On Being a Writer

Hello today we are going to post this awesome writing.  It comes from Shana Chartier and she is a fellow writer that i met.  Everyone out there can view here blog here after reading this.  If you want your guest post to be featured next time send your ideas and stories to me through twitter.  Enjoy

Shana Chartier is a New Hampshire author with an uncanny ability to not listen to people while they're talking because she's thinking about how to describe them in a story. Her debut novel, Past Lives, is due out later this summer through Pants On Fire Press, and her thoughts are often on display on her blog

A lot of people are asking what it means to be a writer these days. You can Google it and find blogs for miles on the subject, full of opinions saying we should be writing every day and journaling and always thinking about writing all the time and blah blah blah.

To me there is one big difference between a writer and someone who writes, and that is ambition.

This is the 21st century, where nearly everyone has a platform to express themselves with the written word. With the obvious downside of terrible grammar and overt racism being on display, the upside is that communication is happening at all times. People are connecting. People are expressing themselves. The point here is, everyone writes. So you want to be a writer? Here’s how to make the difference:

Writing is a profession, which means you need experience. You need to get published. Getting published is really, really hard for a lot of people. Imagine going on a ton of dates and being rejected at the end of the night every time for five years. But you keep going on dates. That’s what it takes to be a writer. You have to have enough courage to push through an undetermined amount of time and the mountainous pile of No Thanks’ to get to the person who wants to pay you for your artistic expression. Oh also you’re competing against people who are being professionally trained to write, people who have been writing for several decades, and people who are terrible writers that are annoying the editors reading your work before they get to yours.

Sound daunting? It is. This is the path a writer takes. Not everyone takes this road—some people are in the right place at the right time or know just the right person to expedite this process. They’re like people who can eat whatever they want and not get fat—they’re the minority here. The rest of us are in the trenches. Not getting published? You might have to look in the mirror and ask yourself if your work really sucks. And it might. And that’s ok. I wrote three crappy novels before I developed a sense of what was being published and got a book accepted for publication. Just as six pack abs don’t happen overnight, neither does good writing. The greats were not born with a perfect sense of story—it takes time to develop it.

To a millennium dweller, this is terrible news. We love instant gratification. But if you want to be a writer you’ve got to prepare to fight for it. Writing combines business and art, which are two things that should be like water and oil. They don’t go well together, but in order for us to make a living, they must. So to get published do you need to write every day and think about writing every waking moment? No. Sometimes I go months at a time without writing a word. It comes when it comes, and that’s ok. Find your process and let it be fun. My advice is to read voraciously, take note of your favorite authors’ style and look deeper into why they were published—then emulate it with your own story.

Getting published is no easy feat, but it can be done. If you have the soul of a writer, and you know who you are out there, then tie that to your warrior side and prepare to do battle with your own insecurities.

Because if you don’t, you’ll just be someone who writes, just like everyone else.