4 Steps to Being the Writer You Want to Be

Sameena Mughal
5 min readNov 26, 2020

Don’t complicate it.

Photo by Lauren Mancke on Unsplash

In 2015, I came to the realization that teaching no longer satisfied me.

That wasn’t fair to me. It wasn’t fair to the students I taught.

Before taking the plunge to walk away, I took a sabbatical researching Students with Interrupted Formal Education and wrote a scholarly paper for my school district. What I discovered along the way was that writing was all I wanted to do.

Still, I couldn’t resign because I owed my district the semester I took for the sabbatical. I decided to give them the full year to make sure giving up a 17-year career was the best decision.

As I look back on that time, I realize the decision-making process broke down into 4 simple steps:

1. Make the decision

2. Find your niche

3. Know your worth in that niche

4. Be it

Photo by Vladislav Babienko on Unsplash

Make the decision

Before the school year ended in 2016, I decided to write full-time. I second-guessed that decision more than once because I didn’t have a step-by-step plan for how I…

--

--

Sameena Mughal

Former teacher who retired early to pursue a passion for writing. Personal development content writer and fiction author. Dog mom. www.sameenakmughal.com