You know you’ve thought about it. It’s come to you while reading a really great book (or a really bad one), or perusing the shelves at your library, or in a really funny moment with your friend, or when your kid said something incredibly horrifying in public. You’ve thought, I could really write about this. I should start a blog. I should author a book. And then you get excited about the romance of that. You have dreams of experiencing Paris the way Hemingway did, with a cigarette and a beer. You imagine you’ll look like he did in the window of a cafe, thinking deep thoughts. Unlocking new truths with every syllable you write. And then a squeaky toy from your chocolate lab or a request from your child or a new suggestion from your boss snaps you back to your very own reality. And then your dream floats away, seemingly out of reach.
In our culture, we romanticize what we think writers look like. We decide they live a much more glamorous life than we do, and that’s simply not true. I’m here to tell you that the minute you put your thoughts to paper, you are a writer. You are what you dreamed you would be by simply creating. I have been a writing teacher for ten years now. Each semester, I ask my students to write something small, quickly. When the time is up,and we put our pens down, I ask them how it felt. I am met with confused faces. I repeat, “Now how does that feel?” Most of them shrug, weighed down by teenage angst, protected by the facade of being too cool to care. Succumbing to the alone. The asleep. The wasteland.
These dubious looks thrown my way only make me stronger. That is when I ask my students to do something scary. I ask them to wake up. I ask them to swim around in the reality of creating something that didn’t exist before they wrote it. To acknowledge the responsibility of giving life to a moment. To let them know that this is the most amazing realization. They gave life to ideas and things. They documented their very existence. Their perspective now lives on on the parchment. The act of putting pen to paper, fingers to keyboard is permanent. It is authorship. It is a declaration of actually being awake and alive right now. And then they smile. 
Writer, if you choose to come with me on this journey of authorship, please know that I will ask you to take some risks. I will ask you to observe more than you have ever before now. I will request that you to go deep within to unlock the writer inside. You were meant to live your fullest life, and you can do that by putting pen to paper. Your first assignment: find a place to write your thoughts. Are you a notebook person? Yellow legal pad? Brand new leather-bound journal? Spiral notebook? Printer paper? Computer? Typewriter? Once you’ve test driven your vehicles of composition, let your pen fly for ten straight minutes.
Pre-Write: Make a list of ten words that make you happy. Don’t apologize for liking these words. They can be in any language. They can be million dollar words like, phantasmagoric, or they can be words you like because they make you giggle, like “bubbles”. No matter what, celebrate these words in a list. Can you go beyond ten? Look at them. Verbalize what you like about them. What feelings do they evoke? Are they similar? Different? Notice your preferences.
Assignment: Complete ten minutes of stream of consciousness writing for one week. Just put pen to paper and let it fly. Do not question it. Do not stop until your timer is up. Clear your mind and write everything that comes to it for ten minutes. Don’t edit. Don’t second guess. Once you’ve completed assignment #1, leave the number of pages you created in the comments. Try to repeat this assignment every day for a week. See if it’s a habit that might stick.
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