This is a great post from one of my favorite blogs/mailing lists, Daily Writing Tips.The guest post was written by Maeve Maddox. You should check out the link above, but her are a couple of highlights.
When I read a blog filled with incomplete sentences, trendy slang, misspellings and grammatical atrocities, I feel at one with the professor at Ohio University who returned a student’s paper with this comment:
I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
To me a writer has certain characteristics, among which are:
a compulsion to write
a love of language
a grasp of grammar and idiom
a wide acquaintance with writing in different genres and from different historical periods
an enormous vocabulary, together with an instinct for choosing words appropriate to context and audience
the ability to write despite discouragement and distractions…
Here are some quotations that go along with my understanding of what a “real” writer is.
It is impossible to discourage the real writers – they don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to write. ~Sinclair Lewis
I can write with a crying child on my lap. I have. Often. ~ David Baldacci
We write because something inside says we must and we can no longer ignore that voice. ~ Sheila Bender
One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~Hart Crane
The more you read, the more you will write. The better the stuff you read, the better the stuff you will write. ~ Annie Dillard
The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax. ~Alfred Kazin
If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad. ~Lord Byron
“Daily Writing Tips” is always a highlight of my email checking day. It should be one of yours, too!
