After that, you have to make the sentences into stories. With characters.
Who are not all idealized versions of you. Stories with scenes in which something happens. Something that propels the reader into the next scene.
Sounds easy. But many "talented" people never get there. I have known tons of talented sentence writers who never learned to write a story. On occasion they may write poetic, reflective vignettes. Usually about sitting in cafés. But anything more would take away from their sitting-in-cafés time.
They lack drive.
These days we also need the drive to build a social media presence and author platform while we're learning craft, or all those lovely stories won't reach readers.
2) Passion
You need to be in love with writing. You have to fall in love with the process itself: not just your characters and story and what's going on in your head. Not just the praise you get from your critique group or your readership. You need to adore the day-to-day work of putting the story on the page.
If you don't feel the passion, your reader won't either.
3) Listening Skills
This may be the most important ability of all. If you can't listen to other people—and work to truly understand them—your stories will be flat and repetitive.
If you only write about yourself and your own thoughts and experiences, you'll bore your readers silly. You also won't have much to say. As
Nikki Giovanni said, "If you wrote [only] from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy."
You need to tell stories about other people. How do you find out about other people? By zipping your own lips and listening to them. And caring about what you hear.
This is true of listening to your fellow writers, too. Sometimes they can give you insanely stupid advice—more on that in a future post—but usually you can get some pretty solid tips.
4) The Desire to Learn
I'd say about 50% of wannabe writers don't actually want to learn to write. They want to BE writers, but they don't want to acquire the skills to do it effectively.
I've actually heard newbies say stuff like, "I don't need to read a book about how to write. I got A's in English all through high school and I'm a great speller."
There's a word for people who think they know everything already: ignorant.
Writing is like any other craft. You need to learn the rules. And then practice, practice, practice until they are second nature to you.
I love to quote Somerset Maugham's great observation about writing rules: "There are three rules of writing. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are."
But actually we do know what some of the rules are—up to a point. We have rules for grammar, spelling and word use. (They're slightly different for fiction writing—more on that in another post.)
There are also some fairly firm rules about point of view, story arc, and character development. And the necessity of conflict. Not to mention believable dialogue and non-snooze-inducing inner monologue. We need to learn them.
We also need to learn to make the words flow on the page without sounding as if we're robots, illiterates, or pretentious asshats.
Plus we need to learn these rules tend to evolve according to changes in the marketplace and new technology.
Those aren't "talents" you're born with. They are skills you have to learn.
5) The Ability to be Alone
I suspect a lot of those café sitters are simply extroverts who have a tough time being alone.
I'm not saying you have to be an introvert to be a good writer. Many great novels have been written by extroverts. Many have even been written in cafés.
But these are people who are actually writing, not talking about it. And when they write, they're creating their own "alone" space. You can't write without it.
6) Understanding of the Marketplace
You wouldn't open a dress shop or a hardware store without visiting a lot of similar retail establishments. And you wouldn't open a restaurant without noticing what other restaurants are located nearby.
Publishing is a business, and if you want to sell a product, you need to know what's selling and what customers are buying.
This means reading the books on the bestseller list. Or at least knowing about them. You don't need to read a one-off viral phenomenon like
50 Shades of Grey as much as you need to read the writers who top the list consistently. Especially bestsellers in your genre. It's the only way to understand what readers are expecting right now in terms of style and content.
It's also important to read the classics, of course. If you don't know what has gone before, you're going to waste a lot of time re-inventing the wheel.
Mostly you need to read, period. As Stephen King said...and I keep repeating:
"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut."...Stephen King
7) Gratitude
If you reject information that's offered to you, and stubbornly cling to bad writing habits—or take lessons as personal insults, you're in for a grim time.
It's good to remember that every failure—as well as every success—can be an opportunity for growth and a way to acquire the skills you need to succeed.
When some beta reader sends you back your ms. bleeding with comments about your misuse of commas, this is not the time to stage a temper tantrum. It's time to buy a grammar book and learn something about that pesky punctuation mark.
You should also be glad you now know why all those agents rejected your pages. Maybe your story is great, but they saw 20 misplaced commas in the first page and hit delete.
I'm not saying you should be grateful for every pointless, mean review, or the idiot critique that is only about the critiquer's agenda.
And I'm not saying a little wallowing in hurt and anger isn't therapeutic when we're in the stage of gathering rejections or getting those first one-star reviews. (Yes, everybody gets them.)
But after that, figure out what you've learned (sometimes, of course, what you've learned is that the world is full of asshats whose opinions are based on ignorance and/or malice, but that's important stuff to learn, too.)
Then be grateful, accept the lesson and move on to the next level.
8) Persistence
You knew I was going to say this, right? Yeah, there are thousands of Internet memes with inspirational messages like, "The difference between success and failure is persistence."
Things get to be clichés for a reason. People think they're worth repeating.
Here are some of the more popular ones:
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. Thomas Edison
A successful man is one who can build a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him. David Brinkley
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. Confucius
Failure is just a resting place. It is an opportunity to begin again more intelligently. Henry Ford
It’s not how many times you fall down, it’s how many times you get back up. Unknown
Is Talent Important?
Sure. Talent helps. But less talented people who are willing to work and learn are more likely to succeed than wildly talented people who aren't willing to put in the time to acquire skills.
In a 2008 essay titled
The Myth of Talent, photographer Craig Tanner said,
"Conventional wisdom says that it is not enough to dream. You need talent. And definition of talent lifted straight from the dictionary describes talent as 'a natural ability of a superior quality'. In other words, you either have it or you don't. I call this cultural flaw in our self-awareness the Myth of Talent. And buying into this dead end myth about ourselves is where it goes wrong for many people – particularly people who have a dream of becoming an artist."
