How to Become a Writer in 40(ish) Steps

1. Come up with an original, inspired idea (this is arguably the hardest part).
2. Outline how that idea might translate to the page.
3. Sit down and tune everything else out.
4. Develop a “thinking problem.”
5. Let this problem overtake you, preventing you from getting anything done.
6. Get up to check if the laundry is done or if there is anything new in the fridge.
7. Sit back down and actually tune everything else out.
8. Start writing.
9. Leave part of who you are on the page—and be willing to accept that it might be drivel.
10. When you run out of things to say, stop writing and go get a snowcone.
11. Get another snowcone.
12. Sit back down and second-guess what you’ve written.
13. Check the fridge again.
14. Put your writing away and take a nap.
15. Sit back down and open your work.
16. Write some more.
17. Hit a roadblock.
18. Give up and decide that you’d rather be on Facebook or watching Netflix.
19. Come back to the work six weeks later and think about how much farther you could have been had you been writing once per day, like you told yourself you were going to.
20. Re-read what you’ve already written.
21. Decide that it’s actually pretty good.
22. Write some more.
23. Get a job because you have bills to pay and your work is only half finished (if you already have a job, disregard).
24. Become stressed out by your job and procrastinate from your writing again.
25. Wait another two weeks while you “figure things out.”
26. Pick it back up and write until your fingers bleed.
27. Finish the work, in spite of yourself.
28. Make some smart friends (hopefully, you already have some).
29. Give them your work and tell them to read it and rip it to shreds (figuratively).
30. Don’t lash out at them when they do.
31. Question your self-assertion that you are a literary genius.
32. Binge-read Mark Twain quotes.
33. Put off revisions for a month.
34. Pick them back up and do them in what little spare time you have. 
35. Finish the goram revisions.
36. Have someone else read it to make sure your plucky revisions weren’t completely counterproductive.
37. Revise it again (if needed).
38. Send the work out into the world to be enjoyed by millions.
39. Wait.
40. Wait.
41. Wait.
42. Make a little money that doesn’t seem to be worth the piece of your soul you left on the page.
43. Smile at your “success.”
44. Repeat.