Some of you may have attended the Writer’s Digest Conference last weekend and in particular Nina Amir’s talk about creating a bestseller plan. But if you didn’t, it was sort of like this.
I do a lot of conferences (shout out to the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference this week!) and I often see attendees looking for a quick fix or the “secret” to becoming a mega bestseller so they can quit the corporate world forever and go retire on a beach, only lifting their hand to sign the occasional autograph. Among the folks who express this to me, a fair amount of them also express their frustration, seemingly because no quick fix has yet produced these results for them, and I get the sense that the latest quick fix they’re seeking is an agent.
Folks, an agent is not a quick fix. You haven’t “made it” when you get an agent. An agent (at least in my opinion) should be someone you work with over the long term to build a progressively stronger career and skillset. Sure, they’ll help make you better now, but you shouldn’t quit at the first sign of improvement. If you want to lose 50 pounds, you shouldn’t quit after your trainer helps you lose the first 5. You’ll have to want it, power through, and push yourself to make those final steps on gelatinous, “OMG, WTF did I run this marathon?” legs. Then accept that running marathons is now just a thing you do, stretch, and start training for the next one.
The secret, if you want it, is attitude, and not the one that looks for a quick fix or sees the lack of instant gratification as cause to quit. Nina Amir often talks about it in her books as “Author Attitude,” which among other things includes willingness, tenacity, optimism, objectivity, and general chutzpah. You have to want it enough to put the time in, especially when you don’t see results right away.
The goal shouldn’t be to lose weight; it should be to keep it off as part of a healthy lifestyle. Your Author Attitude should fuel your author lifestyle and help maintain it over the course of your career. In Nina’s case, the moment we decided to work together, we worked up a long-term hybrid plan of over a dozen books that will eventually lead her to her goal. Ignoring the fact that she’s already a best-selling author, award-winning blogger, successful author coach, entrepreneur, (the list goes on), she’s always looking to improve, and I’m always looking for ways to help her do so. Right now, we’re working on a project that involves retooling and expanding some of her previously self-published work, and she gleefully pointed out that she is a much better writer now than when she started the project a few years ago. And folks, she isn’t done growing. None of you are. And that’s exactly what’s going to help you get where you need to be.
