How to Find Happiness As a Writer

Happiness in writing? Is that a joke? You'd be surprised. You can find plenty of happiness as a writer. Writing itself can open certain doors in your mind, and being creative in general can be close to bliss at times. However, there will be some hard patches for you as a writer. This piece will provide you a map to get through them.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Patience
• Time
• Somewhere to write
• Achievable goals

1. Write What You Want:The one plus of being a writer is you can almost always choose what subjects you want to write about. Magazine writers pitch assignments. Online writers come up with interesting takes on SEO articles. Fiction writers explore exactly what subjects they want. Even copywriters often pick which field they will be writing in. Follow your interests and hobbies when choosing the path of your writing career, and the work will be a lot more fulfilling.

2. Read Books by the Greats:After you’ve chosen exactly what to write (or at least thought about it), read some books by the greats in the genre you've chosen. Want to be a literary novel master? Read the likes of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Want to be a screenwriter? Try "Story" by Robert McKee. The list could go on in all fields. Choose something that will inspire you.

3. Believe in Yourself:Writing can be painful. A freelance career, for example, can take a while to get going. Magazines decline submission after submission; online sites stop accepting articles; the blogging world goes downhill. Sometimes the road will be rough, but you need to believe you can accomplish your dream to succeed. Belief in yourself and your talent is the only way to find true happiness in writing.

4. Find Satisfaction:Some say writers should never be satisfied and should keep chasing that next big story. But if you wrote a few articles, a few thousand words of your novel, and even did some journaling, why shouldn't you be satisfied? Finding peace with yourself at the end of the day or week is the only way to find happiness as a writer. If you are never satisfied with your output, you are rarely happy. And if you can gain satisfaction from all your hard work, finally becoming published is a bonus.

5. Working Through Tough Times:You will experience writing depression, or writer's block, at some point. All writers do. You may find writing through tough times is the answer, no matter how much you don’t want to. Sit down in front of your computer and force yourself to get a few sentences out. Eventually, you will work through your depression, and you will be glad for all your hard work.

Tips & Warnings

• Ready to start a writing career? Read some of the top writers in your field and compare your writing to theirs. Study how they construct sentences and develop their characters. This doesn’t mean plagiarizing; it just means learning from successful writers.
• Start small with your writing ambitions. Set small quotas you can reach every day. When you are ready to go for more, you are coming close to being a happy, successful writer.
• Artists often go through depression more than anyone else. It can be hard to keep working when you are failing at every turn, which can happen.

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[durang77]

on 7/7/2009 great advice--thanks

[wordster]

on 7/6/2009 Encouraging words. Thanks for writing this.

[RFerriANP]

on 7/6/2009 If you want to write do one simple thing - READ.

[Alisiane]

on 9/27/2008 These are really good tips that those of us with a passion for the written word can really relate to.

I imagine that for someone who's passions reside elsewhere, this wouldn't be the great read that it was for me, but I likewise would never be able to get all gaga over an article about home-improvement projects or kyaking....and to each his own, but this article was a pleasure for me to read. Thanks for posting this!

[WriterGig]

on 5/29/2008 Good tips ... I love writing. It's so nice to want to do my work every day. I recently started making enough from writing that I quit my long time English grading job. It was wonderful to break free!