You Don’t Have to Be a "Writer” to Write on Substack
Picture “a writer.” Whatever image just came to mind. Stay with it. Close your eyes for a moment and make it more vivid.
Notice if you have a particular response to it, something along the lines of That’s me or That’s not me. Even if you’re a professional, award-winning, bestselling author, you may respond either way (me, not me), depending on the day and your mood.
What defines “a writer” is often unrealistic, inaccurate, and melodramatic. Writers are thought to be endlessly imaginative to the point of living in a state of constant (inane) creativity. Writers supposedly “love language.” (I don’t even know what that means.) Karen Bender writes in Lit Hub that writers “want to grab the world and wrestle it to the page.” (Really? I’m a writer down to my toes and my tax forms, and I’ve never felt this. Ever.)
In “How to Stop Thinking and Start Writing,”
writes,“I think there can sometimes be a false perception about what it takes to write and how people feel about their own writing. But once you talk to enough authors you learn that — with the exception of a lucky few — most find the writing process challenging. Those that excel at it have simply learned the tools to manage the hardest bits i.e. just sitting down and starting to write.”
People who don’t think of themselves as writers misjudge the fact that writing is just a job like any other. It has its challenges and isn’t typically an inspiration, feel-good party. As the Columbian novelist and journalist Gabriel García Marquez told The Paris Review, it’s “nothing but carpentry. Both are very hard work.”
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