Guest Post: The Path by Nathan Squiers

THE PATH…

It’s the longest running question on the up-and-coming’s mind and the first and most frequent question that the established will be asked: “What’s the best way to succeed as a writer?”

For as many authors as there are, however, there’s just as many answers, and, more often than not, their success story will mean very little to yours. Everyone’s heard some variation of the old line “what’s medicine for one is poison for another,” and the same rings true for any sort of career success. The simple truth is that there is no concrete answer, but there ARE steps that can be taken that, by and large, will tip the scales in your favor.

The ability to create new worlds and characters is the art of creativity, which is not something that one can necessarily learn. Like athleticism and musical talent, it’s something that an individual’s mind naturally does or does not have. It is, however, the sort of thing that can be nurtured; the sort of thing that can be trained and expanded upon. Chances are if you have the desire to write, then you’ve already got a knack for creativity.

My start came about from a silver lining in an otherwise dark storm cloud; I was in a bad frame of mind and most of my time was spent thinking about escape. The only thing that gave me a sense of control was writing, and it was through this that I started to find my strength—getting hooked on telling the story of a like-minded young man and his path to strength and confidence. After ten shaky years of writing that first book (a book that would later become ‘Crimson Shadow: Noir,” first novel in my dark urban fantasy series) I realized I’d found my calling, and I set about to know EXACTLY what to expect from that calling. I took classes in the art of crafting stories and shaping characters, I studied classic methods of storytelling and the anatomy of different plot structures, and I read… a lot.

While the first half of my story isn’t something I’d suggest to anybody, aspiring writer or not, the second half, the studying and research and reading, is most certainly a great place to start. Just like the athletes need to train and musicians need to practice, a writer needs to hone their mind to strengthen their craft. By training your mind to absorb everything around you—by asking yourself “how can what I’m seeing/hearing/experiencing be applied to my work?”—you’ll begin to “clock in” as a writer.

Unlike any other job, however, this is not the sort of career one takes vacations from. Wise literary minds have put it best as saying “a writer is either writing or getting new inspiration for their writing.”

While this may sound like a cliché, and in some cases it is, it doesn’t make it any less true. (In fact, as a writer, you’ll come to find that clichés are sometimes clichés for a reason; they’ve survived the test of time and held strong enough to earn the title.)

And therein lies the first of two crucial practices every successful writer can agree on: never stop striving to get better; never stop taking in new ideas…

Which leads me to the second, and arguably the most crucial, of the two steps: NEVER STOP WRITING!!!

So many people have come up to me upon hearing that I’m an author or approached me after panels I’ve hosted on this very subject and said essentially the same thing: “I started a book once…”

The statement always hangs in the air, for me because I’m certain there’s more they have to say, and, for them, I’m sure because they expect this to represent an accomplishment that I’m going to praise them for.

Now, make no mistake, I’m not about to go belittling all of their efforts. Getting something started is a tough thing to do… almost as tough as finishing. And therein lies the trouble—they didn’t finish what they started, and an unfinished anything is, when it all boils down to it, no different than having nothing at all.

You can’t publish an unfinished book.

You can’t sell an unfinished book.

And you can’t take pride in an unfinished book.

There are so many little reasons to stop writing—afraid that it’s not good; too tough to keep it going; got lazy; got distracted; blah blah blah—but there’s one simple-yet-challenging reason that outweighs all of them: you’ll have achieved what you set out to accomplish.

Every story deserves to be told, and, with the right care and treatment, any story can be great. Worries about whether or not a piece is good or whether or not people will read it are ill-spent at best, because at the end of the day the writer with 200 pages of completed crap still has a better piece of work than the writer who quit at page 150.

As I’ve already said: there is no single right way to become an author. Success stories, like all stories, are different for the person experiencing them. However your success may come to you, though, it can’t begin until you’ve worked towards a completed and polished manuscript.

By that point, however—provided you’ve put the blood, sweat, and tears that your work is owed—the pieces have a funny way of falling into place. 

Title: Noir (Crimson Shadow #1)

Author: Nathan Squiers

 

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