If You Want to Be a Writer, Start Writing

And over the course of that time, people have asked me, I want to be a writer, what should I do?

Now I recognize that some people are saying even though they're hiding it if you know of any positions open that I can fill let me know I'll be right there well that's not the way this works but I can tell you certain thoughts you've got to have if you do in essence want to be a writer I've lost count of how many people have told me they'd like to be a writer or just either like me or like others elsewhere or they wish they had done that before their retirement or whatever.

I can tell you before I go any further, this is a whole lot of fun.

Once you get past understanding the weighty responsibility you have to your readers, to your craft as a wordsmith, to your style and your brand, to excellence. Well, that's the aspiration anyway.

To the legacy of your language as the cultural expressions of history, to the veracity and honesty and originality of what you write, and to journalism as its own sacrosanct universe.

That's plenty to carry around, but I consciously give it its due every time I sit down at the keyboard. Like I said, it's a weighty responsibility.

So for those who see the output only and not understand the input, I'll make sure that by the time you're done listening to this, you do.

But let's say they understood all of this.

The input necessary for the output. The responsibilities as I laid them out.

They do understand that. The advice I give couldn't be simpler or clearer.

So if you want to be a writer, start writing without delay, and then don't stop.

Like anything else, the more you do something, the more you have a chance at getting good at it. Notice the have a chance phrase in there. Are no guarantees. I am not saying the more you do it, the better you'll get. I'm not saying that at all. You know, John Wooden, a name that us old folks know and revere, the head coach at UCLA men's basketball in the 1960s and 70s, and the most successful coach in history in any sport at any level. Now, that's my opinion, but we can have a long discussion about that if you want to.

John Wooden used to say practice doesn't make perfect practice makes perfect so when I say the more you do something the more you have a chance of getting good at it you got to be doing it and doing it right as you practice it and develop the skill you have to commit to getting better and that means knowing and accepting your current level generally not an easy thing to do the work and the hope never end there's an interesting little story a little quip about that on his 90th birthday legendary cellist pablo casals was asked why he still practices every day at 90, Casals' response, because I think I'm making progress.

That is the commitment I'm talking about.

I taught a graduate-level leadership and communication class for 15 years at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, in which students were required to write five papers.

Put that in perspective students who took the class in the evenings came in 15 or 12 weeks students who took the saturday class eight hours a day wrote how to write five papers in five weeks actually four because we needed to sum up but i want to talk to you about my relationship with those papers I read and graded nearly 4,000 papers.

And not one of the nearly 800 students who passed through my class handed in a first paper that could be considered or remotely considered a final publishable document.

Twelve weeks later or five weeks later, it was different.

I wasn't reading Pulitzer Prize material. Jeez, I still aspire to that. But I had in my hands vastly improved works.

Now, imagine what kind of development you could show if you write every day instead of five times a semester.

That's commitment.

Once you've committed, find a place to publish.

An established blog if they'll have you.

Your own blog.

Freelancing.

That's how I started out.

Part-time work for a local paper or journal.

Work for peanuts if you have to.

That's how I started.

Volunteer if you can, but work. Write,

And then put it in front of enough people for as much constructive criticism as you can get. You know what constructive criticism is? I hope you know. So if you value constructive criticism, you'll agree with me that constructive criticism is the opportunity to go to bed at night in a world that's better than it was when we entered it.

This is what paying your dues looks like. You just know you can do better, but you have to get there first. Prove yourself.

No way around it.

When i move forward from that concept the prove yourself concept we'll take up the conversation when we get back from this break before we go on let me thank another sponsor of vantage point someone i have known for more than 20 years who spent a career developing people by putting them to work i'll let him introduce do since then. Thank you, Eli, for having me. It's good to be with you. My name is George Svokos, the founder of Kardam Consulting, and I've spent more than three decades in global pharmaceuticals.

What you said today about writing is exactly what I watch play out in leadership.

You don't get better by sitting in a classroom. You get better by doing the work again and again and by being willing to be judged on it. I never saw a manager grow just by reading about it. They grew when they had to make a real call, put it in writing, defend it, and own the outcome. That is the very same thing you are telling writers.

To start and never stop and to get your work in front of people who will tell you the truth.

Standing next to people while they do that work is most of what I do now, and we call that teaching by another name. It's a privilege to support Vantage Point and the work you are doing here.

The world is full of things that anyone can love Writing is one of them In 19, I'm sorry, in 2003 The opportunity arose for me to write a weekly career column For a major regional newspaper in the Northeast The Record in Northern New Jersey I had been writing professional material for different jobs But never focused like this I secured the assignment as a trial for three months And here it is, 24 years later And I've also written for six years for Forbes.com As well as other papers around the country It's been an absolute guess Not to mention vast professional development Now, I'm doing it under my own banner A truly wonderful gig.

In total, I've done a few things during my life to make a living.

Adjunct professor, sales executive, coach, entrepreneur, and writer, columnist, author.

All of which contribute to this advice.

If you want to be a writer, start writing and don't stop.

I'll go through much more on this in the next episode.

We'll do some of the whys of how you can start writing and continue writing. You know, when this country was founded, the Declaration of Independence stated who we were And the Constitution stated how we became and would maintain being who we are. Same thing with writing.

Declare your love of and desire to write and then work on the hows and the whys.

So thanks for your company today, but let's get off the writing advice and let's get on to the rest of the podcast. this. I'm going to give you my predictable aphorisms, or not predictable, but the fact that it's predictable that they're here.

I got a thought for the Great Minds part of this episode from Mark Twain, so don't go anywhere, you're going to want to hear this.

And I got a pretty interesting what if.

Aphorism number one for the day.

When we let go of who we are, we can become who we might be.

You really can't make that change, that transition, until you are ready to transform.

This is very ancient Chinese in nature, Lao Tse, and so many others.

Aphorism number two next time you walk into the office think about this building a team is like holding a baby you cannot let go not for one second aphorism number three everyone wants you to tell the truth until you do.

And the final aphorism for the day, if you wake up each day without a list of at least three meaningful things to do, you're either disorganized, disinterested, or pessimistic. A guy that I would like to share some time with, you ever have your list of great people in history you'd like to have dinner with? Well, one of them is Mark Twain.

And if you can show me an author that gave us more than Mark Twain with Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Connecticut Yankee, and King Arthur's Court, and others, I'd be surprised.

But Mark Twain was also a great essayist, and he was a great speaker. People used to come far and wide to hear him speak.

Mark Twain said in explaining his capability, it usually takes me about three weeks to write a good impromptu speech.

And therein is a great lesson.

These things don't happen because they spill out of your pen or your keyboard.

It takes an awful lot of work.

And as far as authoring books is concerned, who else but Twain could say, a good book needs a good opening and a good ending. And the two need to be as close together as possible.

So when you're writing, and you attempted to go on and on and on.

Think about what old Mark Twain said. Who, interestingly, whether you know it or not, and this is not terribly important, but it was born and died in the year of Halley's Comet.

Interesting, no?

Well, that does it for the content for today, but it leads me right into wanting to give you a great what if, which I promise to do every episode.

What if Christopher Columbus were not a scheming sort that history appears to portray him? What I'm getting at, 34 years ago when the calendar turned to the 500th anniversary of Columbus discovering or setting foot on the soil of North America there was everything you could possibly find to read and view about Christopher Columbus he didn't understand the magnitude of what he was doing in that the Colombian exchange the things that exchanged or the changed hands or shared hands between Europe and North America and South America took place.

We were growing tobacco here. It went to Europe. They had the horse that they brought that here. We were growing corn and potatoes and Europe exported germs and disease.

It was truly the greatest single exchange in history. And Columbus understood that he had discovered something. but not the magnitude of it.

However, many of the books and videos on Columbus back in 1992 seemed to indicate that he knew he was doing something historically significant, major, as a matter of fact.

And that there's evidence that he collected, I'm sorry, not collected, but kept three different sets of logs, one for himself, noting where he actually sailed, and one that was fictitious, that went north.

To the landmass of North America and one that went south that would have landed in Brazil somewhere. He was going to shake the trail and make it more difficult for those who followed to figure out where he went. What he was doing that for is up for speculation, that he was instructed to and expected to bring back things for the King and for the Church, the King and the Queen, Isabella, and the Church, so they could have complete control over those things, such as, it turned out, tobacco, cocoa, chocolate.

Do we know for sure that the route that we know he took, based on his logs, was really the route he took?

Most historians say, yes.

I say, I don't know enough about it to tell you.

What if we knew different?

What if we knew that he didn't land on the island of Hispaniola? What if we knew he landed on what became Collins Avenue in Miami Beach 500 years later?

All the other exploration that took place by Ponce de Leon De Soto Magellan although he never touched Florida but all of that would have been different I don't know if there's anything monumentally important about that what if but it is an interesting what if and with that I'll say again thanks for listening. See you next time when I'm going to tell you about my thoughts about not only being a writer, but being a great writer. Until then, keep questioning, keep learning, and keep thinking critically.