Are You Meant to Be a Writer?
The other day, I was making a birthday cake for one of my kids.
After much deliberation, the birthday boy decided he’d like a fish-shaped cake for his party, and the photo he gave me for reference looked like quite a challenge.
Nevertheless, I spent half of the following day secretly baking, icing and decorating, to surprise him when he would return home from school.
When my husband walked in the door and found me sweating over the colourful creation, he smiled, gave me a hug, and said, “Every kid should have a mom like you. You were meant to be a mother.”
For someone who once thought she would end up an eccentric spinster with a houseful of cats, those words really hit home. I didn’t always think I was meant to be a mother–in fact, I thought I’d be terrible at it. Now I know different.
This got me thinking about what it means when someone says, “You were meant to be a writer.”
A friend once said those words to me, without ever having read anything I’d actually written. For some reason, she felt it was something I was meant to do. While it was tempting at the time to treat it like an empty compliment, the more I thought about it, the more I started to believe her.
I know I’m meant to be a mother because I love my kids, I’m proud to hear them call me “Mama,” and I would do anything for them. Even when I fail my children, even when times get tough, I wouldn’t trade motherhood for the world.
Writing is different. I know I can string together a proper sentence, I have a vivid imagination, I love to read, and most of all–I enjoy writing. But those are characteristics possessed by many people, and not all of them want to (or should) become writers.
What separates us from others who simply enjoy writing? Is it a gift? A talent? A delusion?
How do you know you’re meant to be a writer? Or, if you’re still unsure, what keeps you from believing you have what it takes?
Photos courtesy of *Zara and swimparallel.
Suzannah Windsor Freeman writes and teaches in Canada and Australia (but never at the same time). Pop over to Write It Sideways for more great writing tips, or follow her on Twitter.
Suzannah, this is a wonderful post with a great analogy, (motherhood and writing). Like you, there was a time in my life when I thought I’d never marry, never have children – it just wasn’t “me”. In fact, after I’d finally found “the man”, and we announced to my parents, (shortly after we were married), that I was pregnant, my mother’s first words were “Oh no.” Yes, I was heartbroken, but with time I morphed into motherhood as if I were meant to do it all my life. No, I’m not the perfect mother, far from it, but when my mom told me I’m a great mother, I felt I’d reached “that place” where I finally felt comfortable calling myself a mommy.
Calling myself a writer happened in much the same way. I’ve written since the time I could hold a pencil, but didn’t start taking it seriously until a couple of years ago. At first I wrote only creative nonfiction, and started a blog last year – the 29th will be it’s birthday – and then writing friends encouraged my, okay practically demanded, I try writing fiction. I was terrified. Having tried writing fiction years ago, I had already decided I’d fail, so my first attempts were naturally not all that great. But with the help, and the kind comments, of those great writing friends, I eventually gained confidence, and began telling myself “It’s okay to call yourself a writer – you are one.” It wasn’t an epiphany moment, just a progressive realization. Now, I can’t imagine a time when I didn’t consider myself a writer, much like, when you have children, you can hardly remember the days when you didn’t.
Thanks for this great post, and happy Mother’s Day to you!
I had that progressive realization, too, Deanna. Thanks for sharing your story!
It took a long time for me to call myself a writer, but the day that I realized I was a writer was the day that I knew I couldn’t go through life without sharing my world in print.
A very interesting article indeed.
I’m the same as Deanna, I have always been known for writing since I old enough to hold a pencil (and eventually master a laptop!!).
Ambitions and career areas, in my life have come and gone (dancing, hairdressing, marketing, historian, teach etc) but writing is what I always come back to. My friends and family tell me I write because I’m talented, but I say that I write because I enjoy it.
Now I write stories, I blog, I write articles, and I love every moment that I spent piecing words together, for various gains.
And I don’t remember ever not being a writer. It’s what I do as a hobby, it was my university degree and now it is my future since I now write professionally :)
Kat, what a wonderful thing to be able to blend your passion for writing with your professional life. I like how you’ve tried other things but have always come back to writing.
I started writing to exorcise the demons of insecurity soon after I became deaf. For me at that time, I literally didn’t worry who read or how well I wrote. I truly needed to expel my fears and write about my experiences to keep my sanity.
Over time it became so much more. I wrote on issues of Domestic Abuse, Animal Cruelty (I take in strays, get them fixed, and re-home them). In the midst of all that something happened – I discovered despite my deafness I had a voice and I knew how to use it. Over the course of a couple years, more and more people began to ask me if I had a book, if I was a writer and if so where could they find my work.
I didn’t think much of it at the time, what came out on the page before me – flowed naturally; to me it would be nothing more than a natural extension of me.
These days I’m writing, not because all those people thought I could, rather because I started to believe in myself, to believe I can and do earn the title – writer. Honestly, I can’t imagine ‘Not’ writing. (Hugs)Indigo
Thanks for sharing this, Indigo. I love how you’ve used writing as your voice, and this is an inspiring story!
I realized I was meant to be a writer when I realized that, more than anything else I had ever done, writing filled me with a sense of accomplishment and pride. It’s cathartic, and I always leave my keyboard or notebook feeling refreshed and purged of whatever bothered me previously. I’ve never found an activity that is so pallet-cleansing.
That, and I’ve always done it. I remember writing stories before I understood how to write. I would make squiggles in rows on a page and then tell my mom I was reading to her from my book. I think it’s always been in my blood and my mind that I am a writer, a storyteller. And it’s only just now that I am beginning to realize the professional potential of those words.
My son has been writing stories since he could hold a pencil, too. He’s just turned 8 and he writes the most amazing things–way more advanced than what I would have been writing at the same age. I guess writing’s in the blood :)
This is a great post! I never thought I would be a mommy either but it’s amazing and I love it so much. Also, I believe you know you are meant to be a writer if you feel you MUST do it. I have a strong passion for writing and I wouldn’t feel complete without it.
I can identify with that feeling of “you MUST write,” Ashley. Sometimes I wish I didn’t feel that, but seems like I’m in it for the long haul. Might be easier if I were obsessed with knitting or something :)
Of course, like the others, I’ve been reading and writing since an early age. In particular, I began to read so young that I do not even remember not knowing how – my mother tells a story about how she “found out I could read” rather than the “teaching my daughter to read” stories most moms tell. One day, when I was just two or three, my mom announced that we might be able to go to our lakeside camp with my grandmother, and this was something I loved. I kept begging my poor mother to tell me when we were heading out, and finally, with an exasperated air, she sighed “When I find out whether or not it is going to be sunny this afternoon.” “Oh,” I said. “I will tell you.” Then, I reached out and grabbed the newspaper from the kitchen table, and read her the weather report! She was so shocked that she called my father at work to say that it seemed I could read. My parents suspect I had taught myself to read quite some time before that, but that I kept my new talent hidden because I thought that if they knew I could read books myself, they’d stop reading me stories before bed every night (something I loved almost as much as going to the camp)!
Language has always come easily to me. The rules of sentence structure and grammar seem natural. Spelling is the same. I can visualize words and the way they should look in my head the way some visualize complex mathematical formulas. My husband and I have been married 8 years and he says that in that time, I have spelled a word incorrectly only once — and I apparently corrected myself thirty seconds later. This natural language ability extends to foreign languages as well, and I learned both French and Spanish so quickly that my high school teachers suggested that I might be great as an interpreter for the UN.
However, I was also interested in science, and that is what I ended up doing for my first career. The siren song of writing was always there, though, sometimes louder than others. In college at a top science and engineering school, we were required to do a humanities concentration, and I chose creative writing. When I am asked what the best days of my life have been, invariably the day in college when I showed a story I’d written to one of my favorite authors (Alan Lightman) and he said I was very, very good makes the list. Later, I got a Ph.D. from a top medical school and worked in the laboratory doing cancer research for ten years.
Eventually, after some soul-searching, I left the laboratory bench to become a science writer. It’s a great career, because I can mix my love of science and my love of words. Still, I do feel a certain incompleteness, and in recent months have begun to slowly write fiction stories again during my downtime and I hope to write a novel (or two or three or four) in the near future.
Jennifer,
Wow you’ve got some tremendous talents there! It’s so great that you get to write for a living, but I understand the call of fiction. I hope you do get to write those novels one day!
I don’t know that I am “meant to be a writer.” I do know that the messy truths of humanity only make sense to me when I can wrap words around them, and that I like the work of doing that.
If I can make it pretty? Score.
“The messy truths of humanity.” Yes, there’s something cathartic about trying to put it down on the page.
If anyone is interesed I am starting something called TRIPLE F. It’s Flash.Fiction.Fridays. If anyone is interested in having their Flash Fiction featured on my site please email me. Check out http://labirdsnest.com for more details. Thanks!
How important is it for us writers to have a book deal before we feel comfortable calling ourselves a writer?
I don’t tell people I’m a writer just yet, but I tell myself I’m one. I don’t think non-writers understand unless you have a book deal, to be honest!
Good article!
Personally, I’m still unsure what I’m meant to be/do.
But, is that something that other people define for you, as you stated above? Is it something we are meant to discover for ourselves, something only we can define? Or can the opinions of others guide us to our “calling”?
Perhaps we have to discover it ourselves first, then through hard work and eventual success we can be defined as writers by others. I think we need to be the first ones to validate ourselves before others will validate us.
I’ve always had an active imagination – at school my favourite lesson was English and I’d spend hours writing my ‘neverending story’ about an adventure down a rabbit hole (which, with hindsight, does bear a striking resemblance to Alice in Wonderland, so I suppose you could argue that I was either a genius or a plagiarist at a very early age!)
In my adult life I’ve been writing fiction for the past five years, but I struggle with the label of ‘writer,’ given that most of the time I’m not writing, but rather obsessing over the fact I should be writing (if indeed a writer is what I want to be). I take part in NaNoWriMo every November to kick start my writing, but no sooner have I typed ‘The End’ than I invariably consign the manuscript to the murky depths of my hard drive, never to be looked at again. And the cycle begins again in earnest…
In answer to your question, I suppose I know I’m meant to be a writer because even when I’m too lazy to do it, I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s like a constant nagging voice in my head that just won’t let me ignore it. Do I have what it takes to be a success? Who knows. But what is the measure of success? Book sales? Or just the satisfaction of having eloquently conveyed your thoughts, emotions – not forgetting the thoughts and emotions of your characters – into words?
All I know is that I like it. For whatever reason it’s a part of me, and I hope it always will be.
Ah, the nagging voice. That’s so annoying, isn’t it? :)
I think early in the journey it’s really easy to give up on writing. You worry it won’t take you anywhere. But, as you spend more time practicing, learning about the craft, and seeing improvement, it becomes harder to put it aside. That’s the place I’m at right now. I
How do I know I was born to be a writer….because writing is like breathing. When I can’t do it or it’s been too long, I feel like I’m suffocating. It’s something I simply have to do.
I think that’s fairly typical of writers. Great definition!
I can’t say out loud that I was born to be a writer. I’m not even able to whisper it to myself yet. I am starting to tell myself with winks and nods, though.
I have always been envious of people who knew from the time they were very little what they wanted to be. Not too long ago I remembered playing office with a friend when I was 5 or 6 and she said she was going to publish my book and I ran out to tell my parents because I was so excited. She was going to publish my book!! :-) I wrote a newsletter for my class in 3rd grade – the whole thing. It was all my idea and I did it all myself. Then I wrote a series of books that my classmates could check out one at a time. And now, when I learn something new about myself or the world, my hand twitches and aches for a pen and paper so I can share it.
So yeah, I think I knew what I wanted to be when I was little. I think I was born to be a writer.