Advice for aspiring writers.

Listen, there’s no magic or any mystery to this. To be a writer you just have to write. I shared the previous quote by Cheryl Strayed and I’ll share it again here.

“Writing is hard….Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.”

Writing is really hard. It is work. But you don’t become a writer by talking about wanting to become a writer. You become a writer by actually writing.

So remove all distractions. Find a nice, comfortable spot to write, write and you will be a writer. That’s really all there is to it.

You cannot control how people respond to your work. That’s not for you to worry about. All you need to focus on is your writing. Whenever you can, just write.

The rest will take care of yourself. You shouldn’t even concern yourself with accolades. Your validation as a writer should come from within. Someone else loving your work should be a bonus and not the goal. Write only what you want to write about. There are no rules and there truly is enough room for all our ideas. “The sky is large enough for birds to fly around without one having to bump into the other.”

Your voice matters. It is very unique. We could be asked to describe an orange placed in front of us and I promise because of our very unique writing voices we’d all tell different stories about the exact same thing. That’s the beauty of this glorious work that is writing. Your voice matters and it should find expression.

I’ve always called myself a writer from my childhood simply cos I wrote. I have some published work but no published book. I never went to school to learn to write. I just read and wrote a lot until I found my unique voice.

I show up on the site everyday because I know whatever I have to say NO ONE on this earth could say it in exactly the same way I would. And that is my gift and superpower. My voice matters. And so does yours.