When Did I Stop ‘Being’ A Writer?
January 19, 2012As long as I can remember, I have been a writer. As soon as I learned to pick up a pencil, I started writing my own stories. Before that, I had imaginary friends and made up stories for and with them. As a pre-teen, I used to gather together all the pens in the house and turned them into characters in their own little dramatic stories.
Through all of the most difficult times in my life, writing has been my solace. I wrote poetry about being lonely and about my parents’ separation. Short stories have helped me to work through some of my deepest fears and most challenging confrontations. Journaling has saved my life – and my sanity – on more than one occasion.
I used to carry a notebook everywhere I went. In my years as a call-center agent, I kept it at my desk and would compose scenes, poems, and unsent letters in between my daily calls. At one time, I wrote for and published my own online magazine. For years, I faithfully journaled online – sometimes multiple posts each day.
These days, I mostly write only when something affects me so strongly that I can’t keep it inside. I don’t blog as much as I could – here or in my less-public forum. The last poem I wrote was over the summer, and I can’t recall the last time I wrote any kind of fiction. How can I call myself a writer (as I have continued to do), if I don’t write?
Yet… the label has stuck. I *am* a writer; I’ve just misplaced my voice. Somewhere along the line, I started listening too closely to all the voices that told me I wasn’t a writer if I didn’t write every single day. I started believing my inner critic when it labeled my writing as worthless fluff. I accepted each short-coming and limitation, embraced them, and allowed them to come together to form an all but total block. I stopped *being* a writer.
It’s time to start again. I know this block took years to create and is going to take some time to pull apart, but it needs to be done. I am, at heart, a writer; it’s time to start actually being one again.
I wish you the best in finding your way again! There are a million voices out there that will tell you what you SHOULD be like as a writer. They’ll tell you how to think, read, create, and what type of schedules and strategies to follow. Some of the suggestions are great, but it’s easy to internalize those comments as rules. (That’s when your inner critic goes crazy! He or she feeds on those.) But in the end it’s all about YOU, both what you do best and how you do it best. You will always be a writer as long as your heart tells you that you are.
Thank you, Lissa. Obviously a number of these ‘voices’ are my own inner critic, and those are the ones I especially need to learn to ignore because as you said, he or she feeds on all of the external voices as well!
I really appreciate your input and understanding.
Here’s to quieting the ‘shoulds’!