Part two of my advice should be obvious, but you can’t really be a writer unless you write. Yet this seems to be a major problem for a lot of amateur writers and they can’t seem to just sit down and do what they claim they want to do.

That strikes me as odd, sorry. If this is what you want to do, then why do you refuse to do it? Let’s explore that.

This one should be a piece of cake for anyone who wants to write, but you’d be surprised how many supposedly enthusiastic writers don’t really want to write. It’s an observation that has been made by many, but there are more people who want to “have written” than there are that want to write. They want to have gone through all of the struggle and difficulty, only to come out the other side with some respectable work and that’s not how any if this really goes. If you want the title, you have to put in the effort and most simply don’t want to.

See, as I keep saying, writing is a damn hard thing to try to do well. This isn’t something that you can decide you want to do today and be good at it tomorrow. That is a completely unrealistic expectation. This is something that is going to take a lot of time and effort to get competent at it and many who try, no matter how hard they try, they simply will never make the cut.

That seems to upset a lot of people in the modern “give it to me on a silver platter” culture. There is no easy path and no guarantee of success at the end. If you’re doing it because you want to see your book on a shelf somewhere, you have the wrong reasons for trying. This isn’t a way to stroke your ego. If that’s your goal, give up now. You’re wasting your time.

This is difficult to do, especially if you aim to make it any more than a passing hobby. Telling a good story is difficult and it requires learning a lot about how stories are put together. There is a lot of inventiveness that you need to master to tell a story anyone is  going to want to read. A writer, by their very nature is a storyteller. If you can’t tell stories, you’re not going to be able to write books. It is one more thing  you’ll have to learn before you get anywhere.

So here’s my hard advice to hear. If you want to write, if you’re really serious about it, you’re already writing. Writers write. It’s what we do. We do it without having any care about reward or status or anything else. I’ve been writing since I was about 10 and it’s been very rare that I’ve ever stopped. I paused for a couple of years when my kids were young and I was focused on career, but otherwise, I have  cranked out book after book after book for decades without ever thinking, or caring, if I’d get published. It wasn’t a means to an end, it was an end in and of itself.

But that’s not enough. If you want to get anywhere, you have to get organized. You have to set goals and push yourself to achieve them. Writing is not sitting around in your underwear waiting for inspiration to strike. Inspiration doesn’t matter. You work because you have to, not because you want to. You treat writing like a job. You do it whether you feel like it or not. You put it ahead of other things in your life. You stop playing video games and TV shows to write. It becomes a driving force in your life, just like anything else you want to get good at. That’s something a lot of people aren’t willing to do. That’s why they fail.

The answer here is simple but often unpalatable. If you’re really serious about this, you wouldn’t be reading this blog, you’d be writing. Writers write. It is what we do. We do it because we want to. We don’t sit around and argue and make excuses. We do it because that’s what we enjoy. If you want to get good at this, you’ll do the same thing. You will make writing a priority in your life. If not, like with anything else that requires repetition and practice to achieve, you will not get good at it. It’s entirely up to you. Stop asking people to motivate you and make you want to write. You either do or  you don’t. Make up your mind.

Now get out there and do it.