A writer, by any other name...
"I wonder when I can legitimately call myself a writer?" I wondered, gazing thoughtfully into the middle-distance.
"Well, you're writing a book aren't you?" my mother's voice emerged from the telephone.
"Yes, but... is that it...?"
I was in my early twenties and unemployed (though trying to find my first full-time job). I'd been searching for employment for months, but despite tens of interviews (at which I was generally told I was over-qualified) I hadn't had any success. It had all started earlier that year - I'd been sat on a bench in the park, wracking my brains for new approaches to job-hunting. This was years before the internet took off - you couldn't just sit in front of a PC for a few hours and look for new job adverts - I had to scour the papers, trudge the streets looking in office windows, and that's on top of the regular visits to the Job Centre. I'd even been cold-calling potential employers and arranged to speak to them in the hope that they would see potential in me and take a chance. It hadn't happened.
(It occurrs to me how ironic it is that I'm back in that position again now!)
Anyway, there I was, sat on that park bench in the sunshine, wondering how long I was going to have to continue to respond to questions about my occupation with a falsely optimistic "Oh, I'm unemployed, but...", when it suddenly occurred to me that there was another way...
Ever since I could remember, I'd wanted to write - not in the when I grow up I want to be a writer sense, more in the sense that every so often I have to write in order to stay sane. I think I'd even thought wistfully that one day I might write books, but until that moment it hadn't occurred to me that if I actually picked up my pen and applied ink to paper then I would no longer have to say "oh, I'm unemployed, but...".
So, I did pick up my pen, and judiciously applied it to paper (computers back in the nineteen-eighties were not widely owned, nor the sort of item you could take down to the park for a spot of creative writing). I started to write my first book, and ever since that I've been a writer. I've been a number of other things as well, and that has really got in the way of the creative process, but for me at least -once a writer, always a writer.
That said, I still have to check, from time to time - can I really call myself a writer?
"Well, you're writing a book aren't you?" my mother's voice emerged from the telephone.
"Yes, but... is that it...?"
I was in my early twenties and unemployed (though trying to find my first full-time job). I'd been searching for employment for months, but despite tens of interviews (at which I was generally told I was over-qualified) I hadn't had any success. It had all started earlier that year - I'd been sat on a bench in the park, wracking my brains for new approaches to job-hunting. This was years before the internet took off - you couldn't just sit in front of a PC for a few hours and look for new job adverts - I had to scour the papers, trudge the streets looking in office windows, and that's on top of the regular visits to the Job Centre. I'd even been cold-calling potential employers and arranged to speak to them in the hope that they would see potential in me and take a chance. It hadn't happened.
(It occurrs to me how ironic it is that I'm back in that position again now!)
Anyway, there I was, sat on that park bench in the sunshine, wondering how long I was going to have to continue to respond to questions about my occupation with a falsely optimistic "Oh, I'm unemployed, but...", when it suddenly occurred to me that there was another way...
Ever since I could remember, I'd wanted to write - not in the when I grow up I want to be a writer sense, more in the sense that every so often I have to write in order to stay sane. I think I'd even thought wistfully that one day I might write books, but until that moment it hadn't occurred to me that if I actually picked up my pen and applied ink to paper then I would no longer have to say "oh, I'm unemployed, but...".
So, I did pick up my pen, and judiciously applied it to paper (computers back in the nineteen-eighties were not widely owned, nor the sort of item you could take down to the park for a spot of creative writing). I started to write my first book, and ever since that I've been a writer. I've been a number of other things as well, and that has really got in the way of the creative process, but for me at least -once a writer, always a writer.
That said, I still have to check, from time to time - can I really call myself a writer?
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