How to be a Writer
What is the difference between a writer and someone who writes? I know this question sounds kind of crazy - even silly. Isn’t someone who writes - a writer? I would love to call myself a writer, but I do not believe that I am quite there yet. I enjoy to write, I love to play this game with words. I love to watch my thoughts dance around on a blank sheet of paper until they find meaning, a purpose, direction, and make sense in a place other than my mind.
I crave writing, I love writing, I breathe writing. I want more than anything to be a writer. I want to write things that people will read, remember, and talk about. So in my endless journey for answers in life I have come to the conclusion that the only way to become a writer is to write.
Write constantly. Write silly things, write stupid things, write thing that make no sense at all, and write things that make all of the sense in the world. Write in a blog, write in a journal, write in a computer, and on a napkin during lunch, and on paper. On the back of your math test, in the memo section of your cell phone. Just keep doing it.
I know this is redundant - but if you want to become a writer. WRITE!
It’s the simplest concept in the world, and yet so difficult to commit to. Consistently writing, not necessarily good, but just writing is more difficult at times than sticking to a strict diet. It follows the same patterns; initially you are motivate, you make a plan, and you stick to it. Then a few days or weeks go by and you forget to go to the gym (you forget to write) or you sneak a donut (You don’t accomplish your writing goals for the day) and then you have officially “failed” for the day. You can either give up and stop or keep going.
And with any plan, the keep going part is the most difficult thing to do. Well, I vow right here on this blog - to myself that I will keep going.
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Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- A Year Of Vibes from Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings
- Pluralistic: A perfect distillation of the social uselessness of finance (18 Dec 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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- Grow, Like a Tree Not a Cancer from Jim Nielsen’s Blog
- Pluralistic: All the books I reviewed in 2025 (02 Dec 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- DEP-18: A proposal for Git-based collaboration in Debian from Optimized by Otto
- [RIDGELINE] No Phones in The Ten-don Shop from Craig Mod — Writer + Photographer
- Open design: the opportunity design students didn’t know they were missing from Ubuntu blog
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Year 10
I distinctly remember waking up early, on January 1st, 2017, going downstairs with my laptop, making myself some coffee, and coding what ended up being the first iteration of this blog. I wanted to write weekly updates to hold myself accountable. …
via Manuel Moreale — Everything Feed January 1, 2026Pluralistic: The Post-American Internet (01 Jan 2026)
Today's links The Post-American Internet: My speech from Hamburg's Chaos Communications Congress. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Error code 451; Public email address Mansplaining Lolita; NSA backdoor in Juniper Network…
via Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow January 1, 2026[RIDGELINE] Happy New Year With a Side of Fries
Ridgeline subscribers — Hello from Denny’s. Happy new year. You can tell it’s January first, because I’m at Denny’s. I woke up and made a nice coffee and did some accounting (as one does) and went to my local shrine in Tokyo and bowbowclapclapbow’d and the…
via Craig Mod — Writer + Photographer January 1, 2026Generated by openring