It takes a lot to become a writer. It’s hard work. While creating the list of functionalities for Asengana, I was thinking about the similarities between starting a business and writing a book. These are some ideas:
1) Connecting with people
As a writer, you create a connection with reader even before you start writing the book. It’s the smart thing to do.
For me to create an online writing software and project management tool for writers it meant to listen to my friends writers as a digital project manager listening to his clients. It’s not as much about the inner workings of the technical solution offered but about the simplicity to use.
2) Bootstrapping
The decision to create your solution without external investment is difficult and requires sacrifices. The same applies to writing a book. Nobody will write it for you. In front of the screen you are alone facing your inner demons.
3) Be a pathfinder
Come up with a solution that is better than the existent one, but also better than the ones others are working on right now. I’m not the only one that thought of an online writing software, but I might be the first to create an online project management tool for writers that will really help.
Writing a book offers also the opportunity to create new inroads in any literary genre. The premise of your book might be the same that at least other four or five writers thought of. Your talent as a writer and hard work will make the difference.
4) Unyielding work ethic
Building a start-up means you have to decide what you will do and also what you won’t. Believe in your dream, work day and night and never compromise. It sounds difficult because it is. I can vouch for this with every night when I wake up searching my notepad under the bed to write an idea.
There isn’t any writer consumed by the drive to write who doesn’t understand what I wrote above.
5) Think about money from the first day
No online service is free. Would you prefer to pay with money or with a part of your life, your privacy, your needs, and desires? Facebook is not free. It takes a big chunk of your life and sells it forward. I don’t judge if it’s good or bad. But, for Asengana, I’m interesting in making money that will allow creating a better service and an important literary award (more on this in a year from now).
Unless you’re a vanity writer which likes to have a book spine with his name on it on a shelf to impress the guests, you need to make money from your books. It will help you write the next book and write better.
The last and the most important: keep your promises to yourself and your readers.
