How to Become a Writer and an Artist

Ever since I was very young I thought of myself as a writer. Even when I was going through stages where I wasn’t writing regularly I thought of myself as a writer. Many people who want to write seem to struggle with thinking of themselves as a writer. They say, “I want to be a writer,” or “One day I’ll be a writer.” You are a writer when you decide to be a writer. That is simply a shift in thinking that you must make. Do you write? Okay, then you’re a writer.

Just because I never had to do that with writing doesn’t mean I didn’t have to do it with something else. For me it was art. I only started referring to myself as an artist a few months ago. Have you ever been guilty of thinking something like this:

• “One day when I’m good enough I’ll be an artist.”
• “If I could just draw super realistic drawings…”
• “If I just learn how to use oil paints …”
• “When I start working on canvases …”
• “When I …”

Good grief, I was full of qualifiers, and those qualifiers were completely unnecessary. The only necessary qualifier we need is that we are doing the thing we want to be. [Tweet “The becoming is in the doing. If you want to be a writer start writing.”] If you want to be an artist start making art.

So what if you aren’t as good as you want to be yet. Nobody really is. There is always room for improvement, but you get better by doing it every day. Even if it’s just for a few minutes everyday. Even when you only see tiny improvements or sometimes you feel like you see no improvements at all, you are getting better. You are making the commitment. You are becoming. You are being.

You get better by doing. If you want to be it, you have to do it.

How do you become an artist? You start by making art … everyday.

How do you become a writer? You write … everyday.

How do you become a musician? Try playing an instrument … everyday.

You’ll improve over time. You might be guilty of thinking, but it will be ten years before I’ll ever be any good. That was my thinking whenever I thought about learning to play the guitar, but one day I realized that ten years are going to pass whether I learn to play the guitar or not. I’d much rather be able to play the guitar in ten years than not. So I started learning. I only do it for forty minutes a day, but you know what? I’m getting better.

As you commit to the doing, you develop your style. You learn how to use the tools better and better with the passage of time. You start to develop a vision, a sound, a voice that is uniquely yours. That’s where the passion lies. Passion comes from the commitment to do this thing again and again. The commitment to struggle through the problems looking for solutions, to ride out the plateaus looking for the next level, to keep going when others might stop. The passion comes from mastery, and mastery comes from doing it everyday.

Are you an artist? Are you a writer? Are you a musician? I don’t know. That’s up to you to decide.