How Do You Become a 'Writer'? (Part 1)
Notes on scratching that itch
Talking about writing is one of my favorite things to do—mostly because it’s easier than actually sitting down and writing. People approach me pretty regularly to ask about the writing life, so I thought I’d capture here some observations that have guided me thus far in my career as a writer. That way, next time we chat, we can get into the weeds on voice and technique and how your life changed once you took my recommendation to read Brian Doyle.
I’ll share more posts later, but here are three points to start.
If you can do anything else—at all—don’t become a writer.
We have a lot of romantic visions of the writer’s life floating in our heads. Wouldn’t it be nice to be sitting in a cabin in the Rockies under 18 inches of snow, cozied up to a latte and a typewriter—nothing but quiet and an adventure between your ears? I’m here to tell you that this scenario is not that far off from sitting in that cabin and doing your taxes or transcribing school board meeting notes or assembling a cuckoo clock. It’s work. And if you’re doing work, it doesn’t much matter if you’re in the Rockies or the Caymans or your basement—your interior disposition is far more significant.
It is easier to do anything else other than write. I know—I’ve tried! Here, for example, is a partial list of things I’ve done instead of writing because they involve less effort:
Chopped wood
Cleaned the bathroom
Negotiated a home insurance claim over the phone
Folded laundry
Mowed the lawn
Scheduled a colonoscopy
There are precious few external rewards to this craft—writing is an exceptionally inefficient way to gain attention. The only motivation to write has to come from within and be inexplicable. I’ve tried not writing, but I can’t do it. My life gets out of whack—I get grumpy and restless. So I’ve learned to accept writing as constitutive to who I am, which takes a lot of pressure off. I don’t do it for praise or money—I do it because I don’t have a choice. If I write in any given day, it doesn’t matter what else happens—it’s a good day.
If do you write, then start calling yourself a ‘writer’.
Look, no literary gestapo is gonna break in your door and ask for your ID once you start calling yourself a writer. If you write regularly as a practice—doesn’t matter if you’re published or not, or if you blog or create fiction or share cooking recipes—then you are a writer. And if you are showing up to the page regularly, then the sooner you start calling yourself a writer—both to yourself and to others—then the more seriously you’ll start to take that craft. Being a writer is an identity because it is vocational—it is too hard to do for pleasure. The sooner you understand yourself as a writer, the sooner you’ll start to notice and accumulate tricks of the trade.
An example: I play amateur baseball in a summer wood-bat rec league that’s equal parts drinking beer and eluding a pulled hammy. I last played organized ball in eighth grade, but now this league my “thing.” I don’t golf, I don’t bowl, I don’t sit in the barbershop—I play baseball in the summer. I try to approach the game the same way I did when I was 10, and it’s so dang fun that I want to get better at it. So I started going to the batting cages regularly to work on my swing. I look like a middle-aged schmutz out there, but it feels good and I lose track of time when I’m doing it and I think I’m getting marginally better. And now I’m catching tips from A-Rod on how your kunckles should line up when you hold your bat; I’m studying Nelson Cruz’s cage routine. Because I took the craft seriously—even though I’m a hack!—I started to accrue insights.
Dork it up.
I heard Pete Holmes use this phrase on his podcast. He was talking about how every artist, performer, creator needs to spend time doing the unglamorous and hidden work of craft. Before he goes on stage, he talks about the need to “nerd out” on his material—he sits in front of a notepad or screen and boils jokes down to their most efficient and punchy form. We hear the laughs on stage; we don’t hear the traffic and birdcall outside his window in the bleary-eyed dusky morning when it’s just him and the page.
Let me offer a visual example of what I mean. Here’s the heroic Timothee Chalamet we see when we watch Dune:
Here’s the hidden Timothee Chalamet preparing for his performance:
So don’t confuse the heroic for the hidden—only one of those is real. It’s even worse for writers because the “heroic” life is only marginally better than the hidden one! We show up to the page by putting our butts in a chair somewhere, and then when we’re done, our butt is still in the chair, but we’re sitting in front of a page full of words. Huzzah.
There’s only one way to get better at any craft: by doing. And doing means setting aside the illusion of heroism and just showing up to do the hidden work, even though you’re a hack.
A recording of Ethan Hawke just surfaced on social media where he gives advice to actors, but what he says applies to anyone interested in art. You have to decide that “you are in service to this art form, do or die,” he explains, whether or not it leads to something lucrative. You have to let the world think what it will of you—the praise or condemnation of others won’t help you do what you need to do. His advice: Imagine yourself teaching the art to which you are called to high schoolers when you are 62, and if that doesn’t sound great, then “get out,” he said—“get the f*ck out.”
