Behold, I share with you a mystery.
Ready?
The secret to writing is … writing!
That’s it. Apply butt to chair and fingers to keyboard, or hand to pen to paper, and write.
“How do you become a writer? Answer: you write.”
Ursula K. Le Guin on How to Become a Writer
“It’s amazing how much resentment and disgust and evasion this answer can arouse,” the late, great Le Guin tells us in an essay published on LitHub. “Even among writers, believe me. It is one of those Horrible Truths one would rather not face.”
Le Guin’s advice is the kick in the butt I need this rainy morning. Instead of taking advantage of the weather to focus on writing instead of my usual morning walk, I dithered the minutes away on email and social media. Then I recalled this essay and its simple wisdom. Which led me to plopping my butt in my chair and — well, not writing, exactly. Not yet. But blogging. I intend to get to the writing just as soon as I hit publish. Although I could send one of my recently revised short stories to a few literary magazines. That’s kind of like writing, isn’t it?
No, Andy. Focus. Write first. Send out stories later.
Like playing the tuba?
“Honestly, why do people ask that question?” Le Guin writes. “Does anybody ever come up to a musician and say, Tell me, tell me — how should I become a tuba player? No! It’s too obvious. If you want to be a tuba player you get a tuba, and some tuba music. And you ask the neighbors to move away or put cotton in their ears. And probably you get a tuba teacher, because there are quite a lot of objective rules and techniques both to written music and to tuba performance. And then you sit down and you play the tuba, every day, every week, every month, year after year, until you are good at playing the tuba; until you can — if you desire — play the truth on the tuba.
“It is exactly the same with writing. You sit down and you do it, and you do it, and you do it, until you have learned how to do it.”
As an English professor at my former place of employment frequently told his students, “The best teacher of writing is writing.” It just doesn’t get any simpler than that.
OK, writers. We have our assignment.
Ready? Set. Write!
AI-generated image.
Andy writes! 
I kind ilof just scanned this article with a thorough perusal, but I gather if I want to be a better writer, I need to buy a tuba?!? No wonder I can’t write!
Seriously tho, I agree, when I can’t think of anything, I just start writing and something always comes of it.
Thanks, Mark! I didn’t mention it in this post, but writing regularly in a journal has helped me. I don’t write every day — too much of life seems to get in the way of that some weeks — but enough to keep from getting too rusty (I hope). Plus, putting hand to pen to paper slows down my monkey brain a bit, and even though the writings are rarely anything I would want in print, they help to get the juices flowing. Journaling primes the pump, so to speak.