"My one writerly habit was describing everything I did, no matter how absorbing or how trivial, as if I were standing outside myself and watching. That is, I would get up in the morning and look out the window, all the time thinking, 'She slid from the rumpled bed, yawned, and looked out at the pale...no, thin winter light. It was going to be another one of those days....' That kind of thing; very corny."

Every writer's origin story is different. In How I Became a Writer, Gloria Steinem charts her unlikely journey from restless teen in Toledo, Ohio, to professional magazine writer in Manhattan - with sage advice and "random directives" for getting started.

How I Became a Writer was originally published in Glamour, October 1965.