Rebirth: The Day I Became a Writer

We often mark time in our lives with rituals and rites of passage. Moments of birth and rebirth. Baby showers, weddings, funerals. There were a couple of years in junior high school where many weekends were taken up with b’nai mitzvot for friends or family members, followed a few years later by sweet sixteens. We recognize the transition to adulthood with things like proms and graduation. We come together for funerals and memorials to grieve losses together in our own lives, and on a grander scale when famous people die. I’m an absolute sucker for pomp and circumstance. I love rituals–there are times when they’re comforting, where going through the motions of something familiar amidst chaos can help me feel centered or grounded. They give me a feeling of one solid place to stand while the ground around is shaking. 

My Rebirth as a Writer

I’ve written a lot about my own journey as a writer. My rebirth as a writer, you might say. It’s been a continuous process since about November 2020. Even as so many other parts of my life were thrown into chaos. And this rebirth has had milestones along the way. There’s no formal way to mark those milestones. No one throws you a “writer’s shower” and gives you a thesaurus when you sit down and decide you’re going to be a writer. I suppose some people actually do sit down and decide “I’m going to be a writer,” but I didn’t even do that. But I just liked to write, and I wanted to write and I was looking for something to do.

I started out with no specific goals in mind–I wasn’t trying to produce something for publication. Nor did I have a story I was working on. I had pens, paper and time. 

That lack of direction could have gone so many ways. Because I had no particular goals in mind, it gave me the chance to experiment with formats and genres and ideas. Even if one of the rules is “Finish something,” my openness also meant I had lots of space for not finishing the things that didn’t work or weren’t working. My Google Drive is a testament to not finishing things. I’m okay with that, more okay than I expected I might be. These pieces, finished or not, whether they’re things I’ve: 

-workshopped with people

-written and left in my files and not shared

-taken to the next stage with editing and sharing

have taught me things. Whether it’s finding my power and my voice, figuring out what I do (or don’t) do well, or becoming comfortable with the idea of writing for a wider audience. I’ve been learning.

The Rebirth of Confidence

As I’ve written about my journey, I’ve written about writer’s block. I’ve talked about the incredible lack of confidence in my own voice and the challenges of imposter syndrome. One topic I’ve waxed lyrical about is “what makes it okay for me to call myself a writer?” From the beginning there were some things, like being published, I didn’t need in order to call myself a writer.

But I wasn’t ever able to figure out what would allow me to apply the label to myself. It didn’t matter if other people called me a writer. It didn’t matter if I had achieved the same things as other people who I think of as writers or who call themselves “writer.” It’s still been a really difficult thing to contend with, feeling like I can’t take on that label and yet being surrounded by so many writers. It’s not like I’m involved in some apprenticeship system where I’ll train under a master who will hone my writing skills in the image of their own, and then unleash me onto the public to pursue the craft on my own. With no picture of what “writer” means, no clear destination or goal, there were no limits but also no benchmarks.

What’s a “Real Writer”

As I branched out and tried new things–open mic night, submitting things for publication–I had no idea how to fit these pieces into my own identity, my definition of me-as-a-writer. By the time I did those things other people had been calling me a writer for months, but I still resisted calling myself a writer. I still got an uncomfortable feeling when other people called me a writer. For a long time, whenever I heard someone call me a writer I objected out loud.

My objections didn’t matter. Other people insisted on calling me a writer. I directed the voices inward instead, feeling physically repulsed whenever anyone used the label. Last summer when I was answering a question about excuses for why I wasn’t writing I answered without hesitation, “I’m not a real writer.” 

The Excuses Fall Away

Somewhere in there, the queasy feeling when I heard other people call me a writer began to fade–or at least it became less directed at the word “writer” and more at other, modifying words, complimentary words instead. I know how important labels can be, how important identity can be, what it feels like when you’re feeling uncertain about where you belong and how much of a relief it is when you do finally figure it out. Surrounded by other people whose writing I held in more esteem than my own, feeling like I’d never meet whatever standard I set for myself in spite of being granted the title “Writer” by other people was hurting me.

It wasn’t fair to the people around me–how could I both seek their approval and simultaneously demean the value of their opinion when they called me “writer”? And it was hurting me. I spent months directing energy to figuring out what “writer” meant to me, looking for benchmarks, milestones, something, instead of appreciating the fact that I’d been granted admission to this club and following through on figuring out what I had to do as part of my initiation. 

But that’s just it. There’s nothing to mark these moments. No ceremony. No ritual. And no rites. 

Being Able to Celebrate Unselfconsciously is Part of this Rebirth as a Writer

Somewhere on Twitter recently, a thread scrolled by. Someone I follow had responded to a question about what you did when you sold your first piece of writing. He mentioned a particular way he’d marked it–I don’t recall what it was–and said that he still does the same thing now, many years, many publications later. I sold my first piece of writing and did… nothing. Unless you count navel gazing and trying to figure out when I would really be a writer, that is. I got my first rejection, too-a milestone Adam told me he considered even more of a big deal than my first acceptance. And I did…nothing. I’m doing the things “real writers” do, and not giving myself credit for them. I’m interacting with “real writers”-getting advice, being mentored, and still not making that space for myself. 

Now, When Writer’s Block Comes, I’m Ready

I don’t know what changed, but in the last few weeks, there’s been a subtle shift in the way I see my own legitimacy as a writer. For months, writing felt like slogging through quicksand. I was fighting writer’s block, and I couldn’t figure out why. I blamed it on how much energy I’d put into writing The R Word piece and thinking about the language I use to talk about my own experience with sexual assault. Maybe I just needed to take some time to recover. Maybe it was something else.

What I do know is that this time, instead of panicking at how stuck I was, or deciding I was going to give up, or doing any of the other things, I kept writing. I wrote through the writer’s block.

Every since what I’m tentatively sort of calling my “rebirth,” I’ve been afraid that if I stopped again, I’d never start. But I stopped. And then I started up again. Maybe not my best work, but it wasn’t about the project, it was about the process. It was about learning to take care of myself as a person and as an artist. It was learning to manage fear, and stress in a new environment.

There’s also the idea that acceptance and rejection are part of a writer’s life, but I’ve discovered that it’s not just agents, publishers and editors. It’s me, too. It was easy for me to accept the idea that I will probably never write a novel. It was much harder to accept the idea that there is a particular kind of writing that I might actually be good at, and to become comfortable with that. And to realize and embrace the idea that it’s not something any writer can do. It’s just me telling my stories in the way that only I can. 

Two Lightbulb Moments

Last week, when I was talking with Adam about how I was writing yet another piece about trauma, he said two things that were really light bulb moments for me. He pointed out that in the nine months or so we’ve been blogging together, I’ve probably written a book’s worth of words… and that if you took only my very best pieces and revised them, that I’d probably have somewhere between a third and half a book there. The idea that I’ve written that many words was incomprehensible. The idea that there was that kind of cohesiveness to some parts of it shook me up even more. It shook me up, even though this wouldn’t be the first time. I have a running not-quite joke that my first book, my eventual biography, and my epitaph will all be called: “Pretty Words about Ugly Things.”

A Writer Writes

Writers write, and that’s what I’ve been doing. Writers can spend years crafting work before it sees an audience. Yesterday I had someone tell me they were going to give my antisemitism essay to their students. 

My work. 

In someone’s classroom. 

My words, as part of teaching students not about writing or rhetoric, but as part of an Introduction to Judaism class. 

I was speechless. 

Because that’s something that happens to “real writers.” People read their work. People they don’t know read it and talk about it. Writers write. Readers read. I’m still trying to figure my own place out. I’m sure that I’ll still struggle with my own confidence and feelings of inadequacy. And no, there’s no rite of passage, no prayer, no ritual for it, but I think it’s time for me to claim today for myself as “the day that I became a writer. “