DID YOU EVER WANT TO BE A WRITER?
Did you ever want to be a writer? If you are like the majority of adults, you harbor a desire to tell a story or create poetry, but every time you pick up a pen a little voice tells you that you don’t have what it takes.
You believe the voice because you can’t spell, and you always thought grammar was your father’s mother.
So what do you do with the niggling stories and ideas that also talk to you? Tales or lyrics or opinions that are yours and yours alone.
The reason they take up space in your head is they want to be heard also. Why not give them a chance?
WHAT IS THE DEFINITION OF A WRITER?
I have not always been a storyteller. Or have I? Sending letters, keeping a journal off and on over the years, toying with short stories, dabbling with memoir…isn’t this writing?
Someone told me I couldn’t be a writer unless I published. I believed her and found myself in a kind of creative purgatory as I waited to be ‘good enough’ to enter the land that ‘real’ writers inhabit.
If this sounds familiar I have news for you.
If you write – you ARE a writer.
You do not have to wait to be acknowledged with a book contract, or to make money with your poetry. Nor do you need a college degree in journalism. Write, and you are a writer.
“BUT I’M NOT GOOD AT WRITING”
‘Good’ is a slippery and judgmental adjective that depends a lot on personal preferences and goals. Take reading, for example. Clear and succinct are at the top of my criteria when choosing non-fiction to read, but many people are thrilled at finding thick volumes of historical narratives that drone on and on with long wordy descriptions of places, times and events. Not me!
We have no control over the taste of others and trying to write to please someone else will never be satisfactory. If you create something on the page, and you like it, then it is ‘good.’
WHAT IS YOUR GOAL ?
My goal is best described in these words of Flannery O’Connor:
“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”
When I was young I believed what others wrote. A reader. A listener. But definitely not a critical thinker. That would take years to develop.
I figured anyone who was smart enough to get published knew what they were talking about, and my job was to listen and take notes.
I certainly didn’t think I was as intelligent as someone whose name was on a dust jacket. Life has had a lot to teach me.
Writing gives us what formal education can miss – a chance to hear our heart and voice without worrying about a report card or GPA.
THE CREATOR INSIDE OF YOU
Is there a wordsmith inside of you? One that you have never acknowledged, even to yourself? Here is a fun list from Buzzfeed called “24 Signs You’re a Writer.” It is the sort of list I enjoy, and at the same time I cringe at definitions that create a ‘box’ in which I don’t fit – like dreaming of waking up in a writer’s loft in New York.
I return to my original premise. If you write, you are already a ‘writer.’ Now go write. There is no time like the present. Write in the comments and tell me about your struggles as well as your achievements. I answer all comments.
HERE IS ONE PLACE YOU CAN PRACTICE WITH JUST ONE SENTENCE A DAY. CHECK OUT THE
MEMOIR COLLECTIVE FOR ORDINARY PEOPLE WITH STORIES TO SHARE PRESS HERE
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