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On Becoming a Writer
I had wanted to write for longer than I can remember. It began officially when I composed a poem while in the third grade to read on parent’s night. It was as if I had done something special that no one else could accomplish and I liked that feeling. My thoughts on becoming a writer were beginning to take shape.
In the sixth grade a boy named Danny began a school newspaper and asked me to be one of his writers. I’m pretty sure he rewrote every word I submitted but it felt good anyway to be included in this project.
In college I took some English classes and it was then I realized my writing wasn’t very good. I wanted to write situation comedy scripts for television and learned the formula. I took each rejection to heart and slowly my writing came to an end, save for the papers I needed to write for my classes.
I took to reading books on becoming a writer and came to the conclusion that Dorothy Parker got it right when she said “I hate writing, I love having written.” That became my mantra for more than twenty years. I would torture myself for days at a time to do some writing and then retreat back into the comfortable space I created for myself.
It turns out I was focusing on the wrong thing for all of those years.
Writer Sarah Cy has penned an article that lends validity to my experiences. It’s called…
