Alessandra Torre, Inkers Con co-founder and contributor

While there’s a ton of advice out there for new authors, it can be harder to give (and find) advice for experienced authors. We took this challenge to a group of bestselling authors (at Inkers Con) and loved hearing their responses.

Click below to see their advice – and keep reading for the transcripts.

*This clip is from the Career Author Vault presentation, which is part of the Inkers Con 2022 conference. Get immediate access to all 28 presentations, plus bestselling author Q&As and attendee workshop recordings here.

Here’s the transcript of the clip:

Alessandra: Great. Now we’re going to talk about best piece of advice for experienced authors. Nick.

Nick: Yeah. Actually the answer is very similar to what you just said. I got to the point in business, not even just necessarily writing, but just in business stuff that I realized there were better… people better suited to doing the things that I was doing. And it was so bad that I was trying to do these things because it was cutting into my writing time or to be more specific, cutting into the time that I was spending, doing things that I am good at or that I’m better at than somebody else. So the advice I give to the experienced author is just like you said, figure out the things that you’re good at. Figure out the things that you’re not good at. We so often don’t want to go there because it makes us feel bad. Well, I’m not good at this. But we have to, that’s your job now as an author.

You’ve gotten to a certain point where you need to know what you are not good at, so you can go find somebody to do those things. It sounds very simple, it sounds very obvious, but it’s really not. Because it just gets out, we get lost in what we’re doing every day. Pat Flyn taught me this. We had coffee and he just like literally told me, write down the things that you are good at, but then also write down the things that you like to do. And then the quadrant, right? We’ve all seen that little punt square, whatever it’s called, and then write down on the side, the things that you’re not good at and the things that you don’t like to do and then fill those things, fill those boxes. And then that bottom corner box is the first thing you get rid of. You don’t like to do it and you’re not good at it, why are you doing it?

But then you start moving out and you start going, okay, well I like doing it, but I’m not good at it. Hire somebody. Figure out how to get that off your plate. And then the last one, you know, is the things that you like doing, but you’re not… did I say that already? The things that – I don’t know. You know the other one, the other one that I’m not saying. Like, whatever, you can picture the box, you know what I’m talking about. So that’s my best advice is your job now is to figure out what you are good at and what you’re not good at and what you like doing and don’t like doing and figure out how to get somebody to do those things.

Alessandra: Thank you. Shayla.

Shayla: I think I would say two things that have been kind of really, you know, super important for me and they’re kind of in a way to right set your mind. And the first one is to piggyback off Ines; when you do this as a full-time job, like this is a seven day a week job for me. And every day you can sit down and choose to, oh my gosh, I have to go to work, I’m so tired, I’m so burned, blah, blah, blah. Or you can say, what can I do today to make this the best day it can be? How can I find excitement in what I’m doing every day? Because yeah, you’re still sitting in the same chair doing the same thing you did yesterday and the day before and the day before that. And like I tell people, I’ve been writing on a cruise, I’ve been writing in Europe, I’ve been writing with the flu, I’ve written on Christmas Day, like I could go on. Find some way to make every day worth doing and find the fun and the joy it.

The second thing I would say is it’s so easy, especially when you’re trying, you’re newer and you’ve got a few books in, but you’re trying to climb and you’re trying to climb. Don’t compare yourself to anybody else, please. Compare you to you. Make the current release better than the last release, which was hopefully better than the release before. But the minute you start comparing yourself to other people, you’re always going to find somebody who’s like, oh, I want to be that person. Well guess what? That person has somebody else they’d like to be to. So all you can do is really compare you to you and try to get better with, you know, every release and every chapter you write and everything you do. You know, put your heart and your passion into it. It will show

Alessandra: Malorie.

Malorie: Everybody else gave such good answers. I’m like, what can I add to this? I read a book; I can’t remember the name of the book cause I’m terrible at remembering things like that. I blame COVID even though it might not be the case. The book was about finding your zone of genius. So often we look at things that we’re good at and that we’re like, well, look what Nick was talking about, like finding the things you’re good at. But the whole purpose of the book is like, there are things that you’re excellent at, but there are things that you’re genius at and that only you can do. And that’s what you want to focus on. And like, it’s like he said, outsource everything else. Understand how it works so you can make sure the people you hire are actually doing a good job, but just let them do it, and do the one thing that only you can do or the two things only you can do, which generally for most of us is write the book.

The other thing I think is that at a certain point, I think all authors who have done this for a while need to sort of rediscover their joy and just maybe take some time to do that. I’ve taken a year. I haven’t released a book since last July which is kind of fantastic because ads have kept my income flat since the last 12 months, which I’m really happy about. But I feel like I’ve written 120 sci-fi books, almost like universe. I am running out of ways to describe a gun fight in a corridor, you know, like I just can’t do it anymore. I cast about writing a bunch of different things and I found myself writing this thing for this RPG company.

I’m writing a thing about a transgender character in the year, 165 AD. She’s a wealthy money lender in Rome and I’ve got to figure out a way to make it so that she’s responsible for getting Marcus Aurelius, the emperor to create the second and third intel legions and sending them to fight the Germans and I’m loving it. I’m like, I wrote like a thousand words in 20 minutes kind of thing. You know, you might hit a point where you’re like, oh God, I just can’t do this anymore, this has become this grind, but you can discover your joy again and it’s worth it, and it’s a lot of fun.

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