(Hi, folks! For the time being, some, most, or all of the fol­low­ing links will still revert back to the orig­i­nal Writ­ing About Writ­ing web­page over on Blog­ger. This is not a mis­take. It just takes a long time to move thou­sands of arti­cles. Thank you for your patience as we nav­i­gate this tran­si­tion.)

You Can DOOOO EET!!!!!!!

A lot of peo­ple look at writ­ing like it’s some mys­ti­cal process and writ­ers like they’re a dif­fer­ent species. For years, the ped­a­gogy of cre­ative writ­ing pro­grams across the coun­try was that genius could not be taught. Start­ing writ­ers wor­ry more about some myth­i­cal qual­i­ty that they hope they have that will trans­form their dreams into suc­cess than they do about how much work it’s going to take to get from “here” to “there.”

But writ­ing does not need to be mys­te­ri­ous. As a cul­ture we’ve come to revere the genius rather than acknowl­edge the sim­ple fact that most artists were rel­a­tive­ly nor­mal peo­ple who put in a shit ton of effort. Craft can be taught. Cre­ativ­i­ty can be cul­ti­vat­ed. Dis­ci­pline can be exer­cised. And while writ­ers like Shake­speare or Faulkn­er are cer­tain­ly word­smiths of the cal­iber that we can only admire from far, far below, most writ­ers are just peo­ple who work very, very hard, think deeply about their words, and learn to tap into the cre­ativ­i­ty that we all have with­in us. They are human beings com­posed of the same spi­ral­ing cords of DNA as the rest of us.

And you can do it too!

The Holy Trin­i­ty of Writ­ing Advice–The Only List You Real­ly Need
Earn­ing Your “Er.”
Ziglar and Suc­cess.  What’s Yours?
A Writer’s Atti­tude: 15 Adjust­ments Toward Suc­cess
Using S.M.A.R.T.(S.) Goals in Writ­ing
Progress is Progress
10 Rea­sons to Write Dai­ly (Accen­tu­ate the Pos­i­tive)
Don’t Make it So Damned Hard!

Ques­tions? Com­ments? Want a future arti­cle to go into more detail? Mail me through our con­tact form. Just be sure to pick the right top­ic from the drop down menu, and check the archives—particularly the F.A.Q.—to see if your ques­tion has been asked before.

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