All writers think of what they do as an art. Smart writers understand that writing is also a business. Really smart writers see themselves also as entrepreneurs.

As a veteran of both a Silicon Valley technology law firm and a Valley start-up, I've known people who labored for years late at night and on weekends to create a new product while holding down a full-time day job; who, when the prototype was ready, found a venture capitalist to help make the prototype commercial-grade, validate the product by attaching the venture capitalist's imprimatur to it, and introduce the entrepreneur to prospective customers; who then started a real company and learned to run it, creating new products and selling them to new customers in new markets.

As originally appeared on Intrepid Media

You already know how to be better. You know all the pitfalls, all the traps, all the flaws. You know that to be a better writer, you need to hone your manuscript over and over. You need to work on it until it's the best possible piece of writing you can make it. You need to write and rewrite and re-rewrite. You need to craft your sentences, build your plot, develop your characters. You need to polish that sucker til it shines.

Forget all that for now.

There are 10 things you can do to be a better writer that have absolutely nothing to do with working on your writing project.

You can succeed without doing any of them. Sure. Know what? You'll be a lot better off if you try at least some. And I'm coming at this from a novelist's perspective, so that's where I'm picking my examples from, but a lot of this applies to short stories, memoirs, poems, essays, the whole bit.