You want to be a writer, but you know you suck a nation of ass.

It’s okay.

A child doesn’t speak clearly at first. It drools it’s nasty garbled message to the world and those who love it praise it and call it an amazing phenomenon…and there it begins.

Read everything. Classics, philosophers, your favorite authors, Reader’s Digest.

Listen to the common truth in the words, the voices across time speaking life’s truth in different voices. Read your own words as you write them and remove all but the exact few that matter to you.

Submit your work to the literary world and hug their rejection letters and suggestions to your heart as you refine your words and learn to speak your truth.

Write when it’s hard and when it comes easily to you.

Write when you’re hurt, angry and afraid. When you want to live and when you want to die. When every nerve is alight and when you’re numb.

When you’re fragile or invincible.

Write until you see the words that make your soul quiver in recognition and ecstasy.

Then step aside. Look at the crazy beautiful kaleidoscope  you’ve created and begin to sift the wheat from the chaff.

Truth is essential, every superlative you used is not.

It doesn’t matter how “far” you get. You have to let go, get out of your own way, let yourself fall.

Let your crazy and your sane converse on paper. Let all the words caught up in your blood flow onto the page in front of you until you begin to ask yourself questions only the words can answer.

If and when the moment comes when you lock into the sweet spot, you won’t be able to stop. You’ll write in your car driving 70 mph, at work with everyone calling for your attention, in the dark morning hours before your alarm goes off and late at night when you should be sleeping.

Your fingers will itch for the keyboard

the ink pen

the notes on your iPhone.

You’d use a crayon if you had one.

Then you’ll know. No one will have to tell you. You won’t need permission.

If you have to keep the words alive even when you’re unpublished

Unacknowledged

Unpaid…

You’re a writer, and you rule the world.

Where are your words?

Start with One.