5 Secrets All Successful Writers Know

You know what I can’t stand? Clickbaity articles about the “secrets” successful people use to get ahead and quickly rise to the top. But it’s not just articles about secrets that bug me: ones about tips, tricks, shortcuts, and hacks irk me, too.

First of all, even if what’s been written was a secret, it’s not anymore. The second you publish that article, the cat’s out of the bag. Second, successful people – whether in business, science, the arts, politics, or whatever – know there are no shortcuts, no secrets that will magically get them to where they want to be.

People who aspire to be great but still have a long way to go, on the other hand, rarely understand that there are no shortcuts on the road to accomplishment. Success takes time, effort, and sacrifice. Whether it’s becoming a successful musician, politician, physician, or even mortician, you have to be willing to put in the time and effort.

That being said, secrets aren’t always equal. Some are true secrets, known only by a single individual. Others, like trade secrets, are known by one particular group of people. And then there are secrets like the ones we’re going to discuss.

Truth be told, these aren’t really secrets at all. But, based on how few writers actually follow them, you’d think they were. So, I’ve decided to do precisely what I told you I can’t stand in the very first sentence: write a clickbaity article about five secrets all successful writers know.

Well, that’s not exactly true. What I’ve decided to do is write an information-packed article aimed at new-and-aspiring writers that will help take their writing to the next level – but give it a clickbaity title so it’ll get greater visibility. And if you’re reading this, it worked.

In a moment, we’ll get to the 5 secrets all successful writers know. But first, I’m going to tell you a quick story about something totally unrelated yet totally relevant.

Tell Me A Secret

For the first 27 years of my life, I never weighed more than 140 pounds – and I’m 6′ tall! I was basically a toothpick with legs and a face. Desperate to gain weight, I’d tried every muscle-building product on the market: weight gainers, dozens of supplements, short workout plans that promised insane results, and more.

Well, guess what? Nothing worked. None of it.

But then shortly after my son was born, I decided to give something new a shot. Instead of trying to shortcut my way to a killer physique through bogus diet-and-exercise plans, overpriced pills, and other products, I gave something else a try: hard work. The idea was foreign to me at the time, but it was the only thing I hadn’t yet tried.

I got myself a membership at a nearby gym and forced myself to go at least three times a week. I read books about fitness and nutrition and subscribed to Men’s Health (not the greatest resource, but it had some useful advice at the time). I worked my ass off in the gym and made myself eat better.

It sucked. It was hard. I wanted to quit. Results didn’t come after a week like so many products had promised, giving me a false sense of what was actually possible. But eventually – after many weeks of busting my butt in the gym and in the kitchen – I started to get results.

Change came slowly. But the longer I kept working hard, the more my body transformed. Three days a week in the gym turned into four. Then five. I packed on ten pounds of muscle. Then another ten. And another. I got my weight up from a scrawny 140 pounds up to a healthy 180.

Only after trying every diet-and-exercise plan under the sun and not getting anywhere did I finally realized there were no secrets to success. No easy way. No instant results. The hard way was the only way. And that lesson applies to writing (and so many other things) as much as it does to physical transformations.

If there was a magic pill that turned scrawny weaklings into musclebound beasts, there’d be no more skinny guys. If there was some secret substance that made fat melt off your body, obesity would disappear. And if there was some hidden secret that could turn you into a successful author overnight, you wouldn’t be reading this and I wouldn’t be writing it.

There are no writing secrets Stephen King, Nora Roberts, John Grisham, and Janet Evanovich know that the rest of us don’t. But there are a few things they do know that a lot of aspiring writers either don’t put into practice or, if they do, don’t take seriously enough. Here are five of them.

5 Secrets All Successful Writers Know

1. The Definition of Success

I’m not JK Rowling. My books haven’t sold half-a-billion copies. I haven’t even crossed the half-a-million mark yet. And none of my titles have been on the New York Times bestseller list.

However, I consider myself to be a successful writer. Why? Because of the definition of success I came up with when I started my writing journey. To me, being a successful writers meant being able to support myself 100% from my writing. And last spring, after five years of working my butt off, I was finally making enough from my writing to quit my job of fifteen-years.

That, to me, is success. I hated having to be at a job 10+ hours a day, following their schedule, my labor making some lazy owner I’d never met even wealthier, dealing with the commute, and all the other crap that goes along with having a regular job. I wanted to be my own boss, set my own schedule, and work from wherever I felt like. Most importantly, I wanted to know that it’d be me and not some rich d-bag boss benefiting from the blood, sweat, and tears I put into my work.

My goal was realistic (though ambitious), measurable, and clearly defined. Yours needs to be, too. All accomplished writers understand the importance of having a clear definition of success. Let’s break down the three elements:

Realistic

If you set the goal of selling, say, a trillion books, you’d be setting yourself up for failure. That would mean every single person on the planet – man, woman, and child – would each have to buy 143 copies of your books. It’s never going to happen. Even the bestselling book of all time, The Bible, has only sold a measly 500-billion copies.

Your definition of success must be realistic: it has to at least be humanly possible. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be ambitious. Making a million dollars a year as a writer is extremely difficult, but it’s possible. Some people – not many, but some – do. Don’t be afraid to be ambitious in your definition of success if it’s what you really, truly want. Just make sure it’s at least possible.

Clearly Defined

“I want to make a buttload of money writing books,” as you may have guessed, is not a clear definition of success. If your definition of success isn’t clearly defined, you’ll never know when you get there – or even how to get there.

“I want to make six figures a year before taxes but after expenses from writing historical fiction” is a much better definition. It clearly lays out how and when success can be declared.

Measurable Goals

The last secret accomplished authors know about defining success is that there need to be measurable goals along the way. No one goes from just starting out to topping the New York Times bestseller list without a lot of steps in between.

If $100,000 a year is your definition of success like in the example above, break it down into measurable steps. Or goals. Or milestones. Call them whatever you want. Maybe your first milestone will be to make $100 a month. The next, $1,000 a month. Then $3,000. Once you’ve clearly defined your realistic definition of success, break getting there into steps. And celebrate after each milestone is reached.

2. If You Write It, They May Read It

But if you don’t write anything, they definitely won’t. If you’ve seen the 1989 film Field of Dreams (and likely even if you haven’t), you’re familiar with the phrase, “If you build it, he will come.” [I could’ve sworn it was they, not he, but I just looked it up and it is in fact he.] The obvious implication of this sentence is that, if you don’t build it he/they/whoever won’t come.

If you want people to read your books, you have to write them first, you say? Gee, thanks for this Earth-shattering secret, Ellis. But while this widely offered advice is anything but secret, you’d think it was because so few aspiring writers actually follow it. There’s a reason why every well-known author who’s offered advice about writing puts some version of You Have To Sit Down And Write on their list – tons of people who claim to want to be writers don’t actually write!

There’s a saying in the writing world: butt in chair. What it means is that, if you want to be a writer, you have to actually sit down and write – a lot. Most successful writers write every day. For some, they write for a set amount of time. Others, like myself, don’t stop until they hit a certain word count. But how long or how much you write is far less important than the fact that you simply write something.

Writing is a craft that must be developed over time. It’s widely held in the writing world that your first one-million words will suck. While some people (very few) may be naturally gifted writers and storytellers, most aren’t. We need to develop our craft and the only way to do that is by actually writing.

You know how I mentioned famous writers who’ve offered advice about writing? Here are some quotes from some that might help you get your butt in chair to sit down and write:

• “Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.” – Henry Miller
• “Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.” – Emma Coats
• “Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you’re on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.” – Margaret Atwood
• “Whether it’s a vignette of a single page or an epic trilogy like ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ the work is always accomplished one word at a time.” – Stephen King

If you want to be a successful writer, you have to write. It’s that simple. Have you written something today?

3. Read More To Write Better

All the great writers of the world, past and present, have been voracious readers. This is hardly surprising. The world’s greatest film makers are all huge movie buffs, the world’s biggest rock stars are all huge music fans, and the world’s best chefs are all big foodies, too. To be successful at anything creative, you really need to immerse yourself in it.

If you want to be a successful writer, you have to read – and you have to read a lot. Why, you ask? Several reasons. For starters, reading a lot helps you to understand both sentence structure and story structure. Sure, you could learn about these things by watching instructional videos. But the only way to develop an intuitive understanding of them is by doing a lot of reading.

Another reason you should read a lot is to learn the tropes of the genre you plan to (or already do) write in. A trope is any recurring convention, rhetorical device, or theme that is found throughout a given genre. For example, in science-fiction novels, a common trope is artificial intelligence (AI) trying to conquer their human creators. Another example of a trope would be the happily ever after (HEA) endings that are found in nearly every romance novel.

To be a successful writer, you should know your genre inside and out. Only once you’ve learned your genre’s rules will you be able to know which ones to skillfully break and which ones to always adhere to.

But it’s also important to read a lot outside the genre(s) you write in. Some of the greatest, bestselling books of all time have taken ideas from other genres and spun them in a new light. The more widely you read, the greater pool of ideas you’ll have to pull from. Maybe reading a romance novel will inspire you to give the lead in your steampunk thriller a love interest. Or maybe reading a history book about the Salem witchcraft trials will help to spice up the urban fantasy novel you’re working on.

Read, read, read – and then read some more. Read classics. Read contemporary works. Read fiction and non. Read inside your genre and out. Read poetry. Read essays. Read blog posts. Hey, you’re doing that right now! Here’s a related post: Reading Like A Writer – 9 Things To Look For.

4. Onto The Page, Then Into The World

You’ve defined success. You’re an avid reader. You’ve gotten your butt in chair consistently enough to have finished writing something. Now what?

Now comes the part that terrifies most writers even more than sitting down to write: submitting or publishing. Eventually, someone else is going to need to read your work. It doesn’t matter how you’ve defined success. Even if your definition of success is to sell a single copy of a single book, you have to send your beloved (or loathed, whichever) manuscript out into the world.

Here’s the (not so) secret formula that all successful writers follow: Write, edit, submit/publish, repeat.

That’s how it’s done. If you choose to go the traditional route, you’ll be submitting your work to agents and editors. If you’d rather do things in a more 21^st century way, you can self-publish your work. Or you can be what’s called a hybrid author and do both. But you’ll never be a successful writer if you do neither.

Robert A. Heinlein, author of Starship Troopers and several other popular sci-fi books, published a now-famous article in 1947 with five rules for writers. Note numbers 2 and 4:

1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
4. You must put the work on the market.
5. You must keep the work on the market until it’s sold.

There are a lot of skilled-but-unsuccessful writers out there with a desk full of half-written manuscripts. You need to finish what you start. Before I came across Heinlein’s rules, I had a bad habit of switching projects every time a new idea popped into my head. Now, if I start a writing project, I finish it. You should do the same.

And once you finish writing something, you need to put it out there. If it’s a short story, submit it to a periodical you think would be a good fit. If it’s a full-length novel, send it to an agent you think might be able to sell it to a publishing house or self-publish it yourself. Whatever it is that you’re working on, finish it, send it out, and get started on the next project.

5. Sell Yourself, Not Your Soul

You did it. You published something. Now you can just kick back and watch your book fly off the shelves, right? Unfortunately, no. That’s not how it works. Not anymore, anyway.

Ten years ago, you could self-publish a book on Amazon, do zero marketing, and there was a good chance people would discover, buy, and maybe even read it. Not today. A decade ago, Amazon only offered a few-million books. As of March 2021, there were 57,700,000 (~ 58 million) books for sale on Amazon.¹ That’s a lot of competition!

And it’s not just self-published authors who are feeling it. Traditionally published authors are, too. Gone are the days when you could rely on your publisher to market your books. Even the largest publishing houses don’t spend much time or money on marketing in today’s technology-driven world. Which mean, if you want to be a successful writer, you have to learn to market yourself and your work.

For introverts like me – and a lot of writers are introverted – the only thing scarier than writing and publishing something is promoting it. But to be successful in today’s climate, you have to put yourself out there. Fortunately, a lot of marketing can be done without having to leave home.

There are an infinite number of ways to market yourself and your writing. Blogging, creating a YouTube channel, using social media, starting a podcast – these are just a few of the ways successful writers let the world know they (and their books) exist. But there are plenty of others.

Get creative. Try different marketing strategies. See what works and what doesn’t. Not everything will. In fact, most things probably won’t. That’s okay. Learn from it and move on. With so many different marketing options thanks to the internet, you can surely find a way to put yourself out there that won’t be too horrible. You don’t have to sell your soul to be a successful writer – just yourself.

Lots of books have been written about marketing in general and book marketing in particular. Throw one on your reading list every once in a while. Cashvertising by Drew Eric Whitman is a great-and-easy-to-understand book about general marketing principles. For book marketing, I really liked How To Market A Book by Joanna Penn. She’s got a informative blog and a writing podcast, too.

Those are just a couple of examples, but there are tons of books, videos, podcasts, and blogs out there that’ll help you learn how to market yourself. If you’ve already read the books above, you may want to explore this list: 10 Books Every Writer Should Read.

Conclusion

Perhaps the biggest secret all successful writers know is that there are no secrets to success. Only through hard work, determination, discipline, and persistence will you get to where you want to be. It ain’t easy but, to me, it’s been so freakin’ worth it. Here are ten reasons why.

No two paths to success are the same. Just as the hero’s journey is different in every story, the writer’s journey is, too. What one writer says has been the secret to their success might do absolutely nothing for all other writers.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Joyce Carol Oates: “Best tip for writers: not to listen to any silly tips for writers.”

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