Plenty of people harbour a dream to one day write a book.
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Maybe they're voracious readers who have a yearning to see something they’ve written in a bookstore.
Or perhaps they’re a journalist who writes for a living and wants to have a crack at writing something longer than a story for the paper.
But so many of people with these dreams never actually see them become reality.
Maybe they start out full of confidence and then run out of steam, after which they give up because they discover this writing a book thing is hard.
To make themselves feel better, they tell themselves that all those authors whose books are on the shelves must possess some special talent they themselves do not.
The problem is, that approach is complete rubbish.
As someone who has written a book (it’s called The Slab. Shameless product plug – you can get it here) as well as number of unpublished manuscripts – some which are unpublished for a very good reason – I know what the most important thing is.
Discipline.
Sure, those people whose books you see on the shelves obviously have some level of talent. But talent is worth nothing if you can’t get the words on the page.
See, writing is hard. There’s no getting around that. That’s why discipline is the No1 ability needed when it comes to writing.
It’s not easy to sit in front of a computer and bang out words. There is almost always something else I’d rather be doing than that.
But I do it. Because I know that’s how you get it done. The words won’t appear on the page all by themselves.
There’s a quote whose origin I’ve forgotten – “writers write. Everyone else makes excuses”.
And it’s absolutely true – you want to be a writer, you have to sit down and write.
End of story