Writing Forums. Helpful or Not?

Lately I’ve been taking somewhat of an interest in writing forums.

Why?

Because they’re regularly touted as one of the best places for writers to hang out and learn their craft.

Many years ago, while I was quite new to being a writer (but I was already earning a decent income from it), I joined a couple of writing forums.

What I found was that most of the people on these forums weren’t writers at all.

Most were wannabes who had never (and probably never would) write anything publishable at all.

Quite a few others were just trolls.

It only took me a few weeks to realise what was going on and get the hell out of there.

But lately I wondered if anything had changed.

So I took a look around and scanned through a few forums looking at the threads and all the responses.

And you know what?

Nothing had changed.

No matter where I looked, each forum was dominated by people either responding to questions with useless advice because they weren’t professional writers and so had no clue what they were talking about, or they were nasty trolls just hanging around trying to upset people.

But do you know what amazed me the most?

It was how much time these people were spending on these forums.

It seemed that they spent hours every day posting new topics, answering questions, and getting into arguments.

There were even people who seemed to be on the forums 24/7 and had tens of thousands of posts and comments and thousands of followers.

One poster actually had well over 67,000 posts that he’d uploaded over his 10 year membership which averaged out at over 18 posts a day. Imagine that! Posting 18 times a day - or more -  to the same forum for 10 years.

And the funny thing about all this was that the threads that received the most responses were the ones where people were asking about how to earn money from writing.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

I found this hilarious because how can anyone who spends most of their time on free forums dishing out advice about how to make money from writing, actually have the time to make money from writing?

The irony just has me in stitches because let’s face it, anyone making money from writing is writing and getting their work published, not hanging around writing forums. Have you ever heard a successful writer saying how they spent hours and hours every day on writing forums and it helped get them to where they are today?

No doubt there will be some who think that writing forums are great and that’s why they’re always on them. But it’s also the reason why they’re not successful writers.

Successful writers are busy writing.

My advice to anyone who wants to earn money from their writing is to “Just Do It,” as the Nike slogan says.

Writing time is best spent writing and if you don’t know where to start or what to write next, try a writing course like Quick Cash Writing that gets you earning money from your writing  fast.

Or look at my Writing Markets page for new places for writing submissions.

Or how about downloading How to Write Any Book in 28 Days or Less so that you can get to work straight away writing your next best seller.

Writing is work, not a hobby.

No writing = no publishing = no money.

So don’t spend your time hanging out on forums all day.

Find a way to start work quickly and get down to some serious writing.

Just Do It.

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