Advice from authors who made it

by Stacey

It's interesting to me, although perhaps not surprising, that my entries keep skewing to the children's market. Not intentional, but just what keeps catching my eye. I recently saw this piece that I thought offered some good take-away advice for aspiring authors, not only those those writing for children. I think that anytime you get a collection of published (and in this case bestselling) authors in the same room, it's worth listening to what they have to say. One thing that's worth mentioning is that none of these writers set out to become bestselling children's book authors, and I think most of us (see all of our posts at DGLM about how we got to where we are) take a number of different paths before finding the one that's really right.

Thinking about the way to maintain and extend a successful career once it's been established is an interesting conversation that continued the discussion. The ability to be flexible in terms of category and ride the market waves is one important comment that's worth paying attention to, and the TOWEL acronym created by Marilyn Singer is comprised of a clever checklist of reminders to stay the course (Talent, Optimism, Widespread Interests, Endurance, and Luck).

I'd be curious to hear from our readers what they feel are the mantras that they keep coming back to in order to stay focused and motivated during the inevitable ups and downs of a writing life.