Characteristics of Writers

The writer has many things to think about, wonder about, ponder on:

The Writer doesn't have to like people, but the Writer must be profoundly, passionately interested in them.

The writer must have an equally passionate desire to make other people see what the Writer sees, hear what the Writer hears.

The Writer must be sensitive to the human condition and moved to express his feelings about it.

The Writer must have a passion for words so that phrases, sentences, and rhythms haunt him.

As a person the Writer must be profoundly committed to what the Writer is writing; as an artist the Writer must be detached from it as the Writer learns to recognize what is good and what is bad about his writing.

The writer needs to be born this morning, and again tomorrow morning. The Writer needs to look at familiar faces as if the Writer had never seen them. The Writer should drive his car to wherever the Writer is going as if it were the first time. The Writer should look at the face of the supermarket checker as if she, too, had been born this morning.

The Writer must learn that writing is rewriting. The Writer must be able to cut away at his manuscript without quivering, to carve up his child without flinching.

The Writer must acquire a deep concern for details. This concern often makes the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful story or article.

A person must realize that writing is a daily routine, not the result of an occasional inspiration. The Writer has to find the time every day to sit down and write. Keeping a journal is one way of sitting down and writing. The beginning writer cannot use his job as an excuse for not writing. (In fact, why not use the job as an excuse for writing?)

The Writer must realize that only a mall number of writers are able to make a living by writing. There are few compared to those who have other professions, trades, or jobs.

The Writer must admit, finally, that there are no excuses, that the only reason the Writer isn't writing is because the Writer doesn't want to. People write successfully everywhere, under all conditions and with all kinds of handicaps.

Occasionally the Writer will stop in anguish and tell them self that everything has been said, all the tales have been told. The Writer must remind himself that the story of Romeo and Juliet had been told by an Italian writer of novellas, but that Shakespeare told it better, and that the same plot was retold later in the form of Abie's Irish Rose and again in West Side Story.

The writer must learn to live with his rejection slips, use them as scrap paper, not label them "End of the World." The Writer can avoid many rejection slips by knowing the market. The Writer should not, of course, be sending manuscripts to a magazine that went out of existence seven years ago.

The writer must learn how to handle the problem of loneliness, for writing is a lonely profession. It is one road a person must walk alone.

This page renewed 26 February, 2001 By Thom Potter, This sites owner and Head Crafter!