"6 Reasons You Will Never Be A Writer"

You might notice, looking back on things I've linked to and posts I've written, that I'm a big fan of blunt advice, the kind that grabs you by your shoulders and shakes you up a little.  Tough love, you might call it.  I think any problem is best tackled with a wide-eyed, clear-headed, no-nonsense approach, and I don't think that you help someone get to that point by talking around the issue and sparing their feelings.

I think this is especially important when we're talking about writing, because writing is not just about truth, it's about Truth — capital-T, 48 point gold-embossed type Truth.  Even if we're writing about spaceships and monsters and vampires with rayguns, if there isn't real human emotion contained in your fiction, it's not going to be worth reading.  You can't bullshit your way through telling a story, not a story that matters, so I don't think you should bullshit yourself about the process of how you tell those stories, either.

So I appreciate reading any writing advice that makes me sit up and pay attention and say, "Oh, crap, you're right." This list of six reasons you're not going to make it as a writer did just that:

Wondering when you'll reap the fame and fortune that come with your dream of being a writer? Well, probably never. If:

1. You don't read

At least, not the right things. You read all the books on writing and polishing and publishing, and all the books that literary critics are praising, but nothing of any real value. You don't read books that light a fire under you, you don't read in your genre, you don't read non-fiction for fun and inspiration.  You don't have an Audible membership or a library card and you couldn't name a book that has meant anything to you since you turned 20.

[...] 5. Your Writing Sucks

When you do make the time to write, it's hard. The words do not come dripping off your pen easily; all the elements in your story don't come out in the right order; your characters are flat and uninteresting and they speak in cliches; you want to give up.

And that is what Anne Lammot calls your 'shitty first draft'. It has to be got through in order to get to the second draft, the third, and the polished end result. If you are too scared to suck, too scared to fail then you will never be a writer, because all writing involves putting some truly terrible prose on the page — and excising it later or, like William Faulkner, throw it out entirely and start again.

– 6 Reasons You Will Never Be A Writer

That first point hit home for me especially hard.  I've known for years that I wasn't really reading as much as I should be if I wanted to write well.  Fortunately, that's really turned itself around — since I first got my Kindle, less than a year ago, I've probably read more novels than I'd read in the last three or four years combined.

The rest of the list was definitely worth checking out, too, and contains some great quotes from famous writers.  You should go read it.