This is better Than a Writing Prompt

Writing prompts are such useful things for getting our creative minds working. They also give us a starting idea of what to write about which is all a writer needs to get going.

But writing prompts are just that. A bump to get you started writing. Nothing more.

So, what if, instead of using random prompts, you look for paying markets and writing competitions and use them as prompts?

You don’t have to submit them, just use them as writing practice. There’s a lot of advantage of doing it this way.

1.    You’ll be practicing writing what the industry is looking for, so you’ll know what kind of writing sells         and what subjects/topics are currently popular.

2.    You’ll get used to writing to deadlines. Having a limited time to write can give you the bit of pressure you need to get your writing done. Writing to tight deadlines can also help improve your writing by not giving you time to second-guess yourself or to try and edit as you write, both of which are fatal to good writing.

3.    You can submit your writing if you want to and earn money. And because you’re only practicing your writing, it doesn’t matter if it gets accepted or not or if it wins a free competition or not. You’re just getting used to being a regular writer.

There really are no disadvantages to using writing markets and competitions as writing prompts.

It’s great practice, gets you writing regularly, and gets you used to deadlines.

Plus, you can submit your work if you want to, and even if it’s not accepted, you can find another market for it later. Or not.

And it can really get your creative mind working, which is what using prompts is all about.

Monthly Challenge Writing Series

https://cheritonhousepublishing.com/books/MCWS1.html

Why Successful Writers Make Plans

"If you don't separate yourself from distractions, your distractions will separate you from your goals."

~ Steve Harvey

I love reading about other writers’ goals and how they plan to achieve them. This is something that’s always fascinated me, probably because it reassures me that I’m not alone.

But what is a successful writing plan?

I’ve learned a lot about how other writers’ minds work and it can be inspiring to read about their successes as well as their failures. Mostly I love their tenacity to keep going no matter what.

Working as a writer is extremely isolating because I have to work completely alone and cannot stand the smallest disturbance when I’m “in the flow,” deeply absorbed in my writing.

Thankfully, the Internet, books, and podcasts, gives me access to other writers, and seeing them go through the same struggle I do gives me hope.

When I first began writing professionally, I went openly online talking about what I was doing. The reaction from some people (through blog comments and emails) was hostile to say the least, and I used to get upset about it.

But eventually I discovered that I wasn’t the only writer getting criticism. In fact I was far from it. I found out that even the most prolific and successful writers received hate mail. Most writers put it down to jealousy and moved on, so I did too. I still get a few haters now and again, but thankfully it’s easy to report them and block them.

It turned out that even hugely successful authors like Stephen King get people telling him how he could have written his books better, even though they’ve never written anything and his books are not only best sellers, but many have been made into high-grossing movies. He wrote about this in his book ‘On Writing.’ 

But trolls like these are the type of thing that can be distracting, especially if you’re just starting your career, like I was at the time. Back then, even other writers would tell me that I’d never make it as a published author because I self-published my books when no one else (or not many) was doing it.

Then the self-publishing industry boomed and I was already way ahead of the rest, who’ve since failed and seem to have fallen out of the writing universe, yet here I am - still!

And it’s probably due tot he fact that, like all the successful writers I’ve read about, I’ve always had a plan of what I wanted to achieve and how I was going to do it.

My original plan was to set up several websites and us them to earn money through advertising and affiliate marketing. At the same time, I was also doing freelance writing and submitting article ideas to magazines and other websites all the time. And it worked well.

My next plan was to write a novel, which I did . I self-published it (which took a lot of research back then to figure out how to do it), and when I started making sales, I wrote a book about how I did it so that others could do it too, and that’s when I got trolled by the haters. Yet at the same time, my books sales took off (and I swear the trolls helped me with marketing by talking about me all over the Internet), and my websites were all earning me a good passive income.

Since then my plans have changed a few more times because the online and publishing world have changed so much. I’ve always been constantly learning the whole time so that I can keep up with everything. Even now I’m trying to keep up with AI and how it’s making even more changes to the way I work.

My plan now is to write and publish as many books as I can, as well as still doing freelance writing.

But no matter what, having a plan is important because without one, how can you achieve anything?

How to Earn Money Writing Short Stories

It's enjoyable to write short stories. I love writing short stories so much that I often don't even know what I'm going to write until I sit down and start writing. I simply sit down and make stuff up as I go.

But is it feasible to write short stories and make money doing it?

If you know what you're doing, you can earn money from all of your writing. Over the years, my methods of making a living as a writer have evolved significantly, but one consistent source of income has been writing short stories.

Markets for Short Stories

To start making money quickly from your short stories, look for paying markets. Strive for well-paying markets that pay at least 5 cents a word. And never, ever pay to submit your work. You’re a professional writer and your time is worth money so you should be paid for your work. Whoever you send your work to will earn money from it,  more than they’re paying you (that’s how business works) so make sure you’re paid well for what you do and never pay to submit.

Types of Short Stories

Pick a genre that you’re comfortable writing in. No one can choose a genre for you because only you know the kinds of stories you like to write.

And you don’t have to choose just one genre. I’ve written horror stories as well as romance stories. These are two completely different genres but I enjoy writing (and reading) both.

Short stories can also differ greatly in length. Some markets want stories up to 10,000 words, which is great if they’re a high-paying market of 8 cents a word. Others want Flash Fiction of only 250 words, or Drabbles which are stories of exactly 100 words, which is only a couple of short paragraphs. 

Shorter story markets such as these can still be high-paying with up to $100 for just a few words.

A word of warning though; make sure that your copyright remains with you and that your story is yours to republish after a few weeks or a year.  These things will be in the the Ts & Cs of the publication you’re submitting to.

If you story gets rejected (and most will, it happens to us all), just keep sending it to other markets, even if you have to tweak it a bit to suit their guidelines.

Having your stories published in anthologies is great for marketing because those books will probably go on selling for years so it helps to  get your name known.

How Many Stories to Write

If you’re serious about earning  money, I’d suggest you write and submit one story a week, or one a fortnight if that’s too much. This helps writing and submitting to become a habit.

As well as submitting to markets that pay outright, there are also a few story websites (like Wattpad for instance) where you can upload your work and receive payments based on how many people read your story. I don’t have any experience submitting stories this way so I don’t know if it’s worthwhile or not, but many writers swear by it.

But you can keep submitting your stories to high-paying markets. Keep them on the market for at least a year. If they still don’t sell, or even if they do, you can publish them in your own short story collection and they can go on earning you money for years, which will increase year after year as you keep writing more short stories.

So keep writing and have a blast doing it.

https://www.cheritonhousepublishing.com/books/MCWS1.html 

How I Schedule My Daily Writing

One of the hardest things for many writers (or wanna-be writers) is having a consistent writing schedule. I used to be the same. I kept saying I wanted to write every day but instead I got busy doing other things, telling myself that as soon as I had time I’d get my writing done.

And I didn’t understand my own reluctance to writing. I like to write so why wasn’t I writing every day? Why did I put it off all the time? 

The reason was that writing wasn’t part of my daily schedule, so it often didn’t get done. Yet all I could think about was the writing that I wasn’t doing, and that made me miserable and frustrated. So what I did was make writing a part of my daily schedule.

When I first began to write professionally, I had a job and a family so I fit my writing in around those things. But I still did my writing because I wanted to work as a writer, so I was doing freelance writing, and plenty of it.

I always told myself, and I thought it was 100% true, that I’d eventually stop working and write full-time instead. And I did. But it turned out to be so different than what I’d imagined.

In my day dreams about working as a writer, I was sat at my desk every day producing thousands of words and amassing a whole collection of published books. But in reality, I found it harder and harder to sit down and write every day, thinking that I needed to do other things first. My procrastinating got so bad that at one point I decided to give up writing and go back to work because I felt like I was just wasting my time every day. I was actually doing plenty of things, but none of it was writing.

But when I started to go through my files, deciding what to get rid of, I realised that I didn’t want to stop being a writer. I wanted to start being a writer. But I still had no idea why I was so reluctant to write when it was the thing I wanted to do. I even asked myself if I did actually want to write or did I just want to ‘be a writer.’

So I began writing again, but I also began reading books by other writers about their writing processes. And it turned out I wasn’t the only one battling the ‘wanting to write but never doing it’ problem. But no matter how much I studied the problem, I couldn’t find a solution. People just said they decided to take their writing seriously, or would sit in their writing chair no matter how unmotivated they felt.

I even tried forcing myself to sit down and write a certain number of words a day because that was the advice from several writers. But that didn’t work for me because I mostly write by hand so it was distracting to have to stop and count words all the time. Eventually, I settled for writing for a certain amount of time every day. But that became a problem too.

I’d tell myself that I’d write from 9am to 12am every day. But other things would happen and I wouldn’t be at my desk at 9am so I’d blow my schedule. I even tried writing at different times of the day thinking that maybe I wasn’t a morning writer but an afternoon or evening writer. But that didn’t work either because no matter what hours I scheduled for writing, things kept getting in the way. I also tried going somewhere else to write every day so I’d walk to the library or sit in the park, but the weather would often stop me by being too hot or too wet or too windy.

Then I read an article by an author about her writing schedule. She is a prolific and award-winning novelist and she says that she writes for 2 hours a day. She doesn’t set the hours she writes except whether she writes in the morning or afternoon/evening. Some days she writes for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon as well. But she has her 2-hour daily schedule and sticks to it. She also said that if something else comes up in the morning and she doesn’t get her 2 hours done, she does her 2 hours later. And she also said she’s surprised when people call her prolific, but her simple writing routing does allow her to write more than most others.

I thought that was brilliant. A writing schedule with a set number of hours, but no exact time to do it. So I did the same. I wrote up a loose schedule of 2 hours every morning, minimum. Two days a week, my schedule is to write 2 hours in the afternoon as well. And it doesn’t matter what I’m writing just as long as I’m writing. And it works out well because some of that time may be taken up with online work, or correspondence, or any number of other writing-related tasks. But I don’t have to worry about getting them done because I know I’ll get to them during my writing schedule.

And this frees me up to get on with other things when I’m not writing. And when I am writing, if I’m deeply into what I’m working on, I carry on as long as I need to.

So after all my years of trying to figure out the best time for me to write, it turned out that my schedule was just too strict. So every morning I know I have to write for 2 hours, so I need to be sitting down by 10am at the latest. And if my schedule also involves the afternoon, then I know I have to be sitting down by 3pm. I usually sit down well before these times, I mean, why wouldn’t I?

And this schedule gives me plenty of time to do other things, like chores. I cannot sit down and write if the dishes aren’t done or there are other outstanding things that need doing. But my schedule gives me time to do them which frees up my mind to write without the distraction of things that have been left undone.

I also have several writing projects on the go all the time, so if I get stuck on one, I move on to another. I find that taking a break from a piece of writing can free up my creative brain so that by the time I get back to it, I’ve got fresh ideas.

Also, having an established daily writing habit, means that it’s something I want to do every day. They say that we don’t miss something unless we’re used to having it, such as, if you ate a piece of chocolate cake every day, you’d miss it if you gave it up. Or if you go for a run every day, you miss it on days when you can’t do it.

Which is probably why I like to write short stories at night. I don’t know why, but after my shower, which I usually take after dinner, I like to sit down and write short fiction or read for a while (maybe an hour). Again, it probably comes down to routine. It’s something I started doing a long time ago and I still do it. It’s so routine that as soon as I’ve had my evening shower, I look forward to either picking up the book I’m reading, or I get out my folder where I keep my short stories and carry on with the one I’m currently working on. It’s like my own private little quiet time that I always look forward to at the end of the day. Yet at the same time I used to struggle with writing during the day.

I used to think that I couldn’t sit down and write if I didn’t feel inspired. But that’s just BS. Stephen King put it best when he said, “Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you're going to be every day from nine 'til noon, or seven 'til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he'll start showing up.”  
~ Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

And he’s right. Just sitting down, getting out all my stuff ready for writing, and looking at what I’m currently  working on, gets me straight back into my writing. Which is why his other quote is true when he said: 

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.” 

It’s all about starting. Starting isn’t hard. It’s making yourself start that can seem hard. I know that I have to sit down and write for a minimum 2 hours a day, so I’ve stopped giving myself excuses like, “I just don’t feel like writing,” or “I don’t have any idea what to write,” or “I haven’t been shopping today and there’s loads of stuff I need to get.” I know that all I have to do is sit down and I’ll soon be writing. Sometimes, if I find I can’t sleep and I wake up in the early hours of the morning, I go and get myself a cup of herbal tea, sit down at the dining table, and start writing. This helps to focus my mind and after an hour or two, I’m either tired enough to go back to bed, or I’m enjoying what I’m doing and I keep writing till breakfast time. Either way it’s a win-win. And I still sit down and do my 2 hours later because a schedule is a schedule so I need to stick to it.

So if you’re struggling to sit down and write, just decide how long you’re going to write every day, put it in your schedule, and stick to it. And before you know it, writing daily is a habit and you won’t want to stop or you’ll miss it.