When can you officially call yourself a writer?

How to start writing? (or anything else for that matter)

Writing is tough. It seems impossible. It’s scary, so we put it off for tomorrow.

“How do I convince people who don’t know me that an enemy they don’t believe in is coming to kill them all” — Jon Snow

People’s minds are not made for problems that large. White walkers, the Night King, Army of the dead. It’s almost a relief to confront a comfortable, familiar monster like my sister. — Tyrion

That’s how writing is. When we start writing, we would face all those demons. Those faceless demons, that make us feel like hell. Am I any good? What am I writing even? It’s a relief to tackle the comfortable, familiar monsters instead.

We would encounter the most meaningless of distractions. “What about the laundry? Shouldn’t I do that first?” “But my friend must really be needing this. I should go and give this to her first.” “Then I will come back to write”. Hasn’t happened. Won’t happen.

So, how do the writers write? They must be exceptionally talented, we think. Birth of a higher cadre or caste. I am not special. How do I even know if I am supposed to be a writer?

There is only one thing and I know that I am putting this as obvious, and I know how difficult it is to actually do, but there is only one thing that writers do that we don’t. And that is, they write. Daily. A lot of it. 1000 words, 2000 words, 5000 words, mostly full of shit. And from that huge dump of shit, comes the gems. There is no other way. At least as far as I know of. No tactic, no hack.

So what can you do? As soon as you wake up, pick up your laptop or your notebook, and start writing. Put a timer of 45 minutes and write whatever is coming to your mind. When the timer rings, put another one. Once you have done that for more than an hour, stop when you feel tired. Repeat this the next day.

That’s it. Everything else will take care of itself. Just start doing this no matter what.

I will post a few hacks that might make it a bit easier, but nothing would help if you don’t do the above. That is the key to writing and I think that is the key to do anything remarkable in life.