I miss you.
What I Mean When I Say, "I'm a Writer"
Back in December, I went on a do-it-myself writing retreat. I booked a room in a hotel a couple of towns over and holed up there for the weekend. I wrote as much that weekend as I usually write in a week. (Having a soak in a whirlpool tub dangled as a reward helped.) I realized on Sunday, as my weekend came to an end, that for the first time, I'd felt like a "real" writer. Not a dabbler or a hobbyist, but an actual, true, dyed-in-the-wool writer.
Since then, I've been thinking quite a bit about what it means to say, "I'm a writer." The simple answer, of course, is that I write, therefore I'm a writer. Except, things are never that simple, are they?
I make my living writing and editing educational materials. Does that make me a writer? Lately, the answer has felt more and more like, "No." The writing and editing I do for my "day job" doesn't feel like mine. I have no ownership of it. My name is not on it. I do not decide the parameters of each project, parameters that seem increasingly arbitrary with each new project. Those parameters--usually driven by the needs and requirements of the public education system--often leave little room for creativity and exploration. Some are downright soul-sucking. There are exceptions, of course, but those exceptions are heavily outweighed by the rules. There's no sense of fulfillment in the work. It's just a paycheck. A rather irregular, inconsistent paycheck, at that. More and more often, I have to take on greater amounts of work to make ends meet. I frequently find myself wondering how else I could earn a living.
So what writing does fulfill me? Two kinds: writing history and writing fiction.
I used to write semi-regularly for a now-defunct history magazine for kids. It paid a pittance, but I loved it. Since that magazine shut down, I have not been able to find a replacement. I would love to return to that kind of writing again.
Then there's writing fiction. Whether it's spinning a NYC Midnight flash fiction story in a weekend or plodding away piece by piece on my novel-in-progress, that's the writing that makes my heart sing. The writing that energizes and satisfies me. The writing I want to nurture and grow and develop. The writing I want to strengthen by attending conferences and participating in the larger writer community.
The writing that always has to take a backseat to the writing I need to do to support myself and all the myriad tasks and responsibilities I have as a single, self-supporting woman. I never have enough money or time to attend conferences or even participate in the blogging community. If I'm lucky, I might have an hour a night to devote to "my" writing. Most nights, I don't have that much. Hardly enough to produce the thousand or more words my writer friends seem to produce daily or find markets to submit my short stories or, should by some miracle I finish my novel, find an agent to represent me. Hardly enough to make me feel like anything other than a dabbler or a hobbyist. Hardly enough to give me hope that someday I might actually publish something with my name on it.
So how can I say I'm a writer when so little of what I produce is truly mine? When the writing I have to do robs me of the time and energy I need for the writing I want to do?
My Word
It's become a tradition for me that instead of making New Year's Resolutions (and breaking them), I choose a word to guide me through the year. Sometimes the word comes quickly; sometimes--like last year--it's a struggle to find.
I usually start my word search by making a list of goals for the year. Below is my list for 2016. See if you can detect a pattern.
- Go to the gym.
- Go for walks.
- Go volunteer.
- Go to ALL my doctors. (I somehow missed my eye exam in 2015. Oops!)
- Go on a writing retreat
- Go to writers' conference or workshop.
- Go to California
- Go to the United Kingdom.
Three guesses what my word for 2016 is.
Kind of a no-brainer, huh?
Photo by Eivaisla/iStock / Getty Images
New Year? But I'm Not Done With the Old One!
I woke up this morning and the calendar informed me it's a new year. My brain, on the other hand, tells me something entirely different. I still have too much unfinished business from 2015 for it to be 2016 already.
My word for 2015 was "Forward," and I did move forward--in ways both hopeful and not. My savings account has a few more pennies in it on January 1, 2016, than it did one year ago. The numbers the doctors use to measure my health are better now than they were a year ago. And I've had to adjust to life without my canine companion.
But there are things I had planned to accomplish in 2015 that I haven't quite completed yet. For one, my Goodreads challenge. I started 2015 with the goal of reading 100 books over the course of the year. By June-ish, I realized that goal was entirely unrealistic and adjusted my target to 75 books. As of midnight, December 31, 2015, I had read 73 1/2 books---one and a half short of my goal.
My other goal was to finish the first draft of my new novel. As with my Goodreads challenge, I am thisclose to getting it done: only two chapters and a bit left to go.
I figure I need about a week to finish off those last two loose ends. We can postpone 2016 for a week, can't we?
All in favor, say "Aye!"
The Story Behind the Story: Act Natural
You know that old chestnut about comedy being hard? It's so very true.
I found that out firsthand during Challenge #3 of this year's NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge. I was assigned to write a comedy that takes place in a vintage clothing store and includes aluminum foil.
Comedy is not really my thing. I don't watch sitcoms (well, except for reruns of M*A*S*H) because, frankly, I don't find them funny. Same for "Saturday Night Live" and other late night television. Very few stand-up comedians make me laugh (although Bill Engvall and Jon Stewart have both, on occasion, made me laugh until I couldn't breathe). I've read a few books by Christopher Moore, but only two made me giggle: Lamb and Sacre Bleu. Still, his middle-school-boyish humor is not something I can recreate.
So what the heck was I going to do?
After 12 hours of panic, I decided to take a stab at writing a comedy of errors. It took all day of Day One of the two-day challenge to produce a draft. A very, very horrible, absolutely no good, very bad draft.
Day Two brought the rewrite. It was by far an improvement over Day One's draft, but I knew when I submitted it that my journey in the Flash Fiction Challenge was over. I was right. I didn't advance to the finals, but I did receive some very kind comments from the judges about the story. Still, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'm never again assigned comedy as a genre.
Click here to read "Act Natural."