Anyone Can Be a Writer

Intimidated by the blank page? Don’t be.

Every writer has to start somewhere. As a writer myself, I know where I started. As soon as I learned how to write letters and sentences, I was creating fictional little stories. This art was lost to me for many years—there wasn’t an arts education in elementary or middle school. But I read a lot; once, in the seventh grade, for a statistics project, a kid asked around how many books each of us had read in a year. I did my mental checklist, and it came out to be 223. I was the only outlier.

I knew I was advanced in that category. In the third grade, as my teacher read out Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Holes to the class, I snuck my own book from the public library under the desk. “Ashley,” my teacher had noticed, “what are you reading?” I pulled the book out. It was the sequel to Holes, the adult version with a lot of profanity and sex. He was amazed.

To be a good writer, you have to read. There’s no compromise on that. You have to read and you have to read often. Think of it as exercising your brain and creative muscles. By reading, you can get a sense of what style, pacing, and formatting is like. You can also experiment with different genres by reading, before you even try them out for yourself.

Victor Hugo wasn’t born with a pen in his hand. It’s a skill. We often don’t realize this, but many people’s first pieces and books fall into obscurity to their later ones. Why? Because they had a lifetime to refine their skill. If you never try and refine it yourself, you may be missing out on a grand opportunity.

So go. Write. The page is calling you.