2:31 a.m. - 2004-10-18
A Decision
It’s late, and it’s quiet in my apartment aside from the occasional hiccup from the pipes and the soft music in my headphones.
I should be sleeping, even more so now that I realise I had the wrong shift in my head for tomorrow and I have to be up much sooner than I previously thought.
And yet, here I am, sitting here contemplating my future.
If I want to be a writer, I realise, all I have to do is write. A writer is anyone who writes, and as long as I keep putting pen to paper and fingers to keyboard, I will be a writer. Always have been, always will be, and I have the evidence of my first novel at age five to prove it.
But the question now becomes, do I want to be a Writer? Do I want to be one of those who stays at home all day with only my laptop Giles for company? Do I want to live most of my life inside my head with the imaginary people I’ve created there and try to carve a living out of their world?
I don’t know.
That’s not true.
I do know. I do know I want to do it. What I don’t know is if I can.
Diana asked me today why I need the external validation of other people to believe that I’m a writer. It’s a good question, but it’s one I can’t really answer. The nature of my brain, I suppose, is that I need people to tell me I’m good at something in order to be willing to do it. Sort of an endless loop to be stuck in, since I’m unlikely to get any good at anything without doing it for a while first.
But this weekend, I’ve had that external validation. Twice. I’ve had two things accepted for publication in two days, and suddenly I’m faced with the reality of the situation. If, in two days, I’ve had an article accepted and won a short story contest, the truth of the matter appears to be that yes, in fact, I can do it. Those two things, two little emails in my inbox, have turned this around once again. Now, I know I want to do it. And I guess I need to accept that I can do it, because for the first time in my life, there are people who I do not give Christmas presents to telling me that I can do it. Because as much as the support from my friends and family means, it’s hard not to scoff when they tell you that you can do something. They’re supposed to say that. It’s their job. They aren’t going to tell you if you’re terrible.
But editors, and judges, they tell you. And they’re telling me that I can do it.
So now I’m faced with the biggest problem of all. I have to do it. I can’t say that I don’t want to do this any more, can’t hide behind cheap excuses when it’s painfully obvious that I want this more than anything. When I really face myself, I know that the best times of my life have been when I’ve been writing something that I know is good. I remember all too well the years of ignoring the urge to write, pretending that other things were my real interests, stowing that part of my mind towards the back where I could easily ignore it.
And I remember, even more clearly, that winter day when that part broke out and forced me to pay attention to it. I haven’t stopped writing since that day, almost four years ago, and since then my fate has seemed somewhat inevitable. But I could hide behind the excuses of not being good enough. The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. Plenty of people write mediocre things every day, and I tried to convince myself that I was content to be one of them. It was easier that way.
But slowly, gradually, I’ve tested the waters. I’ve sent things in, written things that I thought were worthy of the light of day, gotten bolder and braver with my writing.
And they tell me I can do it, that I should do it, that I should keep doing it.
And now, I have to. I have to do it. I owe it to my mother, who typed that first novel for me, leaving the spelling entirely intact for posterity. I owe it to my grade five teacher who saw the writer in me and encouraged it. I owe it to my grade seven language arts teacher who took my essays and took me aside and told me I could write. I owe it to my grade ten English teacher who covered my essays with exclamation marks and enthusiastic comments. I owe it to my Shakespeare professor in university who took me aside after handing in my first essay and told me how exceptional it was. I owe it to the writing professor who never stopped believing in me even when I had completely given up on myself.
But most of all, I owe it to myself. I owe it to the five year old me who wrote that first novel and thought it was the greatest work of fiction that had ever been created. I owe it to the grade five me who wrote truly atrocious overwrought pre-teen angst that had moments of genuine emotion. I owe it to the junior high me who relished every creative writing assignment. I owe it to the high school me who poured her heart and soul into her World Lit papers only to write two of the best essays I’ve ever created. I owe it to the university me, who ignored the writing for too long, and to the university me who accepted it and took writing classes where I learned the intricacies of the craft I’ve always loved. I owe it to the me that dragged myself out of the deepest darks of depression to finish that last writing class. I owe it to the me who wrote my first NaNovel, that pile of mostly garbage with moments of true glory. I owe it to the characters who live in my head, the ones who stay mostly quiet until I need them, when they burst forward fully formed with such astonishing clarity I wonder how I ever thought I could do anything else.
Here goes nothing. I want to be a Writer. I can be a Writer. I will be a Writer.
