Follow These Steps (From an Unpublished Author) To Write a Bestseller

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Gotcha with that clickbait title, didn’t I? I’m in the middle of writing my very first novel, so sorry to say, I have zero steps to give you to become a bestseller. But, as I’ve been spending some amount of time building up my following on Threads and as I’ve read books on writing, I’ve been bombarded with tips on how to write a book and, more importantly, how to write a book that can sell. 

There’s been a lot of online debate about the value of creating your own personal brand before you even think about shopping your book to the big publishers. I won’t lie, I’ve spent my time slowly, painfully building up a social media audience partially because of this advice. But, I’ve also liked posts, interacted with authors, posted my own thoughts on writing because I also genuinely enjoy interacting with people. It makes my solitary writing practice feel a little bit less lonely.

What I’ve learned as I’ve ingested so much of this online writing advice is that someone that is trying to sell you something, including their own personal brand, has that one piece of magical advice that is sure to land you that deal with an agent, sure to get your book over the finish line, sure to make your characters compelling, sure to hook readers in your very first line. Somehow, they all magically know how you can write the best book of your life, and if you don’t follow that advice, you’re doomed to never get out of that slush pile quagmire.

A friend, who has already published five books, recently posted about the ability of all of this swirling advice to cause you to stall with anxiety. If that could happen to an experienced writer like her, imagine the new writer, like me. Well, you don’t have to imagine, because I can tell you that the overwhelming amount of advice can be downright paralyzing. 

I stalled on writing my book because I thought I needed an outline first. And then I thought that I could only write what I knew, so needed to do massive amounts of research first. And then I thought I needed to make sure that I had exactly the five essential plot points of any good narrative or my book would be a bust. And then I thought I needed to have my book start in the middle of the action, because no one wants to start reading a book in the middle of an expository dump. And then I thought, I need to get rid of that prologue that I’d written because everyone hates prologues. 

Now, a lot of these “rules” are good rules of thumb. If your novel is all exposition with no rising action and no climax, well, then you might just bore the pants off of any readers. And a lot of the folks giving out this advice have the experience of reading through mountains of dreck, so they’re trying to do you (and themselves) a favor by doling out the advice they’d like to see happen to the books submitted to them.

But, a lot of these folks are just trying to sell something. And, at the end of the day, my personal goal is to finish and complete my novel because it is a lifelong goal that I’ve had. I want to do this for me. It may very well turn out to be a completely shitty book because it may not follow all of these rules. But I’m writing at this moment in my life for me. And I’m learning how to pick and choose to follow the advice that works and makes sense for me. Today, for example, I just attended a lunchtime writer’s session. Stephen King in his book, On Writing, didn’t see the point in writer’s workshops. They just didn’t work for him. But, this particular session worked for me. The ladies I met during the session were smart and fascinating, and the time we spent working on writing prompts was invigorating and inspiring. I’m looking forward to our next session.

So, today, my advice to you is to take the oceans of writing advice out there with, yes, a grain of salt. Take what makes sense and works for you, and try not to let it paralyze you in your own writing endeavors.