It is a pretty good indication that the person is laboring under the illusion that he must do some particular something, perform some act of initiation, speak to some secret oracle in order to be welcomed into the exalted society of the writing class. Just write, and you re a writer. There is no reason to think of writers as an elite club of wordsmiths or anointed arbiters of taste and custom. Writers are just people who happen to write. And that makes you whether you are composing a term paper, an essay or any other piece of writing in which you are trying to communicate your own ideas to an audience a writer as well.
Writing is an art.
Well, not really. Writing is more like a craft. Like making clay pots or building a cabinet, it requires skills that you can learn by looking at good examples of master craftsmanship, working to imitate those examples, screwing up a lot, and doing it all over again. It involves trying something, usually getting it wrong, then figuring out what is wrong about it and trying again until you get it right. Most of writing, it has been said, is in fact re-writing putting something down on the page and then honing and revising it until it seems right.