Suggest art of writing.
Answers
Writing as an art is ideally an open-ended medium of expression intended either as a more lasting form of communication, a lingering personal interaction, or as a succinct means to convey ideas and feelings to others, now and in the future. As an art form, it requires motivation (a reason to actually go to the trouble), a facility with words (wordsmithing, i.e. the brush strokes of writing), a dash of creativity, and just enough attribution (and/or plagiarism) to add spice and to suggest to the reader that the author actually reads the works of other authors!
Extremely valuable to the new writer is the inclusion of a particular attitude whenever the writer shows the end result to others. If the truth be known, a hint of arrogance is often a critical personality characteristic of a writer, as well as a devil-may-care attitude and/or any of several additional selected forms of both functional and dysfunctional personalities. For example...
“I am a monopolar depressive descended from monopolar depressives. That's how come I write so good.” -- Kurt Vonnegut
It is important to remember that such literary luminaries as Ernest Hemingway, Eugene O'Neill, John Steinbeck, and Sinclair Lewis were all certifiable alcoholics. (And we haven't even begun to talk about the literary equivalents of Vincent Van Gogh.) In effect, you don't have to be crazy to write, but it helps. As Douglas Adams has pointed out:
“First of all, realize that it's very hard, and that writing is a grueling and lonely business and, unless you are extremely lucky, badly paid as well. You had better really, really, really want to do it. Next you have to write something. Unless you are committed to novel writing exclusively, I suggest you start out writing for radio. It's still a relatively easy medium to get into because it pays so badly. But it is a great medium for writers because it relies so much on the imagination.”
The best writing often occurs only when the not writing is more trouble than the writing. Whether it's a matter of alleviating an internal pressure to blow off steam or simply some striving need to communicate one's thoughts in a visual form, the motivational aspect of writing becomes a minor obstacle while the emotional content becomes the flavor of the piece and the icing on the cake. In fact, an author's emotional state is often transparent in the writing regardless of the actual words and how they are strung together. The state-of-mood of the author often comes through loud and clear.
But writing is more than just blowing off steam; it is also a means of designing one's future, of Creating Reality in a very personal manner. It is an affirmation, in the sense used by Evan Hodkins where he has defined an “affirmation” as “an appointment with one's future self.” In the same fashion, writers often see great simplifications and insightful visions of what might be in a more perfect world -- something which they actually create in the form of a written description. As Kurt Vonnegut has noted:
"Artists are people who say, ‘I can't fix my country or my state or my city, or even my marriage. But by golly, I cam make this square of canvas, this eight-and-a-half-by-eleven piece of paper, or this lump of clay, or these twelve bars of music, exactly what they ought to be.”
Motivation in writing is thus often a means of alleviating the frustration of seeing what others apparently don't see, solutions that are so simple if only others would open their eyes and see the blindingly obvious! [How's that for a strange juxtaposition of words?]. The writing is often to convince them of just this fact, and thus one writes it all down in a cunning and convincing fashion, presenting ideas which solve the world's problems and require only that someone gives up their Neanderthal thinking in order to understand.
Structurally, writing consists of the basic skills of arranging words and thoughts in a semi-permanent form for the benefit of others. “...a daunting blend of perfectionism and a terror of failing in his quest, as he liked to phrase it, ‘a hundred thousand words in a cunning order'.” [Douglas Adams] Writing can always be therapy, vanity, and/or egotistical in the extreme. But when others benefit more than the author, then it's the art form of writing -- it's the reason for all of the fuss.