Giving Thanks – I am a writer
By Dan McDonald
This week on Twitter
@authorTraci retweeted @byMorganWright’s asking readers about what the best
writing advice was, that her readers were given. Such a question is probably
answered differently by writers at different phases each an author experiences.
As for me one piece of advice I received recently speaks perfectly to my
present situation.
x
I have viewed myself as a wanna-be
writer. A friend challenged me on that. He said that a writer is one who
writes, and that as I have written quite a few blogs I am already a writer.
Part of me felt like arguing with him. Instead I remained open to what he said,
and soon the message began to make sense as I thought about the place my love
for writing has had in my life.
In my first year in my first four
years of high school, I was a mediocre student, getting an occasional B, and
the rest C’s and D’s. At the end of my freshman year I was in the bottom half
of my class scholastically. That was also when an excellent English literature
teacher assigned writing essays to our class. A significant number of students
grumbled when essays were assigned. My reaction was the opposite. It was as if,
school now had one thing for me to do that was enjoyable. I enjoyed thinking
about how to write about something. My enjoyment of writing essays seemed to
help me participate more willingly even in studies where we didn’t write
essays. Well not in geometry, I fell behind there and things only got a whole
lot worse as the year rolled on. By the time I graduated I had reached to the
upper tier of the bottom half of the class to barely being within the upper
one-fourth of the class. Writing essays proved to be my educational turning
point. Even so, I never thought of myself as a possible writer.
In my undergraduate years, I majored
in history, minored in philosophy, and took a number of literature courses. These
required writing papers. I was surprised when I received a number of remarks on
papers saying “excellent writing.” I never thought of these remarks as
suggesting I had decent writing talent.
After graduated from college, and
considering the possibility of going to seminary I felt like more academic
studies wouldn’t be the best way for me to understand life. I went to work in a
factory, then for a construction company, and later I worked as a warehouseman.
During that time I often wrote papers that I gave to friends, sometimes they
were inflictions upon friends. The one constant activity I enjoyed doing was
writing, but I could never think of myself as a writer.
I have one final story that as I
reviewed my relationship to writing, suggests now to me that I should indeed
think of myself as a writer. I was visiting New York City and was staying in a
hotel where my view of the city was blocked by the Empire State Building in my
window, definitely not complaining. I had been to the Bronx and caught a train
near Fordham University to come back to Midtown Manhattan. It was late in the
evening, with only a few passengers scattered throughout the train. Diagonally
seated near me was this young woman, perhaps a college student. She had a
writing journal and was writing almost frantically like someone afraid if they
don’t get the thought on the paper it would be forever lost. Occasionally she
paused between rapidly written sentences. She would look upwards as if asking
her brain to come up with the perfect word or phrase. I imagined her in that
zone where it is her and her writing and the rest of the world has retreated to
a different universe.
I decided I wanted to say something
to her before one of us got off the train. I also wondered if I was just being
crazy. Finally as we reached where I was getting off the subway I managed to
say to her on the way out the door, “Whether you are writing for you or for
another, best of luck on your writing.” She glanced up at me, and smiled
slightly and said “Thank you.” I can look back at this now and I realize that
at that moment I thought of myself as a writer, and thought of her a member of
my tribe; a tribe of writers.
Ned helped me understand I have been
a writer for a long time. If you are a writer it matters if you think of
yourself as a writer. As a want to be writer, every weakness in my writing led
me to believe I was not yet a writer. As I have begun to think of myself as a
writer, those same weaknesses are beginning to be treated as weaknesses to
overcome, because I am a writer. I don’t imagine any writer wants to reach a
point where they don’t want to pursue improvements in style, substance,
clarity, precision, efficiency, and especially writing with beauty. As a want
to be writer, each flaw suggested I would never be a writer. As one who has
accepted “writer” as part of my description there is a world of flaws to which
I am called to do battle, because I am a writer. I hope if you love to write and still can't quite view yourself as a writer, that you will realize you love to write, and whenever you write you will be a writer, and especially that you are a writer if you are willing to give yourself as you are to doing the finest writing you are capable of doing, and accept that if you are a writer, from here on you accept the call to continual improvement.
