I have always wanted to be a great writer.
When I was a kid I wrote stories and my parents read them, assuring me in excited tones that I was going to be a famous author, that they would buy my best-selling novels and that I would take care of them in their old age. I always won the writing competitions at school and wrote A+ papers all the way through college. I haven't published a damn thing (and honestly haven't even tried), yet my father still asks me, now a 23-year old test editor with an English degree, when I am going to publish a book so he can retire. I always laugh and say, "Dad, it doesn't really work that way."
I have always fantasized about life as a writer, just me at my desk pumping out literary brilliance, perhaps in a cabin in the woods somewhere or in a condo overlooking the beach. Publishing novels, poems, creative nonfiction. I've also dreamed of being a passionate, crazy journalist telling all the smug middle-class Americans about the injustices and triumphs going on all over the world, waking them up from their contented self-seclusion. Traveling, writing, protesting, fighting for the good. I am smiling as I write this because it sounds so beautiful and worthwhile and noble, and the job I'm really doing--answer reviewing and editing Language Arts tests all day--seems more harmful to the world than helpful. I'm also smiling because I'm geographically illiterate and terrified of airports, so my journalist career would be quite a stretch for me.
Still, when I'm really honest with myself about who I am and what I want, I always come back to the same simple declarative sentence: I want to be a writer. It's the only thing I've ever thought that I was good at, the only thing I've ever felt at home in. Writing has always been my space, the place that makes sense for me. I feel so alive when I write, so real. I am disgusted with myself for having neglected something that I love so very much, for shrugging my shoulders and saying that I'm too tired of reading after work, too tired of looking at a computer screen, too tired to do anything that matters to me. Too tired to live?
I know what it means to put a sentence together: subject plus predicate plus infinity. The writer writes worlds into existence.
How could I not want to be a great writer?
Faith is Key
7 years ago
3 comments:
I love this. It is like reading my own journals. How many times have I written these very words. And I am 41. But the fat lady hasn't sung yet and we can both still attain our dreams. You are a beautifully gifted writer...and it is never too late. Not for you and not for me. I cheer for you!
I too think you were born to write. And you are very good at it. I hope in the days to come you will allow yourself some time to develop your passion. It won't happen overnight but in time I'm sure you will realize your dreams.
Me, too, Erica. One day, perhaps.
I am in a constant flux, flummoxed over my inability to finish half (understatement: closer to 3/4ths) of everything I write. I sometimes stumble across fairly good first draft stories written a year ago that I'd completely forgotten. I set a pace of 6 this year, plus a dozen poems, and the beginnings of a novel. How am I proceeding? 2 stories, 4 poems, and no progress on the novel. But strewn about my apartment are tiny mountains-or-molehills of scraps and half-drafts.
The good news is that I am becoming a better writer. Hopefully, one day, that will translate to an advance fee and a book that will sit on the shelf for 150 years. Till then, it's just a sip in the maelstrom to finagle a period for my run-on sentences.
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