You ARE a real writer
No more self-doubt
It makes no sense to say, “I’m not a ‘real’ writer.”
You’re either a writer or you’re not.
So you can say, “I'm not a globally recognized writer,” or “I'm not a bestselling writer,” or “I’m not a prolific writer,” — these statements are fine.
But “I’m not a real writer” is a dangerous story that will keep you from doing good work.
What makes a writer “real”?
Who is a “real” writer?
I used to believe “real” writers were people who wrote books for a living, until I discovered that many writers don’t write books, nor do they earn money from their writing. So I concluded that a writer is simply someone who writes.
Even this definition, however, felt incomplete. Someone who writes . . . what? WhatsApp messages? Novels? Reports? Many people write emails every day, but we wouldn’t call them “writers.”
I journaled about it and came up with a new definition: a writer is someone who writes as a result of giving in to an invisible force that draws him or her to the page.
This force comes from a desire or a need, or both.
A desire to create, connect, and communicate.
A need to experience, escape, and express.
Do you ever feel this force? Do you also surrender to it in order to write?
Then you are a “real” writer.
Even if your grammar sucks. Even if your readers fall asleep when they read your stories. Even if you’ve never taken a storytelling workshop or made a cent from your books. Even if you don’t publish your work.
You’d still be a “real” writer.
Van Gogh was a “real” painter because the invisible force that drew him to the canvas was the very thing that kept him alive. And he painted because he had a desire: he wanted to feel and wanted others to feel too.
In a letter to his brother, he wrote:
Ah, my dear brother, sometimes I know so well what I want. I can well do without God in both my life and also in my painting, but, suffering as I am, I cannot do without something greater than myself, something which is my life — the power to create. 1
And in another, he wrote:
What I want & have as my aim is infernally difficult to achieve, and yet I don’t think I am raising my sights too high. I want to do drawings that touch some people. [...] I want to get to the point where people say of my work: that man feels deeply, that man feels keenly. 2
No matter how bad you feel when you’re not writing and no matter how many stories you want to share with an audience (not all writers are authors), believing you’re not a “real” writer will make it hard to do work you can be proud of.
So, free yourself from that unnecessary adjective 👉🏻“I’m not a real writer.”
And get rid of the adverb👉🏻“I’m not a real writer.”
You’re a writer.
Period.
No more self-doubt. No more questioning your identity. You’ve earned the title simply by surrendering to the invisible force that wants you to do the work.
Keep writing beautiful things!
And speak soon,
Fabio
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. — George Orwell, Why I Write
Letter from 3 September 1888 - The Letters of Vincent van Gogh (Penguin Classics) by Vincent Van Gogh (Author), Ronald de Leeuw (Editor), Arnold J. Pomerans (Translator)
Letter from 21 July 1882 - The Letters of Vincent van Gogh (Penguin Classics)