Last week I was asking when does writing make you a writer? When should we feel comfortable saying it out loud? What makes the difference between a pastime and an actual occupation. Is it money? Is it being published? For most of you, you didn’t actually need either, although I sense we’d all feel comfortable putting “Writer” on our passports if either one of those were the case! But it also seems that the type of writing can also come into it. People making an honest living writing for others still not feeling happy calling themselves a writer.
Thank you for the varied and thoughtful response on here and Twitter – from all sorts of people I consider to be writers. (If you missed it, you can catch up on great comments here.)
It seems there’s more comfort describing the task “I write”, than ascribing the lofty title to yourself “I’m a writer”. Perhaps this is simply cultural for some of us. The question “What do you do?” from others implies “What do you get paid for?” – at least a good deal of the time.
So the transition from “I write” to “I’m a writer” requires a few other layers of understanding to shed any embarrassment we feel at claiming its mantel.
You are a Writer because:
- You practice the craft.
You invest a significant amount of time and energy in honing your skills. You want to be good at it. You need to be good at it. You buy and read books or magazines about it, follow blog posts and twitter hashtags on it. You pay deliberate attention to your style, what works and what you’d like to improve. - Writing has already changed and claimed you.
You’ve learned writing helps you understand yourself and others, emotions and events on a different plane. You couldn’t stop now if you tried because you occupy the world differently through your writing. - You’ve come to terms with not making your millions.
You don’t need to be professional in activities such as sports to be the greatest in your field so why would you need to be paid before you could craft great words? That’s right. You don’t. - There’s an acceptance that this is now it!
You are now committed to always writing something. At least for a while, maybe for the rest of your life. And - You have the intention to produce something!
Be it on-line or via electronic or printed media. From essays to flash fiction, articles, copywrite, blog posts to that far away book. - You feel at home or know you would be better understood in some sort of writing community.
Perhaps you belong to a writers group in your home town or on-line. You might participate in competitions or writing prompts. You’re thinking of a course or writing festival.. - Finally, You find yourself asking the question out loud or in public. “Can I call myself a Writer?”
You’ve probably hit a critical point on your path to becoming writer. It’s as if the conscious grappling with whether it’s now okay to declare “I am a writer!” is, in itself, a rite of passage.
Post Script
When I was very ill, I used affirmations to help guide my head through mind-altering negativity to a better, more productive space. After chemo I was barely able to swim 2 lengths of a pool before getting out and going home to sleep all afternoon. I had to swim side stroke, so slow was I, that that was the only way to breathe. I had a cycle of 6 (ridiculous – if you could have seen my bald and bloated body) phrases – one on each stroke.
“I’m strong.
I’m healthy.
I’m fit.
I’m well.
And I will live
for years and years to come.”
These words still make me cry and they also fire up a kick-arse anger to all the nay-sayers – To have that intention in the face of terrible odds put me in a place of pity or madness for some. I didn’t say these words out loud to people for those reasons. Sometimes having hope that others see as unattainable, can quietly ridicule us. I had enough doubt without shouldering theirs.
But when it boiled down to it, what was important was the intention and the message to myself. How can you hope and prepare to be something that you dare not think nor say out loud?
Sometimes it’s the easy option to let what others think, or worse still, what we think they think, crush a goal or dream. The same is true of writing. If you’re doing any of the above, you are a writer – Perhaps you just need the affirmation “I am a writer!” to fully grow into the dream. It’s ok to keep it to yourself for now – but that doesn’t need to stop you believing it.
So are you a writer yet? I now know I am
December 15, 2016 at 6:09 pm
This entire post just blessed my heart.
Sometime a go a friend of mine seriously dissed my ability to write. It sucked but you know what?
It doesn’t matter because I found this line.
“Sometimes having hope that others see as unattainable, can quietly ridicule us. I had enough doubt without shouldering theirs.”
I am a writer!!
Thank you
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December 23, 2016 at 2:32 pm
Thank you 😊 Great to know you came across this old post and it’s been of help. Writing it publicly has helped move me on and I’m finding it easier and easier to just put stuff on the page. I hope you do to. It seems to take years of persistence to reach comfort calling ourselves a writer, but that’s what we are! I wish you luck with your writing Xx
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April 12, 2016 at 10:08 pm
I love this and number 2 is definitely me!
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April 13, 2016 at 7:18 am
I could write a book on number 2..
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February 29, 2016 at 12:37 am
A very good post and I am a woman who writes… it is easier to say, somehow saying I am a writer implies I am a novelist or journalists, paid, commissioned and published. I have been paid for a short it carries my name, I am writing a manuscript, and I write daily. *whispers* I am a writer. 😇😕😐😊
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February 29, 2016 at 7:28 pm
Just followed you back – I think you had me at procrastinating your manuscript. Doh! That was reason 8 why you ARE a writer! 😀
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February 29, 2016 at 7:36 pm
Okay I do as a writer I think I’m a loon like a writer I write like a writer so hands up I am a writer.😇
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February 29, 2016 at 8:09 pm
Love it! Welcome to the shaky confessional! 😇😈
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February 28, 2016 at 2:36 am
What a wonderful follow up to your last post and what validation! Thank you for this, Lisa! ❤
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February 29, 2016 at 7:41 pm
Aw thank you Charli. I love how you’ve put words to my feelings so many times. Thank you for being part of the process 😀
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February 29, 2016 at 10:32 pm
Make me think it takes a village to write! 🙂
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February 29, 2016 at 11:48 pm
A bit like we make up a larger organism?! A ‘colony’! Hmmm. I love it xx
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February 28, 2016 at 1:20 am
Yes! Love this. 💕
Fantastic follow-up to last week’s post. #2 is particularly spectacular. I love the thought that writing has “claimed” me. Also, anything that can “make me cry and…also fire up a kick-arse anger…” is brilliant. 💗💗💗
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February 29, 2016 at 7:41 pm
Thank you Sarah – yes writing has changed and claimed me so there’s no going back to where I once was. Just have to feel the fear and keep putting one word in front of another..
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February 27, 2016 at 4:43 am
Great post, Lisa. I love the phrases of affirmation you repeated to yourself as you swam and am pleased that they have helped your return to a better place. I’m also ecstatic that you feel empowered to claim the title: writer. It makes me think of the belts worn by boxers. They box. Doesn’t matter how good they are, how often they get battered and bruised, they are still boxers. Maybe we need a belt for writers. Not that I want us to get belted up at all! )
I was intrigued to read this sentence: “People making an honest living writing for others still not feeling happy calling themselves a writer.” I didn’t think about that from your previous post, but of course I have been employed as a writer. I would say, “I’m a teacher writing curriculum documents.” Because it was not of my choosing, or created out of my own imagination, it didn’t feel like “real” writing; writing to a formula almost. But I do consider the writing of my own educational resources creative and real – it comes out of my imagination and is not to a formula. However when I mentioned that I am a educational writer to a fiction writer, her response was one of disdain, “Oh educational writing. That’s very prescriptive.” I like to think mine is not. Maybe it is. Who knows? But her hurtful comment made me question just where in the pecking order of writers I sit. What I am doing right now is definitely not literary, but was that ever a requirement for being a writer? Did I see it on your list? Thank you for your wonderful description of writers. I am a writer, but …
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February 29, 2016 at 7:36 pm
Crikey! How narrow seeing educational writing as ‘prescriptive’ – does she not understand the audience!? Talk about requiring both tremendous insight into the motivation and potential problems of different age-groups and the creativity then required to achieve a specific goal.
And no, I don’t think being ‘literary’ is a requirement. To me that’s snobbery. People read all sorts for all sorts of reasons – me included!
You are certainly a writer, and no buts or else I shall go back to whispering my affirmation – which will still remain a WIP 😁
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March 1, 2016 at 1:21 pm
Thanks for your support, Lisa. However, since writing that comment, I have been feeling rather a fraud and questioning whether I am indeed a writer. Maybe I’m just a writer-in-waiting or a writer-in-wishes. Once I get this educational bug out of my system, perhaps I’ll go back to writing my children’s stories and poems, and maybe even write that novel that swirls around in the back of my thoughts from time to time. Maybe my educational bug is unworthy procrastination. Maybe … Sadly, the insecurities get the upper hand all too often. It takes a lot of willpower to recognise them, silence them, and prevent their win. Your reassurance helps strengthen the armour. Thank you. xx
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March 1, 2016 at 2:12 pm
I think that’s simply greater consciousness arising out of a more public declaration – for both of us. Having posted this I can see it has been received in a number of ways – and in fact, I wasn’t entirely clear what the message was about myself (I’ll still never know what I think til I read what I’ve write) but it is a useful exercise for that in itself.
I think this post says I’m a writer in two ways – on the surface it’s ‘I do all these things and yep, they count so therefore I’m a writer’ and then the second way is the repeating loop of affirmation – the, if I say it out loud (or at least on this blog) it is a clear declaration of intention. If I don’t declare that perhaps I can never reach the point of either feeling or believing it..
At the point I pushed publish, I was thinking ‘Yeah baby – you’re one shit-hot writer’ and now I’m almost dying with embarrassment at the audacity of that!
Tomorrow will be another day and I might feel worthy once more but it is forever a challenge to believe it until someone else either pays you or publishes you!
In the meantime I can see quite clearly that you are a writer of educational stuff and have written children stories and most likely will write them again. I can’t imagine the current time will be wasted as it will surely inform what you write in the future in some way shape or form.
..If you need some ideas – We need more stories in the world empowering kids with learning and developmental issues to be able to identify their strengths.. 💖💖💖
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March 2, 2016 at 5:35 am
You are just too beautiful for words! And I don’t need to write that to think it. I just know it!
Thank you for your encouragement and for understanding the fragile nature of this writer’s spirit. I appreciate your kind words – and your suggestions! 🙂
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February 27, 2016 at 3:35 am
powerful and such clear post…
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February 29, 2016 at 7:29 pm
Hey, thank you 🙂
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February 26, 2016 at 9:58 pm
This feels like declining amo in first year Latin. Writo writas writat writamus writatis writunt.
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February 29, 2016 at 9:15 pm
Oh dear.. Sorry 😦
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March 1, 2016 at 12:05 pm
Not at all!
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February 26, 2016 at 9:35 pm
Fabulous post! I am a writer 🙂
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February 26, 2016 at 9:50 pm
Yay! You are a writer 😀
Thank you ❤️
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