8 Things You Need to Be a Successful Essay Writer

Grüezi, essay writers. Over the weekend, Writer Abroad taught a course at the Zurich Writers Workshop called Miniature Memoir: How to Write and Publish Personal Essays.

Here are eight things you need to become a successful writer:

One

Excellent command of language

This is obvious, but if you can’t write a sentence and don't care to revise it between 4-104 times, you need not apply to be an essay writer.

Two    

Discipline

Do you sit your butt in a chair almost every day and write? There’s no lightning bolt, so if you wait for it, you’ll be one of those writers who always dreams of being a writer but never becomes one. Treat writing like a job and it will become one. Treat writing like a hobby and it will remain a hobby.

Three

Desire

You must want to write more than anything. Why? Because almost anything else is easier, even bioengineering. A book (or sadly, even an essay) can take years to write. If you can do something else, do it. If you can’t, congrats, you’re a writer. Now sit in the chair and believe in yourself (see number four). If you don’t have discipline, all the desire in the world doesn’t matter.

Four

Strong ego

When do others believe in you? More often than not, after you first believed in yourself. Don’t be afraid to call yourself a writer—as long as you’re writing almost daily and you consider it your job—even if you’ve yet to be paid for your work. Believe and it will happen. Wait for others to approve you and it won't.

Five

Resiliency

Sorry, but rejection is a part of the writing life. If you’re not being rejected, you’re not putting your writing out there enough. And you must not only deal with rejection gracefully, you must bounce back from it. Often rejection isn’t personal, so move on fast. Rejected? Send the piece to someone else. Do it. Now.

Six

Courage

Any kind of writing takes a lot of courage—but personal essay writing and memoir probably takes the most. Because you can’t hide behind the façade of another character when the main character is you. The more personal your writing is and the more you’re scared to tell a certain story, the better it probably is. Good luck with that.

Seven

Separation from the page

You must be able to separate writing about your life from your actual life. This is very important when it comes to personal essays. Remember: when you put yourself on a page, it’s a portrayal of yourself. It is NOT you.

Eight

An ability that allows you to never read the comments

Do not click. Do not feel compelled to click. You should not care what JohnBoy123 thought about your piece. Be able to talk to the world at the same time you ignore it. Then you’ll have the courage it takes to put the next piece out there because you won’t still be questioning the comment from HeyImABitchYo about the latest piece you wrote.

What to do with writing rejections

Writer Abroad has been reading an interesting book called Rejection Proof by Jia Jiang.

It’s about an entrepreneur-turned author’s personal journey with rejection. To battle his fear of rejection, he develops 100 tasks that he believes will lead to rejection in order to learn how to deal with it.

In the middle of the book, he includes a section on writers and rejection, since no one knows rejection like an author. He lists how many times famous books were rejected by agents and publishers until finally being published. The lesson, of course, is that much of rejection is opinion. Does the person you’re asking like your idea and writing or not?

To find a person who likes your work, it can sometimes take 100 agents or publishers. In other words, it can take persistence and a lot of time. In the age of independent publishing and the tendency for big houses to only publish already-proven authors and/or celebrities, how persistent should you be? Or should you even waste your time with traditional publishers?

Writer Abroad isn’t sure she has an answer to that. She knows some authors that are purely independent and never submit to traditional publishers. She knows other authors who would never dream of self-publishing—even if their work is rejected. And then there is Writer Abroad, who is open to either and thinks there is usually a clear answer to what you should do depending on the kind of rejection you receive from big publishers.

With Writer Abroad’s first book, the feedback from traditional folks was that her market was too small. That opinion seemed consistent. The rejection wasn’t about the writing or the idea—it was about the size of the readership who would appreciate it.

She could have scrapped the book because of that. But instead, that kind of rejection led Writer Abroad to publish the book, Swiss Life: 30 Things I Wish I’d Known, through her own press. Because small markets are great for independent authors—they are easier to target and market to. And since independent authors get bigger paybacks, a book with a smaller market can still make sense for them financially even if it doesn’t for a big house.

Whether to publish after “traditional” rejection depends a lot on your project. Do you have the ability to target and reach potential readers? Do you have the money to hire a good editor and designer(s)? How set were you on having the “status” of being traditionally published? Is the writing great and have you been published enough to be able to claim that? All good questions to ask.

How to do you decide what to do with rejection?