How to be a writer

The other day, someone asked me the age-old question, “How do I become a writer?” My answer was, “Just start writing.” Of course, that’s the edited version of the real answer, which involves a lot more than this blog post can handle.

I’m sure many of my friends and relatives wonder how I wrote a “whole” novel, which makes me laugh because writing a novel, while extremely difficult, doesn’t seem half the hike up Mt. McKinley it once did. I remember as a young writer thinking I’d never be able to keep the dream alive for 300 pages. I thought short stories would be my thing, and at the time, that was enough. At some point, though, my mindset changed, and the result has been novels, novels, novels—and a growing desire to write more of them.

If the writing life is something you aspire to, here are six pieces of advice to help get you there.

• 1 • Give yourself permission. This is the first step. If you don’t do this, you’ll never be a writer. It’s a decision you have to make. After that, just do it (my favorite ad campaign of all time). Sit down with pen and paper, or open a new Word file, and start writing. If you’re worried about not being good enough, give yourself permission to write badly. Many people want to be great straight out of the box, but that kind of expectation has paralyzed many an aspiring wordsmith. Instead, do the opposite: go into it without expectation, and be prepared to grant yourself patience. You’re going to need it.

• 2 • Guard your writing time. If you’re going to be a writer, you’re going to need blocks of time to do it. Small blocks or large ones, doesn’t matter. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was a novel, short story, poem, or article. Okay, you can probably write an email or a blog post in a day, but both will read better if you write it today and revise tomorrow.

If you don’t reserve the time to write, life will inevitably get in the way. There’s plenty in this world to distract us from our writing goals. If writing is important to you, schedule it—block out the time on your calendar. Be prepared to cut into some of the free-time activities you enjoy. Gaming, for instance, and that streaming habit of yours, probably some nightlife as well. Some people want to write so badly that they literally lose sleep over it: they write at 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning.

If you have a flexible job, that’s great. You’ll find time to write during the day. If not, you’ll probably have to write on the weekends. Once the time is scheduled, don’t let anything short of an emergency steer you away.

• 3 • Write and write and write. You have to create a lot of not-so-great writing in order to learn how to write well. Like any other pursuit or skill, you will learn by doing. By making mistakes. By writing terribly. The only way you’ll ever reach the good stuff is by wading through the bad stuff. That’s why you have to love to write in order to be a writer. It’s hard work often fraught with rejection, and it requires an abundance of time logged before you do it well. In addition, there are no guarantees that you’ll ever write something that takes the world by storm. So, if you’re going to write, you may just be writing for yourself.

If you’re okay with all that, what are you doing here? Get back to writing!

• 4 • Read for inspiration. I’m a big believer in stoking the flames of creativity with quality reading material. Read the kind of book that crackles inside your brain. I know I’ve found a good one when the urge to highlight words, phrases, sentences, and full paragraphs takes over—when I have that euphoric, amazed, tingly feeling that I’ve stumbled upon something special. That’s the kind of reading I want to do. It’s the kind that inspires me to get back to my current work-in-progress.

• 5 • Develop your craft. Craft goes far beyond proper grammar and knowing how to spell. Do you understand point of view, for instance, and how important it truly is? What about story structure? Do you know what it means to flesh out a scene or how to write realistic yet interesting dialogue? What about voice? Everyone talks about finding their voice as a writer. Have you found yours? Do you know what people mean when they talk about voice?

Writing craft is the thing that takes an ordinary tale and elevates it to something potentially unforgettable.

How does one go about learning the craft of writing? Here’s my three-part answer:

• First, write a lot (as I said earlier).

• Second, study those wonderful books that you’ve highlighted into a neon yellow frenzy. The first time you read those books, you read as a reader. Now you’re going back to read them as a writer. That means studying the writing, the wording, the dialogue, the way the author describes the setting; then look at the plot and how it unfolds with moments of strong emotion and surprising twists and a page-turning pace; and, finally, look closely at the character arcs. Who was the protagonist (and his friends and acquaintances) at the start of the story and who did they become by the end?

• Third, leave your internal editor behind—free-write. In other words, take some practice time to write at fast speed without correcting or deleting or rewriting or scratching out. Let yourself go, just write, write, write (it helps if you’re exploring something you care very much about). Continue these free-writing sessions until you reach the unadulterated part of you that’s unabashed, unsullied, unafraid, unintimidated, and uninfluenced. Just be as “you” as you can be.

If you do this for long enough, and you practice free-writing often enough, you will eventually find your voice.

• 6 • Don’t give up. If you want to be a writer, I assume you enjoy writing and that’s what will see you though the good and the bad, the exciting and the dull. A writing life is truly about the journey. And if you love to write, it can and will be deeply fulfilling.

This list is a lot to take in, I realize. And that’s why when someone asks me how to be a writer, I say, “Just start writing.” The rest will come later.

Kim Catanzarite is the author of the award-winning Jovian Duology, a sci-fi thriller. She is a freelance writer and editor for publishers and independent authors, and she teaches copyediting for Writer’s Digest University. Her Self-Publishing 101 blog discusses the ins and outs of indie life as well as all things writing craft (www.authorkimcatanzarite.com/blog). She lives on the east coast USA with her husband and daughter.