All my life, since I can remember, I wanted to be a writer. Dreaming myself “Brenda Starr, Reporter” after that beautiful woman with voluptuous red hair, who, in the Sunday comics traveled the world to exotic places, chasing after stories for her newspaper. There was also a mysterious man—Basil St. John, who wore a patch over one eye and raised black orchids.
After my adolescent Brenda Starr phase, I got a crush on Lillian Hellman. Not the person, but the image—a moody black-and-white photograph of her, cigarette between her lips, tumbler of Scotch on the table beside her upright typewriter, deep in concentration. Somewhere in the background, her lover, a dashing Dashiell Hammett. The two of them living a noir romantic, alcohol-fueled, literary life.
These images, and others—Dorothy Parker at the Algonquin, Anais Nin and her many journals and many lovers, Beryl Markham flying West With the Night—I carried in my imagination of me as Writer. Garrets in Paris may have been involved, stilted huts at some tropical water’s edge.
Instead, married with family, a Pop Warner Football mom and Bluebird leader, I worked in newspapers, in radio and TV, PR and marketing. Every job included me writing, but I never said, “I am a writer.” Instead I said, “I work for …” or “I do PR,” because, truth be told, I didn’t believe what I did was writing even though the better part of my days were ass-in-chair, fingers-on-keyboard, writing. I believed, as so many other dreamers I have since worked with, that a writer is someone who has written and published a book, probably several books. Someone who has agents and editors and goes on whirlwind book tours. Yet even after I had written and published two or maybe even three books, I didn’t feel like a “real writer.”
Now, after all these years, I do claim myself as writer. Not because of the books I’ve written or the number of places my work has been published, but because I write every day, or nearly so. It’s the daily practice of writing, not being published, that has given me the confidence to name myself writer.
I’ve just returned from my annual retreat in Mexico with a cohort of wild women writers. During our time together, we had quite a lively dialogue about how to build confidence as a writer based on a handout I’d prepared, which begins: “1.Claim yourself as writer.” and, 24 suggestions and ideas later, ends with: “25. Write.” I’ll post the entire list in an upcoming blog.
So, do you claim yourself as “writer”?
Judy – I do claim myself as author because of working with you all these years. I love your Brenda Starr story. When I was young I fantasized about being Julie Andrews. I loved to sing and was either going to be a nun who falls in love with a captain with seven children or Mary Poppins who was practically perfect in every way!
Thanks for sharing your early fantasies, Jill. I’m glad you’re not a nun. Not that I have anything against nuns, but I don’t know if we would have come across one another if you were and nun and and me, such a sinner. Ha. Oh, and by the way, your are practically perfect in every way!
You always do good in the world. You teach people and the fruits of your efforts show your goodness.
Thanks for all this, Linda. Part of me wants to demure and tell you all the ways I don’t “always do good in the world,” but I’m trying to learn to simply say, “Thank you.”