The Writer's Call

Post Reply New Topic

how do you know if your meant to be a writer?

Speaking for myself, I just wanted to be. The rest is history. All that's left is to see if I've been wasting my time or not.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I think you just discover it over time, when you realise you'd rather present your thoughts as text than verbalise, and that you like the idea of being able to provide a narrative of your experiences or stories you want to share.
You don't just wake up one day and realise what your calling is, its more like it creeps up on you and taps you on the shoulder from behind; like something that has always been there but you didn't notice before.
That's my theory anyway.

A calling whatever it is can be obvious or not, but I think more often than not you realise once you're already there.

f you want to be a writer it's important you know some of the basic grammatical rules. To wit:

"how do you know if your meant to be a writer?"

1. "how" needs to be capitalized as it's the first word of the sentence.
2. The proper contraction is "you're" not "your" as you wrote.

Umm...there are many ways to tell if one is meant to be a writer. One has to have a huge love for writing, and one would have to love different subjects and love writing about them. You probably would have to do a lot of writing on a daily basis. I dunno, I've been writing stories for as long as I can remember.

I write because I want to entertain myself and others. My characters help make me feel less alone and also I can enjoy their escapades with them.

I don't know if I believe in the idea "meant to be", because it implies fate which I have doubts in. If I work hard at it and one day get a book published then I can be happy knowing that my hard work was rewarded, even if it doesn't sell.

I like to consider myself a writer, but that's just the closest thing I can think of to call it. I'm not great at writing. I'm okay with grammar and stuff, but even if you have horrendous spelling or grammar, that shouldn't stop you from writing. You might find that your spelling and grammar gets better with time as you write more.

What I like to think I am is a story teller, and my preferred method of telling the story is by writing it out. My goal isn't even to write to share with others, but write it so I don't forget it. I have a friend who is an english major and after telling him a few things about my writing, he was impressed at my ability to flesh out and make things make sense between all the different aspects of a story(plot, setting, themes, characterization, effective use of hot topics etc...) When it comes to actually writing it out in a format that someone would read, I find that I'm not so good at that. What I write usually reads like a mix of a general 2nd person outline/description of events(think police report), with some first person, and on occasion some dialogue mixed in when I know very specific things and the occasional info dump or notes in parenthesis. It's not something that would ever be published in a book as it is, but it gets the story documented, and out of my brain. I struggle with trying to format my writing so it's in a common format like 3rd person omniscient, or 1st person, and usually give up because it's mentally draining and doesn't come easy. Regardless, I still write out the story in my own way.

Last night as an exercise, and I was all by myself when I did it, I verbally went over the story I've been working on as if I was describing it to someone else and I caught two problems that dealt with the logical flow of the story.

I avoid structured writing like the kind of stuff you do for schooling, research, and work like the plague.

Overall, you just write what you like, and if you don't have a problem writing what you like, then you're a writer. I don't have a problem writing down my stories for myself, as I write for myself, and I'm a writer.

I'm a writer, that's what I am.

Everyone has their own stories to tell, be they true or false. The majority of people do this verbally. I'll never be good at verbal communication so i write. That's how I express myself. Besides, there's something very poetic about the written/typed word, ain't there?