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The Productive Writer: Publish Your Work · The Daily Writer

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider Podcast, where we bring you tips and inspiration each day to help you build habits for writing success.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: For more resources, including your free Daily Rider Starter Kit, visit DailyWriterLife.com.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: This week we've been talking about ways to be a more productive writer.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've often talked here on the podcast about the importance of finishing a first draft of your book quickly.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm not saying that you should be sloppy or rush through things.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: You should make your book or any writing for that matter as good as it possibly can be.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact of the matter is that we all have limited time on this earth.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: There comes a point after you've written the first draft, then the second draft, and after you've done revisions on formatting and the other stuff you need to do to make a book good, there comes a time when you just need to publish it.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that your number one goal right now should be to get your current project finished and published and then move on to the next thing.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think that we make this whole writing thing way overly complicated sometimes.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, my goodness, just let's make it really simple, okay?
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Make it good, do your best, and hit publish on that sucker.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: It really comes down to that.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going to become a better writer by continually tinkering with your current project and never actually pulling the published trigger.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because a book could be 99% done.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: It can be the greatest book in the world, but if it's not published, nobody's ever going to read it.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that a, now this may be a little bit controversial, but okay, all things being equal, I think a B-level book that's published is far better than an A-level book that's never published.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, who's really the authority when it comes to grading books anyway?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we we come up with these scenarios in our mind like, well, my book is like a C or a B, or we kind of grade things at some certain level, but really it's all sort of arbitrary, isn't it?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, who's really to judge whether a book is good or a book isn't good?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of different opinions about that.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there are some standards we definitely need to hold to, like, you know, a book's formatting should be good.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: It should have as few typos and grammar errors in there as possible.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: It should have a good cover, you know, those kinds of things.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, there's a lot of varying opinion about what actually makes a great book.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes great books don't sell well because they're not marketed well.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Other times really crappy books sell a ton because they're marketed really well.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: So marketing's a part of this equation too, and we cannot ignore that.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get back to the point here.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think you're gonna become a better writer by just tinkering forever with your current project.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna get better by doing more work and learning from each project while getting feedback along the way.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, you're gonna be better by doing and publishing, not by sitting and tinkering.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's really hard to get feedback on something, and it's really hard to get better if you haven't published it yet.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: A quote that I really love about writing and publishing is by the author Dan Pointer, who was one of the early advocates of self-publishing.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: He said, if you wait for inspiration to write, you're not a writer, you're a waiter.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think maybe even that's an unfair criticism toward waiters because even waiters deliver something to the table.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, my goodness, even if you're a waiter at a restaurant, you're still delivering something, and that's a great lesson for all of us.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: We've got to deliver, we've got to finish, and we've got to publish.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: So make it your goal to deliver your work to your hungry readers who've been waiting to read it.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Here's today's challenge.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Finish that book you're working on and publish that sucker.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening, and I'll see you tomorrow.