Writing is an extremely difficult job, whether you’ve achieved some of your goals as a professional or you’re still working your way up to it (writing, regardless of visibility, is still work worth celebrating!). Anxiety over untangling messy plots, cutting down unnecessary prose, and finding people who might publish your work are all things every writer will eventually have to stress over. It’s part of the deal.
There are many things to worry about as a writer. That’s never going to change. But once you shift your focus away from some of the worries preoccupying you unnecessarily, you’ll be able to invest much more time and energy in solving the writing problems that matter much more for you and the future of your career.
The Size of Your Social Media Following
Here’s one quick nugget of truth: Having a social media presence as a writer, aspiring or otherwise, can absolutely benefit you and your future career. Over the years, I’ve made life-changing connections with agents, editors, and fellow writers through social media. Honestly, I’m not sure I’d be where I’m at in my career without it.
But you probably already know that when it comes to social media, the bad can very quickly and easily outweigh the good. Especially when it comes to numbers — follower counts, engagement, and the like. It isn’t that these metrics don’t matter or that you can’t use them in certain situations to your benefit. It’s when you get too caught up in social media’s gamification that it has the potential to become a huge burden on you and your writing.
About five years ago — yes, during everyone’s favorite year, 2020 — I spent a lot of time on social media. I spent more time “making connections” than actually writing. I can cut myself a little bit of slack for that; we were all having a pretty rough time, and we all cope in our own ways. But I got way too hung up on my numbers. I got a little bit reckless. Irresponsible. Let’s just say I didn’t always act like the professional writer I was allegedly striving to be.
If you write really good stuff, and you find ways to get that stuff in front of as many people as possible — through social media or otherwise — things like a social media following might come, eventually, as a result. But your work has to come first. Before you have to worry about how many people your work might be reaching … you have to have publishable work to be reached.
Write first, promote later. You can still spend time on social media — again; there are good reasons for doing so in moderation. But don’t ever let yourself start to believe your social media numbers are more important than the words you’re writing offline.
How Many Words You Write in a Day
There is nothing wrong with keeping track of your word count. It’s not a crime to use some sort of system to keep a log of how many words or pages you’ve written today, or this week, or over the past month. Some writers need that form of external motivation — that figurative or literal progress bar giving them that extra push, or a reason to pat themselves on the back for a job (hopefully) well done.
It’s when you get too caught up in word counts and daily writing goals that things can get a little messy. If you’re the kind of writer (like me) who benefits from setting daily goals or even limits, that’s one thing. But if trying to stick to a certain number day after day is starting to wear you down, you’re doing yourself and your creative output more harm than good.
Don’t set a goal that’s too high, or something that you can’t keep up with consistently — especially if you tend to get disappointed or talk yourself down when you don’t hit your writing goals. There is a time and a place for setting and sticking to deadlines. Putting that kind of pressure on yourself can be good sometimes, but very stressful other times.
This is one of those instances where you can set goals that are slightly less specific, but much more manageable instead. Right now, I make it a point to work on my book five days a week. I might write 100 words each of those days or 1,000. That’s not the point. The point is that I try to keep chipping away at it. And when I accomplish even that, I still walk away from my draft each of those days feeling pretty good about having done even the absolute minimum.
Stopping pushing yourself so hard every single day. Challenging yourself? Good. Burning yourself out? Not good!
How Similar Your Ideas Are to Other People’s Work
There is no such thing as an original concept or idea. You’ve probably heard some variation of this statement elsewhere (because, surprise! Not an original thought). It’s not a statement meant to discourage creatives or to make you think that none of your ideas are good enough for publication. Quite the opposite, actually. All it really means is that in all the time you might be spending worrying that you’re unintentionally copying someone else, that your ideas aren’t original enough, or that someone else is going to copy you … you could be turning that idea into a bunch of original, captivating words.
A premise for a novel, for example, is probably never going to be fully unique. It’s pretty likely that in some form, someone has written a story similar to the one in your head before. But here’s what you need to remember: No one has written YOUR version of the story yet. And no one can or will ever be able to do that except for — you guessed it — you!
YOU and your words are what make a story original. Not your general idea. Stop worrying about being unique in concept. Let your words speak for themselves — which does, believe it or not, require you to actually write them first.
Keep all these things in mind as you’re working through your (undoubtedly many) writing anxieties. You’re doing fine. Just keep writing, and worry about the rest — or not? — later.
Meg Dowell Writes 