When I was a kid, I was dazzled by writers and obsessed with becoming one. I attributed all sorts of glowing qualities to them. They were sensitive, intelligent people who had special insights. They possessed uncommon empathy. They knew how to sketch minds and create worlds.
When I got into high school I began to read the writing magazines and I learned a different definition: a writer was someone who knew how to make publishers like them. Of course, you had to have skill and some kind of magical spark, but they were only important as a way to please the publishers.
You did not even have to read the magazines to understand this. On the cover of almost every issue were the words “Get Published Now.” Of course, there were variations: there was “Get Published in Three Easy Steps,\” \”What Publishers Want,\” or “Get Published: Learn the Top Five Things Editors Hate.”
I wanted to be happy that I had discovered the magazines. If you wanted to be a professional at anything, you had to have a magazine subscription for it, or you would forever be a dilettante.
But instead of being thrilled with my induction into industry knowledge, I always felt depressed when I read the magazines. The definition of a writer as someone who could give publishers what they wanted was so far removed from the original impulses that made me want to write.
I tried to reconcile the two definitions in my mind. Maybe Real Writers were everything I had once thought: empathetic, sensitive, kind, and talented. But the measure of being a Real Writer was how much the publishers liked you.
It was easy to latch onto this idea, because I had spent most of my life being blocked. I was not confident in my creativity. But even though I disliked my new definition of a writer, it was nice to know there was a definite measure of talent, a way to know I had arrived: getting published.
After I graduated from college, I spent a year sending my stories and essays to magazines and ended up with a bulging envelope full of form rejection letters. I finally did get published, but overall the experiment was discouraging.
I read widely and scanned the bookstore shelves in search for the magic ingredient that made publishers like you, the rows of bestsellers with their golden award stickers and effusive blurbs of praise.
But as this years progressed, I began to notice something else. A lot of books were not about the writing at all. The books were objects like Christmas ornaments wrapped in words to be sold. There were “gift books” with a single line of wisdom on each page. There were ghost-written books about celebrities, in which case, the writing was not the product; the celebrity was.
And there were whole aisles dedicated to belief confirmation. There were books on spiritual healing, astrology, or the magic of crystals. For every political point of view, there was a book to validate it. For every religious persuasion there were books to tell the reader why they were right and everyone else wrong.
And there were the books that indulged wishful thinking: how to lose 50 pounds a month or become spiritually fulfilled or beat depression with aromatherapy or get someone to fall in love with you.
What I realized was that selling books had little to do with writing. What mattered was the promise of a reward inside. Sometimes the reward was the depth of the writing, the introduction of an unusual point of view, or a story well told.
But sometimes the reward was telling people what they wanted to hear.
All of these books were published. But none of the books represented any ideal I had ever had of being a writer. If these writers had been published, it meant that publication could not be the ideal I cared about.
Every illusion about real writers I had ever had evaporated, and I began to see more things I had missed before. I noticed how even in fiction, popular but dubious themes were dressed up in a neat editorial package to seem valid.
There was no single, ideal writer profile. Being a published professional was not the grand achievement I had once thought.
And maybe being a writer was not either. Maybe a writer was just anyone who wrote. Beyond assembling letters into sentences, there seemed to be no common tie.
There were brilliant writers and honest writers. There were irrational, pandering, and dishonest writers. There were superficial writers and thoughtful writers. There were, it seemed, as many kinds of writers as there were people. Even mass-murdering tyrants, such as romance novelist Saddam Hussein, could be writers. And they had all been what most considered to be the true definition of a real writer: they had been published.
The more I learned about “real writers,” the less I wanted to become one. I gave up trying to become anything and I began to write.
Meanwhile, I stopped reading the magazines that said “Get Published Now” or “Three Surefire Ways to Impress an Editor.”
I was more confident in my writing by that time. I had self-published a novel in 2002, entering the first wave of the self-publishing revolution that began around the turn of the millennium.
But I had never marketed it much or sold many copies. I had longed for the authenticating stamp of traditional publishing.
Now, whenever I looked over the shelves of books on astrology and fad diets, I found myself without a definition of a real writer, other than the austere one: a writer is someone who writes. From the classics I loved to the trolls who prowled the internet to bully other writers, anyone who could use the alphabet was now a writer.
I told myself it did not matter. What mattered was only that I was doing what I loved. I was writing. I was no longer blocked. Writing was about process, not identity.
I started my blog. Writing in it was an awesome experience because for the first time, I had an audience to react to what I wrote, and that made me all the more motivated to do it well.
Beyond that, there was no one I had to imitate. I could share my thoughts about the world as I saw it. I could fill in the gaps I thought were lacking in the books I read, the things which I had never seen expressed anywhere.
And as I wrote I continued to ask myself the question, “What is a writer?” I knew there was no set-in-stone definition that everyone would agree upon. Besides, it seemed less important that I define a writer than to decide what kind of writer I wanted to be.
I tried to remember all the writers I loved and why I liked them. I thought about Mark Twain, Maya Angelou, Ray Bradbury, and Carl Sagan. And, beyond their skill and talent, the writers I most admired all had one thing in common: they were honest.
They said the things I was afraid to say. Many risked ridicule, opposition, or censorship in order to mirror life as they honestly saw it. The best fiction writers might have been “making up stories,” but their details felt authentic, because they were keen observers who were willing to say what they saw, and not what they were supposed to see.
The product they offered was not belief confirmation or celebrity gossip or thrills or the pseudo-inspiration of “gift books,” but something more valuable.
I had been wrong to try to determine who writers were as a group and be like them: to create a mold and slip myself inside; or conform to a checklist of traits that editors liked.
I could make choices.
And I thought the description from my childhood was not a bad one: people with empathy who could sketch minds and create worlds. I liked that. I added a few traits. The writers I most admired were purveyors of honesty. Though they might have never been able to perfectly convey life exactly as they saw it, they worked toward that end, using all the skills and talent that they had.
For me \”Real Writers,\” the ones that had eased my loneliness in high school, were those who were skilled at being honest. The more skilled they were and the clearer their thoughts, the more honest they could be.
Like most ideals, mine may be ones to strive for but never completely reach. Or I may meet them, but not all of the time.
But it is a new world. And there is nothing to stop me from trying.