Writers are notoriously strange, bizarre, ritualistic creatures who come up with all sorts of personally perfect ways to find, attack, and tie the Muse down to a nearby chair so they can write, write, write. That’s great.

At some point in your life, whether writing is a vocation or avocation, you’ll get to make the calls about how, when, where you write and what you write about.

For now, I’m taking the pressure of those decisions off of you (most of them, anyway) so you can focus on one thing and one thing only: writing. The gift of focus is the ability to write; distraction is the enemy. (The gift of focus means concentrating on only the act of writing rather than the myriad of tiny inconsequential decisions that accompany and yet distract us from it).

I’m going to be a bit Nazi-like. I need you to take me on faith that I’m not being arbitrarily dictatorial. I’m all for independence and individuality. But first, first, before you get to the place where you can make the calls, you have to do the duty and be the med-school flunkie, the serf, the student. This is you paying your dues.

What I can promise you, as someone who’s been writing independently and individually for the last almost-10 years, is that what I’m going to give you to do will serve you well. I’m going to give you the tools that took me years to learn on my own. If you can grab them, make them your servants, you will be years ahead of any of your peers and years ahead of many professional writers out there.

There is no reason you cannot succeed as a professional writer starting right now. There is no reason you can’t learn and write and publish and sell your work right now. There is no law that says you have to graduate high school first or graduate college first or get your master’s first or read X number of books first or write a thesis first or impress a Professor first or be a certain age, first.

So, at this point, take my word for it. I’m going to teach you the rules of writing, which means both things like story and grammar and research but, more importantly perhaps, means how you get the story from your head to paper and how you get it from your piece of paper to the printing press of a publication. That’s what you’re here to learn.

“…you generally can’t wait for inspiration, so just get on with the work. Disciplined, regular effort will elicit inspiration, no matter what your field.” -Michael Dirda