What do all writers have in common?

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Laer Carroll

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PASSION seems to be the one aspect all writers share who are published or who will be published. Otherwise we're very unlike. We come in all genders, ages, ethnicities, classes, and socioeconomic statuses. We begin writing stories as early as kindergarten, as late as the middle of our lives.

At least that's the impression I get from reading several dozen interviews over the past several months. They are in a collection of middling-short interviews originally published in Publisher's Weekly. It's titled Writers and Their Craft and is available at Amazon and B&N or at your local library. Some of the writers are authors of bestsellers. Others are important because of their literary success.

Although "passion" may be a better-sounding way to say "obsession." At least from my experience, writing a book is something that I MUST do, rather than merely want to do. (Though there is that motivation too. Writing for me is like eating, something pleasurable in its own right.)

What other aspects do we all share? Not just SOME of us share, but ALL share?
 

veinglory

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Honestly, I would list nothing beyond 'writing'. I take a pretty blasé approach that I doubt could be referred to as a "passion".
 

Kerosene

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I would agree with vienglory... but some "writers" don't even write.
 

veinglory

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I would agree with vienglory... but some "writers" don't even write.

I contemplated that but I think the verb and noun should be assumed to agree. If what they are is deemed to be a writer, what they are doing should logically be deemed to be somehow writing--even if it is not writing in the tradition sense of the word.
 

fadeaccompli

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Writers write things.

Some people who do not write things call themselves writers, but this would be rather inaccurate, much as it would be inaccurate if people who don't play the guitar call themselves guitarists.

Everything else is optional.
 

Unimportant

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PASSION seems to be the one aspect all writers share who are published or who will be published. Otherwise we're very unlike. We come in all genders, ages, ethnicities, classes, and socioeconomic statuses. We begin writing stories as early as kindergarten, as late as the middle of our lives.

At least that's the impression I get from reading several dozen interviews over the past several months. They are in a collection of middling-short interviews originally published in Publisher's Weekly. It's titled Writers and Their Craft and is available at Amazon and B&N or at your local library. Some of the writers are authors of bestsellers. Others are important because of their literary success.

Although "passion" may be a better-sounding way to say "obsession." At least from my experience, writing a book is something that I MUST do, rather than merely want to do. (Though there is that motivation too. Writing for me is like eating, something pleasurable in its own right.)

What other aspects do we all share? Not just SOME of us share, but ALL share?
A heart, lungs, brain, liver, and circulatory system that function at a level sufficient to maintain life support.

Honestly, I think that's really all you can say. Not all writers who are passionate will be published. Not all writers who are published are passionate.
 

KateSmash

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Magical fairy dust and rainbow lasers that shoot from their fingertips?
 

virtue_summer

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They write. Beyond that I don't know that any generalization works. People write for different reasons and they write in different ways and come from different backgrounds.
 
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