How Do You Find Success as a Writer?

      Now that NaNoWriMo has ended...how did you all do who participated?  Personally, I didn't participate because I know NaNoWriMo would never work for me.  I'm generally a writer who writes every day but I only have a target of writing 500 words a day.  So for the month of November, I wrote 15,310 words.  If you participated in NaNoWriMo and didn't win don't feel bad.  The main thing is that you wrote something, maybe even more than you've been writing normally.  If that is the case, pat yourself on the back for that.  
 
     Those of you who participated in NaNoWriMo and won by writing 50,000 words...CONGRATULATIONS.  Now I hope you will continue writing this book to its completion and hopefully get it published.

     The thing I always hate hearing is when someone wins NaNoWriMo and then does nothing with what they wrote.  I think the thing you have to decide is did you just enter NaNoWriMo just to see if you could write 50,000 words in one month, or was your intent to actually write a book and finish it to its completion so that you could go on to publish it?

     I guess my question here is what this article is truly about:  "How Do You Find Success as a Writer"?  For some of you just winning NaNoWriMo will be one way you find success but for others, it may be something totally different.

     I have to admit for me it was finishing a book to its completion and publishing it for the world to read.  Of course, I have admitted in previous articles that I have struggled with finding my reading audience.  Anyway, what I have come to discover recently is that I truly find success as a writer just knowing that what I have written and published will live on long after I am gone as long as I don't unpublish my books.  So in a way, it is sort of my legacy for future generations.

     I wonder if authors from long ago felt this way.  Let's face it we have many classic stories today and the authors have now departed this life.  At this time of year, one classic is told in many different ways and that story is:  "A Christmas Carole" by Charles Dickens.  I'm sure Charles Dickens at the time of writing "A Christmas Carol" had no idea what a classic story this would become one day.

     So how do you find success as a writer?  (Here is a video below that I found on youtube from a vlogger who basically summed it up for her).

     However you find success as a writer, I think the main thing that any writer can do to find success is to just keep writing and never give up.  As the young woman in the vlog stated above, "Success isn't determined by how lucky you are but by how badly you want it?"  I couldn't have said it better!

     In my next blog article, I am going to discuss the topic that a lot of writer's wonder about when starting a book and that is, where should I start my story? 

     So stay tuned!