Now write!

Remember, a writer writes. Always.

~ Larry Donner

Now it is down to you. The thing that makes you a writer is, obviously, writing. So just do it, enjoy it, open the gates of the asylum and run free. It’s no good listing excuses; that is how you divert your spark into the gutter. Take a leaf out of Henry Miller’s book: he suffered great poverty and yet still made the leap. At thirty nine and without any publishing success he left his native Brooklyn and moved to Paris, with only a smattering of the language and barely any money in his pocket, just to write. To do it. To be. To live the dream!

Get into a routine. Burn the candles at both ends, get up early and make time, work at it, create, for there is nothing better. You will probably have to do two jobs at once, the writing and the one that pays the bills until your writing is good enough. It is an art and a craft, it requires dedication if you want to be successful.

When people say that they can’t write they often mean they can’t write like Dostoevsky or they can’t write like Anne Rice and of course they can’t and so they shouldn’t because they are not Dostoevsky or Anne Rice. Your writing is unique because it is yours and that is what makes it beautiful, the personal idiosyncrasies. The world already has The Brothers Karamazov and it is a wonderfully complex work of genius. Read it, learn from it, dismantle it, comma by comma, rivet by rivet, then feast on it and move on. You can learn a lot from good books but don’t be overshadowed by them. When the rejection slips start coming through the door, don’t be discouraged but take heart. No writer ever made it without suffering and overcoming adversity. Go for it!