Can you learn to write a book?

By Dennis Mellersh

For the person interested in becoming a writer, it can be discouraging to hear comments such as, “Real writers don’t write just because they want to; they write because they have to.”

The implication being that if you have not been obsessed with a compulsion to write since an early age, you are not a “real” writer and it is highly unlikely you will be able to learn to write, let alone become a writer of books.

The other assumption in that comment is that if you have not been writing anything up to this point, you probably don’t have the ambition, or the natural aptitude necessary to learn writing, or to write books.

Well, it’s simply not true.

You can learn to write and you can learn how to write a book.

A person who has been interested in writing and the world of books and who has made efforts towards writing at an early age probably does have a head start on learning to write seriously. But such people are not members of an exclusive writers’ club that no-one else can join.

Writing is a craft, an art, a form of creative self-expression, and it can be learned. The same as learning to be an artist, such as a painter, or learning photography, or learning woodworking – they are acquirable skills.

A huge part of learning anything, such learning as the craft of writing, is having a strong desire to do so; and you have that desire, or you wouldn’t be reading articles on writing such as this one.

Learning how to write well can be challenging and it will take time, but you can do it.

Don’t listen to anyone who tells you otherwise.