In my last blog post, I shared my first five tips for serious teen writers—from a serious teen writer! This post is a continuation of that one where I’ll be sharing five more tips! And remember, although these tips are specifically geared towards serious teen writers, they are still applicable to all writers. Without further ado, let’s get started!
#6 Join a writing community
Writing is a solitary task and can be quite lonely at times. It definitely felt that way for me when I first started out. But this can easily be fixed by joining a community of other writers! There are plenty of them you can join online and I can’t overstate their importance.
By joining an online community of writers, you have a group of people who just get it. They’ll be there to cheer you on, encourage you, answer your questions, bounce ideas off of and sometimes even give you feedback on your writing.
Joining a writing community was one of the biggest moments of growth in my writing journey, which is why I highly recommend becoming a part of one.
Don’t forget to make sure to do your research before joining one!
Here are some suggestions for online writing communities: (Some of these are free and some of them are paid)
The Young Writer’s Workshop (My top suggestion!)
The Kingdom Pen Forum
The Story Embers Forum
Hope*Writers
Writing organizations such as the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) or the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW)
#7 Build a writing habit
Just like in many other parts of life, with writing, consistency is key. Which is why building a writing habit is super important even if you don’t have a lot of time in your week. Maybe you can only write one day a week or maybe you can write every day, it doesn’t matter—the importance is in the consistency.
First of all, this is how you make progress in your writing. If you’re only writing here and there, it’ll take you forever to finish writing your book (or whatever part of the process you may be in). If you’re writing on a regular basis, you’ll be able to achieve your goals faster.
Secondly, it helps with writer’s block. A lot of writers only write when they feel inspired. They get a spark of an idea and run with it until they get bored. Then they stop writing for weeks or even months—but this is not a sustainable nor smart approach. It’s inevitable that you will face rough patches in your writing journey. There will be times when you have no motivation to write or have no idea what to even write about. But consistency is so important because it can help you push through these difficult times.
#8 Get a mentor
Getting a mentor was one of the best decisions of my writing journey. The personal feedback and guidance was so crucial to my growth as a writer.
First of all, what is a mentor? A mentor is someone ahead of you in your writing journey who will be there to hold your hand at whatever part of the writing process you’re at, whether it be writing your first book, or publishing your tenth. A mentor answers any question you have (to the best of their ability) gives feedback on your writing.
But how do you find a mentor? Well, when you’re looking for a mentor, you need to be sure of a few things. First, as I said earlier, they have to be someone who is ahead of you in their writing journey—they should have more experience than you. Second, they should have enough time to be an adequate mentor to you. Third, you must make sure you trust this person and their capabilities.
To find someone like this, first consider the people you know, whether online or in real life. Now, not everyone knows someone in person who could be a potential mentor, so the online option is a bit more realistic. Do you have any writing friends who are ahead of you in their writing? A great way to find someone like this is when you join a writing community! There are also people, such as authors, editors, or literary agents, who offer paid mentorship services. This is actually how I found my writing mentor, Tessa Emily Hall, who offers mentorship for young writers on her website.
#9 Refine your writing process
This tip is one I haven’t heard a ton of people talk about but I think it’s really important. The reason is because refining your writing process can make it more efficient.
If you’re serious about writing, you’re probably planning on publishing eventually. And once you get published, the writing timeline moves much faster. When you sign a book contract, you are promising to complete your book by a specific date, which is why it’s important that you’ve gotten your writing process refined. Lots of writers spend years on their first book, but then when they have to write their second book in nine months, they don’t know what to do.
The best way I can recommend refining your writing process is by going through the cycle of writing a book a few times. Try different methods out and see what works for you. This way you can see how long it takes you to complete a book and focus on improving your speed and spending your writing time more efficiently, which means not spending insane amounts of time on only one part of the process. This will help you not feel rushed when you’re on contract in the future.
#10 Remember why you write
Writing can be tough. It’s inevitable that there will be times where you face writer’s block, self-doubt, negative feedback and times where you’re tempted to just give up. This is why remembering why you write is so important—so you don’t give in to these things and let them drag you down. It will help you remain focused and inspired.
Your reason doesn’t have to be anything unique or earth shattering. It can simply be the fact that you love stories and you love writing them.
You can write your reason down on a piece of paper or on a document in your phone. This way, whenever you’re feeling discouraged or down, you can come back to your reason and remember why you write.
Doing this has helped me in some of my toughest times and I know it can help you too.
That’s it! Those are my next five tips for serious teen writers. I hope you’ve learned something valuable and as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Until next time,
Kayleigh Idea