What Is Necessary In A Writer

I wonder as a writer is it necessary to be secretive. To be communicative, surely, but about your personal inspirations, motivations, ideas, and the ambitions of your particular story, you remain private and withdrawn. Though it seems a bit dark, is it impossible to believe you may one day find your ideas, once discussed, written in another's ink in another's book somewhere?

I stopped talking about "the big story I'm working on" because while I always wish I could openly talk about it and share it with people, I'm always afraid that ideas that I want to be knew and devices I use to make it original or distinct from other books will be copied and used- perhaps even to better effect- than myself. So instead of obscurely referencing it all the time without giving any particulars, why talk about it at all.

In my own experience, the first thing I really thought was important was be courteous but private and keep your best cards to yourself. Unless you don't mind sharing...

The second is be open-minded, be flexible, be willing to start over, and be willing to change when you need to. I think that above all, I have found that since your writing is a part of you, an expression of you, that like you it is a living thing also. It grows and evolves with your way of thinking and what it started out as may be completely different to what it becomes. It's almost like watching a seed that blooms in your mind grow up alongside side you, within you as you grow up. And as it's author, sometimes I am divided between one reality and the next because I really like the content of it and I become really involved in it.

As you may consider your story to be a living thing, treat it as such. Do not force it but observe it. Identify it's nature as something that may be in ways apart from your own thoughts of what it should be. Sometimes a story writes itself. Explore it as it unfolds. Immerse yourself in what becomes really alien and you end up with something truly mystifying in the sense of creationism.

I believe that structure, grammar, and all that are secondary. What is important is content. It is the story people want to read, not the structure. People are interested in what your story has to show, has to say, where it takes them, how it relates to them, how it makes them feel, and how it makes them think. After you have created your story there are more than enough editors present to help you work out the bugs.

As I believe writing is largely a personal motivation, whatever you are writing about, I think that anyone who truly likes to write already has the important parts needed to be a writer- motivation, thoughts, and/or vision. But to be communicable, it does have to be correct. And so the last step would definitely be editing and proofreading. Making sure your ideas are conveyed as easily and as true to yourself as possible. Perhaps people will take their own meaning out of your writing whatever your point of view, but in the end, I suppose it is a good thing to finish it, put it out, and have someone out there pick it up and remember it.