It takes more than words to make a writer great.
A great writer is selfless. He doesn’t look to his own needs, but finds a way to serve others.
A great writer is a servant. If you’re going to take your writing to the next level — to be truly great — you’re going to have to learn to serve other people.
The number one question I hear writers ask is: “Do I have to have a brand?”
It may come in the form of, “Do I really need to worry about marketing?” Or, “Why should I worry about self-promotion?”
But really, they’re all saying the same thing: “I don’t want to do the work.”
It’s a subtle form of arrogance to believe your work can stand on its own without any help.
Great writers and workers and craftspeople are great not because of talent, but because of one crucial ingredient they have that you don’t: Perseverance.
They know how to stick things through, how to achieve and move on to the next project. They understand that until they publish their work, it doesn’t matter.
Writing is an art. And all good art pushes buttons. It pokes and prods, makes people uncomfortable. This is why we need art, why writing makes a difference. But that’s not to say that makes it any easier.
Listen. You need to quit screwing around. Stop playing it safe and provoke us, already.
Stephen King calls it “killing your darlings.” I call it cutting the crap. Bottom line: There’s a lot of junk that gets in the way of good writing. And you have to kill it. Get rid of it. Totally annihilate it.
If you are going to write well, you must make your writing clean. You must get rid of the clutter.
Bestselling author and creativity expert Jeff Goins dismantles the myth that being creative is a hindrance to success by revealing how an artistic temperament is, in fact, a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
For centuries, the myth of the starving artist has dominated our culture, seeping into the minds of creative people and stifling their pursuits. But the truth is that the world’s most successful artists did not starve. In fact, they capitalized on the power of their creative strength. In Real Artists Don’t Starve, Jeff Goins debunks the myth of the starving artist by unveiling the ideas that created it and replacing them with fourteen rules for artists to thrive.
