One of my rules is never explain. A writer is a lot like a magician, if you explain how the trick works then a lot of the magic turns mundane.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
First of all, writing at best - certainly fiction writing - more and more I think is magic.
Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say.
Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.
Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.
Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.
People imagine that there are rituals, like lighting candles or sacrificing chickens. They really just want to know what the magic formula is for writing. I inevitably disappoint them by saying you just put your butt in the chair, and you write 500 words a day, and then you get up and repeat it the next morning.
Writers are articulate. Artists find it more difficult.
The act of writing surprises me all the time. A miraculous thing happens when you have an idea and you want to convert it into words... and then you start to create a work of art, and that's another miracle, and it remains mysterious to the writer, or to this writer anyway.
Writers don't write writing, they write reading. When I was a kid, I read four or five books a week. And that is how I became a writer.
If you want to be a writer, just write. There's no magic to it.