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What Makes Writing “Great”? · The Daily Writer

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey my friend, welcome to The Daily Writer, where we help writers become authors of their own lives.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now I gotta be honest here, nobody would ever accuse me of being obsessed with sports, but I admit that I'm really fascinated by what makes any given sports legend great.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now the answer really is pretty simple though.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: A sports legend is considered great if they achieved a difficult metric.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now it could be strikeouts, it could be touchdowns, it could be home runs, free throws, goals, or whatever it is.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing that I really appreciate about sports is that the metrics for success are crystal clear.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's no guessing about which team wins or which team loses a game, or how many points or goals or touchdowns that a player scored.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as any writer knows, it's frustratingly much, much harder to quantify success in what we do.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, sure, we have metrics like the number of copies that your book sold, or whether or not you got on a bestseller list and what your ranking was and those kinds of things, but those metrics only tell part of a writer's story.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Being on a list or having a certain number of copies sold doesn't automatically equate to what I would call great writing.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: So does that mean that we're hopeless?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Does it mean that we're left to our own devices when it comes to figuring out what it means to craft great writing?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't think so.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I want to share one way that you can measure the success of your writing, and it's really very simple.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's the question did it accomplish its stated goal?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give you an example.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: My book, The Ghost Powered Author, it's a book all about how ghostwriting works.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: It comes out really soon, and I have metrics around what I want that book to accomplish for my business.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Another example is my daily emails and podcasts.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: I want to have a certain level of engagement as measured by open rates and replies, or in the case of this podcast, downloads, as well as click-through rates in the emails and also sales when I start to promote more things in the coming months via the podcast and my daily email.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let's say, for example, if you're publishing a novel, you might have a few different types of metrics.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you'll have a metric such as the number of copies that you sell, but there's also a different kind of metric, which is just the value of finishing the project, which is its own really valuable metric.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Another example is if you're writing social media posts, you could measure the effectiveness by engagement, likes, or comments.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: The point here is that whenever you write anything, have in mind what you want it to accomplish.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that might mean I don't want to accomplish anything with this piece of writing.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to write creatively and express myself.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's really valuable as well.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I do think it's helpful just to know up front what am I trying to really accomplish through this?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think that it all comes down to the question: what do I want from this?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: What is exactly the purpose or the goal of what it is that I'm creating here?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can define whatever that purpose is and whether or not you met that goal, that's considered great writing in my book.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that whenever you look at your creative work this way, it frees you from feeling like you're beholden to somebody else's definition of success.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it also helps you feel more successful because number one, you defined the purpose of that writing.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And number two, you worked toward achieving it.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because in the end, you get to define what great writing means to you, which is one of the cool things about what we do as writers.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks for listening.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Keep writing and keep showing up, and I'll see you tomorrow.