Are you a true writer? Not ‘true’ as in a super secret club that only published authors or elite snobs belong. If the only writing you do is on a blog that you think nobody reads, you could still be a true writer.

You could be a true writer and not even have a blog. Heck, you could be a true writer and not even have an internet connection. It’s not where one writes that is important, it’s what and how one writes that does.

Criteria for being a true writer

I’ve come up with nine qualities that no true writer should be lacking:

1. Desire. If you experience withdrawal when you don’t write, even when it’s material that others may never see, that’s the mark of a true writer. You must do it. You are driven. It’s not a choice. You don’t write only to have others read, you write because it’s an insatiable need.
2. Read. You can’t write if you don’t read. It’s how you learn the language and the beauty of the craft. It could be argued that the best true writers read more than they write. Much more.
3. Furtive imagination. You often think about what you are going to write when you aren’t writing. Perhaps it’s laying in bed or on a long drive, but the cogwheels of your brain never stop spinning.  They might be spinning at this very second.
4. Quality control. You hone the skill of recording your raw imagination and thoughts to paper or digital ink. Accurate, honest and laced with passion. Through editing (#7 #8) you can make these thoughts even better, but before writing down an idea you measure its worth through your own quality control.
5. Practice.  You understand that you can’t get better if you don’t actually do something. You make plans to write something down regularly, even if it’s only a partial thought and/or something you don’t publish today.
6. Fresh meat. You do not like to trip over what you’ve already written and despise plagiarism. If somebody else saw what you did and published first, then step aside and give that writer credit. In the blog format where retelling and word repackaging is the norm, not the exception, this can be very difficult. Being fresh and original in a sea of talent might be the most challenging aspect of the blog format. This shouldn’t stop a true writer but it should weigh on his/her mind.
7. Trunk. I don’t know any true writers who are trunk-less. The trunk used to be a place for unpublished works and drafts, but these days is a set of digital computer files or unpublished database(s). True writers understand that what you’ve written today could be more or less useful in the future. The trunk is a snapshot in time. Knowing when to pull material from the trunk and publish is part of a true writer’s quality control skill. 
8. Edit. It’s the one part many writers hate, myself included, but it’s a cruel reality. You must edit. I enjoy the blog format of publishing because I can get away with less editing than all other formats combined, but total editing abandonment isn’t the mark of a true writer. You must learn to delete words, sentences, paragraphs, pages and even nuke your favorite posts. Just because. Yes, this is different from #4 Quality Control, because editing happens after the words are in place. Your quality control filter happens before it is written and after it has been edited. An editor takes what is there and shapes and molds. While the editor role in internet publishing might seem to be a dying art, a true writer knows how important the editor role is in improving the work.
9. The dreaded ‘other.’ There can be no true writer list without the ever important ‘other’ entry. This wildcard is your criteria for what quality makes a true writer. You, friendly reader, are what make published writing satisfying. The payoff for unseen mental blood, sweat and tears. What is the one quality you think every true writer must have? What have I overlooked that no true writer should be without?

I’ve read famous authors like Stephen King describe writing as an obsession; something he couldn’t imagine ever not doing. Sure, with fiction you need fresh ideas, but there are always ideas and it’s hard to keep an active imagination like his down. I’m reluctant to go as far as labeling true writing an addiction, but it is on some levels.

As long as I can remember, I’ve been a true writer. The blog format fits the bulk of my current publishing output, but some other type of format could come along and claim my writing time tomorrow. Someday I might stop writing at this particular blog, but I will never "retire." A true writer never retires, s/he dies. Perhaps at the keyboard, caught eternally in mid-thought.

There have been a couple web personalities who have talked about quitting or retiring from blogging recently and at the risk of falling into a potential attention whore trap I’m not going to use names in this post. You probably know these people as I’ve written about writers (I hesitate to use the term ‘bloggers’ as I think of blogging as a format, not a type of writer) like this in the past in posts like: Is it the blog or the blogger that holds subscribers? One of my goals in 2008 was to avoid falling into linkbaiting schemes and writing too much about web personalities. These people get far too much undeserved attention already. Call this my fresh meat filter tweaking. This leaves more space for highlighting passionate, compelling work by unknown true writers.

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Did this post make you go hmm?

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