What Does It Mean to Have Cave Smarts?

Neanderthal man survived for a very long time because he had “cave smarts.” To survive as a freelance writer, you also have to develop cave smarts but of a different kind. While the Neanderthals learned to hunt by trial and error, you must know your strengths and weaknesses and use them accordingly.

Most writers are industrious, sometimes intuitive,  at times a bit impulsive and perhaps compulsive, and observant. What drives most writers is inspiration. The difference between writers and wannabee writers is how they handle it.  A wannabee writer believes that he or she has to be inspired to write anything while a professional writer uses inspiration to get ideas that he or she further develops into articles, stories, and books—all the while keeping an eye on their target market.

If you don’t have a reader in mind when inspiration strikes, you might as well not write anything. Writing for yourself won’t get you anywhere professionally. You have to write for a specific audience. This audience may change from publication to publication or from book to book, but it’s there, nevertheless. Knowing who that audience is ahead of time will enable you to use those inspired ideas to their best advantage. And that’s where being industrious comes in. It takes a lot of hard work to develop an idea to its full potential—perhaps hours of research, followed by an equal amount of time actually writing.

And men, don’t let the women convince you that only they have “intuition.” If an idea seems right, then it probably is. Follow your intuition once in a while. You may have a “gut” feeling about a topic. Follow it through. It may turn out to be the best piece you ever wrote or a runaway bestseller.

While it isn’t in your best interest to act impulsively, once in a while you may have to decide then and there—providing the light bulb goes on in your head—that you’re going to start working on an idea. This often will give you a jump on the competition. And in today’s super fast media world, that may not be such a bad thing.

Avoid acting compulsively. Don’t worry about sharpening your pencils or making sure your desk is compulsively neat. Sure, you’ll have to put on your janitorial hat occasionally, but don’t make it come before getting your writing done. Don’t use cleaning, filing, or sorting as an excuse not to write. As a professional writer, you should be able to write any where at any time.

Many believe that successful writers don’t clip, file, retrieve information. Only a handful of writers work at an empty desk with only a computer and a monitor. If you don’t accumulate lots of files on the work your doing, then you probably aren’t doing enough research. You may use clips of articles to help develop a current project, or you may let them age to help trigger ideas in the future. More important than talent or luck, is the knack for using clips and files to research and develop topics to write about. Contrary to popular opinion, professional writers don’t write off the top of their heads. Even writing a blog takes some thought and preparation.

Writers overdevelop their sense of observation the way a blind person overdevelop their sense of smell or hearing. You need to be alert at all times, even when you’re not actually working. Ideas are everywhere and if you’re not keenly observant, you’ll miss them and perhaps some great opportunities.

So You Want to be a Writer

Over the years, many people, especially my students in my Creative Writing classes, ask me the age-old question, “How do I become a writer?” Writers aren’t born, they’re made—by the writers, themselves.

Since writers work with words, they have to love them. And the key to loving words is reading. It’s surprising just how many writers, when asked, don’t read very much. What they don’t realize is that by reading as much as possible, especially the kind of writing they wish to do, they absorb words and phrases that later on may appear in their own writing. Writers learn by example.

Unfortunately, students aren’t taught that in school. Instead, they’re led to believe that all they have to do is sit down at a computer and the words will just flow out into their fingers as they type. The human brain needs to be fed information just like a computer. That information may come as facts, experiences, or observations. All give the budding writer the resources to create.

The second thing to consider as a writer is what to write—fiction or non-fiction. Some people only consider fiction writers true writers because they’re the only kind of writers they hear about. They read Web pages, magazines, and perhaps a newspaper–if they can find one—every day but don’t consider where the articles come from.  Each type of writing has its merits. Some writers work in both areas.

What about education? Believe it or not, a writer doesn’t need to study “writing” to write. In fact, that may be a deterrent. Outside of school, writers write in a conversational style which is as far from academic or school writing–reports, term papers, and theses—as they can get. What a writer needs is information and that comes from a variety of courses. The more a writer knows, the better prepared he or she will be to write.

A lot of people say to be a good writer you have to have talent. Talent is such an elusive thing. A talented writer is one who can get organized and write faster—a person who is brimming with ideas. But with perseverance anyone can become a writer. The key is not so much talent as having something to say and the ability to say it well.

Every writer dreams of the big successes of famous authors. But only a very few make it to this level. And it’s not because they aren’t good writers. In this business, it’s often who you know, not what you know or write. Believe it or not, luck often plays a big part in a writer’s success. Being at the right place at the right time may land a writer a juicy article or book. And knowing more about a subject than the next writer definitely helps, even in writing novels.

Taking all of the above into consideration, the most important thing a writer needs is discipline. Good writers don’t just write when the spirit strikes them. As long as they have a good topic and something to say, they can write any time. They communicate with their readers. They make those readers feel as if they’re writing only to them.

There are no secrets to becoming a writer. It just takes lots and lots of hard work to make the grade.