Was I Meant To Be A Writer? – WN 022

This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 22: Was I Meant To Be A Writer?

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m your host, Sarah Werner. And I don’t know if you’ll be able to tell on this recording or not, but I am beginning to lose my voice, which is bad for a podcaster. And this is one of those times where I’m not exactly sure why I’m losing my voice. I haven’t been running around the house screaming at the top of my lungs and flailing like a Muppet or giving lots of long, eloquent speeches. I don’t sing, that I know of. This might be one of those times where life is just set upon proving to me that it can take away anything from me that it wants at any time and I can do nothing about it. Also, it might be allergy related. But I’m not going to let the fact that my voice is slowly fading away keep me from podcasting this week. So, please bear with me if my voice creeks and croaks and fades and such. I will persevere because I have a lot of really cool stuff to talk about this week.

First and foremost, I am going to be adding a couple new podcast episodes to my repertoire. Those of you who have been listening to this podcast since the start, or those of you who have signed up for my email mailing list, may recall about, oh gosh, four months ago, maybe, when I sent out an email gauging interest from listeners like you in a once a day, 10 minute, daily inspiration podcast thing called Coffee Break. The reception that I got was overwhelmingly positive, and then some people who are very close to me reminded me that I barely have time to do these podcast episodes, work my full-time job, attempt to write and spend time with my family, et cetera. So, I quickly kaboshed that, but the idea lived on.

So, I’m going to be introducing a sort of different kind of Coffee Break podcast, episode type thing. It turns out I know a lot of really cool and smart people who know a lot of really useful things about writing. So, what I’m going to do is offer a second weekly podcast called Coffee Break. So, I’m totally stealing my own name. But what it’s going to do is just be casual conversations over coffee with friends and writers. I will be releasing them in the same feed as the Write Now podcasts, but there’ll be clearly marked. So you can choose what you want to download. So if just the one Write Now podcast a week is good for you, then that’s good for me. But if you want all of the episodes, including the Coffee Break episodes, those will be available to you as well.

I just finished recording my first interview. Anyway, stay tuned for that. It’s just going to be a test run. I’m going to be seeing how it works and if I have the energy to release extra episodes like that. I’m just always looking for ways to improve my podcast and to make it grow and flourish. And what can I say? I like to try new things. So, keep your ears peeled. That’s kind of gross. Stay tuned, maybe, is more appropriate for a show like this. So, stay tuned.

A quick note for those of you who are Patreon supporters. These extra episodes will not be part of that. So nothing will change. You will keep contributing as you are contributing now.

This is so weird and unusual for me. Usually I don’t have announcements at the beginning of an episode, so I guess just drink it in. It’s like, “Oh, my voice is going. I might as well use it all up on these announcements and have none left for the actual episode.” I’m such a weirdo. I do have one more announcement, but I’ve wasted enough of your time already. So I’ll go ahead and save that for the end of the episode.

So now onto today’s topic. It’s a question that you might have asked yourself before, or maybe it’s just something you’ve never even considered and you’ve simply taken as fact. But the question is, was I meant to be a writer? I asked this question because it’s something I take for granted a lot. I kind of assume that everyone I talk to who loves to write feels, in the way that I feel, that they were meant or fated or destined or intended to write. But last week I received a really lovely and interesting letter from podcast listener Amanda. Her subject line was very intriguing. It said, “Can someone not be a writer?”

So, I would like to read a small excerpt from Amanda’s letter because it might be a question that you’ve been struggling with as well. Amanda writes, “Hi, Sarah. Been listening to your podcast for a while now. It’s a nice, calming thing to have in my ear while working my mindless, horrid cubicle job. It’s good to be in this gray hellscape and hear about this thing I enjoy doing. At least, I enjoy it in theory. So I have an issue. I’m not sure if I’m meant to be writing. I don’t even know if I like it or not. I mean, I guess I like the process itself. I like coming up with characters and thinking about the situations they would get into. I like developing the characters. I love writing dialogue particularly. There’s something special in finding a voice in you that isn’t yours. I like this so much that it tends to influence my writing style. When I write, it’s never a passive third person, but the character talking. It makes my writing change depending on which character I’m working on, and that is exciting. But I spend maybe 5% of my time actually writing. The rest of that time, I’m in misery. I agonize over my faults until I can barely move, let alone be creative.

I’m a collaborative writer. I’ve been doing this for years. I don’t really have the attention span to write on my own. And for how much I love character and dialogue, I can’t string a plot together to save my life. But being a collaborative writer, I’m not sure I can do that either. The writers I know are quite talented, much more so than me. I try to meet them at their level, but I don’t think I ever make the mark. They know how to use their words. They can actually come up with beautiful metaphors and ways to describe scenery. I’m very much a one trick pony compared to them.

I have a lot of negativity associated with writing. It’s all in my head probably, but I’m just wondering if I should even be writing at all. Can someone maybe have the passion for writing, but then shouldn’t do it anyway. Sincerely, Amanda.”

I’ve thought a lot about Amanda’s email. Amanda, if you’re listening to this, thank you so much for reaching out to me. I don’t think you’re alone in feeling the way that you feel. In fact, I can guarantee that you’re not. There’s a lot of talk about what you’re meant to do with your life. Meant to do implies meaning. What is your life meant for? What does your life mean? For me, I’ve always taken a perhaps embarrassingly simplistic view of things. My view has always been if you have the innate talent for something, then I think that it was something you were meant to do. And I think that everyone who just heard me read your letter, or parts of your letter, out loud would agree that you certainly have a talent for putting words together. You have a gift. You wrote clearly and concisely and conveyed, not only fact, but emotion. The words were put together with a natural flow. And I could certainly tell from that that you are a gifted dialogue writer. I think you have a very good ear for language. So I think the question becomes if I have a talent for something, does that necessarily mean that I’m meant to do it? Maybe as a career, as a hobby. Either way, is this something that I am meant to do? Is this a title I can claim? Can I say I’m a writer? Should I say I’m a writer?

Amanda, thank you so much for your letter. I think I’ve said that like 500 times, but seriously, thank you. In response, I want to talk about what it means to be intended for something or to feel as though you were meant to do something. So, I think the very first thing to consider when you wonder whether you were meant to be a writer or whether you should be a writer is whose mandate are you taking into consideration? Who is imposing these shoulds and meant to’s? Where does it feel like those are coming from? Fate? God? A higher power? A teacher? A professor? A friend? Yourself? The feeling of enjoyment and satisfaction that you get when you’re able to sit down and write something really good? This is something that I had to sit down and really intentionally think about. I spoke a little bit in a previous episode about what happened when I felt as though somebody had set a bar that I should meet with my writing that I took away from my college education, that I needed to be a mixture of Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor and John Cheever all at once. Those were professors and teachers who imposed those shoulds. I later realized that they were shoulds that didn’t apply to me or shouldn’t apply to me because they weren’t true to who I was as a writer or they weren’t driving me toward a path of honest expression as a writer.

Think about all the shoulds that you’ve received in your life. I mean, some of them are important. You should drive on the correct side of the road. You should pay your bills. You should probably not be late to work. You should exercise 30 minutes a day, five times a week. You should eat your vegetables, right? Some of these shoulds are in our best interest to comply with, but sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they’re not in our best interest. And it’s so hard to recognize the intention behind the should. Here are some of those shoulds.

I was told that I should write more like Flannery O’Connor, John Cheever and Ernest Hemingway. I was told that I should not major in English because it’s a useless liberal arts degree. I was told that I should be majoring in science of some sort. I was told that I should write for a living because I was talented. I was told that I should not write for a living because writers never get paid or they don’t get paid enough. I was told that I should go to grad school, but then I was also told by other people that I should not go to grad school, but rather that I should get a job, maybe in a cubicle farm at a company where I could start making money, paying off my student loans, start putting away money for retirement.

Many of these shoulds, I later learned, were fueled by other people’s interests. Again, often it’s so hard to discern whether or not a should is actually a should that you should listen to until it’s too late or after the fact. Those shoulds began to overwhelm and conflict. I got confused and became depressed. I felt lost and directionless. And maybe you felt that before too. I felt so sure that one path, one specific path, had been set out in front of me and that I was failing miserably at discerning and following it. I knew, in the bottom of my heart, that I wasn’t John Cheever and I never would be, but what I didn’t realize is that that was okay. All I could think was I’m not John Cheever. I’m not Flannery O’Connor. I’m not Jane Austin. I’m not James Baldwin. I will never meet those shoulds, those goals, that have been placed in front of me. I think that what’s hard to remember amidst all of those shoulds and meant to’s is that your life isn’t just one predetermined path. At least, I believe it’s not. Your life isn’t just point A to point B. It’s point A to literally anywhere. Points B through Z and beyond. What I’m saying is that there are literally thousands of possibilities and thousands of choices that you make in any given day that, slowly and surely, over time determine the course of your life. No pressure or anything.

The only person who can make those choices is you. No matter how powerless or trapped or desperate you might feel, you still have choices to make. They might be kind of crappy choices, but they’re still choices and they are still yours. What I’m saying is that you have talent. You’re a good writer. And yes, I’m talking to you. You have talent. All of those shoulds and fates and meant to’s aside, at the end of the day, it is your choice what to do with those talents. If you want to use them, then use them and revel in the joy and satisfaction that using your talents can bring. If you don’t want to use your talents, or if you choose to do something else, I think that your talents will be wasted, but I still think that if you make that choice, it’s your choice to make. It’s your choice to write or to walk away. The only person who decides that is you.

I picked up another, I think, question that was buried within that letter that Amanda wrote. It was the question of what kind of writer was I meant to be. If I was, indeed, meant to be a writer, what kind of writer was I meant to be? In her letter, Amanda spoke about having strengths as a collaborative writer and that she was, maybe, disappointed in her abilities to craft scenery into plot even though she’s very skilled at dialogue. I know that I’ve felt this way. I remember the very first novel that I wrote. I was in seventh grade and I was so proud of it. It was a science fiction novel. It was about this woman who’s a space captain, of course. She lands on all these different worlds and has all these exciting adventures. Gets horribly maimed in space battles. I remember feeling so proud of it when it was finished, and then I remember reading, reading other things, reading books that were different than what I had written. What I had written was very fast paced and dialogue heavy. It was very quick, fun and light. I came across authors who wrote very, very lyrical, beautiful descriptions of scenery. I read books with intense and meaningful metaphors. I realized everything that I believed my novel was lacking.

So I know what that feels like, but I’ve also learned a lot since then. What I learned is, I hate this expression, but two sides of the same coin. Say you feel as though you’ve been labeled, or maybe you’ve taken that label upon yourself, and you say, “I’m just a collaborative writer,” or, “I’m just a screenwriter,” or, “I’m just good at description and not much of anything else.” Just because you don’t think that you’re any good at all that descriptive stuff or all of that plot stuff, or maybe just because you’ve been told that you’re not good at all that descriptive stuff or all that plot stuff, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t or can’t write, or enjoy writing, or write novels, or write short stories, or write screenplays, or poetry, or whatever it is that you want to write because what is good? Good is a standard that we set. Good is the standard that was set for me in college as defined by John Cheever, Jane Austin, et cetera. But comparing yourself to other writers will only establish them as good in your mind, and conversely establish you as lacking. It’s so easy to forget that there is more than just one kind of good.

A really great way to sort of internalize this for yourself is to just expand your reading horizons. Read outside of your comfort zone because I think that you’ll find that there are tons of writers with very different specific strengths. There are a lot of writers who are very good at dialogue and not really good at other things, but they’re able to play to their strengths and craft a novel that is still riveting, interesting and meaningful. I don’t think anyone would say that Ernest Hemingway has a gift for beautiful, flowing, lyrical, elegant description because everything he writes is very to the point and stark, but he uses that as a strength. There are a lot of, especially more modern works, that are essentially crafted via lines of dialogue and there’s not a narrator who has his or her own voice. I’m thinking especially of, say, the first Hunger Games novel, which is entirely written from an introspective point of view. Most of the conflict that happens is internal. I mean, yes, it’s a bunch of teenagers out on a gladiator arena, essentially, but I think a lot of the interesting conflict comes from Katniss’ struggle with her own morality.

What I’m saying is you don’t have to write like another successful writer to be considered good. Just as you have your own talents, you have your own strengths within those talents. If you’re good at writing dialogue, then go ahead and use that strength. Make it a strength in whatever it is you’re working on. Write from a first person point of view. If you’re really good at description, then maybe try writing from a third person point of view and gathering most of the atmosphere and feeling and mood for the book within the imagery that you are able to create with your vocabulary.

If you’re not sure where your strengths lie, try some free writing, try journaling, try some stream of conscious writing. Just sit down with a pencil and figure out what it is that you’re compelled to write or drawn to write. Write toward your talents. And don’t be afraid to gloss over the stuff that you enjoy writing less, or that you’re perhaps less strong in, because at the end of the day, there is not just one way to write. I promise there’s not.

So, to sum up my answer for your question, I think that if you want to be a writer, I think that if you love to write, and if you find joy and fulfillment from writing, even the 5% of the time that it’s good, then you should write. Whether you turn that into a career or leave it as a hobby is a choice that you’ll have to make. How you use your talent and how you draw out your own strengths might be another choice that you have to make. Just remember that every writer is different and that’s what makes literature so awesome. We need all of these different voices to tell a complex and complete story of humanity. So, when you tend toward labeling yourself as lacking in one area, you might just simply be a different kind of writer than the people that you’re comparing yourself to. So, write toward your strengths and remember that there is no one path that’s been set out for you. There is no point A to point B. There is point A to anywhere that you choose to go.

This weeks book of the week is actually a series of five books. I totally cheated. And I made the mistake of starting a series. And when I start a series and it’s a good series, I get sucked in and I can’t stop reading. I will stay up until 3:00 AM and it’s kind of the best thing ever. So, I read the Fever Series by Karen Marie Moning. And I’m going to start off by saying that it’s not for everyone. There’s this weird disconnect between the cover art and the content of the book. I picked up a copy of the first book, which is called Dark Fever. I was like, “Oh, my. This is a saucy novel and it’s going to be a romance.” Just, seriously, look at the cover. But it ended up being an extremely rich, urban fantasy tale. If you’re not familiar with the genre, urban fantasy is sort of Harry Potter meets the streets of Chicago. It takes old worlds, fantasy tropes, elves or vampires or any other fun, supernatural thing, and mixes it up in a modern world.

There’s sort of a sub genre or a sister genre to urban fantasy and it’s called paranormal romance, which is what I kind of thought I was getting into, but it ended up being a lot less romantic and a lot more adventurous, which I really appreciated. There is a lot of adult language in these books, which is why I say they are not for everybody. So, please take that as a word of warning.

The story that was woven throughout the five books that I read was epic and masterfully done. So, let me back up a second and tell you what these books are actually about. The first one is called Dark Fever and it stars an impressionable young woman who travels to Dublin after receiving news of the death of her sister. She arrives in Dublin, identifies the body and sets out on her own investigation of how her sister was killed. The protagonist’s name is MacKayla or Mac for short. She starts off as maybe a little bit obnoxious. She does very much grow throughout the series, which is very well done. Moning is an excellent writer and is very good at character development. So she starts off as almost this very girly, fashion obsessed, bubblegum chewing type. She’s very frivolous. By the end of the series, by the end of book five, she’s turned into this very hardened, yet still empathetic, hero.

Ms. Moaning does a very good job of weaving in a very realistic mystery with the richly created world of the Fae, that’s F-A-E, which could translate to fairies, but it’s not like Tinkerbell flying around. These are powerful beings who come from two different courts that are at war against each. Mac ends up being tested beyond what she thought she could handle. It’s surprising, it’s rich, it’s interesting. It’s not for everyone. If you don’t like graphic language or swearing or steamy romance scenes, then I suggest that you not read this series, but I was very glad that I had read it.

I said that I had two announcements for this episode and the first one was about Coffee Break. And for the second, I’ve just booked my first speaking gig for the year 2016. That’s right. I do speaking when my voice isn’t on the fritz like it is now. If you’d be interested in having me speak at an upcoming event, I love to do that. You can go to my website, SarahWerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R.com. And navigate to the speaking page. You can kind of see and get a feel for all of the different things that I’ve spoken about from creative writing, to female leadership, to how to communicate effectively online, to content strategy and just a whole bunch of other stuff. So, that’s exciting and I love to do it. So, get in touch with me if you’re interested in having me speak at an event because it’s really fun for me and, hopefully, for my audience.

If you would like to submit a question for me to answer, or if you just want to get in touch, I absolutely love getting emails and letters from people. I love it. It makes my day to hear from listeners like you. You can shoot me an email at hello@sarahwerner.com, or you can go to my website and navigate to the contact page and fill out my handy dandy little form. It is really thundering.

I also invite you to sign up for my email newsletter. You can also do that on my website, SarahWerner.com. I don’t send out a whole lot of emails, but, well, I have another announcement coming up soon regarding my email list. So sign up, stay in touch. More to come on that.

I have several people that I would like to thank for their contributions to today’s podcast episode. First of all, podcast listener Amanda, thank you so much for your thoughtful and beautifully worded question. I really appreciate you reaching out to me and getting in touch with me. I hope that I’ve addressed your questions efficiently. If not, let me know and we can talk some more.

I would, of course, like to thank my Patreon sponsors, including official cool cat, Sean Locke, official rad dude, Andrew Coons, official podcast caffeinator, Rebecca Werner, and so many others who graciously help support this podcast and make it possible. Thank you so much. If you are interested in helping to support the Write Now podcast, you can do so via Patreon. Just go to the show notes for today’s episode and click help support this podcast. It’s in a link at the very top.

Thank you especially to my friends, Peder Aadahl, who runs the 168 Opportunities podcast, for being a constant inspiration. Thank you also to Ron Gibson for his very useful advice.

And with that, this has been the Write Now podcast, the podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I am Sarah Werner and I hope that by my next episode I have my voice back. Take care. [Thunder in distance.] Sorry, I had to leave that thunder in because it sounded awesome. Okay, bye.