Becoming a Writer

Creative individuals often ask me if becoming a writer is difficult. The answer is no. If you want to become a writer, it is within your control to become one. Will it be easy? No. Will it be profitable? Not for a long time.

If you've read that paragraph and you still think becoming a writer is a good idea, it is easy to get started. Sit at a desk and write. I'm not being facetious when I say this. Scores of people say they want to write, but only a few take that first step and actually sit at the keyboard and put words on the page. If you want to become a writer, don't spend your free time talking about it or doing something else— just write, every day, even if only during your coffee break.

Before my first novel was published, a friend and I used to write for 10 minutes a day during our morning coffee break. We each had a notebook and wrote by hand while everyone else went to the coffee room. We called our writing the "coffee break papers" and a surprising amount of good writing came out of these short bursts each day.

It doesn't matter if what you write is good, or if it follows the rules, or if anyone else likes it. All that matters is that you write. If you're serious about becoming a writer, you need the practice. And while you're in this first practice stage, find ways to learn. Read books on writing, take writing courses, go to online sites like this one and read everything you can find. Just don't let reading keep you from writing. Write about what you learn, and give yourself practice exercises.

If you read about dialogue, then write a paragraph or scene that is all dialogue and read it aloud into a recording device. Now find a piece of professional dialogue, and read it aloud into a recorder. Listen to both samples and compare them. Yours may not sound as good as the professional piece. Try to understand why. Go through and make notes. What do you do that the professional does not? What does the professional do that you don't? If you analyze your work as you're learning, you'll get better.

As you're analyzing passages from published work, read the entire story or the entire book. Writers write and writers read. Becoming a writer gives you license to read whenever you like and call it work. Read for enjoyment, and read to learn. If you read fiction alongside books on writing craft, you'll begin to recognize the particular skills of a writer and will start to develop these skills yourself. Reading widely also allows you to learn what you like to read. You should write what you most like to read.

Becoming a writer requires composition skills, such as an understanding of grammar and punctuation, but it also requires knowledge of writing craft. Without an understanding of craft, your work won't find an audience. You'll bore people, whether you know it or not. Good writing doesn't accidentally catch a reader's attention and hold it. Readers become hooked because of good characterization and because the writing compels them to read forward. It is suspenseful. It leaves them anticipating an ending. They know what each character wants in the story and they read to learn if the character succeeds.

You'll learn how to create that suspense as you learn about craft. You'll learn what makes a character interesting, and what does not, how to slow the story or speed it up to create good pacing. You'll learn what details improve a story and which ones don't work at all. You'll find several good writing books in the writing library on this site. These are books I have used myself and found useful.

Once you become familiar with writing craft, matters of technique will become second nature. Instead of thinking always about what to do next, you will feel comfortable enough to experiment and find your own unique style and subject matter. Originality combined with skillful crafting of fiction will get you noticed. Either one alone will not allow you to stand out from all the other hopeful writers. You need both skill and originality.

At this point, you can submit your work to magazines for publication. If you are like most writers, you will receive many, many rejections before your work is accepted on a regular basis. But this should not discourage you. Many of the writers I have worked with started their own blogs before magazines and journals published them. The Internet is the "great equalizer" that allows you to build an audience on your own. Publish pieces of your work in your blog, and before you know it others will be commenting on your work. You can also join free creative writing sites on the Internet, where you can have your work critiqued by others, and where you can provide critiques, which will teach you more about writing than having your own writing critiqued. See the writing resources page for good writing sites.

Finally, you will pitch an article idea to a publisher, or send in a short story, and the editor will like your work and want to publish it. Over time, this will happen more and more regularly, until you no longer think of yourself as a writer, but as a published author.

Becoming a writer is a slow process, so you will need patience and a talent for perseverance, but if you want to become a writer, and you put in the time and the effort, there is no reason why you will not get what you want.

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