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”?
Claiming to be an artist is the same sort of struggle. I claim it but don’t always believe it.
I know what you mean, Jackson. Sometimes my voice wavers when I say the words, but dammit! I’m going to keep saying them.
Beautiful subject! I always loved to write, and I write stories, poems, novels since childhood. Never thought about ‘how I call myself, writer or not’. Interesting enough, here in France, we have 2 words for a writer: ‘écrivant’ (not a very known word) for someone who writes as a hobby; and ‘écrivain’ for a professional (meaning: writing as a job).
During a writing class, I said ‘I write because I can’t ‘not write’ in my life’. I’d say that this would be a good definition of being a writer or not.
Thank you, Judy
Hello Patricia and thank you so much for commenting. For some reason, I’m just seeing this comment. Must have been the flurry of the holidays. I appreciate the two words with their different meanings. I do know some who write as, more or less, a “hobby.” That is, they write occasionally and to have fun or they take a workshop every now and then, but don’t have that same “I write because I can’t ‘not write’ in my life. There must be a word somewhere in between those two–more than a hobby but not as a “paying” job. That is, writers like me and many others I know (and you): no one pays us to show up at the desk every day, but we do. Maybe, at some point, some of our work will be published and we’ll be paid for it–though sometimes only in copies of the journal in which it appears. But we go on, don’t we. We go on. Happy New Year!
Beautiful subject! I always loved to write, and I write stories, poems, novels since childhood. Never thought about ‘how I call myself, writer or not’. Interesting enough, here in France, we have 2 words for a writer: ‘écrivant’ (not a very known word) for someone who writes as a hobby; and ‘écrivain’ for a professional (meaning: writing as a job).
During a writing class, I said ‘I write because I can’t ‘not write’ in my life’. I’d say that this would be a good definition of being a writer or not.
Thank you Judy!
Thanks for your thoughts, Patricia. Interesting delineation between ecrivant and ecrivain. I wonder if there’s a word for those of us who “write because I can’t ‘not write’ in my life.” I think, really, it comes down to how we see ourselves because that will determine how we spend our time–writing or not writing (and missing it).
Dear Judy,
I’m looking forward to reading your blog with the 25 suggestions about how to claim yourself as a writer.
Arlene
Hi Arlene, I’ll post it in the next couple of weeks. Thanks for stopping by.
I’m looking forward to the list
So looking forward to the list
Coming soon, Kris. Thanks
Judy,
How I loved your post today. It cleared my confusion between Writing and Writer. I am a writing student, dream to become a writer.
Ping
Thank you for writing, Ping. To me, a writer is someone who writes–or as Michael Lewin put it in his comment, “I commit seriously in time and energy to honing my art/craft.” May you do the same. All best wishes to attaining your dream–one day at a time.
you are an inspiration thanks
Right back atcha, Una! By the way, do you identify yourself as “poet” when people ask?
A thought provoking article Judy – thank you…..
For many years I have thought of myself as a creative type – working a process to produce a ‘product’ whether the materials that carried me there were paints, wood, steel or indeed words. Managing to explore different disciplines in my own, almost innocent way, I could not fix a precise label to myself. Which was okay because if I had attached a label saying, for instance: ‘ Artist, ‘ I would have suffered greatly from the malaise of Imposter’s Syndrome. The word just seemed so pretentious -after all Leonardo da Vinci was an artist! Now, in my maturity, after years of writing I’m fine with saying I’m a writer. I’m not saying a ‘good’ writer. I’m not saying a ‘successful’ one, by any conventional standards, but I do write – I commit seriously in time and energy to honing my art/craft which – if anything defines me – this does…..
I like the way you put it, Michael–“commit seriously in time and energy to honing my art/craft…” Thanks always, for stopping by with your thoughtful comments.
Hi Judy!
Having written since I moved to Vancouver after leaving our little coal bucket in the Kootenays of BC Canada way back in the Stone Age, you bet I call myself writer. Writing is what I brought with me through the decades regardless of marriages, jobs, and domicile. Those jobs by the way were money generators while writing was and is vocation. A hundred years or so later I added watercolour painting so now I am Writer and Wannabe Artist.
You reveal your humble nature when you, the master, do not trump your status. I gotta learn that humble thing. Hmm. Next century perhaps….
Oh yeah. Your hair is nicer than Brenda Starr’s.
Thanks, Linda. You always were a step ahead, at least in the years we’ve been corresponding. And thanks about the hair, but no, Brenda Starr wins that one. Cheekbones, too.