Literary Justification: All Writers Are Groovy

    Now there's a big reason why every writer is a writer and why they consider themselves a writer. The magic of what you're doing is that to say that you're a writer, you don't have to be published or have it as a financially stable job. It's something that whether you write manuals or fiction, it takes a creative thought process and the ability to always argue against unknown questions. Writing is a whole new world where you can inject yourself into so many new thoughts and feelings while applying what you learn in the details between the lines to the real life obligations outside of what you do.

    Then again, you can also be extremely successful at writing. The great thing about success is that it isn't always define about how much money you make. What makes success such a lenient word is that it means to be happy. If you're happy with clothing on your back, the world will keep spinning on and on and on for you as long as you really want. If you're happy, you're healthy and healthy people don't tend to die as much as unhappy people do. That's where the importance of being a somebody is.

    You're a writer and we know that. You're a good person and we know that. Can you be happy with being a writer and working for that goal of success no matter what it is? Do you know that feeling guilty when you don't write a book in a week because of "procrastination" where literally--with pun intended--every other writer has had that exact feeling? We're here for you, you know. We've been here, we're going there, and currently you're already there.

    “I have advice for people who want to write. I don't care whether they're 5 or 500. There are three things that are important: First, if you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair. And second, you need to read. You can't be a writer if you're not a reader. It's the great writers who teach us how to write. The third thing is to write. Just write a little bit every day. Even if it's for only half an hour — write, write, write.” 
― Madeleine L'Engle

    The great thing about writing in this modern day and age is that there is no age limit to what you want to do and depending on your country there is no restrictions on what you are allowed to speak out about. If you want to do NaNoWriMo but you don't have the guts to do it, then do it. See, the thing about growing up in a society is that you're told to be scared of spiders, therefore you are. You're told to be scared of a task because it's new. Take a look at your writing ideas and just do it. The worst you could get is a paper cut. 

When I was little, my parents really only wanted me to be a scientist or a doctor; they had never even heard of law school. I think even these days if you were to tell your mother you want to be a fashion designer, or an artist or a writer, a lot of Asian parents would be alarmed because they don't think that's a secure career.
Amy Chua

    Don't be afraid that one day that you're going to get up and look in the mirror and perceive yourself as a failure. The goal is you will be happy and no matter what dip you hit you have your own mind and that is something to protect with a passion. I think a growing problem today comes from the fact that a lot of parents perceive a doctor, a lawyer or a dentist to all be the top paying jobs. If this is you, I think it would be a good idea to mention to your parents that in ten years there will be so many new jobs that maybe there will something even more secure and "paying" than ever before. That job that doesn't exist is the one you're going to take because that's writing and that's what makes you happy. Writing doesn't quite exist as a gaining task until you write something.

There is something really horrific for any human being who feels he is being consumed by other people. I'm talking about a writer's critics, who don't address what you've written, but want to probe into your existence and magnify the trivia of your life without any sense of humor, without any sense of context.
Wole Soyinka

    There's something about criticism which isn't correct in writing communities. I use to do more critiques than I do now and the biggest thing that I learned is that getting a few paragraphs from someone you don't know and don't trust is the most useless things in the world. I think if you want feedback, you need to find a friend to ask you questions instead of point out what they don't like. You shouldn't care what they don't like as long as you like it. Hell, we would have five hundred more copies of Romeo and Juliet a day if everyone conformed to what the critic wanted. There are plenty of people here on  who want to be able to give you that love. You should trust the people you're online friends with, writing friends with, drawing friends with, friends with or anything. Really, a random critique is just as helpful as walking up to a stranger and telling them that one eye is slightly bluer than the other.

When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have.
Francis Ford Coppola

    What makes writing and accomplishing any goals scary is that you yourself have to do it instead of thinking about it. Practice might never make you a perfect writer in the eyes of the person who came and told you about your eyes in the first place, but it can make you what you want to be. There's a style to the substance of what you like to do and I think what the best thing about a writer is that the romantic freedom of words is open to whatever format you want.

    There is no such thing as bad writing. I may not personally like something, but that doesn't mean it's bad. There's a point, there's a distraction and there's an emotion. If you can say: "Jim-Bob went to the store and met with a giant stegosaurus with a laser cannon taped to it's back," then you can be a good writer. The struggle is how vague a job is where you have to make the rules and struggle with the people who think they should make the rules.

 Format the way you think is good.

There is no reason why you have to indent, or you have to write a title a certain way. Of course there are standards, but I've seen full published novels that never capitalized sentences or even the title. It's what you want to do.

 Use punctuation the way you think you should.

Some authors are more heavy on ellipses than others. Some others love to use them to add emphasis and some will avoid it like the plague. No one told you if it was wrong or not. Once again, writing is making up the rules.

 Write what you want to write about.

There's no reason not to, really. Do you want to write really raunchy erotica and post it on  ? Go ahead! There's nothing that should hold you back. In fact, I'd probably read it--just saying.

 Find other people who do what you love to do. 

And hey look, you found this article which proves there has to be at least one other writer out there in the world. Which is neato keeno cool boss because that means you're not the only one pondering what a stegosaurus would be doing with a laser cannon anyways.

 "The publisher wouldn't take this." 

This argument is stupid because in modern day technology you can self publish, self distribute and be quite successful. It's not hard to find alternatives if you feel that your book wont be popular in a local Barnes and Nobles or Indigo. The goal when it comes down it is to really just do what you love and be consistent with that love. People will notice you at some point. Fame and cash, personally, should never be an end goal.

Like many self-published authors, Tim Anderson had a problem getting noticed. He spent years pitching his memoir about living in Japan, Tune In Tokyo, before finally self-publishing it in 2010. The response, initially, was modest. He’d send out copies and the occasional low-profile review might drip in from time to time.

“It was a huge challenge,” Anderson says. “Especially with somebody who’s social media–challenged to begin with. It was really hard to get attention because so many bloggers are pitched. I spent the summer sending out books for review and got little return.”

In December 2010, PW Select reviewed his book—calling it “laugh-out-loud funny”—which caught the eye of an acquiring editor at Amazon, which then republished Anderson’s book in 2011 under its Amazon Encore imprint.

 Read more about self published authors here!

So get out there and be somebody!  

Happy writing,
Naktarra