What Makes a Writer?

What makes a writer? There are as many answers to that question as there are people who call themselves “writers.” What makes me a writer? Confidence in my own work and a feeling that I can trust my own voice to speak up with. The truth is that I started calling myself a writer at the insistence of other writers long before I felt qualified to use the title myself. Long before I had that trust or confidence in my own words.

This past weekend I was getting a piece ready to submit to Bi Women Quarterly. Adam was, as usual, doing the editing, and helping with the title and bio. As we finished up and he instructed me to send it off, I glanced at my calendar and at my “submittable work” file–there’s another publication I want to send some work to whose submission window opens on August 1, and there are a few other pieces I have ready to go once I find the right places to send them, although many of the places that I’m considering don’t open their submission windows until September or October. 

As I was doing this I was struck by the realization that a year ago, I couldn’t have imagined doing any of this. Submitting one piece seemed far, far out of reach let alone having multiple pieces prepared for submission to a variety of publications…some of which even pay authors. 

Beginnings as a Writer

Adam and I began publishing our writing together in May of 2021. When I go back and read some of those early pieces , I can pick out the places where his voice as an editor completely overpowered my voice as a writer. I can point to the places where I didn’t push back against his edits, where I didn’t ask “why” or speak up and say “It’s important to me that we keep this part in. How can we make it work?”

I can also read the work he wrote, work I edited for him, and see where I would have had more to say now, where my own insecurity and uncertainty meant that I wasn’t able to provide the kind of feedback I’ve grown to be able to give. I still remember the exhilaration I experienced the first time I felt like I could give useful, helpful feedback on a piece of Adam’s writing, how it felt to be able to read a first draft and say “I like what you’re saying but there’s something deeper that you’re not saying here–can you dig deeper and bring it out?” 

It’s been a real journey. 

I’ve gone from being afraid to put my words on a page to writing a weekly column, editing for other people, and collaborating with other websites. And submitting my work for publication by others. I’ve written about political things I might not have had the bravery to dig into, once. I’ve written about coming of age. And about my own experiences with trauma. I’ve garnered over a thousand page-views on a single piece. For all the ways I question my own legitimacy as a writer, there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary. 

In the Past: Writing as Trauma

So what, right? With the hours and hours I’ve put into writing over the last year and a half I’d have to have improved a little, no? You can’t practice something as much as I have and make no progress at all. But it’s really not that simple. My ability to construct sentences or to write essays had to improve. The mechanics. But there’s a bigger picture to look at. 

Some people use writing as a way to process trauma. For me, writing itself became trauma about twenty-five years ago. I shared my work with someone I loved and trusted, someone who was also a writer. This person then proceeded to tell me my writing was terrible, that theirs would always be better and I’d never be able to write anything worthwhile. And I believed him. In short, this person destroyed my confidence in my writing and my love for it. 

When writing became traumatic for me, I stopped writing anything that I didn’t have to write for work or school. The trauma I’d experienced around writing became a sort of writer’s block on its own. And I lived with that for years. Whether I wanted to write or not. Because I’d have the instinct to write something sometimes, and I’d either ignore it or I would make a deliberate choice not to write. I was hurting, but writing hurt more. 

Writing as Escape

But then my disabilities grew way worse. At a time when the pandemic was keeping me indoors. I needed something to do. Writing was still painful, but it was less painful than sitting around. So I’ve been practicing. A lot. And at the same time I’ve been learning new habits about writing, I’ve been learning that while writing may not be therapeutic for me (yet) it also doesn’t have to be traumatic. 

Things have changed. And there’s a lot going on right now. I recently described my current state as “living in a trauma zone.” There are a lot of stories to tell–some of them are my stories to tell when I’m ready to tell them. Some of them are not mine to tell until and unless I’m given permission to tell them.The stories are there. They’re with me in a way that I could access them. I’ve made notes about things I might want to write about eventually. This isn’t the time for telling those stories. They’ll still be there when I am ready to tell them. 

The point is things have switched places. It used to be that writing itself was trauma. Now it’s not the writing; it’s what I want to write about. Write what you know, right? But what happens when what you know is too difficult to write about?

Now: Writing Despite Trauma

This trauma space I’m in right now is deep and dark. It’s taking a lot of energy just to stay afloat, just to get by. Some days it’s hard to persevere. I’m taking it in small bites. One day at a time when I can handle that much, and when a whole day is too much to handle, I take it in smaller bites. And one of the things that “staying afloat” means is keeping up with a certain amount of work for 2 Rules. Like my weekly column. 

That’s about all the writing I can handle at the moment. And there are days when that amount of writing is hard to do. But at least it’s not the writing that’s traumatic now. 

Some things are the same. My other trauma responses haven’t changed. The ways I seek safety are familiar. I crave small spaces and often wish I had a cave or a tent to crawl into. Dimly lit spaces that feel comfortable, and with just enough background noise to keep me focused on what I’m supposed to be doing. Some of the less healthy ones are still around, too. Avoiding things, retreating, things like that. But writing? Writing, which used to cause me so much pain and anxiety? It’s one of the things I really want to keep doing. Because it’s one of the things that is bringing me relief right now. At least I think it should be.

As the Writer Evolves, So, too, does the Writer’s Block

I’m experiencing a different kind of writer’s block. The kind where I really want to write, where there are ideas in my head and things to say but where I can’t find my own connection with them. There’s a story I’ve wanted to write about for a while, and something relevant came up in the news recently. It would have made a great entry to the story. I put a few lines down on the page, but I can’t make the connection. Things I write feel hollow. I can’t breathe life into my characters or shed any light on the issues. And it’s causing me a lot of distress. Distress that isn’t helping me to find space to manage the other things that are going on. 

It’s such a strange feeling to me to be in this space. Where writing is no longer traumatic, even when I’m writing about traumatic things. Where writing is comforting, and where writing helps me to keep going. Writing is part of my routine now. There’s a rhythm to the week that makes time to write my column, to do some editing, and to begin looking around for the next column. And I like that rhythm. It’s comfortable. When it works, that is. It’s disrupted right now and that’s uncomfortable. But I can also look at this situation and see how I’ve grown as a writer, too. 

Looking Back on Little Milestones

A year ago I protested when anyone called me a writer. And there was no way I’d call myself one. When I shared my work, I always prefaced those conversations with some rambling about how awful the work was. I can call myself a writer now, even if that label comes with some difficulty. I send Adam work for editing and instead of a beginning with an overall condemnation of the quality of my work I try and bring specific criticisms like “I’m having trouble finding my connection to tell this story,” or “the characters here are flat and I don’t know how to make them three dimensional.” 

The writer’s block is still scary. The voice of anxiety has been present throughout my whole journey. It keeps telling me how I’ll run out of things to write about or stories to tell. But my responses have changed. I want to persevere. I want to keep telling stories and looking for new stories to tell. Beyond just wanting to, I’m willing to fight for it in a way that is unfamiliar to me. Having that one little thing to fight for feels good. One fight that is only about me or about what makes me feel good helps me find energy to fight some of the other battles, or to cope with some of the other obstacles.

But this is the first time I can remember staring back at writer’s block and discovering that what I felt about defeating it was stronger than my fear of being defeated by it. For the first time that I remember, I believed just enough in my own ability as a writer to think that I might be able to tame the writer’s block. It’s one more small milestone on what is shaping up to be a long journey. 

The Dawn of Confidence: Pushing Back against an Editor’s Suggestions

Some of those markers, I can point to. I know, from my own notes and drafts, when I felt comfortable pushing back against Adam’s edits, or where I felt more comfortable as an editor. There are markers, like when I stopped insisting that my work sucked. That just happened one day, like a switch turning on. But I have no idea when. There are even times now when I’ll write something and say that I really like the piece. None of this has stopped me from wondering, often out loud, who would really want to read what I’m writing about. That’s fine. I’ll get to that next place eventually. Or I won’t. And that will be fine, too.

A Writer’s Optimism is to Keep Writing

Whichever happens, I’m here now. I’m writing now. I’m a lot less scared of writing now. And I’m going to fight my way through this round of writer’s block. I’m going to polish and send out some writing to places accepting submissions this fall. Writing that I can look at and say “I wrote that, and I like it.” Writing I believe in, 

My journey as a writer so far has been about developing trust and confidence. Little by little, my confidence has grown, but there’s still a long way to go. The trust part, that’s been harder–trusting myself, trusting other people to read my work in its more raw forms, and trusting that an audience will be interested, kind, sensitive and appreciate the work I do. But this journey, like every journey, happens one step at a time.

I’ve learned something about how I approach journeys, too. That for me, sometimes I need to be able to simultaneously reflect on how far I’ve come from where I’ve started and how much closer I am to my destination. This particular journey doesn’t have a specific destination–there are a bunch of potential ports ahead, and I’d be happy to land in any of them, no matter what order they happen in. I’m taking a moment tonight to recognize how much closer they are than before. How lucky I am to be able to do this transformative work, to recognize my own dynamic state, and to become the writer I want to be. And how lucky I am to have friends along for the ride.