IN TODAY’S ISSUE:
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What led Colleen Hoover to stop writing
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Why multipassionate writers must pursue mastery
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220+ publications that pay $1 a word (or more)
FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
Happy Thursday, everyone!
Colleen Hoover, the bestselling author who once had six books simultaneously on the top 10 of the New York Times bestseller list, has stopped writing.
Hoover started out as an indie author, self-publishing two or more books a year. Her books were successful immediately, and she was soon scooped up by traditional publishing. Hoover never really stopped indie publishing—she wrote what she wanted and when publishers didn’t want certain books, she just launched them herself.
During Covid, Hoover became a household name. Multiple books on the bestseller lists, movie deals, multiple book deals, celebrities who adored her work, millions of fans, and adoring readers.
And haters.
Dismissive reviews in the press. Personal attacks. Constant criticism. Influencers who dumped on her just to get views. Opinions about every aspect of her personal life, her past, her writing, her parenting.
In a profile in Texas Monthly, Hoover says, “Before, release days were kind of fun because I felt like I was writing for the people that love my books, but now it’s almost like I’m writing for the people who are just waiting to put out that negative video of my books, because it gets views. It’s just the popular thing, to hate, right now, and I wish I didn’t let that get in my head, but I do. Because at this point I’m like: It doesn’t sound fun anymore. Release days don’t sound fun. So I’ve been dragging my feet. It used to be so exciting, and now it’s not. And that’s the saddest part.”
No matter where you are in your career, you’ve either experienced something like this or feared it.
It’s why the mindset piece in all this is so incredibly important.
There are parts of the writing life that aren’t fun to begin with.
There are parts of the writing life that stop being fun after a while.
There are parts of the writing life that brought you to this career that have now changed due to success, or failure, or the changing marketplace.
We talk about how important it is to do the inner work when you’re struggling, but I want to remind you today that it’s just as important to build that muscle when you’re succeeding. Because that’s when the real sabotage happens. That’s when you finally have the financial resources to walk away from everything you’ve built.
Your writing career will change. That much is a given.
Make sure you build the internal resources you need to not just survive, but thrive, when it happens.
Enjoy the issue!
Natasha Khullar Relph
Editor, The Wordling
WHY YOU WORK ON MULTIPLE PROJECTS AT ONCE
In my first year as a freelance journalist, I sent out five pitches a day, every single day. Instead of getting stuck on one story idea, one pitch, and one publication, I found multiple ideas, wrote multiple pitches, and blasted them out to dozens of markets.
What this allowed me to do was build mastery. Quickly.
That mastery in pitching has served me for my entire career. It’s allowed me to bring in high-paying assignments quickly when money has been low. It’s allowed me to get multiple agent offers for my books. Even though my novel didn’t eventually sell, a big five publisher wrote to tell me that my book’s query letter was among the best she’d ever seen.
I know the ins and outs of what makes a pitch sell, not because I have any more information than the next person. It’s because I developed an instinct through practice. I did it over and over and over again until it was predictable and boring and second nature.
I did the same for my nonfiction books. I wrote and published seven books within a year. I knew what my audience wanted, I knew the style, the tone, and the format, and with each successive book, I got better. Which means the process also got faster and easier.
Because novels were always a side project, I never gave myself the opportunity to truly master the writing process, letting years go by between each one.
I was torn between indie and traditional, so I got very good at both, but never really committed to one. Therefore, I never elevated the publishing side of things to a level of mastery.
I can see the difference now between the way I approached my freelance and my publishing career.
With one, I achieved mastery. With the other, I didn’t. Which is why one became a solid foundation on which a lot of my other work is built. And the other is still in progress.
In my (free) masterclass, The 100K Blueprint for Multipassionate Writers, I talk about this concept of layering. When you approach each aspect of your career as a skill to be mastered, it becomes the foundation for whatever comes next.
I believe writers can—and should—have multipassionate careers that explore all facets of their personality. But you can’t be in the building stages for several at the same time.
I know this. I’ve learned it through hard, bitter experience. And yet, I still resisted committing to one project at a time. You probably do, too. Here’s why:
- You fear that none of them will work out, so you’re subconsciously giving yourself security by doing a bunch of different things and creating a back-up.
- You’re self sabotaging because you fear failure. Or success. Or both.
- You’re afraid of being identified with and tied down to this one thing.
- You identify as a rebel. Your highest value is freedom. You see committing to one project as a containment of your creativity.
- You’re easily bored, and so you need to constantly find new and exciting things to do.
The last one is especially true for a lot of people in this community. It’s why so many of us become freelancers, hopping from one subject to another because it’s fascinating, it’s entertaining, and it keeps us intellectually stimulated.
However, if you’re someone who’s easily bored, you may not realize how incredibly fortunate you are. You may think that the solution to this “problem” is that you need to continuously find new things to do. The truth is, this aspect of your personality allows you to get to mastery much faster than the people around you because being bored easily prevents stagnation.
IF you commit to one thing, you’ll find it easier to jump to new strategies, try new things, experiment continuously, and figure out successful formulas a lot faster.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in my career is that while I could certainly have it all and do it all, I couldn’t build it all at the same time. Focusing on building one thing until it’s easy and effortless has allowed me to create more space and freedom in my life in the last year than the previous five years combined.
And so it’s a lesson I had to come share with you.
RESOURCES FOR YOUR WRITING CAREER:
🗂️ [DOWNLOAD]: Ever been told there are no well-paying markets left for freelance journalists? Here’s a list of 228 markets that prove otherwise.
🎥 [MASTERCLASS]: You don’t have to be an award-winning journalist to write fantastic pitches that bring in assignments. You need to know what your story is, why readers of this particular publication will want to read it, and how you’re planning on telling it. It’s simpler than it sounds. And I’ll show you exactly how to do it.
📖 [BOOK]: In The Freelance Writer’s Guide to Making Six Figures, we’re not going to talk about freelancing basics. This book is intended to get you from being a freelancer who makes a living, perhaps even a good living, to someone who makes six figures a year.
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