You Were Not Born a Writer
You were not born a writer. I hate to read other writer’s giving advice and making claims that writing is a talent you’re either born with or you aren’t. We are not musicians, who are generally born with their natural talent.
Yes, many writers have natural talent, but for the most part, writing is a learned skill. It often takes time and practice to hone this skill.
When I first started writing, I couldn’t form a coherent sentence. Of course that’s still questionable some days, but I’ve worked very hard to become a better writer. It’s something I work on each time I write.
I’ve seen many bloggers struggle with asking themselves if their work is worthy and beat themselves up over one little mistake. I know how this feels because I literally cringe when I find a mistake in my own work, but it happens. It doesn’t make me less of a writer because I make mistakes; it makes me more aware that I’m not perfect. None of us are perfect writers.
Writing well is a skill, but like all skills, it can be learned. Writing is also like a muscle. If you don’t take care of your muscles and work them out pretty regular, they begin to atrophy. Writing is the same way, if you aren’t working out the writing muscle it will suffer.
One of the biggest mistakes any writer can ever make is comparing themselves to another writer. We each write with a different style, and we are each on a different level of the learning curve. If you feel you’re struggling as a writer; practice. Write more. Write all day. Write as many words as you possibly can and when you think you’ve improved just a bit, write some more.
Improve Your Writing Skills
• Stop editing while you work and start writing.
• Allow yourself to write something totally crappy.
• Allow yourself to use off-the-wall words or big fancy words.
• Study the craft of writing.
• Stop comparing yourself to someone else. You are unique, as a person and as a writer.
• Invest in reference materials. Don’t use the Internet for all your reference work. Invest in real books and use them. Learn to enjoy the feel of those books in your hands.
• Take notes or use a highlighter in those reference books. It really is okay to write in the books you own. I struggle with this too, but the book police will not take you away; well unless you do this to books in the store.
The following is one of my favorite quotes and inspirations:
“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit,”
Hemingway confided to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934.
“I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”
Now we all know Hemingway is considered one of the masters of all time. But he clearly admits to throwing most of his material out. It wasn’t up to his standards. He worked to improve it constantly, just as writers of today must work on their skills to improve them.
You were not born a writer, but with consistent practice, you can become one of the masters, just like Hemingway.
Image credit: NYPL Digital Gallery
Written by Patti Stafford from Patti StaffordPosted on July 20th, 2009 and filed under Writing
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16 Responses to “You Were Not Born a Writer”
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Everyone is a writer – it’s just that some people get paid and some don’t. People are always writing notes, blog posts, emails, letters or some kind of writing of some nature. Those desiring to make writing a career need to spend as much time learning and reading as they do writing!
Inspiring read. Thanks.
It is an important advice for beginners because they usually do not understand that you just need to write if you want to become better. I also think that people who want to be good writers need to read many books because you see professional style, new words, new metaphors and so on.
Time and effort will improve most anyone’s writing but there is a natural talent that some have. It is that talent which separates the blogger from the author.
You mentioned Hemingway and most authors follow a similar philosophy. Stephen King has said something to the effect of if you don’t get rid of at least 10% of your first draft you have problems. Clive Barker said that between 20 to 25% of the first draft makes the final cut of his books.
The blogger has no need to convince people to pay $25+ for what we write. Maybe that’s the difference. When I write a blog I know people will read it and even if I don’t put forth my best effort for a few posts no one will care too much. But if I charged money to read my blog it would be a whole different story.
Thanks for the nice article. I’m a sixteen years old bangladeshi and English is a foreign language for me. I love writing in English. But due to the lack of knowledge in English, most of the time, I stop. I know what to write and how to write, but i’m in lack of making sentence structure. Reading and writing English is the only way to improve writing skill. But where can i learn from if i don’t follow other writers like you?
My English writing can be found here http://www.aisajib.com
As a natural born writer, I have to disagree.
Seriously, I think some people are natural born storytellers. Some may write those stories, some may paint those stories, and still others will put them on film (still or moving).
Now, the technical details such as where to put a comma or how to set the flash can be learned. However, I believe there are talents that we are indeed born with.
On the flip side, I can’t math my way out of a wet paper bag.
This was very inspirational, Patti!
I wasn’t born a writer. Or, at least, I wasn’t born knowing I was a writer. When I was thirteen my English teacher assigned us to write a short story. I was the only kid who enjoyed that assignment and handed in something really long. After that I knew I wanted to be a writer.
I must admit, I don’t have any problems marking up my books! They typically have highlighter all over them the first day, and sometimes notes in the margins. I don’t do this with novels, but if it’s a non-fiction book and it doesn’t have any highlighted sections, that means I either haven’t read it yet or it didn’t give me any useful tidbits.
haha! actually, i don’t have skill to write any article. so, most of time i spent time to read other’s article instead of writing.
P/S: Thanks Patti for nice post!
This is great piece of work~ Thanks for the inspiration!
@ Kathryn Lang & Lovely – I will have to disagree. People are not born writers nor is everyone a writer. There is still a lot of illiteracy out there. I’ve posted an update about this at my own blog which you can get to through my profile here.
@Richard S. Thank you. I believe writing is a learned skill. Storytelling is a verbal skill, and not all storytellers are writers. But then again, not all writers are storytellers either.
@ B. Durant – Thanks for your comment. Stephen King also refers to writing as a gift, not something he was born knowing how to do. He’s one of those that has mastered the art of storytelling AND writing. In his book “On Writing”, his best advice (to me) was to write, write, write and cut, cut, cut. Many prominent authors have said that good writing is in the editing and revising.
Almost anyone can write a ton of words and call it a story, but the art is in knowing what to cut out.
I’d like to thank everyone for their comments. This is a topic that can be debated forever, and we each have our own opinion. There are many talents that people are indeed born with (music) but others have to have a certain skill set to be mastered. I’ve covered this further on my own blog, as I mentioned above. If you have time, please stop by and read that post as well.
Thanks again,
Patti
Hrmm…I think I gonna print this out. LoL~
Love this post very much.
Whenever I see this, it motivates me to write again.
Thanks!!!