Establishing Credibility for New Writers

By Sascha Illyvich

Establishing yourself as an expert in erotic romance is one of the toughest things to do, especially with the internet making everyone an “expert” and allowing a lot of content to go unchecked. The easiest solution is to follow the true experts- those with track records who have achieved the same results you’re striving for.

I reference Morgan Hawke a lot. There’s a reason for that and it’s because she’s goal oriented.

The hard part is trying to get into the group of writers so you can get the tips first. My question to you is: do you really need to belong to a critique group with varying degrees of experience in order to write?

No. But it helps because you’ll see the folks that stand out and are getting results.

Writing is like any other business, it requires the author to be results oriented. If you’re not writing for a profit, what are you writing for? Personal gain? Self esteem? Those things come with experience and time, and I’d like to mention that I’m specifically aiming this post at career writers, not hobbyists.

What are the pitfalls of trying to establish authority when you’re new? Plenty. First off, people have a tendency to overload their plates in a feeble attempt to know everyone and everything. This results in a crash on the human body and a quick burnout. For a solution, I talked about this here because new writers need to learn some lessons passed down from those of us who have been new before.

Once you’ve learned and applied the lessons I’ve talked about, you’ll get a better grip on time management which will allow you to be a healthier writer. This industry is filled with authors who suffer from various ailments and the curealls are actually pretty simple once you realize you need to start taking care of yourself when you’re YOUNGER. I touched on this here too with Writer’s Self Care.

The results will be easy and measurable because you’ll find yourself with more time and creativity flowing better than most of us who are “old hat.” Once you’ve built up a following, using social media like Twitter and facebook to promote your work, you’ll quickly find out who to pay attention to, what to look out for and how to protect yourself as a writer.

You’ll need to understand the mechanics of writing an erotic romance. Sex is part of those mechanics and a good primer for writing sex scenes can be found on Angela Knight’s blog. You’ll also need to know about plot and showing vs. telling.

Worries about recycling content? Don’t be. From an SEO standpoint, it’s not so bad from what I understand. We all have content that gets left behind when we write articles for blogs or websites that were great, gave a lot of information and made an impact on our audiences. A few word changes and some modification gives us a new article that may reach a few more readers.

The biggest thing I had to learn when I started teaching others about money and finance was that people all have different styles of learning. Some are technical, you can tell them what a Dominant is in a BDSM context and they understand how to write that character. Others require articles like this.

The point of all this is that to establish yourself as an expert in anything, it takes time, patience, goal setting, measurable results and self care. This is true of writers especially since we ARE our own bosses. True we have deadlines but those are set by other humans and can be adjusted as life interrupts.

Best of success to you in your career!