If you want to be a writer—write. It’s that simple.

Basketball players only get good by playing basketball. You only improve at speaking a foreign language by using it. If you want to learn the guitar, well—guess what? You have to play the guitar.

The same goes for writing.

I’ll never understand the people who say they’d love to write a book, and then never sit down and write it. For some reason, writing is seen as something that requires endless thinking, planning, and dreaming—without ever actually starting.

No.

Being a writer works like everything else in life: you have to do it to be it.

The best way to improve is to write every day. Even if it’s just a little. A blog post, a tweet, a page for your book—or maybe just a single sentence. Do that every day, and you will get better.

No matter how bad you are at basketball, if you practice daily for a year, you’ll be better than when you started. The same is true for writing.

So how do you write every day?

• Write at the same time each day. This helps turn it into a routine.
• Start with just one sentence. Most days, once you get that first sentence down, you’ll want to keep going.
• Don’t judge your writing. That’s for the editing phase. In the writing phase, your only job is to get the words out of your head and onto the page.
• Mix it up. Work on your book, sure—but also write tweets, blog posts, short stories, or journal entries. Give your brain variety, especially when you’re tired of one project.
• Read a little every day. Reading a great chapter by a skilled writer will teach you something—and it’ll motivate you to create your own badass chapter.
• Put your writing out there. You can’t be a real writer without readers. Some readers will be kind, some will be critical—even harsh. But you’ll always learn something from them.
• Use self-publishing. Traditional publishing is filled with gatekeepers. They’ll reject bold ideas and challenging stories if they don’t fit the current socio-political narrative. So fuck ’em. Use social media, your website, and self-publishing to do your own thing.
• Keep learning. See everything you write—and everything you read—as a chance to grow. Even bad writing helps if you learn from it.

Now stop reading—and write something.
Then do it again tomorrow.
And the day after that.
And the day after that…

One of my favorite filmmakers is Robert Rodriguez. I remember watching Desperado as a kid—it instantly became my favorite movie, and to this day, it remains one of the greatest action films out there.

Rodriguez got his start with El Mariachi, the precursor to Desperado. The movie aired on German TV around the same time. I liked it. It was good. Only later did I learn that El Mariachi was his low-budget debut—made without a crew, without a producer, and without any help from Hollywood.

I read Rebel Without a Crew, the book in which Rodriguez details how he made El Mariachi for just $7,000—and how that film opened the doors of Hollywood for him. I couldn’t believe it was possible to create a quality movie on your own, and on such a tight budget, even back in the early ’90s.

Today, things are even more accessible. You can make a solid movie with just a smartphone and an editing app like CapCut—almost for free. All you need is a few friends, a strong idea, and the drive to make it happen.

To prove this point, Rodriguez made another $7,000 movie in 2018 called Red 11.
I watched it yesterday. It’s certainly not a Hollywood blockbuster, but it’s good—especially when you consider it was made on a shoestring budget.

Watch it here:

And here’s the big lesson: If you want to be an artist—a creative, a storyteller—use what you have and just get started. You don’t need to crowdfund your first book. You don’t need a $20 million budget to make a movie. You don’t need a record deal to make music.

With today’s technology and the reach of social media, anyone can be an artist. The gatekeepers are gone. Make your low-budget film. Self-publish your book. Upload your songs to Spotify, your short films to YouTube, and your comedy sketches to Twitter.

Just start. Learn as you go. Improve with each project. And build your audience, your skills, and your income along the way.