Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Becoming A Writer


          Wherever I go, I meet people who want to become writers.  At a party, in the dentist’s waiting room, on a cross-country flight, if the conversation turns to what it is that I do and I say, “I’m a writer,” someone will invariably tell me that he or she would love to become a writer.  People tell me they could write a magnum opus about what goes on in their office, or a horror novel based on their first marriage, or a satire inspired by all the hilarious things their three-year-old daughter does.
          I am always polite and encouraging with these people, but the truth is, they will not become writers.  A writer is not something you become.  It is something you are, something you do.  People who are writers don’t talk about the books they could write.  What they do is write those books.
          As a child, I never dreamed of becoming a writer.  I had a long list of what I wanted to become when I grew up: a ballerina, an astronaut, a farmer, an actress, a Supreme Court justice, a third-grade teacher, a United Nations translator, a rock star and a veterinarian.  If someone had asked me whether I wanted to become a writer, I wouldn’t have known what to say.  I was already writing. 
          I wrote stories.  I wrote poetry.  I wrote plays.  I wrote scripts for my favorite TV shows.  I wrote articles for my school’s newspaper.  I wrote histrionic rants in my diary.  I never imagined myself becoming a writer, because I already was a writer.  Writing was something I did, often without even thinking about it or planning around it.  I ate, I slept, I got crushes on boys, I brushed my teeth.  I breathed.  I wrote.
          It wasn’t until I was in college that I considered the possibility of making a career out of my writing.  Abandoning the actress dream after taking a couple of acting courses my freshman year and realizing I lacked the talent needed to succeed in that career, I signed up for a playwriting class, mostly because I used to see the professor who taught playwriting when I walked through the theater building and he looked cool. 
          As it turned out, he was cool.  He was a phenomenal teacher.  And one day, without my knowledge, he entered a one-act play I’d written for class into a playwriting contest, and it won.  I was stunned; I hadn’t even known of the contest’s existence, let alone considered entering it.  I was even more stunned when I learned that my first-place prize included a monetary award.
          I’d always written.  But now I realized that I could get paid for doing what I was already doing anyway.
          That was when I set aside all those other possible careers.  As it happened, I was really struggling in my Russian class, so the UN translator gig didn’t seem likely.  To become a Supreme Court justice, I’d have to attend law school, which I wasn’t absolutely opposed to, but I wasn’t crazy about the idea, either.  And forget about becoming a veterinarian.  All those bio and chem prerequisites?  No way! 
          My playwriting-contest win had proved that someone was willing to pay me to write.  This was like someone paying me to sleep or eat or brush my teeth or breathe.  How sweet was that?
          I wound up working as a playwright for the next ten years.  Sometimes someone paid me for my writing.  Sometimes no one did.  I took other jobs to make ends meet while I wrote.  Along with my plays, I also kept writing short stories, novels, poetry and essays.  When I wasn’t writing one thing, I was writing another thing.  I wasn’t becoming a writer.  I was a writer, doing what writers do.  When I got tired of writing plays, I turned my full focus to novel writing, which I’ve been doing for the past twenty-plus years.  But plays or novels, fiction or poetry, I’ve just kept writing.
          I know a lot of writers.  Some, like me, are published.  Some aren’t.  Some work at other jobs to make ends meet.  Some make enough money from their writing not to need outside jobs.  Some write only on weekends.  Some write at night.  Some write nine-to-five, then turn off their computers and punch out for the day.
          I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of the writers I know say that they want to be writers.  In fact, some wish they weren’t writers.  Writing is hard.  It’s physically and emotionally demanding.  It can break your heart, and often does.  The pay is erratic and it doesn’t include health insurance.  Why would anyone choose this life?  Surely becoming a Supreme Court justice can’t be as hard as writing.
          We don’t choose to write.  If anything, writing chooses us.  Writers think in words.  Without prompting, our brains spin plots.  Characters invade our thoughts and beg us to tell their stories.  We scribble notes on napkins, on the margins of the magazines we’re reading, along the edges of our shopping lists.  We walk past a house, peer into a window and suddenly our minds fill with stories about the people we imagine living inside.
          This is what we do.  This is what we are.  We don’t “become” writers.  We just write.

21 comments:

  1. I love this post.

    I’ve read blog after blog about how to write; instructions on how and what . . . whereas I don’t profess to be a good writer, I can’t agree more. It’s something that comes to you, and you write. It’s something you just do.

    Thanks for the wonderful post.

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  2. I must run into the same people. I'm forever having that conversation, "You know, I've always wanted to write a book..." Loved your thought about writers who wished they did something else... anything else! I get that. Great post, Judith!

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  3. Judith
    This is a great post! For a long time I believed anyone could become a writer. If these stories, characters, ideas, dialogue just floated through my head, surely anyone and everyone had the same experience. But no. This is my gift. It took me a long time to realize that I simply am a writer. I didn't become one, I am one.
    Thanks for an excellent post!
    Maggie

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  4. Oh, I nodded along with your entire blog. I think this is so true. I often encourage people to write or to finish, but the truth is, they don't need my encouragement. They either are a writer or they aren't. It's funny, b/c though I've tried my hand at other things at well, I could never shake that anxious, guilty feeling that I should be writing. It stays with me, whenever I try to take break, tells me that I don't just want to be a writer, I'm hard-wired to be one. So when I meet someone who isn't writing or hasn't written in a very long time, I have a hard time believing that she or he really wants to be one. That all said, I've been wanting to start taking art classes this year, and I'm determined to finally take a couple in 2011. We'll see...

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  5. Judith, you wrote this beautifully...and yes. Yes. That's exactly how it is ;). Thanks so much for sharing your storyl

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  6. Boy, you hit the proverbial nail on the head with this one! This post beautifully illustrates what it is to be a writer. Absolute perfection. I'm Facebooking it and cross-posting. Thank you so much!

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  7. Fabulous post. I think a lot of people say they want to be writers because they think it's relatively easy. How wrong they are.

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  8. My favorite part of this is when you say that being a writer is about being published or getting paid. The parallel that comes to mind--I'm a mother (kids are grown now, but still) whether or not I get praise for it, and I certainly never got paid. It's just who I am, what I do, like being a writer. I write. Thanks for this, Judith.

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  9. What a wonderful post! At times I felt I was reading my own thoughts. I'm so happy to be a new member of this group.

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  10. Great blog! Being a writer is so much a part of who I am that I am cranky when I can't spend time writing each day.

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  11. After becoming the next Madonna/Halle Berry (pop and movie star, y'see), I planned on saving the world through some kind of Jolie-esque political activism. The means to achieving all this was to write the plays and screenplays in which I'd perform, and the poems I'd sent to music to be a more literary Madonna. Writing was so central to my nature, I never thought of it as a career. That would be like becoming a professional breather.

    I'm getting a bit territorial with writing. All these people I come across who think they have a great story (they do!) and know how to put sentences together (true!) but who don't have the gumption to sit and write, write, rewrite and write again.

    Writing is the worst lover. As fickle and unavailable sometimes, as he is nurturing and stirring. I wouldn't have it any other way.

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  12. Wonderful post, BK! It rings true with me!

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  13. I got goosebumps when I read your part about walking past houses, peering in the windows, and imagining stories for the inhabitants. That's what I do! But not only them--people in restaurants, at grocery stores, at the pool, the doctor's office. Characters are everywhere!

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  14. What a great post! Thank you so much for this. It's exactly what I most needed to read today.

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  15. I loved this post, and I know it is absolutely true, writers are driven to write and sometimes share.
    Thank you for sharing this!

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  16. Excellent and true, Barbara! Now we just need to direct to it all those people who would write a book "if they could just find the time."

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  17. Glad my post rang true for so many of you! I have tried to quit writing, but I may as well try to quit eating (which might not be such a bad idea, at least when there's chocolate within reach ). Writing lays claim to a huge chunk of my identity, my personality, and my imagination. This is true for all writers. If we stopped writing, we'd stop being who we are.

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  18. Wonderful post! I agree with you completely. We are writers-- even if we have to take "normal" jobs to pay the bills. Thanks for sharing your story! :)

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  19. I am one of those people that scribble notes on napkins, little bits of paper, in notebooks, etc. It drives my husband crazy. He thinks I am so unorganized. But when an idea hits, I need to write it down anywhere I can find a scrap!

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  20. becoming a writer is really good topic i read this book and its tell me a writer how to thinking when he write something thanks for share it resume templates 2016 .

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