Dear “The Writer”, Where Have You Gone?

I have always been a writer. And I’m still one now, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this. I don’t remember exactly how old I was when I first picked up a pen and paper and proceeded to write my first, simple stories, but I think that I was around nine-years-old. I remember writing a story about two girls who sneak out of their houses in the middle of the night and go on an adventure that finds them in a world made of chocolate. I took it into school and showed it to my English teacher with an obscene amount of pride. Look at me, I was probably thinking, I’m a writer.

And I was. In my opinion, anyone who sits down to write anything is a writer. The idea of being a writer took hold of little nine-year-old me, and it never let go. Right now, I’m 22, which means I’ve been holding onto this little dream for 13 years. (A mathematician I am not — I just had to double check what 22–9 was on my phone’s calculator to avoid getting it wrong and looking like an idiot.)

13 years down the line, and I suppose you could say I’ve somewhat succeeded in my goal of being a writer. While I was in High School, I wrote a play for a competition that came runner-up. (It is a secret point of pride that the play was selected for the competition even though it was only half-finished. I’m also wholly of the opinion that the only reason it didn’t win was because the winner’s play was based around the events of 9/11, while mine was about the heartwarming friendship between a young woman and an old man. Obviously the 9/11 play was going to win, but I think mine was a close second.) I also got a few poems published in a little anthology, even though I’ve never really been much of a poet.

And then I went to University to study CreativeWriting, and while I was there I barely wrote anything. I learnt about the techniques for writing, and all of the different formats, and how to write a stage play, and a short film, and a short story, and a full-length novel. I learnt how to write a children’s book and how to be a performance poet. But for the most part, I wrote nothing apart from my weekly food blog (which after a few months of no return, quickly became a fantastic way for me to eat out at Nottingham’s best restaurants for free, so I’m certainly not complaining.)

It wasn’t for lack of trying, though. I planned and plotted and developed constantly — every week my course friends and I would come up with another idea for a parody TV show or a dystopian novel, and I’d buzz with excitement at the thought of writing it. But when I sat down to type, I’d become self-conscious. I wouldn’t be able to shake the sensation that what I was doing — making up stories, writing down fake words from people I’d imagined — was embarrassing, and foolish, and a waste of my time.

Recently, I managed to suspend my inhibitions long enough to plan an entire novel. 55 pages of intricate detail and complex characters are scribbled away in my notebook, and I love it. I love the story, and the relationships, and the plot. I love the magic of creation. And yet, every time I sat down, ready to begin, I was frozen. And now, I can barely even bring myself to sit down. I toy with the idea of spending a day writing, and then I become too shy. I convince myself there are a million other things I should be doing with my time. I tuck the story away like a secret, in the back of my brain.

And so here is my question to “The Writer”, which is what I have always been. The writer of my family. (The next JK Rowling is what they always say — I think that she is the only author they know about. I don’t know where they think the rest of the books in the world come from.) Anyway, back to my question.

Dear “The Writer”, where have you gone? We used to be so close — we’d spend hours together every day. I never wanted to be with anyone else but you. Did I do something wrong? Are we not meant to be? Is there anything I can do to make it better?

There is, of course, something I could do. I could shake off my fear. I could manoeuvre myself out of the creative dead-end that I’ve driven into, even though I’m frightened of crashing. I could write. I could write until my word count outweighs my self-doubt. Maybe then The Writer will come back to me.