Your Simple Path to Writing Success in 2022
By Andrew Murray

Wow, what a year we’ve had!

Thankfully, it’s nearly over. This means we have a chance to wipe the slate clean and start afresh.

2020 most likely punched a big hole in your plans. That’s okay, these things happen. If nothing else, 2020 has taught us a whole lot about resilience and adapting to change. It took the entire 2021 for many of us to re-align our point of view.

So now’s a perfect time to take your newfound abilities and figure out a way to make 2022 the year you succeed in creating your very own version of the writer’s life.

And the best way to succeed? Start with a plan.

Planning Your Success

A plan really is no more than a series of logical steps … steps to keep you on track towards achieving your dream.

It’s fine for your head to be swimming with wild and wonderful ideas. After all, that’s where the best ideas often come from. But to achieve your dream, at some stage you’ll have to reach in, catch a few of those wonderful ideas, and pin them down.

So, let’s get started developing your cunning plan of achieving your writer’s life dream in 2022.

The Why

Start with the Why. Why do you want to chase your writing dreams? Think of the top two or three reasons why you want to live the writer’s life. Then write them down.

It could be so you can travel and work … just like my wife Peta and I do as we work on our travel-based Money-Making Website, Top Wire Traveller. Or maybe you need a steady income and you want to work from home.

Whatever your reasons are, write them down. Why? Well, there’s something about the action of writing them out … it cements them in your brain. By dragging them from your brain and spreading them across the page, what was a dream now looks more like reality.

So you might have:

• “I want a steady income.”
• “I want to work from home.”

Now add a deeper reason. Start looking at the “why of the why”:

• “I want a steady income because right now I struggle to pay the bills.”
• “I want to work from home so I can spend more time with my children.”

Go deeper if you can. Try to get to the bottom of the real reason you want to achieve your dream:

• “I want a steady income so I can pay the bills and save for retirement.”
• “I want to work from home because my children need me around as they grow up.”

Keep going until you’ve exhausted all options. By the time you’ve finished, your Why will likely look quite different:

• “I want financial security for now and the future.”
• “I want to be a better parent for my children.”

So you’ve decided you need financial security and you want to be around for your children. Great!

Notice how just a few minutes’ work can yield a stack of valuable information? Now you have a clear reason, a deeper reason why you’re driven towards your dream.

Your dream is taking form. Just a few minutes ago it was a vague notion, a fuzzy cloud. Now it’s defined … a clear, solid body staring back from the page at you. Something you can see in your mind. Something you can act on.

It’s time to move onto the What.

The What

How can you achieve your Why?

Copywriting appeals to you because it allows you to achieve your Why. So what steps do you need to take to become a copywriter, to live the writer’s life?

Step One is to learn the basics. The AWAI Method for Becoming a Skilled, In-Demand Copywriter^TM is an excellent course. This course is an absolute must for every aspiring copywriter.

It’s the foundation of your new career. It takes you through the subtle art of persuasive writing, from start to finish. By the time you’re done, you’ll be ready to work as a copywriter.

Step Two of your What depends on what you want to achieve.

For example, if you’re looking to be up and running as soon as possible, then short copy projects are a good place to start … email campaigns, e-newsletters, blog posts, chatbot writing, and so on.

This is also the time when you need to tell the world about your new skill set.

Tell everyone you’re a trained copywriter … friends, colleagues, work connections. And post it on social media. Tell the world you’re open for business!

Step Three? Use your industry contacts. If you’re a little (or even a lot) jaded about the industry you’re in, keep this in mind:

A prospect is far more likely to hire a new writer who has loads of experience in their industry than an experienced writer with little or no experience in their industry.

Why? Because you speak their language. You understand their challenges. You know their audience.

(Keep in mind … you don’t have to stick with that niche forever, but it does help you get your foot in the door when you’re starting out.)

Okay. You have the Why and the What. All you need now is the When.

The When

Ah, the When. This is a common stumbling block.

Here’s what can happen. You decide the act on your dream of becoming a writer. So you take a few copywriting courses. Then you see another course … another branch of copywriting that looks interesting.

So you take another course.

You justify this by saying, “If I do this next course, then I’ll be ready to look for clients.” The problem is, you never get any clients.

Some people call it “shiny object syndrome.”

There’s an easy way to avoid this. Concentrate on the When:

• The date you’ll start looking for clients.
• How many prospects you’ll target every week.
• How you’ll look for clients … via LinkedIn, warm emailing, and so on.

And attach a date to every step of the When:

• March 1 — Start looking for clients on LinkedIn.
• March 1 — Send 10 warm emails per week for two months.
• May 1 — Assess the success of my emails.

 … and so on.

By setting dates, you’ll run out of excuses. Those dates hold you to account!

Speaking of which, you might benefit from accountability groups. These are groups of people who meet regularly and share their successes and failures. Accountability groups can be a powerful motivator.

If you need that extra push, then seek out an accountability group. The best place to find one is on AWAI’s Facebook page.

Wrapping Up

Make the end of 2021 the circuit breaker you need to get started on your writer’s life. Plan for future success by using the simple Why/What/When approach.

What better way to turn a year to forget into one you’ll always remember … the year your dream became a reality!

What’s your plan for success in 2022? Let us know in the comments so we can help.