My Biggest Failures as a Writer
from The Wordslinger Podcast Hosted by J. Kevin Tumlinson
A WORDSLINGER 10-SHOT Every successful writing career is built on mistakes. I’ve made plenty of them. In this Wordslinger 10-Shot, I share some of my biggest failures as a writer—from falling for a literary agent scam and spending thousands on things that didn’t move my career forward, to signing a publishing contract without proper representation and eventually burning myself out trying to keep up an impossible pace. The point isn’t to avoid failure entirely. You can’t. The goal is to learn from it, recognize the warning signs earlier, and make better decisions the next time around. If you’re building a career as a writer, author, creator, or creative entrepreneur, learn from my mistakes—and then go make some new, brilliant failures of your own. Visit the Knovelton Bookshop at knoveltonbooks.com TIMECODES: 00:00 Why I talk about my accomplishments 00:46 My biggest failures as a writer 01:25 Falling for a literary agent scam 02:28 Paying for expensive book reviews 04:44 How to recognize publishing scams 05:08 My traditional publishing contract mistake 06:50 Why I walked away from the publishing deal 07:34 Making six figures—and burning myself out 09:33 The danger of pushing too hard 10:24 Why writers should have contracts reviewed 11:21 The biggest red flag with literary agents 12:01 Advice about writing contests and competitions 14:18 Why I talk openly about failure 15:03 Experience, confidence, and taking criticism 16:05 Why failure is part of success 16:46 Go fail fabulously Subscribe to the channel for practical, experience-based guidance on writing, publishing, book marketing, author careers, and the business of being a writer. If you’re trying to build a sustainable writing career, this is the place to learn what works, what doesn’t, and what nobody tells you until you’ve been doing this for years. And tell me in the comments: What’s one mistake or failure in your writing career that taught you something valuable? FIND KEVIN: Find Kevin and his books: https://kevintumlinson.com Join Kevin on Substack: https://kevintumlinson.substack.com Wordslinger Podcast home page: https://wordslingerpodcast.com SERVICES FOR AUTHORS: Polish your writing and make it ready for publishing with ProWritingAid: https://tidd.ly/3NCdlk5 Publish your book to every major retailer online, get your book into print and ebook, and get support the whole way at Draft2Digital: https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger Find a virtual assistant to help you market your books—and more—at AuthorAnchor: https://authoranchor.com
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What this episode covers
In this Wordslinger 10-Shot, Kevin shares some of the biggest mistakes and failures of his writing career, including falling for a literary agent scam, signing a bad publishing deal, wasting money, and burning himself out chasing success. More importantly, he looks at what those failures taught him—and why learning to fail well may be one of the most important skills a writer can develop.
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