A Writer

When I first started to write, I was not prepared for hours of sitting by myself, listening to my thoughts, having just myself for a companion. Facebook hadn’t yet caught on and I hadn’t become quite the Internet surfer I am today. Sitting in front of my laptop, meant precisely that. Staring at a mostly white page with three dreary sentences in boring Arial 11.

           I accepted this state of affairs. I even started to enjoy it. When I couldn’t write another word or the white-ness of the screen became too much to bear, I’d get breakfast and head out to work. When I’d return in the evening, I'd add a few more sentences, sometimes even a complete paragraph. The silent life of the writer would continue on.

It was a quiet life. It was a pleasure to be comfortable in my own company and bask in its silence. Self-criticism was tough, the self-doubt was even more painful and the constant good cop/bad cop dialogue in my head was excruciating. Yes, I was leading the writer’s life. I felt accomplished going through the writing torture. Even a little smug wondering if this is what the great ones went through in their pursuit of a masterpiece.

Then came the second wave of the internet. Today, in the age of easy wifi and constant tweeting and facebooking there’s no such thing as isolation. I no longer have the opportunity to feel the torture or uneasiness of a scene written in the wrong voice. Whenever I feel doubt, I simply go online to make myself feel better. When I don’t know an answer to a question I don’t think through it. I simply google it. When I don’t know how to write something I look up an example on one of the blogs. Yes, these are solutions. Quick solutions that help us write faster. I don’t have to waste time on doubt. I can feel good about myself. I can even spend a little bit more time on Facebook scrolling through my newsfeed.  

We have all become modern writers. We can multi-task as we write. Take ourselves out of the mood and then dive right back in. We are awesome researchers who fix our grammar and read about the anatomy of a scene all at the same time.

I, too, am a modern writer.

I don’t have to dawdle, doodle, daydream while I try to fix a scene. I can simply find a prototype or the advice of a book-editor with a click of a button.

I’m no longer isolated. I have a community. I have people. I have answers.

Answers that bind me and constrict me. That feel like chains around my wrist, around my mind, around whatever it is that makes us put ourselves into our characters’ shoes and write.

So I want to be quiet again. I want to feel free again. I want to be alone again. I want to hear myself think again. Doubt again. Worry again. I want to be a writer again. Just a writer.

Do you?

The J word

  There are many J words: feeling jealous (of friends’ success), being   jaded (of the publishing industry), constant jeering (of others). The J word that’s been on my mind has been judgment.  

 It usually begins with others’ judgments of you. Who you are, what you write, what you do. Then there are those moments of judgment – “Why do you laugh so much? It’s like you are trying to attract attention.” or “Why do you waste your evenings writing when you could be spending time with your mother? It’s not like you are published or anything.”

Judgment, when it comes from a trusted source, begins a chain reaction like no other. There’ the initial surprise: What! Really, do you mean that!? Followed by outright denial: No, I don’t do that. I don’t waste my time. And then anger: How dare she think of me like that? How dare she judge me? That leads to hurt: Does she not understand me? Is she right? Am I a horrible person who hides behind my writing? The most important effect of others’ judgment of you is how you start to see yourself. How it shapes your view of yourself. You begin to wonder who you really are and whether you’ve been deluding yourself all this time. Maybe you aren’t cut out to be a writer. Maybe the evenings you sit in front of your laptop are just an excuse to escape from the world and your real responsibilities.

But then you remember that you love those hours where it’s just you and your characters. That you’ve grown so much as a writer these past few years. That once you finish a couple more drafts you’ll be ready to query your polished manuscript.

Self-judgment is that hill we’ve got to climb over before we can accept someone else’s judgment. Judgment of who we are. What we write. What we wrote a few years ago. What we’ve not yet written. And this acceptance can take various forms. Acceptance can mean that we agree that we aren’t cut out to be writers. We accept we love to read but haven’t become better at our craft. That it will remain a hobby. Or acceptance can mean that we speak out that we’re not hiding behind our writing. That our friend was simply wrong. That writing is vital to who we are. It makes us who we are. Our acceptance can help us deal with the judgment and move on.  It can help us heal the dents to our self-esteem; move beyond self-judgment and continue to write, work on our craft and strive to become who we want to be.

When I remember (and nine out of ten times I don’t) I tell myself that judgment is an opinion. One person’s opinion. It can bring you down or you can use it propel yourself forward on that journey to become a better you and a better writer.

A Writing Career

Career may be a misnomer when you are writer working on getting published. Especially, if you have an actual career that you’re excited about and pays the bills. Still, if you call yourself writer you are in it for the long haul. You write in the wee hours of the morning or complete a page before turning off the lights at night –a process you repeat for years, sometimes tens of years. How do you sustain your writing career? How do you keep the fire (sometimes, it feels like a tiny spark) going through work crises, family emergencies, changing boyfriends and switching apartments?

For me, it’s important to keep the inner child alive. Whether reading a historical biography or taking a nature hike, it’s vital to nourish and enrich my inner life. Having said that, it’s just as important to make sure we don’t isolate ourselves. It’s easy when writing to say that weekdays are for work and weekends are for writing. It’s easy to turn down camping trips and museum visits because your weekend is your time to write. For me, though, tuning out the world works only for a short while. I have to live in it, see it and interact with it to produce work that feels authentic. So I take time out during some weekends so that I can continue to grow the writer in me. It’s amazing how much more focused I am when I return.

Finally, the most important thing I can do for my writing career is remaining a student. I try to hone my craft through workshops, critique groups and craft days. I take time off from my WIP to learn and practice at a weekend workshop or start a new story during NaNoWriMo (beginning in just a few short weeks!).

All of this may mean that it takes me three to four years to finish my manuscript but as long as I enjoy the process and become a better writer it’s time that is worth investing. I look at my writing career as a marathon and not a sprint. I’ve chosen to think long term. Do you feel the same way? What works for you?