Being a Writer

Imagine we’re all sat in a circle, and the question is asked: “Do you want to be a writer?” And you raise your hand, and you see I’ve got my hand raised, too, and the follow-up: “How long have you wanted to be a writer?”

I don’t know what you’ll answer, but when it’s my turn I’ll say, “almost twenty years.”

I was in high school. I liked writing stories and I loved reading stories, but it never really occurred to me that, you know those authors you love to read? You could be one of them, until my English teacher told me, “you should be a writer.”

Like, the thought just hadn’t occurred to me. Obviously some people are writers, else I’d have nothing to read… but I could be one of them?

So then I got a degree in Computer Science and worked as a software developer for fifteen years, because that’s just how the story goes.

And now I’m thirty-five (well, almost thirty-six) and I still find myself wanting to be a writer, so… this is what I’m doing. I find myself thinking about someone who’s a teenager now, just imagining this for the first time. I don’t think, “well, it’s too late for me, but maybe…” No. It’s not too late for me, and if your answer to the question was “fifty years”, or your answer was “five years, but I’m already seventy”, it’s not too late for you, either.

But it doesn’t seem there’s anywhere you can look and see just what it takes to make all these writers we love into writers. If you ask them, it’s usually, oh, I’ve been writing since I was five, something something rejection letters and now I’ve published six novels. Okay, but… in between being five and writing five million words… you must have done something, right?

Well, I’m going to show you what happened. Starting with this: I’ve been dreaming about being a writer for twenty years. I don’t write regularly. For the last year or so I’ve been trying to build the habit of writing every day… and I haven’t done it yet.

If this turns out to be the only post on this blog, I guess you’ll know I failed or got eaten by carnivorous beetles. Otherwise, here’s how it works. Worked. Is working.

Join me.