How To Become A Writer

There has been much talk in the past from my lips to your ears about me and my attempts to be a Proper Writer. I'm still on about it. More than a year and a half since I decided to work on my novel, I have decided to work on my novel.

I am sure that if I bothered to look on The Internet, I would find a hundred WikiHows to tell me about what Real Writers are made of. I don't know what ingredients I need, but these are the ingredients I have:

• Bunches of angst and flagging self-confidence in my Talent and Ability to Write Properly... countered by inestimable measures of But I Love Writing and I Really Really Want To Be a Proper Writer
• A folder C:\My Computer\My Documents\Writing which is full of bits and pieces waiting patiently for my considered attention
• Lots of Very Good but Useless Reference Books with titles such as Word Power and Weird and Wonderful Words and How Not To Say What You Mean and so on
• A novel which I prepared earlier (Personally, I think this is the most useful ingredient apart from Talent and Ability to Write Properly)
• A nome de plume/pseudonym/pen-name, should this be necessary

So, the cupboard is not exactly bare...surely something can come of this?