the right to say "writer"

the fight within myself to call myself a writer

Sometimes I don’t know what to write about. Or I don’t feel like writing. Or I feel like writing, but the words won’t come. I try to write every day and sometimes it is an absolute struggle. Every once in a while, I connect my love of writing with my will to write and a small miracles occurs: I become a writer.

I rarely refer to myself as a proper writer. To me, a writer is someone who has published books, or makes a living writing for publication. Sure, I wrote a novel, but I never had it published. And yes, I’ve written for many online publications for which I got paid, but I still hesitate to use the word writer when describing myself.

Call it imposter syndrome, call it just being a realist, but I feel like I’m engaging in stolen valor when I say I’m a writer. I exist on the periphery of the more accomplished; I follow so many real writers on twitter and I always feel like I’m on the edge of their group, sort of standing back in the playground looking at them all engaged in a game I want to take part in, but lacking the pedigree to do so. So I watch them all, everyone with “writer” in their bio, everyone with bylines at the big places, everyone with a regular writing gig, and I think, I am not one of them.

I write this newsletter on the average of three times a week. It’s free to read, free to subscribe. I make no money off of this. Is this the criteria my brain is using to keep from calling myself a writer? If I got paid for my efforts would I then be able to say that’s what I am? Why does money play into it at all?

I always wanted to be a writer but I never zoned in on one particular style or genre. When I was a young adult, I wrote horror stories. In college, I aimed for a more literary style. I was always told me writing was good - great, even - but I never believed that. I thought I had room to improve. I thought I couldn’t keep up with my peers. For years, I subscribed to Writer’s Digest and would pour over the listings to see who was accepting the kind of stuff I was writing. But I never sent a single thing out. I was too scared, too afraid of rejection, worried that I would be laughed at, scorned, disappointed. I did not have enough faith in myself as a writer to pitch my ideas and words to editors.

So I just languished, writing my short stories for no one but myself until blogging came along. I became pretty adept at writing personal essays, or telling stories from my youth, and people seemed to enjoy them. But I wasn’t a writer. I was a blogger. There’s a difference.

Eventually I landed a job as a music writer for Forbes, but I was held to such stringent requirements that we parted ways when I felt like my writing was being restricted, and they felt like I wasn’t giving them what they wanted. It was great while it lasted; I was paid handsomely, I got to call myself a music writer for a bit, I was happy until I wasn’t. I wrote here and there for various publications, most of which have been disappeared into the ether, but never anything steady enough where I could say I Am A Writer.

When do you get to call yourself that? What is the criteria? Is it just writing every day? Is it being prolific as Stephen King, or can you write a single novel that exists only in PDF form and say you are an author?

I know why I’m so hung up on this. Because being able to say I’m a writer is to feel successful at one thing in my life. I never went on to become a teacher or a librarian like I wanted to at some points, I never even finished college (I left the beginning of senior year with only 18 credits needed because, life), I have three failed marriages under my belt, there’s gotta be something I feel successful at, no? The one constant that has been with me through all of my life is my desire to write, and the act of actually writing. If I could call myself a writer, I could feel like I accomplished something in my life.

But who makes the arbitrary rules for who is and isn’t a real writing. There’s no application process, no board that oversees who claims the title, no one making the decision. And it’s not just that I want to say I am a writer, it’s that I want other people to say it, to believe it as well.

I write every day. I write this newsletter a few times a week. I may not have a plaque that says “writer” on a home office door, but I feel like I’m so close to being what I set out to be. Not as my sole living, but as an extension of myself, as a chosen way of life. I want so badly to be in that circle of writers, to be considered a peer, but I don’t think I’m quite there. I don’t know if, at 60, I will ever get there. I just know that I will keep writing forever, and hope that when I die people say: she was a good writer.