The Lifewriter's Digest Article -- Are You A Real Writer?

Are You A Real Writer?

By Denis Ledoux

What makes a real writer? Is it someone who has published a book? Is it someone who works full-time at it? Is it someone whose only income comes from writing? Is it someone who wears jackets with patches on the elbows and smokes a pipe, or someone who spends hours in a cafe sipping latte and holding court?

No.

A writer is someone who writes. Period. A writer is a person who consciously and conscientiously puts words on paper, whether with pen, pencil, or printer and does it over and over again.

A gardener is someone who gardens. A bicyclist is someone who bicycles. A writer is someone who writes.

I don't mean to imply that putting together a shopping list makes a person a writer. Notice that I said consciously and conscientiously. That's what moves the physical act of writing from mere note taking into the act of creation.

Anyone can dig a hole and stick a seed or two in it. But the minute you pull a weed, you become a gardener. You have made a conscious decision to make your garden better. It's the same with writing. The minute you cross out a word and replace it with one you think is more suitable, you become a writer. You have made a conscious decision to make your writing better.

To conscientiously put words on paper means that you make time in your life to write. You budget time, or create time, to write. The more you write, the more time you want for it. It bothers you when you miss a day or two of writing. You think about your story when you are driving or cooking--or gardening. You turn again and again to your story, aware of its potential, and work hard to help it get there.

You know on some level that the story you write will never match what you hoped it would be. And that does not discourage you. Like generations of writers before you, from Homer to Dickens to Oates, you accept your own shortcomings and keep writing anyway.

Do you have what it takes to be a writer? The magic line between a note-taker and a writer isn't hard to cross. In fact, you've crossed it already. Simply by reading this far into this article convinces me that you are eager to find ways to improve your work. And that makes you a writer.

Good luck and remember to write consciously and conscientiously.