Write Is a Verb, People
Write is a verb. Writer and writing are nouns. To be a writer or produce writing, you have to write. There’s no other way to succeed in putting words on a page unless you dictate your ideas or story to someone, which makes you a dictator and might lead some people to believe you rule a small Central American country with absolute power.
At the age of thirty-five, on a flight back from a vacation in San Francisco, I decided the time had come for me to get serious about writing if I intended to be a writer. Somehow as I was going about my life and not paying attention, I had reached middle age without attaining any of the dreams of my youth except owning every Bananarama album. I determined to take action.
As luck would have it, I opened a local cultural newspaper upon returning home and noticed an ad for an open writing group at a local bookstore. I glanced at the clock and had just enough time to get there. I grabbed a short story, which I had written a few years ago and abandoned to a desk drawer, and flew out the door.
At the bookstore, a local, award-winning novelist had agreed to attend the meet and give some of us aspiring writers some helpful feedback. I slumped in the back of the room, but the author saw me and called on me to be the last reader. I read the first few pages about a meet-cute between two people in a coffee shop. When I finished, and the other attendees were leaving, the author came up to me and said, “You’re a storyteller. You’ve got a good voice, and a great sense of humor, which is something I wish I had. Keep at it, but for the love of God, just use ‘he said’ and ‘she said’ and cut the ‘he ejaculated’ crap unless you plan to write tongue-in-cheek erotica.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
I went home beaming with enthusiasm and pride—and didn’t write anything for weeks. I asked myself why. I had plenty of ideas. I had plenty of time; however, I hadn’t made a habit of scheduling time for writing. When would I write? Where would I write? How would I write, and with what? Should I wear a black beret? Should I get drunk first? It turns out, writing isn’t so simple.
But writing really is simple, so simple, in fact, it’s like instant mashed potatoes. Just take one writer, an idea, and add a writing device. Tell the writer to start writing and not stop until he’s finished. Watch the writer sit there, motionless, and then gently whisper into his ear that unless he writes something, you will kill him and then watch the words begin to flow.
If you want to be a writer, you have to show up to write. It’s a habit like learning to eat healthy, exercise, or learning how to make balloon animals. You must be consistent, you must keep trying, and you must learn to breathe deeply. When in doubt about writing, breathe!
Did I mention you’ll most likely suck in the beginning? If not, then you’ll most likely suck in the beginning—and that’s okay. The more you write, the more your writing will improve, and when it does, you’ll most likely have made showing up to write a habit and something you look forward to doing as much as possible. Also, a byproduct of writing on a regular basis is that you start to have a lot of pages laying around, so you may want to find a nice binder to put them in, perhaps something with a rainbow unicorn, or a buxom, female medical student lying spread-eagle across the hood of a Trans Am in a leopard-skin bikini, or good ol’ reliable Snoopy.
Until you’ve established the habit of writing regularly, do not read what you write. If you do, you’ll want to compare it—and by default, yourself. Never judge yourself; leave it to others. (They’re less biased.) This is not productive. It leads to midnight runs through the drive-thru of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and a solo cruller eating contest. It is akin to drinking just one more glass of wine and heeding that little voice inside of you that whispers, “Go ahead, text him. You know he’ll come crawling back to you, drooling, if you send him a photo of yourself wearing nothing but your comfortable granny panties—and girl, your hair has never looked so good.”
Permit yourself to write badly. Do not worry about grammar or sentence structure yet; vomit your thoughts and characters on the page! Don’t worry if you’re using words correctly; use every word that has ever captured your fantasy, e.g., Attic salt (refined, incisive wit), bobsy-die (a great deal of fuss or trouble), and chalkdown (a teacher’s strike). Write haiku, flash fiction, and short essays about how you stepped on an elevator, and somebody’s chocolate got into your peanut butter and don’t decide if it literally happened or it’s a euphemism until you’re elbows deep in your writing.
Write about what happened that day, what you had for lunch, what you wished you had for lunch, what songs make you feel a hundred tall and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and what tunes make you want to curl into a fetal position on dirty bathroom floor and sob—but in a good way.
As with any good habit, you need to reward yourself when you’ve finished. Take your inner child out for ice cream (or a beer), bake yourself a lemon cake with milk-chocolate frosting, do the Watusi, ride a mechanical bull, or allow yourself to play dead and do nothing.
Be a writer and write to produce writing. Write, rinse, and then repeat.
And in those dark times when it seems no hope remains and you’re unable to type another character or scribble another word, take heart and remember that writer who took you under his wing and said those tender, uplifting words of encouragement: “For the love of God, quit ejaculating!”