What makes a (good) writer?
By: Nina Jervis
Tags: Working Hard, Writing Advice, Individuality, Writing, Freelance Writing

Jordan Whitfield at Unsplash.com

“After the age of about thirty (most people) almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, wilful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class.”

George Orwell, ‘Why I Write’

I don’t use quotes very often, but for me, that one hits the nail on the head. As an egotistical writer, this is mostly because it shines a flattering light on me and the career I’ve chosen.

Writers tend to pontificate a lot; in a hand-wringing sort of way you just don’t see from most other professions. If a plumber were to write an article about what really makes a (good) plumber, for example, you’d imagine the answers would be clear and easy for others to understand. You can’t really pontificate over a leaky toilet, you just have to get on and fix it.

My old Maths teacher used to say he loved numbers because they could only ever be right or wrong, and that was it. No further information required; no flowery explanation about the agonising route you took in the small hours, just to come up with those particular figures. No angst-ridden tales that explain how, from the moment you pressed the buttons on your very first calculator, you heard your future calling.

(For the record, I think numbers tell plenty of stories themselves. It’s just that the straightforward sort of people who work with numbers tend to be different from those who work with words).

But anyway.

I was inspired to write about the qualities that make a (good) writer, because ever since I gave up a boring HR career to become a writer myself, and ever since I published my first book, I’ve been getting emails from people who want to know more.

Not more about me, by the way. More about themselves, and what it would take for them to do what I do. The vast majority of the emails I get start with the hallowed, “I’ve always wanted to write for a living too, but I just don’t know where to start”, before continuing with what they’ve done so far, such as the first bit of a novel, or setting up a blog.

It’s a rare stranger-email that mentions actually reading anything I’ve written, or even finding out what sort of a writer I am, before asking me for advice. This, I feel, is their first mistake — and I’m not just saying that because of my aforementioned ego. If you want to be a (good) writer, you also have to be observant and interested, and you have to be prepared to do a bit of research into the people you ask for help. You’ll get their best insights that way, trust me.

Their next mistake is asking me what they can do to “get started with writing”, as if I alone have trodden the only known path, gathering up secrets from the magical writing sprites I met along the way.

I got started with writing after a lifelong battle with not being a writer. This is hard to explain in the succinct-yet-revelatory email reply I suspect these people want.

From the moment I could hold a pen, writing has been my best friend. It helped me make sense of a lonely childhood peppered with playground bullying, a mostly fractured adulthood, a rubbish career, and later on, a divorce. I’ve kept a personal diary every year since I was eight, and for fifteen years I wrote a blog I didn’t bother showing anyone. I wrote for myself first and foremost, and to a certain extent, I still do. I think you’ve got to, really.

It never occurred to me that I could ever make money from writing. I just really really, really love it. So much so that I was prepared to give up a reasonably successful career to focus completely on words, and so much so that even if my freelance writing career took a nosedive, and the whole world took to Twitter to tell me, in 280 characters or fewer, just how rubbish I am, I would still write every day.

This is the slightly obsessive sentiment I try to get across to those people who innocently ask me how they can “get started with writing”. I start by asking them if they love it, because if they don’t, they may as well stop torturing themselves with dreams they won’t fulfil.

I then remind them that books generally don’t make their authors very much money, and that blog posts mostly go unread. That they could spend weeks coming up with one perfect sentence, only for someone to sniff about how it doesn’t make proper sense, or how the wrong word was used in that bit.

I tell them that writers’ groups are populated by lots of people who only crave feedback on their own words, and who will at best give a half-hearted nod when they read yours. I go on to say that writing on behalf of other people can sometimes feel like the literary equivalent of supermarket shelf-stacking, as your Booker prize-winning dreams are wheeled past in a squeaky trolley headed for the manager’s office.

The double-whammy of writing and having to keep yourself alive by charging people for is not something I would recommend to just anyone, I say. But if they insist, then they’ll have to prepare to work very hard indeed on getting clients.

They’ll have to go to networking meetings and ‘present’ at 7am over tepid coffee; they’ll have to explain just what makes them different in a world full of wannabe writers, and when they finally get the work, they’ll have to deal with “customer feedback” as politely as they can.

They’ll also have to deal with their work being pulled apart by clients and ‘amended’ in their own style, which completely loses its original rhythm and often adds a sprinkling of mistakes. Now they won’t be able to use that piece in their writer’s portfolio, which can be difficult when other potential clients want some writing examples before they decide to work with them.

If they can deal with all that, I say, then maybe they could give freelance writing a go. Then I wish them luck.

I don’t tend to hear anything back from them after that. I like to think they’re beavering away immediately on their words, anticipating the tough times ahead but not caring. Because this is what they really want to do, and they’ll be doing it for the rest of their lives, whether someone’s paying them or not.

That, by the way, is what I think makes a (good) writer. Doing it regardless, constantly working on getting better and not really caring about what anyone else thinks.

(I did warn you: writers pontificate a lot).