Just write.

This year on the blog, I want to talk a bit more about the things I've learned during the last few years I've been studying and practicing creative writing. I'd love to get into conversations about the actual process and craft of writing.

So I thought I would start with some of the best and simplest writing advice I've ever received: 

Write.

On the first day of our writing workshop at the University of Sussex three years ago, Big Chimp and I, along with four other optimistic MFA students, sat across the table from our grumpy old American tutor (which is what they call academic instructors in Britain--er, "tutor," not "grumpy old American tutor" (except in this case, because he was)), and he said to us, "Listen, because I'm now going to tell you the most important thing about writing."
I picked up my pen eagerly and poised it over the clean white expanse of my notebook.
"Put your pens down and watch," he said, grumpily.
I put my pen down.
"Okay," he continued. "This is how you don't write." He crossed his arms and stared into space. He stroked his chin, said "hmmm," uncrossed his arms, chewed the end of his pencil, and sighed dramatically. Then he straightened up.
"Okay. Now, this is how you write," he said, and he put his pen to the paper in front of him and started writing.

In other words, daydreaming, thinking, brainstorming, etc. aren't writing. Sure, they're important and they have their place in the creative process, but they don't count as writing! The only way to be a writer is to write. A lot. Spending all day pondering about writing, thinking about your Big Idea, dreaming about your future book deal--that can be fun, but it won't help you find your voice or hone your craft. Practicing writing is the only way; there are no shortcuts.

Pretty simple advice, right? But I think we've all been through the Dreamer stage. People who are writers are natural dreamers. When I was a teenager I dreamed about being a writer. I even sometimes wrote--when I felt like it. When inspiration struck. Looking back, I call it the Wannabe stage. Lots of dreaming, not a lot of work.

The spring after that fateful writing workshop, Big Chimp and I attended the 2008 Guardian Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts (which quickly became one of my favorite events of the year).While there, on a cold rainy night (it was in Wales, after all), in a big tent that was in danger of being blown away by the storm, we heard a talk by Augusten Burroughs, the author of Running with Scissors, a memoir that I absolutely adore. Afterward, Big Chimp bought me Burroughs's latest memoir, A Wolf at the Table, and we stood in line for him to sign it. When we got to the front I told Burroughs how much I had liked Running with Scissors, and shyly mentioned that I was trying to be a writer, too. He looked at me with these startling blue eyes and said:

"Write every day. You don't have to write about something, you just have to write."

So that's what I've been trying to do: actual writing every day. Sometimes it's difficult. While I try to write 1,000 words a day, over the holiday period when I had two jobs, at times I only found the time to write a couple hundred words per day. But I always try to at least write something. Because I'm over the Dreamer stage; I'm a writer now.
 Sometimes, the simplest advice is the best.