Being a writer
Or, more accurately, not being one
What makes a writer? It’s easy, when you want to be one (like I do), to feel like an impostor, and indeed, I would never have the audacity to call myself ‘a writer’, despite the fact I write for a living. I don’t feel like one yet — I feel like someone trying to become one, someone on their way to becoming one. But I often ask myself: am I ever going to reach the place where I feel like the journey is over, where I’ve ‘made it’?
Maybe I never will feel that way, but one of the beautiful things about writing is that it’s something you can learn to be good at and something you can actively practise. The best way to practise is, of course, by reading — only good readers become good writers. But you have to practise the craft itself, learning the rules of how stories and articles are meant to be shaped and structured, even if it’s only to completely break those rules. ‘The grind’ is part of the reason why I started this project: writing fifty-two articles across the course of the year feels like actually doing something, and at the end of it, I’ll have a portfolio, even if it’s on topics that aren’t necessarily interesting to anyone but me, and even if they haven’t been read more than a few dozen times.
There’s something extremely democratic about seeing writing as ‘reading lots, writing lots, submitting lots’ — anyone can do it, and anyone can increase their chances of ‘making it’ (whatever that means) simply by putting the hours in. Ray Bradbury, the inspiration for this project, gave the advice that a wall in your flat should be dedicated to rejection slips. I have a folder in my email box instead, as that’s generally the way I receive my rejections, but the result is the same: I can directly see how much effort I’ve been putting into getting rejected. Moreover, it helps me organise future submissions, be that making sure I submit the same piece to a new journal, or resubmitting a new piece to a journal which especially liked my writing. This might sound counter-intuitive, but focusing on getting one hundred rejections means you’ll be submitting your work to one hundred places, and a hundred rejections in a row seems unlikely. Moreover, it makes you more resilient to rejections in the future.
I started this project based on another titbit of Bradbury’s, that you can’t write fifty-two bad short stories in a row (which I disagree with, but was at least inspiring). Why didn’t I write short stories for this fifty-two piece project? A main reason, I suppose, was that I didn’t think people would actually read them — that people would rather hear about my life, or subjects about which I’m interested. But why should that be? It’s just as arrogant to assume people give a toss about my opinion on just about anything, more so to want to read about events in my life which were important to me but may not be of relevance for anyone else. But people do read — at least some. My article on depression was read about a hundred times (although my last one on free will and genetics wasn’t even read twenty times (and yes, including them here is an attempt to get those numbers up)). More than that, though, writing fiction is hard — it’s easier to find inspiration from memories, from feelings, for non-fiction projects, than it is to come up with a new idea every week for a story about some characters you’ve made up in your own head. The main reason why I did this, I guess, was just to be writing, regularly, about things I wanted to discus— and maybe receive some feedback (read: praise) in the process.
Feedback is perhaps one of the most frustrating aspects of writing. It’s genuinely rare to find people who are honest with you about what you’ve written, who say exactly what they felt about your work without hedging their statements in compliments or hesitation. Equally as hard is finding people who will take the time to actually read your work and comment on it in depth. I’m lucky to have had, over the years, people who have been supportive enough of me to read lots of the work I’ve read, and luckier still to have people who are honest with me about when they think it’s bad (or good!): a kind English teacher during Sixth Form, my mother, countless friends and even acquaintances who took genuine interest when I told them I’d written a novel (unpublished, obviously). People who read your work and are honest about it — beta readers, as they’re sometimes called — aren’t only a way to improve your work, though; they’re also the people who support you to keep going when you feel like you’re rubbish (daily occurrence for me) or when you feel like you’re making no progress. If it weren’t for them, I may well have given up.
Some places, though, are dedicated to literature, and as such you’d expect them to give you at least a little bit of feedback. This, however, often isn’t the case. I made the goal last year of receiving one hundred rejections for my writing in one year. Suffice it to say I didn’t succeed: my current total is exactly forty, although I’m still waiting on some pieces I submitted. (You’ll wait forever for your rejections from these places, trust me.) Mostly, the feedback these places give is laughable. Sometimes I wonder if they’ve all hired the same writer to write their rejections, such is the similarity with which they read. A couple of examples:
Obviously journals can’t offer feedback to everyone. Most get presumably hundreds of submissions each year, and many are run by volunteers who simply wouldn’t have the time to do that. That being said, sometimes you do get a nice email back, one that reads as though the editors actually took the time to properly read your work and give, however minuscule, a little feedback:
But I don’t just write for the beta readers, or the journals, or to get reads. (What reads?) I write because I want to, because it makes me feel good, because I get a feeling of satisfaction and achievement out of doing it, and because without it, I’d feel discontent and a bit lost. Writing is, quite obviously, a way of expressing myself, my anger, my happiness, my memories and all the rest. It’s cathartic and, while it can be hard, it’s also the only thing about which I can really say I’ve been consistently passionate since I was a child. Orwell compared it to ‘a long bout with some painful illness’, calling it a ‘horrible, exhausting struggle’ which one wouldn’t undertake unless ‘driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.’ A bit dramatic, perhaps, but often true.
In the end, the only way to feel like a writer is to convince yourself you are one. There are plenty of rational reasons why I could be considered one: I’ve had fiction and non fiction published in multiple journals and on multiple blogs; my degree entails writing long, citation-laden essays at least every few months; I literally write for a living for a blog on economics; and I’m doing this project, namely, writing an article every week for a year. It’s the last point which counts the most: I want to be a writer, and I make myself write to fulfil the parameters set by myself and other people of reaching that goal. But other people, be that the people who read your work, or the journals who reject you, or the authors of articles about writing you find yourself browsing when you’re feeling down, can’t tell you what it means to be a writer — that’s for you to say. Their validation doesn’t cut the mustard. To be a writer, you only really have to do three things: read lots; keep telling yourself, again and again, that you are a writer; and, of course, write.
