On Becoming A Writer
I am beginning to get frustrated with all of my research on how to break into the world of writers-an elite league it seems. All of my reading, especially from my personal favorite writers, my idols, revolves around this *feeling* that you inherently ~know~ that you are meant to be a writer. That you were pre-destined for it and you could never have been anything else, or even think of being anything else.
I don’t think that’s right, at least not in my experience so far. Everyone else has thought that I would grow up to be a writer, but I never thought that. I haven’t been writing stories or telling tall-tales since I was little. My poetry, though I have written a lot of it since I was little, and I have studied poetry so much, is mediocre at best **(though I love it and refuse to change it just to satisfy a contemporary audience and publishers)**;However, even if I were to get them published, I still wouldn’t consider myself a poet any more than I do now, unpublished. I would just be someone who writes poetry from the heart when the mood strikes, in their spare time.
I always wanted to be a scientist. I am no good at math, or anything related to STEM, with the exception of freshman level Biological Science. But the study of plants and animals and the physical world has always fascinated me. I did everything in my power leading up to junior year of college to put myself on the path of being a Doctor of Marine Biology, I was convinced that this was my ultimate destiny, the thing I was meant to do, to be on a research boat in the Pacific looking through data sheets and microscopes and scuba diving for samples. Unfortunately that dream came crashing down as I couldn’t pass the first level of chemistry or botany, and completely tanked my GPA for all time.
Even though my strength is for the arts, languages and history, I wanted nothing to do with these subjects, except maybe as a hobby before going to bed, entertainment at most. So, I take issue with the fact that, now that I am interested in writing a book to be published and short stories, that I am not a *real* writer, just because I didn’t want it when I was younger.
I am also a bit embittered with the fact that most writers claim that in order to succeed, you have to make writing your full time job. How can any of us with real bills to pay possibly set aside 40 hours a week, for months at a time, to be at the mercy of an agent or a publisher that may decide that hundreds of hours of your work just “isn’t what we’re looking for right now” and you have to start all over. I resent the sentiment that ‘you don’t write for money, you write for you’ because that’s a real nice declaration when you’re not under threat of becoming a homeless, starving hopeful-writer. Believe me, I would LOVE to quit my day job and weekend job to spend all my time writing my stories, but unless I win the lottery, that’s not happening. The idea that you can’t write as a hobby, that you have to let it consume you in order to be taking it seriously-”bananas”, says I.
These are just my bones to pick with this industry, and maybe they’re right, maybe I will never succeed so long as I have to maintain two jobs and going back to school. But damn if I do, I’m going to set a different narrative for future hopefuls- IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO BEGIN THIS PROCESS, AND IT’S OKAY TO PURSUE IT ON THE BACKBURNER WHILE YOU DEAL WITH REAL LIFE OUTSIDE OF THE ARTS. YOU DON’T NEED TO CHOOSE BETWEEN YOUR ART AND HAVING FOOD ON THE TABLE. TAKE YOUR TIME.