I’m A Writer?
When people say they’ve wanted to be X, Y or Z since a young age, I have a tendency to internally scoff and roll my eyes even if, outwardly, I’m nodding my head and saying, “Really? That’s so great!” But I’m a total hypocrite because I’ve wanted to be a writer from a very young age.
I’ve spent the majority of my life entirely 100 percent sure that writing is what I want to do and writing is what I’m good at. That is, until I became a writer in the truest, I-pay-all-my-bills-by-writing kind of way. Now, in addition to doing what I love, I spend a lot of my time uncomfortably telling people, “I’m a writer?” and fighting off anxieties that my writing isn’t, and will never be, good enough.
Sure, there was a time when I didn’t want to be a writer, but in the spirit of full disclosure, I was a child and my desired profession at the time — a scientist — was inspired by Looney Tunes characters that wore white lab coats and blew off their eyebrows. (I’m still not sure about my reasoning for this because I have nothing but fondness for my eyebrows.)
But, for Christmas one year when I was of a young and indeterminate (because I can’t remember exactly) age, my mom gave me a couple write-your-own-book kits. These were exactly what they sound like: you write out your book and draw coordinating pictures to go with each page, send it off and a hardcover, printed book is returned to you with your name on the cover (cool, right?). I wrote two of these — both basically boiled down to fanfiction — one about ‘N Sync and one about “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe”, and I was on my way to becoming a writer. In high school, my path slightly altered course when I joined the newspaper. I still wanted to write books, but my mom advised me that the best way to get into publishing was to become a journalist (I feel the need to explain that this was pre-Internet advice). So I wrote for the newspaper and I went to a good college for journalism and I minored in creative writing because doing anything other than writing was unfathomable to me.
While my confidence in my career choice may have wavered (I had a whole tag on my Tumblr: “I want to be a journalist?”), I never doubted that I was talented and capable enough to pursue it, even through the harshest criticisms I had ever received. As an example: in response to one of my personal essays, a classmate said something along the lines of “your writing makes me want to kill myself.” So, I’m fairly certain I’ve already been dealt the harshest criticism of my writing I’ll ever receive, and it only made me stronger. Then, when I graduated from college, I began the slow, arduous process of establishing myself in the online entertainment journalism spheres with literally no contacts (because I, with all my stubbornly naive ideas about the industry, didn’t work any relevant internships or network very much). But I did it. Now, I write and edit articles for a living.
However, since I’ve become a real life writer, I’ve noticed two things: I’m surrounded by other writers who are eloquent and knowledgeable, who have been doing this for longer than me; and that I stopped getting the constant feedback that students receive in school. These two things, coupled with my need to project an outward appearance that falls somewhere in between too-cool-for-school and tough-bitch-thatnever-cries, has led to a bucket of anxiety that very few people in my life know about.
When I think about my career, my thought process is a constant stream of, “Am I good enough? Am I knowledgeable enough? Is my analysis smart enough? Is my voice interesting enough? Will I ever be good enough?” And if I dig even below the anxiety, there is an ever-present fear that at some point someone — a coworker, a boss, a peer — will figure me out; they’ll figure out that I am, in fact, not good enough and my career as a writer will be over. This has been a goal I’ve been working toward for most of my life, and now that I’ve achieved it, I’m afraid to lose it.
But I know that this fear is what’s causing doubts, causing my confidence to waiver and causing my anxiety. So I’m working on it. I remind myself that I’m talented, that I’m capable, that I’m good enough. (Yes, there certainly are mornings when I stand in front of the bathroom mirror and I recite this mantra like I’m in “The Help”.) I’m building up my support system; I’m reaching out to friends and talking about my anxiety without worrying about letting go of the tough-bitch-that-never-cries appearance, or at least trying not to worry about it.
I know it’s going to take some time before I feel comfortable in my career, since it’s still relatively new, but I also know that this is what I want to do with my life, this is what I need to do with my career. Hopefully I’ll get to a place where I know that I’m good enough at what I do to be able to shout it from the rooftops. Until then, I’m working on eliminating qualifiers and uptalk when speaking about my career:
Yes, I am a writer.
