There are two kinds of people. Those who are writing, and those who aren’t.
The ones writing are writers. The ones who aren’t, aren’t… at the moment.
Many folks not writing at the moment don’t feel bad, though. They could start writing again at any time! They plan to! They know they will!
Professionals, people who make a living, kinda know they will write again, pretty soon, to avoid starvation. So. They have that going for them.
Wait. Is that good?
I have a friend who is a big-five horror novelist, teacher, writer, and all around great guy. He advocates never quitting your dayjob. Of never having to write something you don’t want to write, for money. Because that happens. A lot, for the non-rock star pro writing class, ie, most of us. He has been working on his second novel, for some time now. I think he has 1000 index cards. It will be great. It takes as long as it takes.
That’s one way to do this.
I have another friend who publishes between two hundred fifty thousand and a million words a year, which is basically a short story you might read in twenty to forty minutes every single day of the year. Of course she doesn’t write short stories, but novels in the 30-60k count, in series, in a few romance sub-genres. What is that? 10? 15? I’ve stopped doing the math on her.
They’re both writers.
I have friends who have never published, who have written for years. Some have unique perspectives and are having a hard time finding publishers because of this. They’re writers.
On indypub forums I have read the stories and explored the work habits of a new generation of pulp writers, working in many genres but often romance, as romance is more than half of all fiction sold. People who have escaped day jobs… at Walmart. In other big box stores. In food service. Office temping. House cleaning. People in places with little opportunity. Making a penny a word works, for them, a hundred bucks a day, to start, working 8 hour days a day in the mines, then an 8 hour day writing, the sleeping a few hours, every day. Once they have strong back catalogs, they reach the point where they go full time.
They’re writers too.
Try to let go of Writer as Identity. Embrace Writing as action, as the act of writing, as the act of research, editing, plotting, outlining, however you do it. It’s okay, to see your life as material; it’s okay, not write, too, it’s okay to call yourself a writer, and never write. But. That feels sad to me. I think part of the word aspiring is that. Often. People who don’t let themselves think of themselves as Writers and thus, who never feel they are truly writing. For some, the identity must precede the action. So the action is delayed and diminished and never fully begun.
What I’m really saying, to the aspiring writer is that by writing you arrive. The blank page waiting before you is the exact same page that has confronted every writer since the begining of time. Every writer you have ever read sits beside you, at computers, holding notebooks, at battered typewriters, holding quils, manuscripts stuffed into pockets on battlefields, holding ball point pens in shitty diners, at tiny desks in sheds, dictating into phones, standing in line daydreaming with focus, packed into subway cars, lounging in palatial hotel suites, living in trailers, in mansions, in rented rooms, in cardboard boxes.
When you write you’re a writer. So stop aspiring and sit down and write something.
It doesn’t have to be good, for you to make it better. It doesn’t have to be good, to learn something from the act of writing it. It doesn’t have to be published, to have been worth writing.
Let yourself do this. You aspired. That’s the first part. The next part is easy. If you let yourself. If you let go of expectation, of ego, of identity, of fear, of jealousy.
Let go. Write. Read. Live. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Whatever your destination, every step brings you closer, every word appearing on the page. Like this word. And this one. And so on. Write with me.
You are a writer.
So write.
If you found this essay inspirational, interesting, amusing, whatever, join my mailing list. I mean, if you want to. I can’t make you. But I’m asking. Because you read this, and that means I sorta love you. Um. Okay, this got awkward. This is the link to my mail chimp page.
