In April 2001 I realized I could write books for a living. If I put my heart into it, maybe I could even become one of the famous authors of this age, a dream shared by many others. But I didn’t know how one sets about writing a book, so I set about writing the opening sentence to what I figured would be the first of many books, and I began hunting down books on how to write a novel.

They said writing is tough, frustrating even, but they never said you could go thirteen years without getting a book published. In fact, many books on writing point out that if you write x number of words each day, you can turn out a book in one year, two tops if you’re a big procrastinator. I laughed many times at the idea that writing a novel could be hard because everything I wrote was an improvement on earlier writing and focused me more and more on one story at a time.

Those books about writing? Yeah, they forgot to say you can write and write and write and still have no published novel to show for it. It’s either you toy with the idea of writing but give it up as a childish whim, or you turn out a novel every year or two. Never this writing for a career with nothing to show for it.

Which brings me to my point: I’ve been novel-writing for thirteen years and have far few books to show for it (and absolute zero published), and what have I learned?

1. Writing is a frustrating business. If you give yourself all the time in the world to write, you’ll find you struggle to write. If you have a “side job” to provide while you establish the writing one, that job can suck the life out of your writing and even the desire to write.
2. Enthusiasm for novels comes and goes. Perhaps this is why even famous authors will tell you to get a first draft done as quick as you can. If you let your story simmer and stew, you’re likely to lose motivation, and you’re likely going to fall in love with another story idea. And the problem with that? You then have stories or novels competing for your attention and both or all of them wanting to be your debut.
3. Writing short stories can help move your writing career along but the same act can also hamper your career. Sometimes we desire so much to hit a certain word count that any writing will suffice, and story will work. But if we throw out our standards (and I don’t mean the grammar, structure side of writing) for a quicker-to-write short story, we’re putting off what we really want in order to obtain an immediate reward.
4. If, in that hypothetical sense where people are “meant” to do such-and-such with their lives, you are meant to be a writer, no matter how many times you swear off writing as a career or as a hobby even, you will find you keep coming back to it. Writing is an addiction, a productive one, but an addiction. Like an addiction, sometimes you have to learn how to live with the knowledge you’re an addict while striving to make lemonade with that sorry fact. If you can’t stay away from writing, then stop swearing it off.
5. Stay focused. Already stated in number two, this one says a lot about your writing career-potential. One story at a time or one book at a time. See it through to the end even if you write backwards and upside down. Tell the entire story that you’re trying to tell before moving onto another project. Beginning. Middle. End. If you get bored or lose all memory of where you were going because 1 week has passed by since you last wrote (and even dragons spewing down fire on you is no excuse to go that long without writing, but I’m no foreigner to justification), plow on with that story anyway. Write even though you don’t want to ruin the original spirit of the story. But write the story you began. Finish it.

This is by far not everything I have learned over the last thirteen years, but when you get to the fundamentals of writing, the most important thing about a floundering writing career is to not become discouraged. Be that brave hero you’re writing about, that one moving forward through a Mario stage because it’s impossible to go back beyond the current screen. Victory!