What qualities does a writer have?

By Dennis Mellersh

Many beginner writers, such as you perhaps, who are in the process of learning how to write (and more specifically, how to write a book) want to know the main intellectual capabilities they need in order to become a writer.

The novelist William Faulkner answered this question during an interview with the Paris Review:
“A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, [and] at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.”

Another question from new writers concerns the question of unblocking or stimulating the creative flow and taking those first steps to getting something down on paper for a novel, a short story or a poem.

Faulkner answered this question as well in the same interview:

“With me, a story usually begins with a single idea or memory or mental picture. The writing of the story is simply a matter of working up to that moment, to explain why it happened or what it caused to follow. A writer is trying to create believable people in credible moving situations in the most moving way he can.”