A "Real" Writer

I received an e-mail from a writer who has lost heart with his writing. Since he hasn't been published, he doesn't feel like he's a writer.

His story touched me. I don't think there is a writer among us who hasn't endured the heartbreak of rejection and questioned his or her path as a result.

Though I am certainly no authority on writing and publishing, I thought I'd share with all of you something that I'd gone through several years ago when I questioned my own path. I hope, if you're reading this and struggling with your own writing goals, you will feel a little less isolated and know you are not alone.

I'd been working on a novel for a very very long time. Another novel. That current work in progress wasn't my first. I had scenes on paper, sketchy bits of dialogue, snippets of description. And nothing to string one scene to the next because I'd long since given up the project.

I'd called it writer's block that I'd stopped writing, though I winced at the term. It sounded like an excuse to me for not working and, worse, calling not writing by that label seemed pretentious to me. "Writer's Block" is something that afflicts writers like Hemingway. It's a phrase used to describe why words fail best- selling authors. I was certainly not one of those - I hadn't published one word - and so I wasn't worthy of having that same affliction.

Not worthy. Right there was the heart of my problem. I didn't think of myself as a 'real' writer. For all the effort I'd put into my writing, the world was not beating a path to my door, clamoring for my prose.

If no one wanted to read what I wrote, then why was I writing it? Clearly, my time would be better served doing things that were productive.

With my husband's loving support, I'd made a decision to write full time. Since I wasn't writing, though, what did that make me?

I struggled to find another purpose for myself. I was doing the chores in my home, things that kept my family comfortable. Okay, I was a homemaker, then. I'm a homemaker, not a writer.

I put my novel into my desk and went about my house doing what needed doing. Not just for my family's benefit. It was for my own, as well. Doing for them fulfilled a need within me. A well-cooked meal or fresh towels in the linen closet was my achievement. As caregiver to my family, I felt validated.

And that was a feeling I could no longer get when writing. A dramatic sentence or poignant description no longer made me feel the time was worth the effort.

Admitting to that, hurt. I'd lived with writing in my life for so long that I didn't know how I'd cope without it. But the pain that was coming lately from writing was as bad as from not writing.

So, along with my novel pages, I put aside all of my hopes and dreams for my work. And didn't write.

Time passed. Nothing earth shattering happened. The sky didn't fall. The world didn't mourn the loss of my prose. The world didn't change at all because of my decision, but I did. I felt a loss as if something important to me had died.

I hadn't expected to feel that way. I'd thought by not writing, I would have felt better, but I didn't. It took me a while to figure out why. Somewhere over the years, while I was pursuing publication, my writing became all about publishing, and not about writing. I'd lost the joy of writing.

But I regained it. In that time of not writing, when I realized that something was missing from my life, I also realized that I couldn't stop writing --whether I was ever published or not.

I started writing again. Did I put aside my dream of publication? No. I've since had novels, and short stories published. But I realized that it wasn't publication that made me a writer. It was the manuscript pages in my desk. A pretty tall stack, I recall. : - ) But tall or small, a word or a phrase, it didn't matter. All that mattered was that I was writing, because it isn't publication that makes me a "real" writer, writing does.

Regards,
Karen