How to Be a Writer in 10 Simple Steps

Be a reader. If you can't read yet, hound your father to read The Watchbirds until tears of mirth pour down his face. Beg Mom to read Old Yeller aloud, never realizing that she changed the ending so the kids wouldn't be up all night crying. Listen to your grandmother reading Enid Blyton and Judith Viorst in her comfy chair while you suck on wintergreen-flavored pink pillow mints. Listen to the teachers who read to the class every day—Half Magic, Tom's Midnight Garden, Caddie Woodlawn, Johnny Tremain.

(15 Things a Writer Should Never Do.)

Load up your bike basket with so many library books that you can't steer as you ride home. Tell your mom some bullshit story about crashing your bike to avoid hitting a puppy, so you don't get in trouble for ripping a hole in your new pants.

Remind people that Charlotte's Web is the most important book ever written.

Take notes like Harriet in Harriet the Spy.

Let The Diary of Anne Frank destroy you over and over again.

Be a storyteller even before you learn to read or write. Tell your mother stories and make her write them down. Illustrate the stories. Make them all about a girl who is stuck up a tree with bad things below, trying to menace her, until at the last minute, she saves the day. Realize that this formula works for you, and use it in every story you write.

Be born a middle child. Even better—a middle child who is left-handed. Fight with your older brother. Fight with your younger sister. Cry into your dog's fur and tell him all your troubles.

Embrace the day you transition from manuscript printing to cursive writing. Write in cursive about your mean big brother and bratty little sister. Write every day. Self-publish “A Book About Some Bad Kids” and beam with pride as your Grade Three teacher reads it aloud to the class.

Rewrite the classics. Dispute the ending of Of Mice and Men and rewrite it so Lenny doesn't have to die. Find a way for Madame Bovary to live with herself instead of...well, you know. Convince readers that Anna Karenina didn't have to...well, you know. Write all your school papers in the style of Ernest Hemingway. Or the beat poets. Or Virginia Woolf. Everything is fair game when you're learning to think like a writer.

Fall in love with books about characters who strive, who fail, who pick themselves up, and strive harder—everything from The Carrot Seed, by Ruth Krauss, to The Once and Future King, by T.H. White, to Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. Read The Color Purple in one sitting, and immediately turn back to page one and read it again.

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Become obsessed with the way words look on the page. Learn words like synesthesia, siffilate, disingenuous, atelier. Care deeply about etymology. Do the crossword. Do the Wordle. Win at Scrabble. Become obsessed with how books are made—the copyright page, epigraph pages, endpapers, and "A Note About the Type." Be picky about office supplies—the luxurious kind. Kaweco fountain pens. Binders and accordion files. Silky smooth paper from Clairefontaine. 

Try other outlets for your creativity. Take dancing lessons. Piece together a quilt. Color outside the lines. Play the cello. Try Fair Isle knitting. Practice plein air painting. Faux finish flea market furniture. Pay attention to all aspects of alliteration. Realize you can't ever escape the stories in your head.

Get serious about learning the craft. Scour the bookstore for Techniques of the Selling Writer, by Dwight Swain. Read Aspects of the Novel, by E.M. Forster. And Writing Fiction, by Janet Burroway. And The Writer's Journey, by Christopher Vogler, and Writing the Breakout Novel, by Donald Maass. And sink into Into the Woods, by John Yorke. Read them and flag your favorite passages.

Realize you're spending all your writing time reading how-to books instead of working on your novel. Donate the books to the library, because you've internalized the important parts anyway. Go to writing workshops and take notes in your fancy notebooks. Highlight the important parts and never look at them again.

Just write. Get up an hour earlier every day and work on your novel. Stop cooking. Stop cleaning. Tell your kids not to interrupt you unless their eyes are bleeding. Realize it's more important to show your kids that you're going for your dream than it is to show them you know how to fold laundry or whip up an omelette.

Remember that Anthony Trollope finished 50 novels by writing for an hour before work every day. Forget that you've never read an Anthony Trollope novel.

Don't tell anyone you're writing a novel. They'll only bug you, asking when that book will be done and available in stores. Tell them you're writing worksheets for your students. If you're a lawyer, tell them you're writing legal briefs. If you're a doctor, tell them you're writing a case study. If you're a bartender, tell them you're writing a tell-all memoir about your friends. This will usually shut them up.

Name all the bad characters in your books after people who treated you mean in high school.

Listen to “The Last of the Mohicans” theme music when you write.

Get up and dance around the room when you write something gorgeous. Realize you'll probably need to cut it later.

Love your characters. Hate them. Worry about them. Don't let them off easy. Make their conflicts as hard and compelling and important as life itself. Make them earn their happy ending.

Feel bashful when you meet a real published writer. Stand in line for an hour, waiting to meet your idol. When you finally get to the front of the line, forget what you were going to say and stammer, “I love your books.” Then kick yourself for not saying more.

Grow your hair out so you look like a historical romance heroine. Get your author photo taken. Tear it into a million pieces because it's awful.

Design your own covers. Picture your published book on the stands.

Send your finished book to a literary agent, one who doesn’t charge fees. Get rejected. Learn from the comments. Repeat until the end of time, or until someone says, "Yes," whichever comes first.

Get an offer from a publisher. A real publisher that pays you royalties. Feel the world shift on its axis.

Realize your book is not your baby anymore. Getting feedback can be painful. When someone says, "This doesn't work for me," believe them. They're always right. Learn to think like a reader. You don't get to sit next to her and explain the parts that aren't working for her. So when your editor gives you notes, don't argue. Revisit the story and write it better.

But when someone says, "Here's the way you should rewrite it," don't listen. You're the one who has to fix it. Don't write their story. Write yours.

The writing life is like a good novel—vivid, exciting, filled with unexpected twists and turns. Every writer who has been at it for a while has fallen down. She's been rejected by publishers, flayed by critics, denigrated by readers, ignored by booksellers, patronized by literary snobs. Her books might fail to sell, often for reasons she can't control, like a bad cover or lack of publisher support or an inopportune release date.

The writer who succeeds is the one who picks herself up, who aims at high targets, and who sometimes soars with wings of eagles when she gets it right—when a reader says the book touched her heart, or comforted her, or showed her something brand new.

When the whole world says "DON'T" but your gut says DO IT, then you should do it.

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