I’ve always liked writing. I can’t say that I’ve always been great at it, but I have always liked it. For a quiet kid with an ever-active brain and an issue articulating her feelings, writing always served as an outlet and a way to communicate.
It probably makes sense that I decided to major in Communications and English in college, but the duality is not lost on me. The hybrid of a more oratory-based tradition next to a written-based tradition pushed me to hone two, often, competing skillsets.
So, when it came time to figure out what I wanted to do (as if anyone can ever completely decide), writing had to be involved. At first, the idea of writing professionally seemed like an impossible career choice where I would never make any money.
And while I’m surely not rolling in it, I have found that I’m happier struggling to do something I like than struggling to like something that is more stable.
But there’s no knocking a traditional office job here, I’ve done it and so do a lot of other people. But I could never fully get myself around the idea of it.
Being labeled reserved, by my own doing mostly, I’ve forever had quite the loud sense of self.
Meaning, I always knew deep down what I did had to be on my own terms, even if it meant sacrificing tradition for the sake of uncertainty.
And honestly, that’s what this writing journey is. It’s completely uncertain. It’s undeniably risky and it probably scares off more people than it attracts.
Yet this endeavor is like any other beginning. It takes gumption and a certain amount of wanting to quit before you realize that you must continue to push through.
You must continue to write and read and educate yourself until your eyes and hands become quite tired. And then you continue to do it the next day and the day after that.
If nothing else, I’ve learned to become my own best advocate and rely less on the praise or criticism of others to completely influence my desired outcome.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t difficult to decide what matters in one moment and what can get left aside in another. The subject nature of writing is nauseating at times, but perhaps that’s what makes it great. What matters the most is the story you have to tell and your ability to communicate that to your desired audience.
A lot of people try to quantify writing or use metrics of some sort to show worth and quality, but there is no true metric to why someone likes one piece of writing but could detest another piece.
Sometimes things just look like crap to some people and there’s no way around that.
I mean you could hate every little thing that I’ve written, but at least I’m not trying to sell you something that you have all the potential to do yourself. Writing is not everyone’s strong suit or even everyone’s mode of communication, and yet it is simply a continuation of the longest tradition we have, storytelling.
As I said I’ve always liked writing. I’ve liked writing because I like stories and I like to hear them told in as many ways that exist. I like seeing the long, drawn out articles about the state of politics and how society is on a downward slope.
I like seeing the other long, drawn out articles on the same subject telling us there’s hope. I like hearing about the handbag that will change my life or which celebrity is seen canoodling with some other celebrity.
I like the highbrow, the lowbrow, and everything in between because that’s where we all live.
We live in between stories and work to create our own.
I just have to keep reminding myself that is where I live too, right in the middle of it.
Maybe this way I can take a breath and remember that my writing doesn’t have to be Pulitzer worthy to be worth something.
Commentaires