1000% True Things About Writing

Writing advice is a slippery topic full of pitfalls – the biggest, of course, is simply that no advice works for every person.

Creativity is inherently personal, and your path to get good things will differ from my path. At best, I can show you what I do, and explain it, and you can try it out and see if it fits for you. You can adjust it how you need and maybe that works out all right, too.

But I am not here to offer advice. Not now. I am here, instead, to tell you the only 1000% True Things About Writing. Seriously.

For a bit of background, if you need it, I will say I’ve not only been writing for money for over 15 years now, I grew up with parents who wrote (and edited) for a living and realistically have been learning about this stuff my entire life.

With that in mind, are you ready? Here it is. The biggest, truest, thing about writing there is:

Everyone can write.

There’s no magic muse granting story from on high. There are no fairies that come down and gift the gift of writing ability from the heavens. It’s a skill. It’s a tradecraft. And if you live in this century you already know a lot more of it than you might think.

We have all seen movies, and TV shows. Not to mention possibly story based podcasts (D&D ones certainly count), or play role-playing games, read fanfic, go to plays, read things… these are all story and they are all filled with story structure. Structure that we absorb through constant exposure.

The trick, of course, is in the deconstruction and reconstruction so you can use the structure you understand already in your own efforts, but seriously at a basic level it isn’t hard. Think of a movie you’ve seen. You know how the intro goes, then the middle, then the end. You can make that work. Ok good.

So we’ve established that we live in a world of stories. Good.

We also live in a world of writing.

Emails, and webpages, and statuses, news, and more. We read things all day, and more importantly, we write them. Don’t think of writing as some classically ordained structure. That can come later. But you have the tools to say what you’re thinking and feeling.

Look at this you already know about story structure, and how to say things in text.

Everyone can write.

The rest is, well, hard work. If you want to write better than whatever your default level is you’ll have to put in the work. If you don’t, good news, you don’t have to! You can write stuff to entertain yourself, and your friends, and never have to get better at it (outside of the basic “getting better” that happens when you do a thing a lot). There is zero requirement here!

But if you want to get better, if you want to reach some spot on the horizon you picked for yourself, it comes down to work.

Don’t tell me “Oh but this person is so naturally gifted” because I’ll shrug. Having a natural skill level that is higher than someone else may give you a step on a ladder but it only gives you that step or so. You still need to work to climb, and so does everyone else.

You study. You read a ton (be it on the page, or audiobooks, whatever, the point is learning how words sit together and phrases can do things etc etc etc). You invest your time, as you would any skill.

Want to be a great woodworker? Same thing. You want to make a simple box? Go for it! If you want to hand carve dovetail joints and filigree into the sides, well, you’re gonna have to learn a bunch of new skills.

The thing of it is, though, the skills are learnable. Some people might learn them faster. Some might have an easier time with certain aspects of the skills you want to master. But there’s still no replacement for hard work.

Hard work and discipline beat a slightly higher base skill level every time.

There is no part of writing that can’t be learned, though how you personally learn it best will vary because you are your own person. And that’s where we would get back to advice. Which we’re still not going to do, because I’m not here to teach you how to write.

I’m here to remind you that you already can, and you can get better as you choose, to whatever level you want, if you’re willing to put in the work.

Do we all have the time and energy to do so? Of course not. Does that mean that it might take years for you, chipping away in tiny doses, whereas someone with more time could learn faster? Yes. That sucks, I admit. But it doesn’t mean you can’t. It just means you have to find a path forward that fits your life and figure out goals that work for you.

The alternative is to do nothing and be sad that you aren’t there. Imagine you want ice cream. You could buy some ice cream but you have to go to the store to do so, and have money to buy it. Or, alternatively, you could learn to make ice cream at home and you would still need some tools (a Ziploc bag is all you actually need) and ingredients. You’d still have to get those. Maybe you need to save up for them, maybe you don’t.

But if you just sit and repeat “I wish I had ice cream, I’d do anything to have ice cream” and do nothing – that’s on you. It might be time to consider how much you actually want it. And that desire might change! Maybe you want to learn and put in a bunch of time then stop to do other things. That’s ok. It’s ok to change your mind again and go back. There’s no wrong path.

There’s nothing wrong with not writing, or writing to a so-called “lower level” just for yourself or a friend. Nothing in the universe is wrong with that. But if you want more you have to learn it.

But you can. Anyone can.