A photographer friend of mine, Jonathan, was telling me about a discussion he had with someone at a video shoot we had just covered for Noisecreep. This person asked Jonathan how to become a photographer. He said his response was this, roughly paraphrased: “I didn’t really know what to tell the guy. The way you become a photographer is you get a camera and take pictures. And you don’t stop taking pictures.”
The guy was more than likely asking how to become a professional photographer — how to monetize on the skill — but Jonathan’s statement still holds true. And it holds true for writers as well. The way you become a professional writer is you start writing and don’t stop. The industry and business side of it takes care of itself as it things progress — not that it’s automatic or turn-key, but the politics of the writing industry is the same as any other industry. Those of us with normal-to-awesome socializing skills who can build bridges instead of burn them are able to make a career out of it.
More than that, though, is that you can write without writing. You can read; reading is just writing in reverse. When you read, hopefully, you are picturing the characters and scenes within your imagination, and maybe even predict how things may turn out. Writing is the same but going in the opposite direction: a story idea springs up, character personalities and motivation and bits of dialogue or plot elements are conceived, all leading up to the grand codifying and commitment to paper (or screen). It’s a little saccharine adage among writers that good writers are often good readers.
Contrary to what most writers would like to think, their romanticized vocation is not so esoteric; they are not some specialized strain of human being that perform the handiwork of the apotheosized. Anyone can learn to write, and anyone can learn to write well. It just takes a commitment.
So if you’re looking to write, you’ll need to see to it that you’re writing all the time, but you need to read all the time. Read modern bestsellers and classics. Read bad books and figure out where they went wrong, then read great books and wonder what the fuss is all about. Read old books about a future that happened a decade ago, then read recent books about an alternate history. Read a chapter in your Kindle and a chapter in the print book and see which one feels more interesting. Read a fantasy series backwards. Spend a year and see how many banned books you can finish, or books that will surely offend — read books with “nigger”, “fuck”, and “cunt” smeared generously, like mud, all around the insides. Or read books that you won’t agree with: Christians should read The Upanishads
You need to cram your head so full of words that your toenails pop off your bloated body. Then lay off the laptop for an hour, grab a sheet of unlined paper and a pen, and write until there’s no more room on the page…then continue writing until the words are off the edge of the desk. Then all you need to do is get the right person to notice it.