How to Become a Writer, with Bryan Collins

BRYAN COLLINS IS A writer, podcaster, creativity guru, and all around wonderful creativity advocate. He’s the director of the wildly popular and oh-so-helpful site, Become a Writer Today. He’s from Ireland. He’s been a columnist for Forbes. His work has appeared on Fast Company, Lifehacker, and Copyblogger. He is a USA TODAY bestselling author of many books on how to become a writer and how to conduct a life of creativity. Listen in and read along as we talk.

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Marion: Welcome, Bryan.

Bryan: Thanks for having me on, Marion. I nearly didn’t recognize myself in that very generous introduction.

Marion: Well, that’s you in a nutshell, and lots of other things too. You seem to have a lifelong fascination with being a creator. You’ve got this three-book series on the power of creativity. Your site Become a Writer Today attracts several million visitors each year because you give excellent, helpful, doable tips on how to become and be a writer. You also have real expertise on how to thrive in the creator economy, but let’s set this up a bit for everyone and talk about this authority you’ve established. I think a lot of people wrongly picture creatives as full-blown combos of Einstein, Beethoven, and Tony Morrison right from birth. And of course, that’s just not true. So what were your earliest influences toward pursuing full creativity?

Bryan: My earliest influence was the children’s book of Roald Dahl. So it’s the first book I remember really loving and enjoying as a kid, particularly The BFG. And I always thought that I wanted to be a writer after reading this particular book. Read it many times when I was a teenager. And then when a time came to pick a course for college or university, I was writing for the school newspaper. So I thought the best way to make a living as a writer was to enroll in journalism college.

That turned out to be a disaster, but I suppose it indirectly set me on a path towards making a living from writing. It turned out to be a disaster because I spent more time in college, going out and getting drunk and going to parties. I was lucky to graduate and I was surprised that I couldn’t find any work after college. I don’t think anyone else was. And I ended up giving up on journalism because first son was born about two years after I graduated. This is around the same time as the financial crisis. So I’m 40, so this would’ve been 2006, and journalism is just really difficult to make a living out of in Ireland. It’s quite a small country with only a few big media organizations. I suppose I found a different path towards earning a living as a writer.

Marion: Good. We’re glad you did. Absolutely. I grew up with two parents who are writers. And my dad was a sportswriter, meaning his friends told the best stories at dinner. It was a very muscular dinner party at my house. And they were competitive in their storytelling. And I got to watch the value of telling a great story, the ultimate payout being the laughter and delight of the diners. And I wanted that. So what did you want as you turned your sights on being a writer, and what do you think others have to want to succeed as writers in this creative economy?

Bryan: I suppose I wanted to do something that involved working with the written word in some form. And I always thought that journalism was the way to do it, but I ended up taking a series of creative writing classes, and that led me more to creative writing. And then later, I discovered writing online, and that led me to setting up my site, Become a Writer Today. I guess I always wanted what every writer wants, which is for somebody to read their work. And if I could get paid for that, at the time, I thought that was a nice bonus too. I didn’t know what that work would be. I remember at one point when I was working as a care worker, I was looking at the signs that somebody had written in a swimming pool. And I was thinking, “Somebody must get paid to write those signs.” I was pretty desperate for any work that would involve the written word.

I much later discovered that you can get paid to become a copywriter. That was the alternative path that I found before setting up my site. And a copywriter is basically somebody who writes words that sell products and services. Good skill for every writer because we’re all in the business of selling ideas and stories. That was maybe the path that I started before setting up my site. But I suppose to summarize, readers and connection and also to earn a living from it.

Marion: Yeah. Do you remember the first time you realized that others were paying attention to what you wrote? Do you remember the feeling of that?

Bryan: I do. Yes. Well, when I was working as a freelance journalist, I saw my article in the newspaper a few times, and I thought that was good. It was nice to see my name in print. Then the freelance journalism career dried up, and I thought that that wouldn’t happen again. Then I entered a few short story contests. I placed in one of the short story contests. I didn’t win, but that I had actually placed in the contest, I’d come in the top 10 or whatever it was, was a recognition that if I keep at this, maybe I could get somewhere with more creative work.

And I didn’t actually really succeed writing short stories over the long-term. So when I started writing online, I was surprised when I started getting emails from readers and started getting website traffic to the articles that I had published. That’s when I began to see that if I publish articles about X, Y, and Z, people will find it in Google and visit them and read them. That led me towards writing online.

Marion: That’s great.

Bryan: Another example is, I mean, I wrote a book a few years ago. And I’m always fascinated by when you read a book that somebody has just written, it’s quite fresh in your mind and you feel like you’re having a conversation with them. But that author might have written that book years ago, and they’ve forgotten about it. Occasionally, I’ll get an email from readers about the book I wrote called The Power of Creativity. In my mind, I wrote that book five or six years ago, but to them, it’s fresh in their mind. And that’s something that sometimes new writers forget, that books and writing can have a sense of permanency. And that’s one of the fantastic things about the written word.

Marion: Yes, it is. It is one of the fantastic things about the written word. And I’m a really big believer in living the creative life. I do not bemoan it when I cannot be actively writing since chances are that at that moment, I’m cooking or knitting or gardening or playing the piano. In other words, I view all of those things as part of the same need. But that took a while and required conquering a great many fears as well as other people’s judgments. What’s the chief enemy of creativity, do you think?

Bryan: Ooh, that’s a good question. I suppose the chief enemy is a fear of what other people will think. So I described I was writing short stories, and later, I was writing literary nonfiction, and I had some scenes in them about sex and depression, kind of stuff mined from my personal life. And my biggest fear was what would my mother think if she saw me writing about sex or what would a friend think if they saw me writing about a dark moment from my personal life. And I held back from publishing my work and held back from being honest in the blank page. Whereas in fact, the biggest challenge a writer often has is not what those close to them will think, but it’s actually finding readers in the first place.

And If you can get past that, then you can get your work out there. And even if nobody reads it, you’re still getting feedback in that maybe it’s the wrong topic, or maybe we should try something else. But if you just leave it sitting on your computer or in your drawer indefinitely, then you’ll never be able to improve and get to the next level.

Marion: Yeah. You’ll never be able to get to the next level. You mentioned depression. I read that you meditate. And so let’s talk a little bit about that as a strategy because writing or the creative life in any form is well known to carry with it or in it… I’m not really sure if it’s chicken or the egg… a large propensity toward anxiety and depression. So how is meditation a tool, a good tool apparently, to use in the pursuit of a creative life?

Bryan: When you’re writing, you’re sitting with an uncomfortable idea, or you’re sitting by yourself in front of the blank page for 30 minutes or 60 minutes or 120 minutes. You’re working on something without getting feedback this week or even this month if it’s a longer project, and it can be difficult to work through those moments. Sometimes we all want instant gratification. But when you meditate, it can help you become more comfortable with sitting with uncomfortable moments and recognizing that they’ll pass and that they’re part of the creative process.

And secondly, what I found is if I’m struggling with an article or a story or a book chapter, sometimes if you go away and take a break and you meditate, you can approach it more mentally recharged and it’ll help you maybe overcome whatever issue you’re having in your work. Now it’s not a be-all and end-all, but personally, I found it’s a very helpful practice. The practice that I follow is the transcendental meditation. I took a course in it. And the reason why I took a course in it is David Lynch, the film writer has a master class where he talks about how… Yeah, it’s fantastic. But he also talks about it in his book, Catching the Big Fish. He describes how it’s a key part of his creative process and it helps him go deep and find ideas that he otherwise would never have thought of for his scripts. So I suppose I thought it was good enough for David Lynch, then maybe I should try too.

Marion: I think frequently, those are really good places to get advice from people who are tremendously successful, right? I have seen his Masterclass and, I’m toying with the idea too. So if there’s an opposite of meditation, I think it’s probably thinking about the world that is social media. And if social media is any indication of what people are thinking… And God help us, it appears to be. The greatest thing people think about writing is that it’s hard. And I loathe all those memes and gifs and the light that portray writing as some kind of hideously impossible process. I don’t think it does writing a bit of good. And in fact, I think it distances this wonderful process further from people. But it does certainly reflect that a lot of people have a fear of writing. So what tips can you give people out and how to conquer the fear of writing and develop a writing process?

Bryan: Well, it’s a good question. So when I was working as a copywriter for a software company, I would sometimes get emails from different parts of the company, like marketing executives, who would be looking for a sentence, a single sentence that they could use on a webpage or on a PDF. I would write it in 30 seconds and send it back to them. And to them, this was something mysterious, and they would be very grateful for it and be like, “How did you do it, write that so quickly?” The way I thought about it is if somebody, a coder fixed some code in software, I would probably have the same response. How did they learn how to fix something that quick?

I think writers forget that writing is a skill and that if you’re able to write, and if you have a writing habit, you’ve got something that a lot of people would love to have. And the best way to improve with that is to turn up and work consistently even if you feel like what you’re producing isn’t very good, because it’s through turning up and putting in your reps that you’ll naturally learn how to tell better stories or write better articles online or connect with readers in a different way.

Marion: Yeah. It’s absolutely true. Nothing can happen if you don’t show up. So you’ve got to show up. It’s just such practical advice. And I think the thing I love most about your work is the acknowledgement that just being creative is not enough. You write beautifully and with great instruction on the nexus between writing, creativity, and productivity. And I know a lot of people who emphasize the first two don’t necessarily talk about productivity. We’ve read that… I think it’s Thomas Hardy tied himself into a chair and that brief time when people were using a tomato timer and myriad other devices to become productive. But what would you advise is at the heart of a writer’s productivity?

Bryan: Yeah. There are lots of productivity tips you can use like the tomato timer, which is a reference to the Pomodoro Technique, which is actually a great productivity strategy. But I suppose any writer should ask themselves, what are they trying to accomplish and who are they trying to write for? When you figure that out, then you can rearrange your day and do all those tactics, like the Pomodoro Technique or noise canceling headphones that any productivity person will talk about. If you understand that, “For these 90 days, I’m working on the first draft of my book. That’s the most important creative project to me.” If you work on that consistently every day and track your progress, that’s how you’ll achieve whatever that writing goal is.

The second part is who are you writing for? So if you’re writing about whatever’s on your mind, then that’s journaling and free writing, which is fine. Those are great practices too. But if you want to suppose earn a living as a writer, then you need to think of your audience. Is this something that they’re going to buy? What genre is this in? If so, do you understand the conventions of the genre? What way should you structure your book? Should it be a three act structure? Is there some other format that you should follow? Otherwise, you’re going to find it quite difficult to connect with that audience and you might get frustrated at the end of the process if nobody buys or reads it.

Marion: Yeah. Absolutely. All of the stuff we’ve been talking about focuses on let’s say the soft science aspect of the work. So let’s move on to the digital tools we need to thrive in this creative economy. We have creative dreams. Let’s say we develop the discipline. And I want to talk about where we begin, literally on which platforms can we choose to unleash those products of our creativity. You write on Medium. You’ve written for Forbes, Fast Company, Copyblogger, and more. And you’ve got this brilliant weekly podcast called Become a Writer Today in which you interview creators and help the listeners to share their story, earn more money, and make an impact with their writing. You interviewed me. I loved it. It was so much fun. And I was delighted to be interviewed by you and talk about that. So you’ve talked to all manners of creatives who have writing lives, making you a person I want to ask how to begin getting out there. What’s your advice in finding the first platform on which to be published?

Bryan: I would pick a platform that you feel comfortable using and where your audience already is. You mentioned Medium. For non-fiction writers, Medium is probably the easiest place to get started simply because you don’t need to worry about learning WordPress or using any technical tools, and there’s an audience already built in there of readers, and there’s publications that are looking for writers. So you can try lots of different topics and you can submit them to publications. And if you don’t the topic, it’s not a big deal because you can just write another article for a different publication. And that will give you a barebones idea of what it is to write online.

And then, Twitter is a complementary. So Twitter has gotten a lot better for writers in terms of discovery and connecting with other writers. You can turn your articles into Twitter threads. And so that said, I’m a big believer in every writer having a place on the internet that represents their home base, their own website. So at some point, look to build a WordPress site on your own domain that you control. You will direct some of that traffic back to your website and give some reader something for free, like a free ebook, so they’ll join your email list, so you can send them your latest work. Then once you have that flywheel moving of testing articles in public, on platforms like Medium, testing ideas on Twitter and using that to connect with other readers. And then hopefully, some people are visiting your website and joining your email list. That’s often enough to get going.

I mean, there’s more advanced things you can do, like learning the basics of search engine optimization and so on. But often, that’s enough to get started. Go where your readers are, basically, and ensure it’s a place that you enjoy. That’s probably not going to be TikTok or Snapchat for writers.

Marion: I have to say, I just don’t think it’s going to be TikTok for writers. But I do agree with view with Twitter. Instagram also is a place that writers seem to gather, but absolutely on Twitter. And I think you make a good point about go where the readers are, and having a place where we can find you. People, I don’t think need, unless they’ve got products to sell, like you have and like I have, I’m not sure how large an online presence they need create on WordPress. But how big would you go in the very beginning?

I’ve got to be able to find you. If you publish something on Medium and I say, “Oh, she’s interesting. I wonder what else she’s got,” I want to be able to go to her homepage. But what else would you suggest they have on that. You suggested, for instance, testing some of your ideas there. So you’re talking about a blog still or do you think?

Bryan: Yeah. If you don’t want to set up a WordPress site, maybe put that in the back burner or something to do later. Just set up a newsletter. Use Substack, which is a free newsletter tool that’s quite popular at the moment. Or alternatively, you can use ConvertKit. But Substack is probably the easiest and the cheapest to use. Then you just have a call to action in your bio on Medium and Twitter or at the end of your articles that says something like, “If you enjoyed reading this article, get my free 24 tools,” or get my free checklist or my free report, or whatever it is, or my free book. And some readers will click through and visit your newsletter and subscribe to your newsletter.

And newsletters are becoming more popular. Twitter has rolled out its own newsletter service called… I think it’s called Revue, R-E-V-U-E. That’s built into the Twitter platform. So you’ll see people building newsletters organically on Twitter. And Medium also has a tool in the platform for newsletters as well. So they’re good too. I mean, to be honest, the tool is less important than the process. What’s important is getting your work in front of the right readers and then having a way of getting your next piece of writing sent out to them when you’ve written it. So some sort of newsletter tool to do that, and probably Substack is probably the easiest, I guess to use, and it’s free to get started.

Marion: Substack is amazing. My husband has a column on Substack, and I’m watching its growth, and I’m fascinated by how quickly it’s growing. He’s got a voice, he was a newspaper columnist for many, many years, and he’s got a newsletter on Substack called The Upstate American. And it’s really got a very specific voice written by somebody who grew up in one of America’s upstates, now lives in upstate. In other words, knowledge that’s outside the major metropolitan city. So he’s got a niche and it’s working. And they make it so easy on Substack. They have gotten rid of all of the hard stuff that we’ve all encountered in those first years of newsletters. So I think that’s just really good advice. And let’s say, when we go to Medium or we go start on Medium, don’t make money necessarily on Medium, but you can test your material. I love that. On Substack, you can make money. You can have a subscription base.

So let’s talk about money. I’ve read widely in your work and was particularly fascinated by your recent piece with the headline that says flatly, How to Make Money Being Creative. It was like, “Oh, well, there’s a basic, direct headline. I love those.” This is something people tend not to talk about, and yet we know writers want to make money. So you’re very direct on this topic. Let’s just type this on a little bit. I tell people that you have to earn the right to write. In other words, you can’t go quit your job and hold your family hostage while you become a writer and make no money. So where and how does the money start in the creative economy for a writer who’s starting out? Just give some people some basics of where they can hope to start intersecting with an income stream.

Bryan: Yes. I spent a year, about 10 years ago, unemployed and on social welfare, and I thought it was impossible to earn a living as a writer. And over the course of a few years, I discovered that it’s a cliche to say that artists or creatives need to starve for their craft. These days, it’s easier than ever for writers to earn a living online. So if you want to get started, I mean, you mentioned Medium. They do have a partner program. You can earn enough for a few cups of coffee, maybe a little bit more, if you write consistently on Medium. But at some point, that’s why need a platform of your own that you can use to sell your books or your courses or your coaching or whatever it is that you have. That’s where it boils down to what type of writer you are.

So you mentioned a podcast there a few minutes ago, Marion. So I’ve interviewed lots of different writers, and I always asked them this question, “How do you earn a living from your work?” And what I’ve discovered is the successful indie fiction authors all have a huge back catalog that they draw upon. So they’re not earning quit their job money on book one. They’re earning quit their job money on series one and series two. They have several dozen books that they write within a series for their audience, genre fiction.

And then the nonfiction auditor are earning a good living. They’re not earning it from writing one memoir or whatever it is, even though it might be a great memoir, unless it’s a New York Times bestseller. But what they’re earning it from is everything else that’s built around their book. So they may offer coaching. They may offer public speaking. They may have a course related to the ideas inside of their book, or they may have some other offering. They have a partnership with a product that’s related to their audience, and they’re able to offer discounts to their audience. And what they have is an ecosystem that their book or their writing fits into. And that’s where it boils down to what type of writer you are. Are you writing fiction or nonfiction? And what does your audience enjoy? And once you figure it that out, then you’ll naturally start to see some monetization opportunities that can work quite well.

I know writers that don’t talking about money that much, but the thing is when you start earning a good income as a writer, you can actually use it to improve your craft. You can take better courses. You can hire editors, better editors to improve your book. You can hire a proofreader and an editor if you’re writing articles. That’s something I did a few years ago, which immediately freed me up to write more articles. You can also start outsourcing parts of your business that you find stressful, like the tax returns or your books. And you can also invest in better book cover to sell more copies of your book. And you can do all of this while you pay yourself and then eventually hire yourself out of your full-time job.

Marion: I love this word, “ecosystem,” and I completely understand it. My most recent book, The Memoir Project, I built a business around it… you’re absolutely right… at teaching, coaching, editing. Teaching lots of classes, but it started as a little paperback book. And a great friend of mine has a book that she published that has to do with grief, and she’s a grief coach. She created an ecosystem. She also coaches writers and edits writers, but she has an ecosystem around it. It’s a wonderful way to think. I think as we consider how to build out, we just don’t really understand that… I don’t think anyone’s ever even given me a good language before for managing the idea. So ecosystem’s going to be my new favorite one. Thank you for that. That’s great.

And as we start to wrap this up, I have to tell you that some of my favorite writing of yours is about you becoming a father. And one of your books deals directly with that subject. As we wrap this up, I have to ask, how do you plan to pass along your message of living a fully creative life to your child?

Bryan: So that book you’re describing is called I Can’t Believe I’m a Dad, and it was a project I wrote during the lockdown. It’s a story-driven memoir about all of the things I wish I’d known about parenting back when I was 26. And actually, I used some of the lessons from your course, Marion, to organize that book. So thank you for your advice in the course.

Marion: Thank you.

Bryan: When I was interviewing you, I think I imagined I took your course twice. Anyway, the book was a creative project, so it wasn’t something that I did to make money. It was something that I wrote because I just wanted to use some of the stories from being a dad and turn them into something, because I had them all in journals and notes, but I knew there was a way I could tie them together around a single theme or a controlling idea or a thesis statement.

That’s what the book is. It’s a story-driven parenting book. It’s not full of medical advice. It’s more if you’re a young dad and you wished an older dad would sit down and tell you over a point of beer what it’s really like to become a father, this is the type of thing that they would tell you. So that’s why I wrote the book. It was fun to write. It was definitely one of the more interesting projects I’ve done over the years.

Marion: So are you going to pass along this message of creativity to your child? Are you going to hope like hell that he goes into something else?

Bryan: Well, so I’ve got three kids. So my oldest son is 16, and I have an 11-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son. So yeah, my oldest son has read the first few chapters because he’s featured quite prominently in the book, and then my daughter hasn’t read it. And then my younger son obviously hasn’t read it. He was a bit surprised by some of the things I got up to when I was younger, but I was trying to relate it to what it’s like to be a young guy and to use personal experiences. So I guess to go back to what I was saying earlier on, books have a sense of permanency that blog posts or articles just don’t have. Books tend to resonate more readers. So perhaps the book will speak for itself.

Marion: I hope it does. And I hope they carry on your sense of creativity because it’s broad and inviting and so helpful to so many. Thank you so much, Bryan. It was really lovely to talk with you again. And I’ll put links to everything you mentioned in the transcript that I run on my site. But good luck and please stay in touch. It’s just a joy to connect again.

Bryan: Thank you, Marion. Thanks for having me on.

Marion: Absolutely. The writer is Bryan Collins. See more on him at bryan collins dot com. I’m Marion Roach Smith, and you’ve been listening to QWERTY. QWERTY is produced by Overit Studios in Albany, New York. Reach them at overit studios dot com. Our producer is Adam Claremont. Our assistant is Lorna Bailey. Want more on the art and work of writing? Visit marion roach com where I offer online classes in how to write memoir. And thanks for listening. Don’t forget to subscribe to QWERTY and listen to it wherever you go. And if you like what you hear, please leave us a starred review. It helps others to find their way to their writing lives.

Memoirama: Live, 90 minutes. Everything you need to write what you know.

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And keep in mind that I am now taking names for the upcoming Master Class, the prerequisites for which are Memoirama and Memoirama 2. It’s live, once a month, and limited to seven writers who are determined to get a first draft of their book-length memoir finished in six months.