Age 4 (?): I can't read yet but I make a book out of paper and tell my mom what to write on the pages. It's about the tooth fairy or something. When people talk about their relationship with writing they always reference childhood stories like these, and they usually say they "started writing as soon as they could hold a pen," or they "picked up a pen one day and never put it down again," something like that, it always involves a pen, and a precocious vocation for storytelling. I was never too impressed because every kid has the instinct to make up stories, it doesn't mean you're a born writer. (But secretly I think yeah well, I started writing BEFORE I could hold a pen. The pen didn't factor into it at all actually.)
Age 8: I enter a writing contest where the prize is getting your story made into a real book. I wrote a story about a sentient flower in a pot because I had never read a story from the point of view of a flower. I don't win.
Age 10: I love reading even more after I get diagnosed with clinical depression, which feels like when your grandpa died and for the first time you fathom the foreverness of death while standing beside his casket, only all the time. I don't really understand why my brain broke but I do know if I'm reading then it's like it's fixed, as long as I get really sucked into the book. I decide I'll cure myself by reading every single moment I'm awake. It works!
Age 12: Another writing contest, this time everyone in the sixth grade is required to enter. We have to write a short piece (300 words) encouraging people to join the priesthood or be a nun or something (Catholic school). Every middle school in the Archdioceses enters, and I win first prize and have to read my entry in front of all-school mass. I'm given a plaque and a check. My essay goes pretty hard even though I hate church and religion. I wonder if anyone joined the priesthood because of what I wrote, about vocations, a word I only just learned. That would be hilarious.
Age 16: I'm in highschool and writing is my "thing." Everyone pays me to write papers and book reports for them, about $20 a pop depending on the length and subject matter. My motto is "at least a B or your money back!" I brag a lot because I don't have to read the book to do a decent book report. I'm in college level English and French but I'm not getting college credit because I can't pay the fee, so I'm just in there writing people's papers. I love that people think I'm deep and smart because I can write (this is what I think they think of me) even though I don't really read as much as I used to.
Age 20: It turns out I'm a terrible student. Putting words in an attractive sequence isn't so impressive; everyone knows how to do it now. Writing nice papers might help me if I wrote the papers, and went to class. So I'm on academic probation for like five years and trying not to lose my student aid. As soon as I arrived at college the fear of God went through me and I abandoned all notions of being an author. I need to do like, business. Marketing. I'm not going to be one of those chumps with an English degree, no. I'm going to get a degree in Communication! Communication is kind of like writing. It's really broad, I tell everyone, so it applies to lots of fields. They say, what do you want to do with it? I say that's the beauty of it, I can do anything. Marketing. Business. Public Relations. They say, but like what job? What job do you want? I say oh man, the sky's the limit. The future is bright. I'm gonna have my pick of jobs, you'll see.
Age 21: I get it in my head that I want to be a literary sort of writer. Confessional, feminist, slam poetry style writing is very en vogue, especially on Tumblr, so I imitate that. You do a lot of writing in second person perspective because it's provocative. It's all about dragging out my traumas for everyone to consume and it's all a claustrophobic examination of myself. I am the most fascinating person in the world. Nevermind that I never, ever edit anything I write. Nevermind that I don't spend any time reading or examining my craft, because I don't even know what that means. People are gonna read about how I did weight watchers when I was twelve and they're going to love it! I'm basically Lena Dunham but all of the cringe and none of the talent.
Age 22: I have an online job ghostwriting blog posts for law firms, a job I didn't even know existed, and that I don't think does anymore. It's just a side gig really, I'm assigned a few blogs per week for several different law firms, about 500 words, and $8 per blog. They give me topics like Divorce Law and Carseat Recalls and I churn out content. Boring as hell but a pretty sweet gig, and not unlike what I did in highschool. I got the job by submitting a writing sample, an essay I wrote about a Frida Kahlo's Henry Ford Hospital, a painting where she is laying naked in a bloody bed contemplating her miscarriage. My employer said of the writing sample, "the content you write for us will be...different."
Everything is all wrong. I'm very concerned with Being a Writer and not at all concerned about writing. I submit writing to magazines because I desperately want to be published but I never edit any piece, I never try to become better at writing, because I think it's a born-in thing and I was born with it, baby. I never like anything I write. I don't even know what I write about; confessional think pieces that hit all the beats they should but don't actually say anything. I'm putting words in an order I think people will like. I want to be published, I want to be a writer, I want the cool girls in the English department who work at the lit mag and go to poetry readings at the book shop to think I'm cool, too. (There's a huge poetry phase in here too, good God, the poetry. I do a lot of comparing men to cigarettes.)
Age 25: I live at my mom's and I quit my job at the vintage store where I've been working for three years. I took a break from school and haven't graduated. I got a job at the hockey stadium and I quit after two days. I got a job at a bakery and I quit after one. I break down crying to my mom that I just turned 25, I have no job, no degree, and I've done nothing. Something was supposed to happen by this point. Everyone thought I was so smart.
Age 26: I wonder when writing became synonymous with literary and memoir, for me. I wonder when I decided I couldn't be an author anymore. I didn't even try. I never even fucking tried, and I never asked myself what I wanted to write. And I never asked WHY I wanted to write. It's very exciting to realize this. I admit that I fucking hate writing about myself, and about the real world, and all the other imitation vagina monologues schlock I was half heartedly writing.
What I like is swords. Faeries and dragons and fallen angels.
I dive into my interests and it's an exciting time. I'm going to write a book. As soon as I decide I'm going to be a fantasy author everything makes sense again, it all feels right and momentous. I'm fine, mom, sorry about crying earlier, I was so young then. I get on Tumblr which I abandoned a couple years ago and find a whole new community called writeblr. I start to amass writing friends and pictures of castles and writing tips and advice. I draft a YA fantasy novel about a girl who goes to a boarding school that has been infiltrated by faeries.
Age 27: I've written a book. I scrapped the YA somewhere in the first edit but I'm impressed I even did that; wrote it, and then contentedly put it away. I worked so hard for 120k word that I would never show to anyone, and I was happy because it made me a better writer. A year's worth of craft work. I think it's the first time I've ever worked hard on something, and I wish I was kidding. And it was fun. But I scrap it because I am possessed by a second idea, an adult fantasy novel. Oh yeah, and I go back to school and finish my degree. School doesn't seem as hard now that I found out how to work at something. I get my degree in Communication even though by now I know that I'd rather die than work in public or human relations, or business, or marketing. But the great thing is I get a job at the library and when I'm not showing old people how to use the computer, I read and brainstorm my novel all day long.
Age 28: I've written the adult novel, and rewritten it. I'm basically writing the same book over and over again nearly from scratch. It doesn't seem like this is how I'm supposed to do it but I can't fathom a better way. Now I've definitely worked harder than I've ever worked in my life. I've never been so certain that my writing is dogshit, and trying to make it not dogshit is so fun its like being high. At least half of the time I want to tear my hair out and sob but I'm almost certain that it's going to pay off, and pay off soon.
Age 29: Holy shit, I'm still going. Every time I think it can't get any better, it does, and every time I think it might be kinda good, I blink, and it's shit again. I've written the same book over and over, but now I'm at the point where I'm not rewriting, I'm keeping most of it and editing on the micro level. I say cool shit now like "micro level." Sometimes I get so frustrated I cry, but I'm starting to kind of love my writing.
Age 30: On Thanksgiving day, 2022 I turn 30 years old. It's a big thing, a big birthday, the big three-oh. I have a really magnanimous feeling like I need to reflect and commemorate and mourn my twenties. I figure since it's my writing blog I should do that through the lens of writing, which has been a presence in my life the whole time, some might say, since before I picked up a pen. And I figure it's my blog and big birthday, so why shouldn't I make a long self-mythologizing post in the style of how I wrote in my twenties?
My adult fantasy novel is just about done, and I'm going to give it to someone to read, and then I'll query it. Four years ago if you would have told me I would write intensively for four years to get one functional novel I wouldn't have believed that was a good thing, but now I'm just proud that I'm mature enough to try and hone the craft before rushing to get recognition for it. I do want the validation of publishing, and I want the paycheck even more, but I had no idea it was possible to feel so content in a process. Just looking inward and fucking with something until it makes you happy (that's writing in it's bare bones, fucking with it until it makes you happy.) Writing is continually becoming; when you force your life into a narrative you start saying shit like that so it all seems so prescient and profound, and then the essay can end. I don't think I can get there. There's something in there about vocations and pens that I should use to put a neat bow on this but I can't. I'm just excited. I think I'm going to be okay.
