171 words of wisdom every writer should read

A couple of weeks ago, Joe Konrath published a blog post entitled “The Path to Success”. It’s not a long post, and it concludes with this, 171 words that sum up the whole writing process:

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Success is meeting your goals.

That definition doesn’t depend on money or sales or agents or reviews or publishers or advertising or how many Facebook friends or Twitter followers you have. It has nothing to do with anyone other than you.

Success is all about setting goals that are within your control, and then hitting those goals.

Maybe some people will read you and like you. Maybe they won’t. That all comes down to luck.

You can try to improve your luck, but it might not work.

You can, however, become a better writer. Write more. Try more. Do more.

The world may never accept you. But that shouldn’t be your goal.

Your goal should be to accept yourself. That’s within your control. And it doesn’t involve luck. It involves learning, trying, working, practicing, experimenting, finishing, never giving up.

You can do that.

You can write books.

Learn to be happy with that, and everything else is just a bonus.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a book to finish.

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 Joe Konrath

Read the full post here, (it’s a whopping 1,142 words).

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