6 Common Traits of Successful Fiction Authors

Thought experiment for the day: Let’s call your present state You 1.0. Imagine a future version of yourself, You 2.0, a very successful author, climbing toward the top of Wikipedia’s list of Best-Selling Fiction Authors.

Why is You 2.0 so much more successful than You 1.0? Perhaps the 2.0 version developed new traits, new approaches to the craft. What might these traits be, and how can You 1.0 attain them?

Vivian Giang and Robert Greene might show us. Ms. Giang wrote a blog post summarizing some aspects of Mr. Greene’s book Mastery. Greene interviewed and researched those he considered masters in their fields, and came up with six common traits or habits that differentiated those people from others.

Greene’s analysis considered masters across a wide variety of fields, but I’ll concentrate on fiction writing. What follows are the six traits from Ms. Giang’s wonderful post, put in my own words and geared toward the craft of writing.

1. Bleed and weep over your keyboard

That’s my way of suggesting you should have a passion for writing. You should care about it, love it. You should miss it when not engaged in it. You 2.0 thinks about writing nearly all the time.

How might You 1.0 develop this trait? According to Greene, you should look deep inside yourself, perhaps using a journal to discover and explore your strongest feelings.

2. Grow rhinoceros skin

This means to stop caring so much what other people think of you. Remember, You 2.0 is one of the greatest authors of all time, so is quite a bit different from everyone else. That sets up You 2.0 for criticism, for derision. Does You 2.0 care? Nope. That version of you uses others’ disparagement as a prod for future improvement, not as an excuse to slink into a pool of self-pity.

How did You 2.0 grow rhinoceros skin? You 2.0 learned not to take criticism personally. You 2.0 values the craft of writing far more than the opinions of others.

3. Forge new calf-paths

Here, I’m referring to the poem “The Calf-Path” by Sam Foss. Don’t let your brain get stale. Think differently. Carve out and explore new mental routes. This is and especially valuable attribute for a fiction author, who must get into the minds of a variety of characters.

You 2.0 developed this habit through constant striving to: learn new things, meet new people, study new fields, try new activities, and read books in unfamiliar genres.

4. Outsmart your smartphone

When did that phone become your boss? When it rings or vibrates, do you feel an overwhelming urge to answer it, no matter what you’re doing? And after you answer, do you take the time to wander the tangents of social media, check email, catch up on news?

You 1.0 can break this bad habit by going without the phone for a day or more. Just turn it off. Funny how life will still go on, and you’ll concentrate better on what you’re doing. Remember trait 1 above: you love writing more than you love your smartphone.

5. Go to your focus cave

Great authors find a place, a time of day, a mental state, where they wall off the world and become one with their writing. Within that private niche, they become laser-focused on writing, and words flow with little effort. Here, no distractions tempt them, no interruptions disturb their work. Their life isn’t about reacting; it’s about creating.

This focus cave is different for everybody. You 2.0 found it by experimenting with different routines in different surroundings before discovering the one that worked best.

6. Push beyond success

After an author gets a book published and enjoys some earnings, there’s a strong urge to build on that success by writing a similar book. After all, that’s what the publisher wants, and what readers seem to want. That’s just resting on laurels.

A truly great author such as You 2.0 will avoid that comfort-zone thinking and strike out in a different direction. Challenge yourself. Keep growing as a writer.

There you have it. Six attainable traits that may well propel you from You 1.0 to You 2.0. Good luck! Still holding at Version 1.1, I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe

Don’t Refuse Your Muse

Is your brain in a rut? If so, you’re not alone. Today I’ll examine this tendency and suggest what you can do about it.

For all its desirable features, the human brain suffers from a love of the familiar and a fear of the unknown. This served as a good survival trait for our ancestors in their world, but it’s no advantage for a writer today.

Dont refuse museThis hard-wired preference probably prevents many people from becoming writers in the first place, since that can be a scary unknown. Even for those of you who’ve chosen to writers, this unfortunate brain feature keeps you using the same vocabulary words, writing about the same topics in the same genres, writing stories with the same themes and using very similar characters. It thwarts your creative urge, putting you at war with your muse.

As I’ve said before, your muse gets bored with the familiar and seeks the new and fresh. She grabs your arm and pulls you away from the safe and the known, beckoning you to explore the untrodden path. Her brain is wired in a different way.

Perhaps you disagree, thinking you don’t suffer from the malady I’ve described. You deny being a creature of habit who rushes to the familiar and avoids the unknown. Fine. Here’s your test. Tonight, before going to bed, hide your toothbrush. Let’s see how Mr. or Ms. Creativity handles things the next morning. Good luck!

For a great illustration of the problem, I encourage you to read “The Calf Path” by Sam Walter Foss. This poem paints an amusing metaphor of how our brains work.

Advertising Director Gina Sclafani wrote about dealing with the phenomenon. I find it interesting how she thought at first the task would be easy, since she prided herself on being open-minded. Then she well describes the difficulty, the inner resistance, to any steps outside the mind’s comfort zone. In the end, she’s glad she did, because the rewards are great, but she warns it is a journey pitting one part of your mind against a powerful counteracting part.

Here’s a three-step method you could try as a writer to push yourself out of your comfort zone. I’ll illustrate it with story genres, but it could also work with characters, themes, settings, style, or any aspect of story-writing in which you’re stuck.

1. Make a list of story genres you’d never consider writing about. Include the ones you find stupid, abhorrent, unseemly, etc. It’s no big deal, right? After all, you’re never going to write in any of these genres.

2. Spend five to ten minutes thinking through each genre on your list. Think about each one as follows: “I’ll never write in this genre, of course, but if I were to do so, here’s the story I’d write…”   You needn’t write down any of these ideas, just think through them.

3. Now let some time pass. A few days, weeks, or even months. This allows your muse to do her thing. You might well find she’s yanking on your arm and leading you down an unfamiliar path toward writing in one of those unwanted genres.

A similar thing happened to me. I knew I’d never write in the horror genre. Then I noticed a publisher seeking stories for an anthology to be called Dead Bait. I dismissed it, but my muse didn’t. She worked on the idea for a story she made me write called “Blood in the River.” I’m still not a horror story writer, but it felt good to get out of the comfort zone.

One final thought. At one point in their lives, each of history’s greatest contributors (think of da Vinci, Shakespeare, Bach, Edison, Einstein, etc.) had to leave a comfort zone in order to develop his or her eventual talents. Imagine the loss to mankind if one of them hadn’t taken that step? What if you could become a popular, successful, or timeless writer if only you stretch your mind in a direction it doesn’t want to go?

You’ll have to excuse me. This calf-path I’m walking along is nice, but some woman wearing a chiton is tugging at my sleeve. “What’s that? Where? But that’s off the path and looks terrifying to—

                                                                   Poseidon’s Scribe”