How to be a writer?

Simple.

Start writing. Writing is inarguably one of the toughest things to do. Maybe you are waiting for the right “premonition” or the nudge to move forward. Many people are bewitched about the “intellectual circuit” where the authors are “promoting” their books and signing deals. Those business models have become incredibly expensive in the era of “self publishing”. Maybe you need to write “murder mysteries” and develop “anthologies” or boxed volumes. Maybe you fancy yourself as the next Tolkein. Maybe you want your book to be made into a movie or a “series”.

The fact is that beginning of all things is simple. You just need to start writing.

Here’s a blog post linked for you. My suggestion: Blog. Use the signals from here to determine the path. My motivation is only to keep the creative juices flowing and determine the least amount of effort to keep the idea matrices fresh and sharp. If I had been focused on the SEO efforts, it would be an attempt to grow the readership inorganically. You may have thousands of followers or the “coveted blue tick” but the action on the ground means nothing. It is only your virtual presence and nothing else.

So You Want to be a Writer… – Hugh Howey

Look around. What are other aspiring writers doing? That’s your ground floor. Your minimum. That’s where you begin. Double that. I promise you, this is the easiest path to success. What follows is specifics. But this is the general rule: Work harder than anyone else. If you don’t have this as your benchmark, you are going to have to rely on too much luck. And this blog post isn’t about the luck, it’s about how to minimize your required dosage.

Here’s another interesting bit:

The thing about writing that’s different than playing a guitar for a living, or acting on stage, or painting, is that we all do some writing. In fact, we do a lot of writing. We write emails. Blog posts. Facebook updates. A novel is just more of that, right? Wrong. The writing is the easy bit compared to the crafting of engaging plots and characters. There are some things you only gain through absorption. Read a lot, read the greats, and read outside your comfort zone. Want to write science fiction? Read crime thrillers and romance novels. Learn how to unspool a mystery and how to inject love into your stories.

My suggestion is to broaden your reading, because it allows you to create associations between different events as they happen. For example, while I follow geopolitics keenly, I don’t write about it overtly. However, it has given me a keen insight into how institutions work, the importance of “gatekeeping” and how organisations develop their “prestige”. These have an uncanny and eerie similarity to “academia”. The same issues can be extended to “leadership” courses. It is true that the Western model of leadership is based on the “capitalistic” or “extractive” mode of the underlings. The Indian civilisational model provides for an encompassing move forward. Just broaden your horizon enough to get a bird’s eye view of what’s being discussed, and it will allow you to zoom into specifics. It becomes incredibly easy to take this in your chosen vocation/profession.

Happy writing!