The Long Road to Becoming a Published Author

People often ask my how I became a published author. I could list the specific steps I took, but I don’t think that would be especially helpful to anyone. There is no secret pathway that leads to successfully becoming an author. Everyone has their own unique journey to fulfilling a dream like publishing a book. My story will be different than yours.

That said, there are some key strategies that helped me achieve my dream:

Master the skills.

Any dream requires mastering skills, whether the goal is winning a race at the Olympics, publishing a book, or harvesting honey from your beehive. In my case that meant learning things like how to write good descriptions and dialogue, and how to structure a novel. Skills can be learned with effort and diligence, so never let a lack of skills keep you from pursuing a dream. Just get busy and start mastering them.

Get to know the industry.

You don’t want to make amateur mistakes, and the only way to avoid them is to learn what the pros in your field know. In my case, I needed to learn about the publishing industry: everything from how to format a manuscript, to writing a book proposal, to how and where to find an agent. Whatever field your dream resides in, you can educate yourself on what it takes to be successful in that arena.

Network.

I’ll be the first to admit that networking isn’t my strength. I’m the sort of person who is perfectly happy to stay home alone all week, talking to no one but my husband and the cat. But you can’t achieve big dreams in a vacuum. In order to accomplish the two points above, I needed to get involved in writing groups, attend conferences, and otherwise begin to interact with other writers of all skill levels.

Whatever your goals, you need to learn from those who are more experienced than ourselves. Begin small. Join a group. Attend a conference and talk with the person next to you in line. You never know when that person can help you with a project years later.

Do it afraid.

I didn’t wake up one day and decide I was award-winning mystery author material. It took me years of dabbling and hanging around writers to even call myself a writer. And it took a huge amount of courage to attend a big out-of-town writers’ conference on my own. Those were some of the hurdles I needed to overcome on my way to authordom.

Whenever we face a big dream, the doubts creep in and imposter syndrome rears its ugly head. I succeeded in my dream because I didn’t let my fears and doubts stop me from trudging onward. I didn’t always believe in myself and my writing abilities, but I kept writing anyway. You can keep going, too.

Get support.

I wouldn’t have been able to keep going despite my doubts if I didn’t have others who supported me in my dream. I needed friends and family who encouraged me to keep working, peers who gave me feedback and support, and mentors who saw my potential and helped me nurture it. Whatever your dreams, you need others to support you along the way, especially on the days you face failure, rejection, disappointments, or doubts.

My convoluted journey to becoming a published author

I’ve made several big career moves along the way to becoming an author. I wasn’t one of those kids who grew up dreaming about writing a book. English was never my favorite class, or even my third-favorite. So I majored in mechanical engineering and took a job at a manufacturing plant. From there I switched to stay-at-home mom, then a substitute teacher and a high school play director. While none of those careers gave me any writing credentials, each one added to my list of life experiences and gave me specific skills that come in handy as a writer.

While I’d been dabbling with writing for years, it was only after my youngest went to college that I decided to take writing seriously and actually try to write a novel. After years of mastering the craft and writing several practice novels, I wrote a publishable manuscript and began the process of finding an agent and a publisher. A few years later, Death and a Crocodile became a reality.

If you’d asked me five years ago if I thought I was capable of writing an award-winning mystery, I’d have given a rueful shake of my head and said, “I wish.” And yet, here I am a published author at the age of 57. What can you achieve, no matter your age?

Attributes that have helped me

In any career or pursuit, mastering the skills is only part of the battle. We each have certain inner qualities, or attributes that play a part in our success. Here are some I think are important to be successful as a writer.

• Imagination: The ability to come up with new ideas, new twists on old ideas, and new ways of looking at things. Being able to think outside the box and employ unorthodox solutions. Experts say there’s only a handful of basic plots, so what makes any story original and worth reading is what comes out of our imagination.
• Self-efficacy: The belief in one’s ability to achieve a goal without a clear road map. Writing is a solo activity with no boss telling you what to do. Writers—like other entrepreneurs—need to be self-starters, self-disciplined, and able to solve problems on their own.
• Teachability: The ability to accept correction and learn from mistakes. Mastery of skills only comes with constructive feedback. If you aren’t willing to admit mistakes, follow advice, and try new things, you won’t grow into your potential—as a writer or in any other endeavor.
• Courage: The ability to act in spite of fear. Some of the places where I needed courage along my journey include: Allowing others to read and critique my writing. Showing my writing to a professional. Submitting a piece of writing to a magazine. Reading my work out loud to peers. Going to conferences without knowing anybody. I could go on, but you get the idea. Nobody achieves big dreams without facing fears.
• Perseverance and grit: The ability to keep doing something despite setbacks and difficulties. It’s a fact of life in the writing world that you’ll have your work rejected, even when the writing is brilliant. There are many examples of bestselling authors whose work was rejected many times before a publisher finally accepted it. Writers need a thick skin and the grit to keep trying until they find the right home for a piece of writing.
• Self-knowledge and vulnerability: Writers need to tap into their own life experiences and write from the emotions those experiences created. We must write from a place of emotional honesty, adapting our own emotional experiences to those of our characters. In doing so, we’re opening up our deepest selves to our readers. This is what Hemingway was talking about when he said,

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Ernest Hemingway

And on that happy note I’ll wrap up this lengthy discussion of my journey from math-loving engineer to award-winning author. Click the links to learn more about me and about my award-winning mystery, Death and a Crocodile.

Resources for learning about the craft and business of writing

There are tons of blogs and websites out there with helpful information about how to write a book and how to get it published. Here are a few that I have found helpful:

• Almost an Author
• Serious Writer
• The Write Conversation
• Helping Writers Become Authors
• Author Media
• DIY MFA
• Reedsy