How to Become a Writer: Start Writing, and Don’t Stop

For nearly 30 years of publishing, Eli Amdur has fielded one question more than almost any other: how do you become a writer? People ask it hoping for a trick, a shortcut, a credential. His answer disarms them with its plainness. “If you want to be a writer, start writing without delay, and then don’t stop.”

That sounds too simple to be useful. It isn’t. Underneath the simplicity sits something heavy and worthwhile: a responsibility to readers, to craft, and to truth. In the seventh of Vantage Point‘s eight inaugural episodes, Eli walks through the input behind the output, and why the commitment it demands never ends.

The Question Everyone Asks

Most people who want to write are waiting for permission, or for the right moment, or for proof they’re allowed. Eli’s counsel removes the waiting entirely. Begin. The desire itself is the starting point, not the finish line.

“Declare your love of and desire to write,” he says, “and then work on the hows and the whys.” Note the order. First you commit to the thing. The technique comes after, and it comes through doing, not through preparing to do.

This is not the same as saying writing is easy. Eli is careful to separate the accessibility of writing from the difficulty of doing it well. “The world is full of things that anyone can love. Writing is one of them.” Loving it is free. Getting good at it is not.

The Weighty, Wonderful Responsibility

The moment you put words on a page for someone else to read, you have taken on a duty. To language. To accuracy. To the reader who gives you their time and their trust. Eli treats this seriously because he has lived inside it, in journalism and in the classroom.

He is blunt about where good work comes from. “These things don’t happen because they spill out of your pen or your keyboard. It takes an awful lot of work.” The romantic image of inspiration pouring out effortlessly is a myth that keeps people from starting, because when the effortlessness fails to arrive, they assume they aren’t cut out for it.

Truth-telling carries its own weight, and it isn’t always welcome. As Eli puts it, “Everyone wants you to tell the truth … until you do.” A writer who takes the responsibility seriously accepts that consequence rather than writing around it.

Perfect Practice, Not Just Practice

If repetition alone made people great, everyone who typed all day would be a fine writer. It doesn’t work that way, and Eli reaches for John Wooden to make the point.

“Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.” — John Wooden

The distinction matters. Sloppy repetition entrenches bad habits. Deliberate, attentive practice builds skill. “The more you do something,” Eli says, “the more you have a chance at getting good at it.” A chance, not a guarantee. What turns the chance into progress is honesty about where you stand.

“As you practice it and develop the skill, you have to commit to getting better, and that means knowing and accepting your current level.” You cannot improve from a position you refuse to acknowledge.

There is no expiration date on this. Eli tells the story of Pablo Casals, the great cellist, still practicing at 90. Asked why a man of his mastery kept at it, Casals answered:

“Because I think I’m making progress.” — Pablo Casals

At 90. That is the standard. Commitment never ends.

Paying Your Dues

Eli’s own path was not handed to him. He freelanced for peanuts. He earned a weekly career column at The Record. He wrote for Forbes.com for six years. And across 15 years teaching graduate leadership at Fairleigh Dickinson University, he graded nearly 4,000 student papers, an education in how writing actually goes wrong and how it can be repaired.

The practical lesson underneath the biography is unglamorous: find a place to publish, and pay your dues. Nobody skips this. You write for little, you write for whoever will run it, and you keep writing.

Criticism is part of the deal, and Eli reframes it as a gift rather than an insult. “Constructive criticism is the opportunity to go to bed at night in a world that’s better than it was when we entered it.” Feedback isn’t the price of admission you resent. It’s how the work gets better and how you do.

Growth, in the end, means being willing to change. “When we let go of who we are, we can become who we might be.” The writer you are now is not the writer you’re capable of becoming, but only if you keep moving.

From Great Minds: Mark Twain on the Illusion of Ease

The episode’s Great Minds turn lands on Mark Twain, who understood better than anyone that ease is manufactured through labor.

“It usually takes me about three weeks to write a good impromptu speech.” — Mark Twain

The joke carries the whole lesson. What looks spontaneous is rehearsed. What reads effortlessly was worked to death. Twain also had firm ideas about structure:

“A good book needs a good opening and a good ending, and the two need to be as close together as possible.” — Mark Twain

Discipline, in other words, includes knowing when to stop. Say what you came to say and get out.

What If? A Question About Truth on the Page

Eli closes with the kind of provocation Vantage Point exists for, a question that sends you looking rather than nodding.

What if Christopher Columbus kept three different sets of ship logs, and the route history records isn’t the route he actually sailed?

It’s a fitting note for an episode about writing. The written record is powerful precisely because we trust it. That trust is exactly why the responsibility to truth on the page is not decorative. It’s the whole point.

Start Now

If you take one thing from this episode, take the sentence Eli keeps returning to: start writing without delay, and then don’t stop. The desire is enough to begin. The discipline is what makes you a writer. And the commitment, as Casals showed us at 90, does not end.

Listen

• 🎧 Episode page: https://eliamdur.com/start-writing/
• 🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vantage-point-with-eli-amdur/id1896926911
• 🟢 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033yuddGiSOzbmEk75HLUl
• ▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VantagePoint-Podcast
• ✉️ Email list and site: https://eliamdur.com/

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Vantage Point – the podcast for critical thinkers. We’re not political, just critical.

This episode is supported by Stephen Bozer, SVP of Human Health at Flavine.