It’s something that I think pretty much all writers want to achieve: success through their writing. Yet for many, it can be pretty elusive, often taking years to materialise – if it ever does at all.

With this in mind – what is the secret of writing success?

The first thing to say, I think, is that there probably isn’t really a secret at all. Like most other kinds of success, doing well with your writing is largely down to hard work. You need to put the hours in.

Without doing the work to actually write a book – and to make it good and worth reading – success will certainly be hard to come by. You can’t do well if you don’t have something to sell.

You also need time, and patience. When we see authors deemed ‘overnight success stories’ in the news, they have in reality often been working for years under the radar, perfecting their craft and doing everything they can to achieve what they want.

It’s important to be proactive; if you want to be successful with your writing, you need to go after it yourself. This is particularly important with the growth in self-publishing and more authors adopting the DIY approach.

There’s also something to be said for talent. OK, so not all of the big ‘successful’ books in recent years are all that great in purely literary terms, but they still have a certain something that makes them popular. It might be that they hit upon a theme that resonates with people, even if the writing is a bit below par. Alternatively, they might be unrivalled in terms of their quality of prose.

This is why patience is so important – success can be fickle and while talent is undeniably important, we need to remember that there are different kinds of talent. Being a good writer and understanding the market, for instance, are two different things.

We also can’t deny that in any writing success, there is always a certain amount of luck. No matter how hard we work or how much research we do, we can never truly predict what will do well and what won’t. Readers’ tastes change, and can be nearly impossible to second guess.

All of this brings into perspective a rather complex package – success is not a simple concept.

What do you think is the secret to writing success, and how are you going about getting it?