What makes a writer a writer?

So it's been almost two months since I last posted. My apologies to the one or two people who may have checked back here on occasion. Mostly what happened was I got swamped with some other projects, so this one fell into the corner. How am I going to remedy that situation so it doesn't happen again, you ask? Well, I'm going to make it a bigger priority. How, you ask again?

Simple.

I'm going to make this blog a DAILY blog.

From now on the entries will probably be shorter, more targeted, and as chock full of fiction factoids as I can fill it.

But that leads me to the subject of today's post. What makes a writer a writer? From the time I was a child, I wanted to "be a writer". I would go around telling people about it, carrying a notebook with me everywhere I went, and read how-to books by the master storytellers of the past.

Then, one day, when I was in High School, I got into a conversation with my friend Diana about writing, the creative process, and all the associated fun that comes with it. After talking for a while, she said "I'd love to read what you're writing right now."

It hit me like a ton of bricks in cement sauce. I didn't have a project I was working on. Not even a short story, and I had been sitting there talking like I was some master of the art. In short, I wasn't a writer. I was just a dreamer. Because, as it turns out, the only way to be a writer...

Is to Write!

So get started. Write something every day. It doesn't matter if it's a page of a novel, a short story, or a cookie recipe. Get started.

In her blog "Fiction Writing ~ The Passionate Journey!", Emily Hanlon has a fantastic article on this for her April 30, 2007 entry. Check it out.

http://www.thefictionwritersjourney.com/archives/blog.html