions.
So, I knew better when I read the headline “How [whatshisname] makes a six-figure income writing 10 minutes a day.”
I know, it’s a sucker’s headline. But I thought maybe there would be something there that would help with the paid writing I endeavor to do in my spare time.
The method? Write one email a day and sell subscriptions for $39 per month. Never mind that what you write may or may not be worth $39 a month.
It’s certainly not to me.
And don’t overlook the fact that you have to find the subscribers.
This is why real writers can’t have nice things.
There are no easy answers. There are no shortcuts. It’s all about doing the work.
Write. Write. Write.
That’s what you have to do.
Violent obsessions sometimes lay hold of a man: he may, for instance, think day and night of nothing but the moon. I have such a moon. Day and night I am held in the grip of one besetting thought, to write, write, write! Hardly have I finished one book than something urges me to write another, and then a third, and then a fourth–I write ceaselessly. I am, as it were, on a treadmill. I hurry forever from one story to another, and can’t help myself.
Trigorin in Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull