The Three Stages of Writing

We live in a literate society. It's considered necessary that everyone knows how to read and write, so writing isn't so distinct an art as other purely optional activities like painting or playing a musical instrument. It's more than a bit nebulous where the line between literate and literati exists. So, how does one actually become an artist of the word? In my experience as a writer and teacher, it's a process that happens in three distinct steps.

1. Yes, I Can Write

From an early age, books seem to have a magical quality to them. Carefully crafted words materialize on the shelf with no evidence of the storyteller aside from the name on the cover. It's an equally magical thing for a young person to come to the realization that he or she has the potential to produce a book as well. This is the time of "Yes, it is possible" when an individual becomes an aspiring writer. Like the child who lives at the foot of the mountain and dreams of one day climbing it, the newly-aspiring writer need only look up and see that it's there.

In my own experience, this moment came way back in the first grade. There was a particularly popular book in my class at school. We were allowed to sign out a book and take it home, but that meant waiting until the kid who had it brought it back. So, a group of clever students decided to staple a few pieces of paper together and copy the book so they could have it all the time. I began to follow suit, but then I stopped and thought about how much more fun it would be to just make up my own story instead. Over the next few years, I wrote something on the order of one new story every week. I'd caught the bug.

2. No, I Can't Write

While it's important to realize you have the potential to write great things, that doesn't mean you'll be able to do it right away. Translating a good idea from a series of scenes in your head to words on the page is harder than it seems at the outset. Most writers (this one included) spend years pursuing projects they just aren't talented enough to execute properly. Sometimes it's just better to be able to step back and be honest with yourself. No writer is a real writer until he or she can say, "I don't know how to do this..." with the caveat, "...yet."

Stage #2 usually happens after the first, or second, or tenth book, series of short stories, or collection of poems a writer pens. As the growing pains of each literary experiment diminish, the writer will have likely developed new understandings and deeper talents. Let it be known that Stage #2 never stops happening. In all art, there's no such thing as maximum capability.

3. I Must Write

The final step in becoming a writer is waking up one day with a burden. It's no longer about aspiration, it's now about habit. After years of adding word-craft to your daily routine, you will eventually find that it has become an inexorable part of your thought process, even of your general health. Like runners have to run to avoid chemical depression and carpenters have to labor until tired just so they can sleep at night, writers have to write. The word becomes the writer's work, the writer's therapy. This condition is neither enviable nor flexible, but it is a part of the process.

J.D. Salinger hasn't published a word in decades, but his family has verified that he has filing cabinets full of work. The Marquis de Sade insisted on writing even when his works were illegal and he was confined to a series of prisons and asylums. Even an unpublished but dedicated writer can tell you how awful it feels to go without the pen. When you wake up every day and find a personal sense of balance, even happiness, is impossible without the craft, that's when you know you've become a real writer.