What is The Author Mindset?
If you want to be a successful author, you need the right mental approach.
Mindsets, attitudes, thinking styles, mental blocks. These are all ways to describe how we see ourselves and the world. And they affect our ability to get our books written - and published.
In my office, on my bookcase, I have a phrenology head. I picked it up from an antiques shop in Staffordshire towards the end of my psychology degree in the 1990s. If I was doing ‘A History of Jon Reed in 100 Objects’, this would be one of them. It reminds me of my studies, the history of psychology - and how far we’ve come in our understanding of the human mind.
It’s a porcelain model of a human head, with character traits, sentiments and faculties written all over it in specific places - such as agreeableness, independence and friendship. Some are things that I’ll touch on in this newsletter - like perfection, criticism, comparison, ‘power of will’ and perseverance. Some aren’t, but are rather wonderful - such as a ‘sense of the terrific’ - which we could all use.
Phrenology was a popular 19th Century theory that someone’s character could be read by measuring the shape of their skull. It’s complete nonsense, of course. But it was a precursor to the actual science of neuroanatomy - the finding that some regions of the brain are specialised to particular functions, such as language or visual processing. And it hints at the study of psychological traits and attitudes - some of which may be helpful, some of which may hold us back from reaching our potential.
The traits on my phrenology head also include literary faculties, ingenuity and ideality. Things we’re all familiar with in our creative work. As writers, our greatest assets are our thoughts, imagination and stories. Unfortunately, they can also be our worst enemies. We can have self-sabotaging thoughts, imagine the worst, and tell ourselves unhelpful stories. These can block our writing, sap our creativity and limit our potential. You’re probably already aware of some of the areas you struggle with - such as procrastination, perfectionism, motivation, focus and overwhelm. These are common mental blocks that all writers experience. Yes, even the established, prolific, famous, bestselling ones.
As writers - and as humans - we’re all embedded in stories. We build narratives around our lives. Just like my story about acquiring a phrenology head. We tell ourselves stories about ourselves, other people and the world. But these stories aren’t always helpful or even true. Just like our writing, they come from our thoughts. And our thoughts lead to our behaviours, habits - and success or failure.
So this newsletter is about improving your thinking rather than improving your writing. If you want to be an author, you need to think like an author. Specifically, like a successful author. One who has the courage to start, the focus to write - and the resilience to keep going.
The good news is that, while phrenology saw character traits as unchanging aspects of ourselves, fixed into the physical shape of our skulls, modern psychology recognises that people are capable of growth and change. We can shift our mindset. To develop what I call an author mindset, you need to work on the things that get in the way of your writing and hold you back from fulfilling your potential.
Some of the concepts I’ll use in this newsletter include:
Mindsets. A mindset is simply a mental attitude to things. It’s how you approach the world. It’s your general attitude and how you typically think about things. A particularly important distinction is between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. (Spoiler alert: a growth mindset is the one you want).
Thinking traps. These are maladaptive (unhelpful) thinking styles. Often our beliefs about ourselves or our situation aren’t helpful - or even true. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) provides tools for challenging these thoughts.
Lifetraps or schemas. These are persistent, self-defeating or dysfunctional patterns of thoughts, emotions and behaviours - often developed in childhood. This is a concept from Schema Therapy - which is itself an offshoot of CBT.
Mental blocks. This is an informal term I’m using to describe anything with a psychological root that gets in the way of your writing.
The Author Mindset
I define The Author Mindset as a combination of:
Developing a healthy growth mindset in the way you approach your writing - and your path to publication
Identifying the mental blocks and unhelpful thinking styles that hold you back from fulfilling your potential as a writer
Taking practical steps to overcome them.
Having a healthy mental approach to your journey to becoming an author sets you up for success rather than failure.
And there will be knock-backs on the way to becoming a published author. Even once you are a published author. If you want to be an author, you’ll need to get used to a lot of failure and rejection. It’s part of the job. So it’s really important to approach it with the right mindset.
But you can overcome setbacks and hurdles, keep going and build a career as an author. The sooner you start to develop the right mindset, the sooner you’ll finish that manuscript and take the next steps to publication. And the better experience you’ll have once you’re published.
Authors come in all sorts of varieties, from every background, across any genre you can think of, and each has their own writing process. There’s no one correct way to ‘do’ author. That’s part of the challenge - finding your way, when there’s no instruction manual. But every author needs certain mental attributes to complete a manuscript - and get it into the hands of a reader. These include:
Courage
Self-belief
Motivation
Confidence
Focus
Creativity
Productivity
Persistence
Energy
Resilience
Positivity.
You may struggle with some of these more than others. Your challenges may change over time, and some may persist more than others. You might also experience different blocks at different points in your writing career - even at different stages of writing and editing your current manuscript.
These are all topics I’ll look at in more depth in this newsletter, as it develops. They're all about approaching your writing - and your vocation as an author - with the right mindset. Do let me know if there are others you’d like me to write about, or which ones resonate most with you.