Sometimes all it takes is magic

Sometimes magic is working harder than imagined possible

Sometimes all it takes is magic
Photo by Joshua Newton / Unsplash

I read Hugh Howey's Writing Insights series recently. I wrote about it too - about when to write.

One insight that he had at the very beginning was about who a successful writer is:

A successful writer is one who finishes what they start while striving to improve their craft.

Later on, he also talks about being the hardest work, completing things, publishing things, before you start worrying about marketing.

Wait until you have five or six novels published before you start to spread the word. Pour every spare minute and every ounce of energy into the writing while you can.

This is not common advice. A lot of the advice on the self-publish wiki, for example, is about marketing. A lot of the posts on the sub are about marketing. People asking for advice, people giving advice.


Recently, I also read Allen Pike's An Unreasonable Amount of Time.

He talks about a similar thing, about craft taking time.

It can be difficult, psychologically, to commit yourself to spend an extreme amount of time and attention towards a goal, no matter how worthwhile. Doing impossible things feels, well, impossible.

There was a particular quote by Teller, which stayed with me.

Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.

The two things complement each other well.

Being a successful writer means working harder at this than any one else and improving myself.

Which, practically means two things:

  1. Read more. Learn from these things. Whether books - fiction or non-fiction, or articles.
  2. Write more. Meaning books. Meaning finish the draft.