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Becoming a writer is a long process, different for everyone who tries it. If it had to be broken down into three stages, those stages would be inspiration, rejection, and revision.

- Inspiration

Inspiration is what makes you write in the first place. Did a great idea for a story suddenly pop into your head? Did you see a duck touch down on a peaceful lake and feel you had to immortalize it in a poem? Maybe you love baseball and want to write an article about the best pinch hitters ever?

Whatever you write and however you write it, you need that inspiration to get going. Inspiration makes writing fun, rather than just another job. It makes you excited to write and keeps that pen moving.

- Rejection

Once you've been inspired and started writing, you'll eventually have what you consider a finished product - be it a poem, short story, article, or essay. You send it off to an editor or publisher and wait to hear back about how much they loved it.

Unless you're Stephen King or J.K. Rowling, chances are you'll be rejected. Even Stephen King had to shop Carrie around to dozens of publishers before someone took a chance on it.

Get used to rejection - it happens. And it happens often. You may think you've got all the talent in the world (and you might actually have it) but you'll still get rejected. The thing to remember is not to give up. So your article was turned down by The New Yorker... send it to The Atlantic Monthly. Don't just let your writing - the thing you've put so much time and effort into - stagnate in your drawer. If it really is good, eventually someone will want to buy it.

- Revision

In order to get someone to buy it, you need to do more than just write it - you need to revise it. Read it again, sound out the sentences, make sure everything flows as well as it can and there are no unnecessary words. Did you tie up all your loose ends? Is your dialogue realistic, or does it sounds contrived? Do your paragraph breaks make sense?

Check for typos and other mistakes - spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. Is your main character's name Josh throughout the entire story, or is there one page where he's suddenly referred to as Frank? When an editor sees more than one or two dumb mistakes in a manuscript, it tends to mark the writer as an amateur. They may not even finish reading the whole thing.

If you're going to take the time to mail (or email) something to someone who can potentially pay you for it, be sure it looks as professional as possible. If you forgot to number a page, don't write it in by hand - reprint that page with the number on it.

Now you've gone through the process of inspiration, rejection, and revision. Think it gets easier now? Think again. You will revisit each of these stages many, many times over. Just stay positive, always give it your best effort, and keep writing. The rest will fall into place eventually.

Learn more about this author, Greg Schwartz.
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