Sarah L. Johnson
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How to become a writer

11/19/2015

3 Comments

 
Picture
1. Grow up a little weird, maybe in a devout Mormon household.

2. Have parents who subvert religious indoctrination by imposing no restrictions whatsoever on the kind of books you check out of the library.

3. Read The Thorn Birds when you are thirteen, understand little, but enough to develop a lifelong appreciation for anything lurid.

4. Spend 4-5 years in your room listening to 90's alt-rock. 

5. Graduate high school with honours because your worth is defined by academic success.

6. Complete a post-secondary education because same.

7. Receive your credential. Do the thing. Realize that thing isn't at all what you want to do. Go back to your part-time job in an artisanal bakery. Congrats, you have failed at being an adult.

8. Recreational drugs.

9. Meet the man you will eventually hitch your wagon to.

10. Do less drugs...do no drugs...drugs are stupid, why did you do all those drugs?

11. Experience a five year interval of relative normality. Marriage, mortgage, larvae.

12. Become acutely aware that you don't fit in with the other moms. Congrats, you've failed at normal.

13. Read Twilight for some reason.

14. With haughty disgust, claim that you can do better.

15. Write a fucking terrible novel.

16. Write more. Take classes. Drink wine. Meet other writers. These are your people, and just like you, they are exhausting and adorable.

17. Sell a few stories. Make a little money.

18. It's not enough money. You have larvae to feed, and you're out of wine.

19. Get a job in a bookstore, and know that you are living a cliché comparable to that of actor-slash-waiter.
​
20. Blog on a sporadic basis. Try doing it in list form because you heard somewhere that people like lists. The list is too long. You have no idea what you're doing. Congrats, you're a writer.



3 Comments
Kari
11/19/2015 05:36:24 pm

This is fantastic. The truth always sounds so brilliant, and it's never easy to tell the truth.

Reply
Maddy link
5/25/2016 04:58:50 pm

The 20 step program on how to become a writer? I can definitely relate to "Grow up a little weird."

Reply
Jack Strange link
12/6/2017 12:21:10 pm

I like what you say about your first novel. It sounds like mine - but maybe not quite so awful. Anyway, I think that's the place a lot of writers start out: a really bad first novel.

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    Sarah L. Johnson

    I mostly talk about books, writing, and running. Other topics of blogworthy interest include pie making, alcohol consumption, and things that terrify me, like owls.

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