Choosing to Be a Great Writer

Five Choices to Make Today for Writing Success

“Bad choices make good stories.”
—Unknown

There’s this thing I keep hearing. I hear it sometimes when I talk about Shelf Life (what Shelf Life does, who Shelf Life is for). I heard it just the other day when I was talking about watching author videos from the National Book Festival to get writing strategies and ideas. I hear it when I talk about Tomi Adeyemi and her free writing resources library where she gives tips and advice on how to write a bestseller. Whenever I get down to talking about how to take whatever you’re writing—or whatever you’ve written or want to write—and revise it, improve it, make it shine, and publish it, inevitably somebody will go,

“But you have to have the writing talent to make use of any of that, right?”

Stop the Presses

If you take one thought from Shelf Life today, please let it be that “a writer” is something you choose to become and not something you inherently are or are not. Nobody is born a great writer. The ability to become a writer, a good writer, a great writer—is not innate. There is no subset of people who have the capacity to become writers while others do not. Almost everyone has the ability to use and understand language, and anyone who can use and understand language has the ability to become a writer. It’s a skill. You build it, practice it, and improve it over time.  

• Anyone; 

• Anyone at all; 

• Who wants to become a writer, and 

• Makes the choices that lead to writing success; 

• Can do it.

Are there people who won’t ever be able to become writers? Absolutely. For instance:

• People who are not interested in becoming writers.

• People who want to become writers but don’t have the time or energy to make it happen.

The ease with which a person learns the craft and hones their writing skill—that part is variable. Some folks lean more toward facility with numbers than words. It might be more challenging for them. Some people naturally take to language and they might find it easier. Everyone will fall somewhere different on the spectrum of how easy or difficult it is to become a great writer, but anyone can do it. There are left-brain people and right-brain people, but all of us can be write-brain people if we want to.

Some Words on Neurodiversity

Some members of the neurodiverse community may find themselves on the far end of the ease-of-honing-the-skill spectrum. People working with dyslexia, dyspraxia, dysnomia, and other language and learning disabilities, are going to have a harder time. I experience aphantasia—the inability to visualize mental images—and that has an impact on the way I read, the way I write, and all the ways I process descriptive language (incoming and outgoing). I would not say that this has made it harder for me to be a writer, but it presents a challenge I have to work with and around.

I also experience dyscalculia—the difficulty learning or understanding some or all aspects of arithmetic. There was a time (a long time) when I thought I was just incapable of doing any kind of math, so I didn’t try. For instance, I can’t read an analog clock face; I have a hard time looking at two quantities and telling you which one is larger; I’ve never been able to follow dance steps or learn martial arts moves; and no matter how much time you give me to memorize a string of numbers, my memory goes completely blank the moment I’m no longer looking at it.

With the help of a calculator or Excel, I can overcome some of my numerical challenges. I’m able understand mathematical concepts, even if I can’t do arithmetic. With the right tools, I have learned to do the kind of math tasks I need to be successful at my job. Likewise, I’m able to aid my descriptive writing process by looking at paintings or photographs while I write, since I can’t clearly picture people or places in my mind. And although scenes don’t appear vividly in my mind the way they do for many writers, I often hear dialogue in my head and get inspiration that way. The process is a little different, and the challenges are different—but I think about my ability to experience imagination verbally instead of visually as a different kind of strength instead of a weakness. 

Takeaway: Don’t let neurodivergence prevent you from writing if it’s something you want to do.

Great! So we know that anyone can become a writer, even a great writer. Let’s take a look at some of the choices that anybody can make to start doing exactly that.

Read Often, Read Everything

Great writers read and they read a lot. I think reading often is equal to writing often in terms of how valuable the activity is for making you better at writing. No matter how much you practice writing, I don’t think you can become great if you don’t also read. Keep that to-read list robust and make sure you stock it with a wide variety of material, like:

• The greats—Whatever type of writing you do (eg, blogging, long-form fiction, poetry) make sure your reading list contains the giants, the progenitors, and the outliers of that type of writing. For instance, a great playwright probably needs to be familiar with William Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen, and Langston Hughes.

• Your peers—Whatever genre of writing you’re working in, you need to be reading the other people writing and publishing in that space. If you write YA, keep abreast of what’s big and beautiful in YA. If your thing is science fiction, keep your Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Arthur C Clarke winners and nominees close at hand.

• A smidgeon of everything—In addition to studying the masters and the margaritas, make sure you are also dabbling in things you might not normally reach for. If you live and die by genre fiction, grab a narrative nonfiction book every now and then. Look for content that is different from your writing, different from your go-to reading, and novel or experimental in some way. I pick up some of the best tips from writing that is nothing at all like my own.

Think critically about what you read. When you finish reading something, think about whether and why you liked it. If you didn’t like it, why not? If you did, why? Was it just fun to read? Tough, but rewarding when you finished it? What were its strengths and weaknesses? And how can you emulate those strengths and eliminate those weaknesses in your own writing? 

Write As Often As You Can

You can refer back to the recent article on habit-building for some techniques to keep yourself on track, but the short version is: (a) Figure out your success condition for writing; and (b) meet that condition every day or on as many days as you can manage. Your success condition could be something like:

• Write for 30 minutes.

• Write 500 words.

• Write 1 page.

• Devote 1 hour to writing-related tasks (research, revising, outlining, editing).

Make a reasonable commitment. You can always increase it later. Just make sure you know what counts as a “yes, I wrote today” and then whatever that is—do it as often as you can. You won’t get better at anything you don’t practice. Some days it’s easy for me to sit down and spit out 2000 words and then go on with my day like it was nothing. Some days I leave it till 11:37 PM and I eke out a 500-word pile of garbage that’s probably going to get scrapped in the morning. The important thing is I did it. Don’t wait for inspiration to strike. Just get in front of your writing apparatus and set down some words.

Seek Feedback and Take It to Heart

Get feedback on what you write. There are a ton of ways to do this but no matter what avenue you select, make sure you are specific about what and how much you’re asking someone to read; what type of feedback you’re looking to receive; and how and when you would like to receive it. Don’t just send someone a link to your writing with a note that says: “What do you think?” That’s not fair to yourself or to the person who is reading your stuff. 

Once you get the feedback you requested:

1. Read (or listen to) the feedback carefully.

2. Spend 2 to 3 minutes feeling defensive because your writing was already perfect and your reviewer somehow didn’t see that. (Optional, but I always do this step.)

3. Make an action plan for incorporating the specific feedback. You might not incorporate every single thing, but if you find that you’re rejecting every suggestion then you need to go back to Step 2.

4. Plan to use the general feedback as you go forward. If the same thing popped up multiple times, or it’s feedback you’ve heard before on other work, strategize on how to stop doing whatever it is that keeps getting flagged.

Where should you look for feedback? There are plenty of options—some paid in money, some paid in kind, and some in thanks. For instance:

• Ask a friend to be your beta reader.

• Join or start a writing group or critique group.

• Work with a professional editor or writing coach.

Keep Relevant Lists

By now I’m sure you’ve noticed that I love lists. My bullet journal is full of lists on all kinds of topics but here are a few of the ones that help me out the most with writing.

• List of project ideas—any time you think of an idea for a project, however basic or simple, write that sucker down. Bad idea? Still write it down. Some of the best stuff comes from bad ideas. I won’t name names but I’m sure everyone can think of a great story with a silly premise.

• Lists of words to use—I try to write down a word of the day every day. I miss some, and some days I do two. These are words I just learned, or used and felt good about using, or heard and I want to remember to use them, or that are just fun to hear or say. I share them three times a week on the Shelf Life Facebook page if you want an example.

• List of words to lose—As you notice words that you overuse, write those down as well. Build a concordance of words and phrases to stop over-relying on. If you’re tech savvy, you can probably teach your word processor to watch out for them for you.

• List of cool names—Whenever I hear a cool name for a person, city, pet, vehicle, constellation, anything like that, I write it down in my list of names to use for fictional people, places, and objects. I have the page sectioned off into the different kinds of writing I do so the names for starship pilots, alien races, and space stations are separate from the names I might use as pseudonyms for real people.

In addition to those above, I also keep lists related to the reading and writing I do. I chronicle my writing in a log that tracks several metrics including how I felt about writing that day. A lot of days I do it even though I don’t feel great about it. Grudgingly written words are still written.

Continue Your Writing Education 

Seek out opportunities to learn the craft from experts. These opportunities are everywhere, and sometimes they’re free, and now more than ever they are available in the comfort of your own home. Here are some places where you can find free writing classes:

• ReedsyLearning—If you don’t know Reedsy, briefly, they are an ecosystem of editorial service providers. They offer a number of free 10-day courses on writing, editing, and publishing. You sign up and get an email with your lesson each day for 10 days. They’re pretty basic but they also don’t require much time to read. I’ve tried these and enjoyed them. I didn’t learn something totally new or revolutionary from every one I’ve done, but at the very least they get me writing when I’m in a slump.

• edX.org (and their peers)—Harvard, Berkeley, and MIT (among others) offer free courses through edX. You won’t get course credit, and if you want a certificate of completion you have to pay, but many of the courses are free online. (Not every course is free, but they are transparent about which ones are and are not.)

And here are some leads on paid writing courses: 

• Traditional universities and community colleges—These are a great paid alternative to something like edX, particularly if you’re looking for a certification or course credit that you can put on your resume (for instance, technical writing).

• Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, and similar online academies—These courses are more in-depth than what you get from Reedsy, but the price point is still very fair. Udemy lets you pay by the course; once you purchase the course you have it forever, to review and take as many times as you want. LinkedIn Learning is a monthly subscription for unlimited access. I’ve taken courses through both organizations and have found them robust for the price point.

• Writing the Other—This resource site is based on the book of the same name by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward. They offer in-depth, instructor-led classes on how to write characters who are different from you. Lots of free resources are available in addition to the paid classes.

And don’t forget: Always read your Shelf Life.

Those aren’t the only choices you can make that lead to great writing, but they’re the biggest and most impactful. Make these decisions—keep making them every day—and you’ll see yourself taking shape as an honest-to-goodness writer in no time.

TL;DR: You have what it takes to be a writer. Choose to make it happen.

Coming up on Tuesday, I have something really special for you—Shelf Life’s inaugural interview feature. I sat down with the writer, editor, and writing coach behind RE:Written LLC to find how she gets her clients cracking on those incredible projects. Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss it.

PS—Ever wanted to try something like NaNoWriMo but felt your project wasn’t a good fit? Wishing you could participate in a writing community challenge in November but not up for the pressure of NaNoWriMo Official? The Shelf Life Discord is hosting a NaNo Club for anyone who wants to participate in any capacity, for any type of writing project. Want to write poems? Songs? Blog posts? Short stories? A non-novel long-form book? Choose your project and then set your own goals, mile markers, and schedule. We would love to have you.   

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