When someone asks you, how did you do it?  How did you become a Real Writer?  This question popped up in my mailbox yesterday, and I am totally psyched.  It’s so cool to be asked.  My first impulse was to trudge through the story of my life: reading, thinking like a writer, the impulse to blurt every thought that flutters through your head, applying news-deadline discipline to writing fiction, joining writers’ groups to maintain a creative buzz, pouring through how-to books to learn the craft, studying market listings, learning to view my own writing objectively in order to revise, edit, and improve it.

Examining the question more critically, I asked myself what is a Real Writer?  A published author?  A writer who makes a living solely by writing?  A person who writes every day?  A writer who persists?  A writer who pours heart and soul into her work?  A gambler who risks filling pages with words that may or may not be published?  As I read once in Writer’s Digest, a writer evolves through writing experience and life experience.  At various points along the journey, you’re a different person and not exactly the same writer you were yesterday. 

What quality do you need to become a Real Writer?  Foremost, I’d say courage.  You need the courage to:

1)      Be different.  People who don’t write just don’t get it.

2)      Sacrifice time you could spend doing other things.  If you want to write, you will.

3)      Risk writing work that may never be published or earn you any money.

4)      Submit, submit, submit. 

5)      Dare to endure the heartbreak of rejection.