So You Think You Are a Writer?

How I discovered my reasons for writing and you can too.

I won’t lie. When I first started writing, I imagined fame and fortune. I envisioned hardcover novels penned by yours truly and published by a swanky New York publisher. Twenty-one years and some brutal reality checks later, I’m no closer to fame and fortune and strangely, still writing.

Every morning, I show up at my notebook like a loyal golden retriever and wait for inspiration to throw me a bone. On the days writing feels more like a root canal, I swear I’m done with it. I entertain ideas of a career in insurance or taking up decoupage. The next day, I’m right back at my desk, praying for the muse to pay me a visit.

I’m new to Medium. My heart races every time I click on the green Publish button. I tell myself that’s good. It means I was vulnerable in my writing. When I catch a whiff of the old Who-Do-You-Think-You-Are kibble my inner critic likes to serve up, I park my writer’s ass on the chair and get clear on the reasons I write.

1. Writer know thyself

I think every writer needs to know who they are before they write anything worth reading. I am no different. When I shed posturing and my ego’s need to sound intelligent, when I show up vulnerable and write my truth, I know I’ve tapped a vein of writerly gold.

I could feed a bonfire for a day with the coil notebooks filled with my attempts to know myself. I’ve written through outdated beliefs and programs installed in me long ago by my parents and ancestors to finally reach depth in my writing. The page is the home of No Bullshit.

2. Always an apprentice

I’m definitely no expert in anything. I will never call myself one. What I can say, is that I have life experience, relationship experience, parenting experience, love, sex, and play experience. When I forget and listen to the ego boasting it knows all there is to know, I close down shop for a day or two. I wait until my beginner’s curiosity returns and begin again.

3. Path to healing

I write to be heard. It could be because as a child, self-expression wasn’t encouraged. I was wise to keep my thoughts and opinions to myself, lest I be put in my place. I grew up in a time when parents believed children were moldable. I don’t think my mother or father were particularly interested in my inner experiences or how I interpreted the world. I don’t blame them. It’s how they were raised. They had their rebellions and then capitulated to an average life.

My rebellion didn’t come until I turned 50. I couldn’t hold on to the façade I had built from other people’s perceptions of who I should be. I exploded. It was my personal version of the Twin Towers disaster. After, my family stood by the wreckage that was me and insisted I had lost my mind.

It took years of weekly therapy and thousands of Morning Pages to find the courage to pick through the rubble and find pieces of me.

4. Feelings

My best writing comes from the well of emotions. Feelings live between my ribs and are tethered to inspiration. I stand down. I let emotions have their way with me. If I don’t, they’ll make the circuit again, louder this time.

I believe all writers host melancholy and nostalgia in their bodies. Without them, our writing would have no pulse.

There it is, the squeezing, the familiar ache beneath the breastbone that reminds me of the time I was a little girl and stood, motionless, in front of my parents’ closed bedroom door on Saturday mornings, willing them to wake and animate me into existence.

5. Purpose

My beloved therapist used to say: “Once you accept you are worthy, that you matter, and love yourself unconditionally, you will know your purpose.”

At the time, I thought she was shining new-age mumbo jumbo up my wazoo. Today, I get it. We are all like pianos. We forget how to play and go out of tune. It takes blowing ourselves to smithereens to reclaim our innate nature and know ourselves for the first time.

6. I write therefore I am

I write because I am compelled to. It is who I am and what I do. When I write, I unite the human aspects of me with my soul. I feel in alignment.

When I don’t write, I feel off balance. I get snappy, short-tempered, and impatient. I lose sight of my purpose and return to living life asleep.

Are fame and fortune in my future as a writer? Maybe, maybe not. After twenty years, I’ve come to the conclusion that money is not my main motivator, it is the byproduct of being true to who I am and doing what I love.

I’ll be showing up on the page again tomorrow, as the loyal patron of creativity and inspiration, as the writer that I am.

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