As someone who enjoys making things, I’ve found that the word “hobby” does a lot of heavy lifting. Most hobbies are creative, usually involving the physical creation of something from a set of tools and raw materials. For instance, woodworking: you have your tools, the saws, hammers, nails, screws; and you have the raw materials, the two-by-fours, the lacquer. In the end, you have a coffee table or a nightstand and people will “oo” and “ah” and you’ll update your Tinder profile to say, “Hobbies: Long walks on the beach, barhopping with friends, woodworking.” Those three activities may span a wide gamut of effort but each one fits the definition of a hobby. That’s why the word is so weighty to me- it spans such an enormous reach of activities that, when lumped together, can cause some confusion.

If your Tinder profile instead said, “Hobbies: Long walks on the beach, barhopping with friends, writing” the three items suddenly seem different. Writing is not considered labor-intensive. It’s a pen, some paper, or hell, your computer or phone. It doesn’t take a monumental physical effort to use voice-to-speech or your phone’s keyboard. Writing, and many of the more “artsy” hobbies like digital painting or embroidery, are often devalued and written off as something whimsical that a person does because they think it’s fun. And the “artsy” hobbies are fun! But people don’t think about what’s required: tools and raw materials. A keyboard or a pen and paper may be your tools but the raw materials? It’s your own brain.

You can’t go to Home Depot and buy some words and sentences. You can’t stop by Michaels for some grammar. There’s no one-stop shop for ideas. Like any art (and before the pitchforks come out, this includes woodworking), you can’t buy the motivation to learn and grow and perfect your craft. Art is a skill and, like any skill, takes time.

I’ve met so many people who tell me they’ve always wanted to write a book. When I ask why they haven’t they say, “Oh, I can’t write, I need to just give someone my ideas and have them write it for me.” Which, well, okay. There’s a market for that. Ghostwriters exist for that very purpose, I suppose. What I get hung up on is the “I can’t write”. Everyone can write. I’m sure everyone reading this has written emails, Instagram captions, texts to your mom, rants on Facebook. That’s writing. What “I can’t write” really means is “I can’t write well” and that’s also solvable. It just takes practice.

I can hear the groans from every corner of the world as I mention the word “practice” but c’mon. You had to know it was coming. All the effort I mentioned? The raw materials for writing being your own brain? It’s not like Stephen King popped out of his mom’s womb with a pen in his hand and the first draft of Carrie. Every famous writer practiced, was rejected, and practiced some more before learning to write well. Looking online, there are droves of writers giving advice, the foremost always being “practice”. There are whole books dedicated to the subject of writing that start with “You have to practice”. The story you want to write won’t build itself- and it’s a lot harder to build a house if you’ve never tried building a coffee table.

Some people think they can get around practice. It usually manifests in a couple of different ways: either they are God’s gift to the earth, more talent in their little fingers than most people’s whole bodies; or they think they can research their way out of practice. I think every writer has experienced one or the other, sometimes both. The only way to grow is to break from those mindsets. The first one I can’t help, that’s a personality thing. The latter, though, I have a lot of experience in. Research is my vice.

There is good research and bad research. Good research usually involves reading or taking instruction in a class setting. Reading outside your normal genres? Counts as research. Reading an author who you admire for their form and word choice, taking note of how they solder words into sentences to keep them tight? Research. Reading a book on grammar, taking notes, and hating every second of it? You got it. Taking a class or joining a writing club? Good research. Every one of these things informs your practice, makes you experiment or change, gives you the nuts and bolts to build your narrative. Bad research is doing these things while not writing.

You can read every book about writing under the sun and still be a terrible writer if you don’t practice. It’d be like reading everything ever written about woodworking in existence, taking conceptual classes on the history of woodworking, buying every tool and resource, and trying to jump in the shop. Do you actually know how to hold the saw? Did all your research about bevels help when you try to hammer in a nail but hit your thumb instead? Your brain knows all about woodworking, but you’ve had no experience. You haven’t tried any of the techniques you’ve read about. You can barely lift the two-by-fours because you haven’t been lifting anything of that weight in preparation.

Research means nothing without the implementation of what you’ve learned.

Writing is starting to sound a lot like work, isn’t it? Here’s a secret that no one tells you about art: It’s all a lot of work (trust me, I went to art school). There is no creative venture that does not involve a metric shit-ton of practice and immense effort. But seeing a finished product you’re proud of? Showing it off to friends and family and getting positive responses? There is great joy in it.

Practice doesn’t all have to be serious experimentation and effort, either. It can be fun, too. So write anything: silly stories, fanfiction, your memoirs, a treatise on topsoil, a Facebook rant, a letter to a friend. Each time you do, you’ll get a little better. You’ll learn something new about yourself. Eventually, you may even build yourself a narrative with every nail in place, every screw tight, and every board lacquered. Until then, just work on learning to hold the hammer.