“Are you a writer?”
The question was appalling. It was invasive. I hated it. I would have rather she’d asked me about my sex life, or my political views. Anything but that.
But why should I not expect such a question? We are attending the Festival of Faith and Writing, for crying out loud. All of us here love words. All of us love to read. And many many many of us are writers.
It turns out that I was standing in front of a booth not of book sellers (as all of them in the row heretofore had been), but of a literary journal. And the two women sitting there (who were, it must be said, very nice women) are here to solicit subscriptions and contributors.
That’s why she asked “Are you a writer?”
When I finally broke free of the ensuing conversation (during which, it must be said to my credit, I was friendly despite having been shocked out of my mind by its opening), I stumbled through the booths of books wondering why in the world that simple question had bothered me so much.
The truth is this: I am afraid to call myself a writer.
Why? I don’t write. I mean, I really don’t. What I do is all the other things I do: care for my family, care for my home, homeschool my children. And when I have time, I spend time with my friends, and talk to distant friends and family on the phone, and read and write for class, and work on developing curriculum, and play my violin in the church orchestra, and go for walks and do tae bo, and iron my husband’s shirts, and work in the garden. Oh, and I write in this blog. But that’s not Real Writing.
What I Really Want to Write is what is languishing in a file on my desktop: a novel of Significant Vision that is Woefully Incomplete. And it’s harder to get to that project than anything else I do, because entering into that project is entering into a world that is utterly in my mind. And the rest of my world is Much Louder and More Insistent– on a day-to-day basis– than the beautiful story in my head.
But I can’t call myself a writer for another reason: when I look at that novel, I find that, in addition to being Woefully Incomplete, it is Woefully Inadequate. It is, in short, bad. It wants revision, it wants editing, it wants to be finished so that I can start all over again. And I’ve already told you the problem with that.
So I would call myself a writer if I actually spent significant time writing something significant, and if that Something Significant were also Good.
When she said, “Are you a writer?” I should have said, “No.”
Nonetheless, when the first seminar time rolled around, I went to the session called “Writing Against the Odds.” And I knew, going in, that I might as well have “Writer Wannabe” branded on my forehead, because this was a session for writers. All of us in there were about writing when it’s hard, when you have too much going on to even find time to write. No one was in there just because he likes to read.
I knew what they were going to say, those three published writers who, by the act of publishing, proved to the rest of us that they were, in fact, Real Writers. They were going to say: I know it’s hard to find time, I know you have children around your ankles, I know you have a full-time job and are going to school full-time and are living in a fixer-upper, but Just Write! Still, I thought I might need to hear it anyway.
And then, to my delight and surprise, that is not what they said. No. All three of them have children, all three of them work, and all three of them struggle to find time to write. They have to accept the offered help from willing spouses (and I have a Willing Spouse who offers Much Help) so that they can get away and write. They write even when the inspiration and time don’t appear to offer themselves. And they reminded me that you have to write from where you are, even if where you are is noisy and cluttered with busy-ness and not what you envisioned for the artistic process.
Oh.
I realized, this afternoon, that a part of me has been waiting. For what? you ask. For more silence, and still space. I wait for summer to work on the book, for when class and homeschool are out for the summer, for Friday afternoons in the coffee shop or the quiet house of a friend. I’ve been waiting to finish my graduate program, for a year during which I wasn’t working outside the house and wasn’t a graduate student, to have evenings with no claims on them, and space in which to write.
But I’m going back to teaching in the fall. Already my work responsibilities have begun. Rather than a space opening between my Masters thesis and full-time teaching, a space where– surely– I could write this novel well, those two projects are going to overlap. And somewhere in the midst of it all, I hope to squeeze out a novel.
I sat there in this seminar, looking at people who Are Indeed writers, who somehow squeeze out language of tangible heft and beauty amidst the busy-ness of their lives.
One of the speakers said that love is an obstacle to writing. And it is. Because I love my husband, I spend time with him instead of writing. Because I love my children, I do the same with them. And because I love them, I have things to write about: ideas, and understanding, and, even, elements of story that emerge from the dailiness of our lives.
So love is an obstacle to writing, but it is also fuels the ambition. Because I love the writing, too, you know. I love the way the pen feels in my hand, I love to watch the words emerge on the blank screen, I love the way the story seems to uncover itself from I know not where. And when I write– and write something well– then I am glad in ways that I cannot begin to explain to you.
I’ve decided to stop waiting. Now is the time I’ve got, and it’s a busy now, but what can you do?
Turns out I’m a writer.
