Anatomy of a Writer
Today everybody wants to be a writer, but are they?
Years ago, a creative writing professor from one of the Ivy League universities — I think it was Columbia — asked me for permission to use one of my articles in his writing classes. The article was about the characteristics of a writer, because sometimes people just want to be writers, but they aren’t. I’ve long lost track of that article, and having been published and in print for some 60 years, I don’t have it in me to track it down. So I’ve written a new one. These, then, are the characteristics of a writer.
The Thinker
The writer is, above all, a thinker. So if you’ve done one of those MBTI tests, and you’ve come out with a big, healthy T, you’re a thinker. Feelers, unfortunately, don’t cut it. Of course, that’s a thinker with a small T. Real thinkers are so much more.
Thinkers observe the world, and they analyse it — constantly. They aren’t extroverts. They’re introverts, examining not only their own inner traffic, but the actions, words, and emotions of others. They look at the sociological, political, and economic systems around them, dissect them, understand them…
