Writer Qualifications

Video Transcript

"How do you become a writer? Well I think that there's two distinct ways you can become a writer. And it gets back to my definition of an author, a writer, a story teller. To become a writer you need the discipline and the mechanics and the understanding of the English language that you get through formalized education. You need to go to college, you need to study English literature and all the periods of literature, and the structures and how all the mechanics come together. It would be just like any other mechanic. If you were going to be race care mechanic you'd go to a top you know, mechanic school so you know how engines are put together and how they run. For an author or a story teller, it comes from the heart. There's no class you can go to that will teach you how to become an author or a story teller. There is no school that will teach you this. They claim they will but its almost like; its like a musician or a painter. You ask them, well how did you become such a great painter or how did you become such a great musician? And they'll tell you they sat down at a piano one day and played or they picked up paints and a canvas and started to draw and it was natural to them. And there are those people who are true authors and true story tellers. It's part of who they are. You can go to classes and you understand better how to fine tune and craft your art but some people can be good writers and story tellers and others can't. Interesting if you never pick up the art, if you never pick up a paint brush and canvas or you never sit down at a piano and play, you'll never be a musician or an artist. And if you never sit down at your journal or your computer and you write, you'll never become a writer. You'll never become an author and a story teller if you don't practice it. And like Ray Radbury said, "You get to up every morning and you write because you have to." Well practice and involvement in writing every day, mentally carving out that section of the day to do that, to get rid of all the rest of the world and go in to a world where you can just write whatever your heart tells you to write, is so essential in becoming who you are. I have a phrase that is, I got from my father and it's very simple; So what have you done about it today? And its become my motto, you know, my mantra. If you truly believe in something, if you have a dream about something and its that important to you, you'll find a way to carve out a section of time, a few minutes here or there every day and do something about it. And that truly is how you become a good writer or a good author or a good story teller, if you do it every day and make that part of your life."