#80 - Beginner's Reflection(46) - Great Writers' Attitudes

Hi, everyone!

Happy weekend!

When someone asks you: What attitudes should a writer have?

What would be your answer?

I've been reading books about great writers and watching interviews with great writers, and trying to discover what attitudes those great writers have in common. Today, I am going to share some of these attitudes I've found in these great writers.

1. No surprise, the most common attitude in all these great writers is self-importance. They all believe that writers play a very important role and have a very high value in our society. They believe that their words can make quite an impact on other people, and they are very proud of themselves to be doing it.

2. The second common attitude is being focused. They know very clearly that they have limits, they don't have all the time and resources to do everything, they ask themselves:

What interests me the most?

What do I care about the most?

What do I consider to be the most important?

Once they find the answers for these questions, they will spend most of their time on the very few fields they have chosen.

3. Uniqueness. You can easily distinguish one writer from another by their styles. Great writers know that they can copy or imitate other great writers, so that they can write better and become more popular faster than seeking their own styles, but they also know that if they want to be the best, they have to be the best of themselves, copying others may be at the beginning a good way for them to enter the field, but they couldn't never become the best they want.

4. Simplicity. Before they write anything, they ask themselves:

Who is the target audience?

What have they already known? What haven't?

How do I make the content easier for my audience to understand?

They know for sure that if the audience can barely understand what they write, their writings and even themselves are useless and meaningless. All they strive for is to make their writings clear, concise and precise.

5. Open-mindedness. What impression have you had of some writers? Untidy, bad temper, with a pair of spectacles, writing in a small, dark room with a dim light, completely separate from the outside world? Great writers can't be in that state today, they read new published popular books, they read news papers, they watch tv and new films, they use social media, they follow trends, they go to bars to talk with other people about what just happened in the world, they know that as writers, they have to know and understand what problems and issues people are facing and what probable solutions to them.

6. Great writers never are satisfied with what they've got, they learn new things and experiment new styles, they want to be better and they never stop learning and testing.

7. Persistence. In an interview, a great writer was asked: How long would I take to be a great writer like you? This writer answered: As long as it takes. There are so many things a writer have to learn and grasp, there are so many difficulties a writer have to overcome, without persistence, nothing would happen.

There is a question lots of beginning writers would ask: How could I improving and growing fast as a writer?

The most simple and efficient answer is this: Do what great writers do. And having these seven attitudes great writers have in common is the first step.

Alright, that's all for now and hope it would be helpful to you all.

Thanks and let's have some good attitudes!

Be bold and be an experimenter!

^