I, WRITER
Photo: Viktoria Borodinova
There was a cartoon published in The New Yorker magazine many years ago that I still often think about.
A group of people are at a party (holding wine glasses) and surrounding a guy who looks a bit uncomfortable. The caption (paraphrased, since I don’t remember it exactly): “Oh, you’re a writer. How nice. So what do you do for a living?”
I still find this cartoon more painful than amusing because really, making a living as a writer is very difficult if not impossible. But the pain also stems from others not valuing it as something we have chosen to do with our lives because it may not have a dollar sign attached to it.
Curious how the words “making a living” only refer to a paycheck. We may hate or at best tolerate the jobs we do to earn that money to cover the essentials in order to live, but then we’re not really alive, are we?
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For me, whether I am paid or not for my writing, it is what I do. It is how I define myself. It is my identity. I live in order to write. I am a writer. Whatever else I do (paid or not) is peripheral to being a writer.
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That declaration took a long time to acknowledge and to feel comfortable over. Now it is my first and natural response whenever I am surrounded by strangers holding wine glasses at a party, or whenever I present my passport to questioning border guards in a new country, or whenever I need to introduce myself in any capacity to anyone in the world.
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The difference is that now I don’t apologize for it, nor attach another profession to it in embarrassment; nor do I justify it to anyone. It’s who I am.
Whether you are a beginner or a pro, it is up to you to decide if you are a writer. If you write because you feel it in your heart, soul, mind, and yearn to do it whether or not you are paid or published, then you are a writer.
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Own it! Say it to yourself. And then whenever you must, tell it to the world.
Writing wisdom:
“Surely, the writer is needed just as much as the monk or politician or painter or anyone who can balance and see the good and evil in the world as it presents itself to us.”
—Nikolai Gogol, Ukrainian Fiction Writer, Playwright, Essayist
Cheers, Irene
P.S. Need help and inspiration in writing GREAT fiction?
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