What do you need to be a writer?

The slightly longer answer is…

In the spirit of commitment to the practice of writing, I scribbled the following on a cardboard box on the day I got the keys to my first home (today, as it happens). It was a response to a DM from a stranger on Instagram and feels pretty hypocritical given how little I’ve written creatively these past weeks. Nevertheless, I thought I’d have a crack at answering…

Creativity. Combative curiosity. Drive. Solitude. Sweetness. An eye for the truth. Sensitivity. Serendipity. Confidence, coarseness and coyness. Space to contemplate/ruminate. Country air and long, boring weekends. Caffeine. Darkness. The freshness and specificity of the early morning. Good food. Plenty of ways to move your body. Community. A mother who loves you. Commitment. Compassion. Clarity. Discipline. Ambition. 

I don’t believe in inspiration. I believe in perspiration, a little talent, and a lot of luck. 

Mostly, I believe in just getting on with it. Writing is not something you are, it’s something you do. 

Thanks for reading. I’d love to know, what do you  think you need to be a writer? 

Love,

Imogen x

Gobbets on writing from the experts

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining. Show me the glint of light on broken glass.” Anton Chekhov

“One writes out of one thing only – one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.” James Baldwin

“‘It’s dark. It’s like a dark room. It’s like a dark room full of furniture I can’t see. It’s like a tunnel. It’s like a cave. It’s like going downstairs into a dark place. It’s like wading through a river. It’s like entering a labyrinth.” Margaret Atwood 

“One should be a painter. As a writer, I feel the beauty, which is almost entirely colour, very subtle, very changeable, running over my pen, as if you poured a large jug of champagne over a hairpin.” Virginia Wolfe

October smorgasbord

Travelling I’m planning trips for 2026 and am currently researching Arunachal Pradesh, the state in the far north-east of India attached to the mainland by the thinnest of land bridges. The government has just announced a new tourism strategy that focuses on tribal-led experiences with a particular focus on homestays with the Nyishi tribe, who tend a large swathe of the Pakke forests.

Reading  In Green by Louis D. Hall is a contemporary travelogue about a twenty-something man who travels from Italy’s Apennine Mountains to Cape Finisterre, ‘the end of the land’, on a horse called Sasha. It’s a little self-indulgent (can someone please explain to me the obsession posh white men have with Don Quixote?) but what travel writing isn’t? Plus the landscape descriptions are spine-chilling.

Learning  I recently took poet Billy Collins’ workshop on Masterclass, which he describes as ‘a flashlight, an instrument of discovery’. He covers craft including rhyme, metre and form, as well as how to create your unique writing persona and how to invite readers into your emotional world.

Listening I’m currently working my way through The Great Turning, which was the final work of the great eco-activist and Buddhist teacher Joanna Macy, recorded while she was in her nineties and reflecting on everything she learned on the road.

Of course, you can always buy my book

 The Ethical Traveller: 100 Ways To Roam The World Without Ruining It