You’ve always wanted to be an artist, writer, dancer, musician. What’s it take to move from wannabee to am?
I met Kurt Vonnegut once. Don’t be too impressed with my brush with greatness: I paid a week’s wages for the privilege.
I was an undergraduate at the time, working hard in hopes of someday becoming a writer like the great man I’d idolized since I was 12 or so. The occasion was a lecture entitled “How to Get a Job Like Mine,” but I paid extra for the pre-lecture meet and greet with the real life Kilgore Trout. A chance to talk to Vonnegut was worth being late on the rent.
He entered the room old, crumpled, and hacking up his beloved Pall Malls and sat in a folding chair in the middle of our semicircle. My fellow ticket holders asked him social questions like, “How was your flight?” and “Is this your first trip to Sacramento?” I listened quietly until the inanity became too much, and then I blurted, “How will I know when I’ve stopped practicing being a writer and have become a writer?”
“Do you write?” he asked me.
“Yes, well, no. I mean, I’ve never sold anything,” I said.
“But do you write?” he asked again.
“Yes.”
Vonnegut crossed his legs and waved his hand at me. “Then you’re a writer,” he said.
The whole exchange seemed very trite and dismissive. On one side was the towering man of letters and on the other was a college student subsisting on bean burritos. How could he expect me to take seriously his assertion that we were in the same fraternity?
That was many years ago. Since then I’ve fully embraced what I am. Also since then the intergooglewebtubes has come along, and with it Twitter. Over and over I’m followed by earnest people who label themselves “aspiring writers,” and every time I read those words I hear Vonnegut’s voice and I see that nicotine stained hand waving my insecurities away.
Do you write? You’re a writer. Own it. Stop aspiring and start being.
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originally posted at Why It Matters and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
This is a great article and emphasizes the practice of focusing on the process rather than the result. You are a writer regardless of whether people agree, disagree, or even like what you are writing about and you write for your own enjoyment. This reminds me of George McFly in Back To the Future. Marty: What are you writing? George: Stories, science fiction stories. About visitors coming down to Earth from other planets. Marty: Get out of town! I didn’t know you did anything creative, let me read some… George: No, no.I never let anybody read my stories. Marty: Why… Read more »
Thank you for this, James. Thank you…
Very nice.
I would personally draw the line if crowds started booing my efforts. I would stop at that point. I really don’t need crowds booing me – it’s not important enough to suffer that hell.
You’re not writing for the booer’s Elissa, you are writing for the ones whom you will inspire, so forget the rest 🙂
Write for yourself, and yourself alone. If you don’t like it, nobody else will.