I have this friend. He’s a good friend and a good guy. An Iraqi war veteran and one of the few postal workers I’ve met who actually seems to enjoy his job. Tony likes to read books about writing and talk about writing. Tony is not a writer. He says he wants to write “someday”. I indulge him in conversations about writing because he’s been good to me and I don’t want to insult him by seeming like some kind of elitist prima donna. So, I nod my head and compliment him on the choice of writing books he shows me.
There is always the question posed to and about writers as to whether writers are born or made. I’ve always been of the opinion that all writers are born with the tools but don’t know how to use them and must grow into the use of those tools the way one grows into one’s own skin. The key difference between a writer and a non-writer has less to do with talent (although talent marks the difference between a great writer and a good one or more likely, a good writer and a bad one) than it does with the simple incontrovertible fact that writers write and non-writers don’t.
Reading books about writing is all well and good. Can’t hurt. When one is starting out it can certainly help. But, writers must read more than books about writing and, more importantly, they must write — sit their asses in a chair, damn the torpedoes, the voices in their heads telling them not to and write. Write like mad. Write as if their very lives depended on it. As if there’s a man dressed in a black trenchcoat holding a gun to their head. Write as if they actually have something to say anyone else even gives a good goddamn about. Write until they get as good at writing as they are ever likely to get . . . and then write some more.
Now I don’t know if Tony will ever write anything. Maybe he will. Maybe there will be a moment when it all just starts pouring out of him. Maybe, but I doubt it. The drive just isn’t there. He’s too satisfied with not writing. And maybe that, finally, is the surest test as to whether or not you are a writer — the engine, the fire, the desire to write and the dissatisfaction with the state of not writing.
