There are things one should not do if they aspire to be a writer. The best advice I can give you is that you should never tell anyone you want to be a writer.
Beyond that, it will certainly never impress the in-laws. Unless you have a cash advance for your next soon to be #1 New York Times best-selling novel in your hand they aren’t going to be too impressed.
The worst is the amount of advice you get about writing - “you should write at least 20 minutes every day. Even if its just crap. That’s what they say you should do.” They also tell people to tell writers to “write what you know.” What I like most about the kind of people that tell me these things is the massive assumption that I have never heard this pearl of wisdom until they were kind enough to grant it to me. THANK GOD! It’s a good thing you told me, cause up until now I've been wasting my time. HELLO! I fucking took 8th grade English! I’ve heard it all before.
I should probably not get too upset about it though... That input would actually be quite handy if I'd decided to become a writer the day before I got that information.
The best responses come from people who also want to be writers. Just the other day I mentioned this to someone in a casual conversation.
I got this reply: “Yeah, I'm a writer too. It’s important for me to write because It’s so grounded in reality.”
Naturally, I asked him what sort of stuff he wrote about.
“Oh, I only write stories about my Everquest characters.”
And I’m not hating on geeks. I have plenty of geek in me. I could go on for hours about how NCAA Football 2005 is better than Madden 2005 (blasphemy!) or I could tell you that I beat Chrono Cross TWICE and was halfway through a third time before my disk was destroyed in a child related incident. I compose electronic music for gods sake!
I certainly provide more than enough fodder for someone else’s blog. Just pray I don't find you as I will kick your ass using classified ninja moves I learned from playing Chrono Cross and Roller Coaster Tycoon.
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