Honorée Corder
Many years ago, one of my mentors echoed something I’d heard from life coach Tony Robbins in my early twenties: you are cause, not effect.
Tony said it like this: the past doesn’t equal the future.
I took both to mean: I am the driver, I am ultimately in control, and I can be successful at whatever I undertake. Additionally, I’m not at anyone else’s mercy, and the best is yet to come.
There are a few things I wish I’d known when I was starting my writing career twenty years ago. These are the practical practices, action steps, and advice you can use, lean into, and even return to as needed as you embrace higher levels of success and prosperity in your writing career.
- Sometimes you need to slow down to speed up. Before you can hit top writing speeds and gain ultimate momentum, you’ll need to let go of anything that slows you down. This could include people, things, or even a tendency to procrastinate. Get organized, get focused, and then get going.
- Build your protocol. Chefs practice mise en place, meaning they put everything they need, in the correct amounts, in place prior to cooking. Define what needs to be in place for you to write as your best self. Decide who you need to become to build the writing business vision you’ve been holding in your mind. Focus on your personal growth, and your professional growth will follow suit.
- Your writing isn’t an avocado. Great writing doesn’t go bad; done well, the words you write can live on and bring income for many years. Take the time to produce quality work. The best news is the more you write, the more you’ll write—the better your writing will get and the faster it will come. Always choose quality over quantity, and know that eventually it will lead you to produce quality quickly.
- Write your next book. Every time I publish a new book, my back list sells more. I published nine books in 2023, and my backlist sales grew by over 3,000 percent. Just keep writing.
- Don’t half-ass it. It’s much easier to talk about writing, think about writing, and wonder how you’re going to earn a living from your writing than it is to actually write—until you make it your habit. There are a lot of people putting in minimal effort and expecting maximum results. Half-assing anything in your career will not cut it. Give it your all, and remember: you’re going to need to use your #WholeAss.
- Find people who encourage and inspire you. A mentor can compress decades of learning into days, providing a path for you to follow and helping you peek around corners with any big business decision you make (read: avoid costly time and money mistakes). A peer group of others with similar goals and visions will cheer you on and lift you up. If you want to go far, you can do it alone. But if you want to go far quickly, surround yourself with others to exponentially multiply your results—and your ultimate happiness.
One final thought: you can have, do, be, and create anything and everything you want to, and I want you to only listen to those who tell you that. Now, let’s go do some writing!
Honorée Corder
