Living as a Writer Series

One thing among many NaNoWriMo is good for, is starting that book you’ve always meant to write. You get the pep-talks, a community of encouragement, and guided writing sprints. Whether you succeed in writing 50,000 words, a full month dedicated to the effort of writing can be enough to kick-start a writing life.

Adopting a writing life can happen at any age. The thirty-under-thirty lists are great but as a reader, I also want the fifty-over-fifty list. I want books written by people who’ve lived long and interesting lives. Books are memories shared. I want to re-live someone else’s memories even made up ones in a novel.

Anyone who can write can become an author. There are no qualifications to being a novelist. You need not be young, or older. You also don’t need any special tools. You can write by hand or on a computer, on an ancient typewriter, or a smartphone. The only requirements to writing a novel are:

• Have a story to tell
• Write all of it

So if you have a story, write it. Someday you may write a novel, and if you start now, someday is today. Even if you just start NaNoWriMo today you can be part of the communal effort and launch your writing life. Those ten or twenty thousand words you write between now and December first are ten or twenty thousand words you won’t have to write later.

Are you ready to start your writing life?

#LivingAsAWriter