Welcome to the Dojo Wisdom for Writers Book Club! Every Wednesday, we meet to discuss one of the lessons in Dojo Wisdom for Writers. We’ll go in order, so it’s easy enough to follow along. Read the lesson, then read the blog post, then comment in the comments! Do feel free to comment on each other’s comments. I’ll answer questions as quickly as I can.
Lesson #22. Know the vital points.
In this lesson, I talk about the importance of knowing what you’re trying to communicate to your readers. In this post, I want to expand on that idea a little. Knowing the vital points is about understanding what matters and then doing it. Recently a couple of students asked me about getting started in freelancing, and they were worried about how to pay estimated taxes and what they should know about contracts, and while I agree that these are things that must be attended to, they are hardly the important thing. They are not the business!
Getting started in freelancing means figuring out what skill you have to offer and finding out who will buy it. That’s what matters. If you don’t get that figured out, none of the rest matters.
That’s why my mantra for writers is always do the work, do the work, do the work. That’s what matters.
Do you ever have trouble figuring out what the vital point is? Let me know in the comments.
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Dojo Wisdom for Writers, second edition, now available on Amazon in print and ebook! (Nook and other ebook versions here)
Catch a Falling Star (by Jessica Starre) and The Matchmaker Meets Her Match (by Jenny Jacobs), two of my favorite novels.
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