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If you can read words and write words, you have most of the skills you need to be a writer Oh sure, there are all sorts of classes you can take on how to write. Some of them are required for school, whether you're in first grade, seventh grade, or senior year in high school. Heck, most of the time you have to take classes in writing in college too. Even folks who are done with school and have jobs get sent to writing classes sometimes. But no matter how many courses you take or how much time passes,to be a writer, you really need to be able to read and write. To succeed as a writer, it helps if you understand what you've read, and if others can understand what you write, of course. The basic tools you need to be a writer are:
Usually you write on paper, but you could just as easily write on the back of your hand. I don't recommend this for a particularly long piece, or for anything that you really want to remember, since words on the back of your hand have a nasty habit of washing away over time, even if you steadfastly avoid the use of soap. And there are many, many things with which you might do the actual writing: you could use a pen or pencil or crayon or lipstick or a piece of charcoal or a particularly dirty stick. Again, some of these are more permanent than others, so you may want to consider sticking with the more typical pen or pencil types of writing implements. Or, you could decide to avoid the use of handwriting altogether and go straight for typing, either on a computer or on a clacking dinosaur called a typewriter. By the way, if you ever come across one of the particularly old typewriters, from the days before they were hooked to electricity, you simply must give it a go. The keys make a very satisfying "smack" as they hit the paper, and, if you hit a few keys too many at the same time, they jam together and drift slowly back to their starting point. Not productive, but fun to watch. It you really want to be a writer, here's what I suggest:
That's right, you heard it here. In order to be a writer, the only thing required is to actually write something, whether it be poetry or stories or letters or newspaper columns. And do yourself a favor. Keep at least some of what you've written at different points in your life. When you are old like me, you will want to see what your old stuff looked like. You'll remember having had brilliant ideas, and having written cool stuff, and you'll wish you could look at it to see if it was as good as you remember. And the funny thing is, it will be - even if you thought it wasn't any good a year after you wrote it, your grown-up self will be able to look at it and say,
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