WAKE UP AND WRITE
If You Want to Be a Writer, You Must Write
I had to write to nobody for ten years before I had an audience
Wake Up and Write is a regular advice column from Moms Don’t Have Time to Write. Today, we have Glennon Doyle — an activist and the author of Carry On, Warrior, Love Warrior, and Untamed— who shared writing advice on the podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, hosted by Zibby Owens.
“People who are not writers don’t constantly wonder if they’re writers.”
“This I know. If you are a human who wonders often if you’re a writer, then to me that means you are for sure a writer.
The other thing that I would add is that it depends on a person’s desire. If the desire is to be an author, to me, that’s different than being a writer. Being a writer is what I hold the most dear. I have friends who are writers who happen to have become authors. I have friends who are writers who have never become authors and who are the best writers I’ve ever known. I have friends who are writers who became authors who are not great writers, for real.
If what you want to be is a writer, and by that I mean you just want to experience the world deeply and then experience it twice by going to your computer and trying to make sense of it through words and communicate it to other people… then you have to write. It almost doesn’t matter what comes next. I had to write to nobody for ten years before anybody was like, “Do you want to write a book?”
You have to be willing to do a hell of a lot of writing that nobody might ever see, which means that if you really want to be a writer, you have to not be able to live unless you write. It has to be something that you can’t not do.”
Episode link:
Buy the book:
https://bookshop.org/books/untamed-9781984801258/9781984801258
