A few weeks ago, I read K.M. Weiland's (excellent) post 6 Tips to Help You Finish Your Book, where she explains that most books get abandoned before they're finished. 

In my years of blogging, I've also seen plenty of blogs get abandoned. Heck, I've abandoned two myself: it's sometimes the right decision, of course, but it's also often the case that bloggers simply give up altogether.

A writing career can take years – even most of a lifetime – to build. The efforts you're putting in now may not pay off for months yet.

Plus, writing can be hard. You might be really struggling to get to grips with an aspect of the writing craft. Perhaps, for instance, you've launched headlong into a novel, only to find that your plotting really needs work.

I think that while you'll face challenges at times, the real issue that divides successful authors from ones who abandon their dreams is being able to stick with it, day after day, week after week, year after year.

How can you stay motivated?

When I started out in blogging and freelancing in early 2008, I also started a notebook where I recorded my monthly achievements. They started off small – and it's fun to look back at things like my first guest post and my first paying gig. But month on month, I made progress.

Get a nice little notebook and use it to keep track of what you achieve, month after month, year after year. I'd suggest sitting down at the start of each month for 5 - 10 minutes to write down anything you've accomplished with your writing. Often, you'll find you've done more than you realised – and over time, you can see how one small achievement leads to a bigger success months later.

Variation: Use a simple daily tracking system to help you build a strong writing habit – e.g. put an X on the calendar for each day that you write, and try to build an unbroken chain of Xs.

While I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to make money writing, I wouldn't recommend going into any long-term project "for the money". (Shorter projects, like individual blog posts, are OK.) A novel, non-fiction book or blog just won't be sustainable over the months and even years if your only real motivation is the money you hope to eventually get for it.

In the early days of any project, especially if you're in the early stages of your writing career, there's often a ton of hard work with no guaranteed reward.Sure, it might sound like a good plan to churn out romance novels in the hope of a quick buck – but if you've only read a couple of romance novels in your life, (a) you're not likely to be any good at writing them and (b) you'll probably get sick of writing it a few chapters in.

Instead, choose projects that are intrinsically motivating. Write a novel that you'd want to write even if you had no prospect of making money; start a blog that you can pour time and love into simply because you want to.

In seventeen years of taking my writing seriously, the one thing that's made the biggest difference to me is the companionship and support of fellow writers. Early on, that was a writing evening group where I was the youngest member by quite a way (I was 14 when I joined) – but where I was treated as an equal. These days, I have a fantastic network of writers all around the world, through the blogs I read, through Twitter, Facebook, and lots of personal email connections.

Simply being around other people who "get" what it is to be a writer can make a huge different. You'll often also find that:

If you can join an offline, local group that's great; if you want more support or something a bit different, then let me introduce you to Writers' Huddle.