How to be a Doctor
If you want to be a doctor, you need to do a little bit of doctoring every day. Doesn’t have to be brain surgery—you can just perform an appendectomy, or lance a boil. If you’re really busy, give a friend some medical advice, or walk into the nearest morgue and perform a quick autopsy. The doctoring you do doesn’t have to be much—doesn’t have to be “good”—just do it. Get into the habit, and soon you will have that thriving medical practice you’ve always wanted.
Obviously, that’s not going to work. And yet, so often people (even writers!) say that if you want to be a writer, you need to sit down every day and write something. Like removing an appendix before your first day of medical school, that’s putting the cart before the horse. So what should a writer have, before sitting down to write? Eight years of writer school? Nah, I don’t think so.
You need an idea.
What makes you want to write so bad you can hardly stand it? If you’re like me, it’s a great idea for a story, or for a scene in a novel.
What is “writer’s block”? Writer’s block is that miserable condition of wanting to write and not being able to think of something you want to write about. And what advice are wannabe writers so often given? “Don’t worry about having something you want to write about, just write something.” Sure, invite those starry-eyed word-worshippers to see how long they can stand a daily dose of self-inflicted writer’s block, and when they find they’d actually rather do laundry, or the dishes, or binge-watch something on Netflix, well, it’s not your fault they lacked the extraordinary will-power it takes to be a writer.
There are bound to be some people out there who can force themselves to sit down and write a great novel, while hating every minute of it, but for most of us mere mortals, if we don’t want to write, we’re not going to write—life is just too distracting (and anyway, is that what you want? To spend a year or more doing something that makes you miserable, just so you can say “I wrote a novel”? Really?)
So how do you get that story idea that begs you to write it? I think you have to do two things: First, you have to find an idea, and second, you have to nurture it. I think most of us have ideas for stories, but fall through on the nurturing part. So how to nurture? For me, it’s reading related materials, and thinking about the idea without distractions (AKA a long walk in the park).
Bottom line, get yourself really worked up over an idea, and then sit down every day and write. If you don’t feel like writing, taking a long walk in the park and get yourself excited about your idea again.
One more thing: if you’re going to be a writer, you’re going to have to get over any shyness you feel about self-promotion, i.e., here’s my latest, a book of short plays I wrote especially for staged readings (but I think they’d make great little performance pieces as well). If you know anyone who might be interested, please send 'em the link.
Obviously, that’s not going to work. And yet, so often people (even writers!) say that if you want to be a writer, you need to sit down every day and write something. Like removing an appendix before your first day of medical school, that’s putting the cart before the horse. So what should a writer have, before sitting down to write? Eight years of writer school? Nah, I don’t think so.
You need an idea.
What makes you want to write so bad you can hardly stand it? If you’re like me, it’s a great idea for a story, or for a scene in a novel.
What is “writer’s block”? Writer’s block is that miserable condition of wanting to write and not being able to think of something you want to write about. And what advice are wannabe writers so often given? “Don’t worry about having something you want to write about, just write something.” Sure, invite those starry-eyed word-worshippers to see how long they can stand a daily dose of self-inflicted writer’s block, and when they find they’d actually rather do laundry, or the dishes, or binge-watch something on Netflix, well, it’s not your fault they lacked the extraordinary will-power it takes to be a writer.
There are bound to be some people out there who can force themselves to sit down and write a great novel, while hating every minute of it, but for most of us mere mortals, if we don’t want to write, we’re not going to write—life is just too distracting (and anyway, is that what you want? To spend a year or more doing something that makes you miserable, just so you can say “I wrote a novel”? Really?)
So how do you get that story idea that begs you to write it? I think you have to do two things: First, you have to find an idea, and second, you have to nurture it. I think most of us have ideas for stories, but fall through on the nurturing part. So how to nurture? For me, it’s reading related materials, and thinking about the idea without distractions (AKA a long walk in the park).
Bottom line, get yourself really worked up over an idea, and then sit down every day and write. If you don’t feel like writing, taking a long walk in the park and get yourself excited about your idea again.
One more thing: if you’re going to be a writer, you’re going to have to get over any shyness you feel about self-promotion, i.e., here’s my latest, a book of short plays I wrote especially for staged readings (but I think they’d make great little performance pieces as well). If you know anyone who might be interested, please send 'em the link.
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