Writing | Life Lessons | Advice
The Secret Weapon to Be a Writer
It’s exactly what you are thinking
We are always looking for ways to be more productive or funnier.
However, with the craft of writing, I have bad news.
The secret weapon to being a writer, and especially to become a better writer, is… writing.
José Mourinho revolutionized the way we train soccer because he decided that all the exercises, in training, had to contain the ball. All the training would revolve around…. playing soccer.
There’s an amazing quote from Mourinho regarding this subject:
The pianist, to rehearse, does not run around the piano. He plays the piano!
Like soccer players get better by playing soccer, we get better by writing. There are tools that help us in this craft, like reading (a lot!), making new experiences, and talking to other people. If you want to become a writer, you have to write.
A powerful reason for this secret weapon is the proven fact that we become better at doing a certain thing by repeating effects. We only have to search our memory to see how we got better at a certain job by repeating it.
We never think about what we are doing anymore. Driving is a good example: how often do we go somewhere and, when we arrive at the destination, we have no memory of getting there? This happens because we have already ingrained the act of driving in us. With writing, the same thing should happen.
But you will tell me that this makes writing too mechanical, uninspired as if it were some kind of job. I understand, but if you want to make a living as a writer, you are telling yourself that your “job” is to write. And this doesn’t mean that creativity disappears.
Writing is a skill that improves through practice, through error. It wouldn’t make sense to think that all the prominent writers wrote the classics at once. Just look at the many diaries scattered around the world to see how many notes and scribbles we find.
The beauty of writing comes from the interconnection between the creative process, of writing without limits, of giving free rein to the imagination, and the editing process, of transforming words in a pure state into an integrated set of ideas whose existence is interconnected. Writing and editing are both art forms. The better we edit, the better we write.
The better we edit, the better we write.
To become a writer, you need to say you are one. First, to ourselves. Then to others. There’s a stigma about artists and we’re evasive when asked what we do. We have to answer “I’m a writer”. Because, in fact, we are. Because we chase that dream.
To say that, we must write. Our life has to be about writing. Everything that surrounds us serves as inspiration, and connects us to the invisible engine that builds ideas, and writing can and must drink from all branches of our life.
Thus, writing is the secret weapon to being a writer. Some professions have their own course. We writers have our own course. Nobody goes to university to get a writer’s degree. We write, we improve every day; we learn from others. And when someone asks us “What do you do?” we answer “I’m a writer”.
Because we write.
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