Sunday, April 05, 2009
The Write Choice
I struggle with my identity as a writer on almost a daily basis. I haven't written more than a handful of (bad) short stories since leaving college almost 10 years ago. I have no significant body of work other than sporadic journal entries. So how can I identify as a writer? It makes little sense, and I've been trying to figure this out over the past few days.
I think I still identify as a writer for two main reasons.
First, I've always done so, ever since I won a small plastic dinosaur in a 3rd grade short story writing competition; I was also an English major with a creative writing focus in college. Background, by itself, is not enough of a justification. That's where the second and most important reason comes in; writing things down is the only way that I can sort my thoughts out. I'd forgotten about this until the past 6-8 months or so, when I slowly started to re-integrate writing back into my daily life. It's been a bit of a struggle because I repress a lot of things and writing brings them back up again. As a result, I still have an on-again/off-again relationship with writing. It reminds me of the time that I quit intoxicants (i.e. booze and pot) for over a year. After a few months of clear-headedness, all my repressed emotions and thoughts came bubbling up and I found myself spontaneously bursting into tears and punching walls.
Maybe the problem is that I assume that identifying one's self as a writer is purely dependent on actually getting published.
I think I still identify as a writer for two main reasons.
First, I've always done so, ever since I won a small plastic dinosaur in a 3rd grade short story writing competition; I was also an English major with a creative writing focus in college. Background, by itself, is not enough of a justification. That's where the second and most important reason comes in; writing things down is the only way that I can sort my thoughts out. I'd forgotten about this until the past 6-8 months or so, when I slowly started to re-integrate writing back into my daily life. It's been a bit of a struggle because I repress a lot of things and writing brings them back up again. As a result, I still have an on-again/off-again relationship with writing. It reminds me of the time that I quit intoxicants (i.e. booze and pot) for over a year. After a few months of clear-headedness, all my repressed emotions and thoughts came bubbling up and I found myself spontaneously bursting into tears and punching walls.
Maybe the problem is that I assume that identifying one's self as a writer is purely dependent on actually getting published.
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