I get a lot of email and queries sent through websites, asking for advice on the easiest way to become a writer.
The word ‘easy’ features heavily in these requests.
There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
~Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith
The first thing worth exploring is what, for you, defines a ‘writer’?
Is a writer someone who simply puts pen to paper on a regular basis or does his work have to be published before a writer can hang up his sign?
For me, a writer writes. That’s all.
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
~Sylvia Plath
Someone who aspires to be a good writer will practice every day – by writing.
The writing is often easier than the sitting down to write.
In my view, we put so much pressure on ourselves to write something profound or witty, we are so focused on the end result, we don’t allow ourselves to enjoy the process of writing. We lose our curiosity about where our writing might take us. We lose our playfulness, becoming ‘significant’ and heavy.
Every writer I know has trouble writing. ~Joseph Heller
We sit for as long as we can spare in front of a blank screen or notebook. We either chase the words tumbling through our minds and forget to cature them, or we spend the time looking for words in a brain that has become nothing more than a ghost town, lacking even the dried bush being blown down the main street by the wind.
I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork. ~Peter De Vries
Being willing to write makes you a writer. That’s where it begins. Don’t wait for the novel idea (play on words intended) – just write. Keep what you write and every now and then re-read it. Extract the clusters of words that spark ideas and offer promise. You won’t see them straight away. There’s something about leaving what you have written that gives you, the writer, a fresh perspective. So put your work away and come back to it another day.
Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.
~E.L. Doctorow
You cannot become a published writer until you become a writer. Sounds obvious, but it’s astonishing to me how many aspiring writers want to get straight to the published bit without putting in the time to first become a writer. You cannot become a soloist until you become a singer…..the principle is the same.
I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.
~James Michener
If you want to become a writer start today. Don’t wait, it won’t get any easier and there’s no point putting it off any longer. Just write.
It is impossible to discourage the real writers – they don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to write. ~Sinclair Lewis
Have you discovered Google+ yet? Join me - Dee at Google+
.