There’s comfort in the crowd. If you identify with the crowd and luxuriate in the familiar, then you’ll never be a good writer. Not ever. If you’re one of those, and hope to be a writer, you’ll bore your readers.

Cardinal sin: Don’t be boring. Nobody will buy your book. If they bought it on Amazon, they’ll return it for a refund. If it’s a screenplay, no agent will represent it. And if you perhaps drop your script from a helicopter and it lands at a production office porch, the script reader won’t look past page one.

Good to great writers are cursed with vivid imaginations. Pieces of ideas flood their brains all the time. They sleep with a notebook and pen near the bed. Their brains can synthesize disparate story fragments into a coherent story concept. They can identify great writing and they admire it.

Could you be a writer? Go for a walk. Observe people, houses, lawns, trash bins, cracked curb concrete, a gargoyle that is missing from an old building. Watch window washers working 20 stories up. Are there stray dogs or cats in the area? If so, what is their condition? Buy food and put it out for them. How did that make you feel?

Engage a child in conversation during your walk. Tell the kid what you saw on your walk. Try brainstorming with that kid about how to assemble your observations into a story idea. Writers can stray off the everyday path that the crowd follows. It’s essential to unleash creativity.

Note how people from all walks of life speak. The words, expressions and manner of delivery could find themselves embedded in one of your stories. Writer and film director Quentin Tarantino has been described as a sponge that soaks up dialogue. Be a sponge.

There is a downside to practicing independent thinking. If you’ve been living in a nice, warm and comfortable bubble all your life, your friends, family and colleagues will notice a change in your behavior and conversation. Be prepared for that.

Abandoning the conventional, leaving your comfort zone, forces your brain to shift into high gear to adapt to new circumstances. Enhanced awareness can lead to ideas. Ideas can jell into stories. Then all that’s left is to organize the stories and write them.

Comfort zones suffocate creativity and dull the senses. The essence of independent thinking is detachment from the crowd and its stifling effects. Independent thinking means your newly-stimulated brain is free to roam and explore possibilities.

I have compiled a long list of funny and cynical remarks by writers about other writers and the writing profession. When you’re finished with this post, go check it out.

Your future could be as a novelist or biographer. Or perhaps, if you’re good enough, you could successfully offer professional ghostwriting services to those who need help with a book or screenplay idea. The future is wide open...if you can think independently with confidence.