How do I become a writer?

By taking a piece of paper, a pen, and writing. That by itself makes you a writer. Or as it may be in today’s day and age, sitting down at a computer, opening up a word processing program and blurting out whatever it is that you want to blurt out. If you’ve done either of these, congratulations, you are a (drumroll) writer. Whether your writing is any good, that is still left to interpretation, but at least you’ve passed the first step.

While being a writer is for the most part an easy endeavor, there are some thing that you can do to improve your skills and abilities. Writing, like anything requires practice. Unless you’re one of the select few who can simply sit down and blurt out the literary equivalent to “Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man” you will most likely need to keep at it. My strategy with this is to write on a daily basis. Whether I’m feeling inspired or not. One day what I put down could be good, the other nonsensical rubbish, nonetheless, this daily activity has helped me drastically improve not only my writing style, but has also allowed me to isolate my weaknesses and work on improving them.

Consider, this to be like going to the gym. On day one, you wont be able bench press the biggest largest weight available, but with time and training, those weights, while static, will seem relatively lighter to you. For the basis of this here website / blog what have you, let’s call it your writing muscle.

Next up. Start simple. Whether you want to be an author, a playwright, or a journalist, taking on a book, a play, or a feature as a first project is probably more than you can handle at the moment. Start out with shorts, simple pieces and when you think you’ve mastered them, move on to larger projects. It’s also quite all right to go back to shorter pieces while you’re working on a larger project. For example, I am working on my first book, and at times, I just don’t feel like continuing the story, in these instances, I’ll write a short, or a small piece, or start a website like this one to clear my head. When I sit down to work on the larger project again, I find myself rejuvenated and the words flow clearly onto the page.

Finally, don’t rush it. Career aside, write at your own pace, you’re supposed to get as much enjoyment out of this possible. You’ll see that the quality of your work is much better, and people will find your work much more pleasurable to read. And when you finish a short story, or a piece, be proud of yourself, one way or another it is an accomplishment.