The 1 Habit of Highly Effective Writers
Original titles are overrated…lol.
I know the posts have been sparing over the last week or two. These two grad classes (dumb idea, two classes the same semester, even if one is online and the other real-life) are excellent for the thinking they inspire but not so excellent in terms of leaving me time to have a life. But one is drawing to a close soon–good news!
The last week, though, my mind hasn’t been on any of that class work. It’s been focused on a couple of discussions I’ve had with author colleagues about the nature of writing. Not the business/selling/publishing point of view, but the idea of what actually makes a writer a writer. These were separate conversations with two people who didn’t know each other but both got me on the tangent of thinking (again–if you read this blog at all you’ll know I harp on this often) about the process of writing BETWEEN the sales and publishing.
So many people get a bug in their brain that they want to be a writer because they see the fruition of our work: a new book sold, a booksigning with other authors, keynote speeches at a conference, an agent hawking our manuscript to New York publishers, our websites crowing our successes–but I was struck by how little these “wannabe” authors (not the colleagues but people they have met) have a true grip on the things we do BETWEEN these events to put ourselves in the position of selling, signing and speaking. There’s this notion of if I just sit down for a couple of weeks, all day every day, I will write a best-seller, get the same treatment and have the same success as (my favorite authors)–and for those of us who’ve spent our lives writing, that’s about as true as believing you’ll become an NBA player if you start on your high school varsity team.
It’s the work in between those pinnacles that makes us the writer, not being able to shout to the masses from those pinnacles. I’m not belittling those grand moments in any way–I’m all for publishing (lol).
Which brings me, in my usual long-winded-thought fashion, to the point of my (slightly pilfered) post title. The common belief is that selling work makes a writer a writer, but I am under the belief that writing daily makes a writer a writer. Highly effective writers have one commonality despite genre, sales numbers, personal levels of fame and societal popularity: the one habit of highly effective writers is, quite simply, that they write daily (or at least almost daily.)
What do you think about this? Agree, disagree, think I fell out of a coconut tree and banged my head on the sand? I’m curious to know what you believe delineates a writer from an effective writer.Think about it, leave me a comment. Then get back to writing, not blog commenting 
It's pretty simple, really. I'm a writer who loves writing about writing, and sharing all the tricks of the trade with other writers. And when I'm not writing, I'm thinking about writing. I have a hunch you know what I mean :)
Lois
March 28, 2011 at 11:11 AM
I agree completely. Every time this discussion comes up, I say the same thing. A writer writes. If a person doesn’t write, how can they call themselves a writer? If you want to do the one thing all published authors have in common, just sit your bum in your chair and tell your story!