Staying focused towards a long term career can be difficult for a writer. It is not an easy occupation and there is no formula for good or bad writing. It completely depends on the judgment of the readers. You might pour out your heart and soul into a piece of writing and then have to witness it being mercilessly rejected. Literature is subjective like that.
But you cannot afford to lose motivation either. It is understandably difficult to keep going in the face of rejection and negative criticism, but you cannot lose focus over these small defeats. You cannot let them throw you off your set path. The 5 ways below will help you to sustain a long-term career focus.
1. Stay focused
If you know what you want in the long run, nothing will be able to move you from that path. You need to fix your goal and just walk towards it, no matter how much negativity and distraction comes your way. Whenever you feel like giving up, look towards the end of the path. Always maintain eye contact with your goal.
2. Keep learning
Make mistakes your lessons. You should learn from each and every mistake you make. Just make sure you do not repeat them. If you keep learning new things from your mistakes, your zeal to go on will just get stronger and every criticism will become a constructive criticism.
3. Get used to boredom
You know what differentiates a great writer from a good writer? A good writer writes with passion but a great writer just writes. Greatness does not come from passion; it comes from struggling with the boredom of everyday routine and then building something out of that. A writer’s life can be very boring. There is hardly any physical activity involved. All you have to do is sit at your desk and try to churn out sentences that make sense to others. And yes that can get nauseatingly mundane and monotonous. But the challenge is to keep going and not get pulled back by the dullness of it. Writing was never a glorious occupation, especially when it comes to true literature. Remember that always.
4. Enjoy the path to your goal
As you keep your keen eyes on your goal, you also need to learn to enjoy the journey to it. Like any journey there will be mishaps and accidents. Things will fail to go as planned. You will make mistakes, and circumstances might try to bring you down. But who said all these are bad things? It is your perspective on which everything depends. If you look at it as a part of an endearing journey towards your long term goal, you will start enjoying even the flaws of it.
5. Believe in yourself
This is a crucial part of staying focused. If you lose faith in yourself during the journey, it will be very difficult for you to keep your focus. You need to believe in your strength and capability. Believe that you deserve the fruits of the journey, you deserve to reach your goal, and it will be easier for you to stay focused.
But there is one thing that is more important than all of this: you need to fall in love with your occupation. Once you truly love what you are doing, irrespective of what people say and what circumstances may bring, you will be able to maintain your focus and move towards it with steady steps.