Now, if we just can ignore my rather bland title that would be great. Thank you very much. The title, though bland, serves its purpose which is to encourage all into the wonderful abyss of self-expression in the beautiful heritage that was given to us by our ancestors-- the alphabet. So you want to write. I did too. So now, voila! Writing. Hooray!

I began writing this as "Anyone can write." which is a true statement (and do not be a smartass on me and ask about three-year-olds, because I swear I will...), but that isn't what I want. Anyone can write but not everyone is a writer. No. Everyone is a writer at one point in their life, but it takes a commitment to be one for the rest of your life which I think I have done. So you're here at AFF and you want to write. Here is sevvy's foot on your giving it a kick start and telling you "Anyone can be a writer!" All you need is a story you want to tell and the desire to tell it well. These two ingredients are necessary because everyone has a story, that desire to tell it well is the great divide from one who writes and one who is a writer.

I do believe that it takes talent to write but that is not all. It is the dedication to develop this talent, to hone it until you can hone your own words, until it is intuition to want better suiting words, effective selection of description, and that need to convey your message as representative of the idea you have conceived. I do believe there is writing talent, but it has very little to do with writing. Like all craft, a talent can only be base. So you have an innate sense of word choice, so you have effective ways on depicting emotion almost palpable on paper, but these skills can be learned and there is no real upper hand. I think a writer is a writer because s/he is writing, in an ongoing, ever progressing path. So when an individual makes a self-assertion, I am a writer, then it is only natural for that individual to know that you are not a writer because you have written, you are a writer because you keep on writing. You are not complete nor are your works the examplary form of perfection. It isn't. In all writings there is that knowledge that there could have been a better telling, somewhere that maybe not for you to reach. But still this is your story, and it is, by intellectual right, yours to tell. You do as you can and that makes you a writer.

Now as for getting better, it is knowing that writing is a craft and that there are techniques to learn. Now I am not a mentor. I am not saying here is a "how to" to be a good writer. What this shop is, is a haven... where we are all learning about the fundamentals of writing... hopefully in a better, much more entertaining way than this rather pedantic pedagology.

But that gist is anyone can be a writer. That means you. But you need to have that fire that tempers your own will. It is a very humbling profession and also extremely rewarding! But please know that the fame, the comments, all of those are just by-products of writing. Always be excited not for the glory, but for the fight in itself. And there is a fight, a struggle where you write into a void and create a universe. It is the creation, not the worship that makes a god... and in the end you may never be an immortal god of infamy but you are your own god because you have made something tangible. Just the idea of creating

So where are you right now? Planning to write? Writing? Published? Somewhere in between? Conception? Birth? Living? Limbo? Heaven? I don't believe there is a writing hell... only writing death and that is when you give up on it. So in your writing journey be that little train who thinks it can. I think I sound too much of an optimist which I can tell you right now I'm not, but dreams are made up of optimism and I think if you share my dream, you can have that dose of optimism straight from that cynic who still believes.

Dare to dream and make that commitment when you wake up to wrestle that dream down, mould them with unrelenting determination until it becomes a reality. Good luck!

Yours,

secretseven