Category: Writing

“Real” Writers

“Real” Writers

It’s easy to fall in love with the writer you SHOULD be. You SHOULD be the sort of person who gets up early every day to write for two hours. You SHOULD have the kind of attention span where you love to do that sort of thing. You SHOULD produce perfectly lush, ready-to-read drafts on the first go. You SHOULD like to write as much as you like having written. Nothing should disrupt the perfect flow of your priorities, and if you don’t put getting words on paper front and center of your day every day, if you don’t love writing enough to break up with your significant other so they don’t cut into your novel-writing schedule, maybe you don’t deserve success or to call yourself a writer or–

But all the “shoulds” of Real Writers is bullshit. You are a writer right now, because you have stories you are trying to tell. You will not be a real writer someday when you have met some magical production speed, or published a certain number of the “right” stories, or made a certain amount of money. You are a writer right now. And you should be proud of the little steps, as well as the big ones. Every journey is full of small steps. You don’t take any big steps without small ones first.

–Lev Mirov, “On Small Writing“

I Am A Writer

I Am A Writer

I am a writer.

It feels weird to own that. Somehow, I’ve gotten away from thinking of myself as a writer and have begun thinking of myself as a “person who writes very well.” It’s not the ability or the skill that’s hard to embrace. It’s the identity.

There’s a lot of self-doubt that comes with writing. It seeps in; even as I type this, I’m wondering why I bought a domain and am bothering with this at all. The point of having a blog used to be sharing ideas and building community. Is that still the point? I don’t know.

All the things that I’ve said to other people, to other writers — “You don’t need anyone’s permission to write.” “You’re still a writer, even if 1000 people don’t visit your blog everyday.” — are coming back to haunt me as I deal with my own shit when it comes to writing.

This is what it means to stand in your truth. To just do it because you feel called to do it.

And there is a sense of power and resistance in that. To know that you have stories and poems and opinions inside of you that you want to give voice to, especially because giving voice to things can feel dangerous sometimes. I’m saying to myself that I don’t need permission, or the desire to launch a brand, or to have some grand experiment.

I can do this because I damn well feel like it. For some people, blogging and this kind of writing is a luxury, just omphaloskepsis. Maybe it is. But as vices and luxuries go, I don’t mind having writing in that category.

I am a writer.