I\u2019m not going to name someone here because I don\u2019t want to embarrass them. But also because I think it might apply to you and I\u2019m hoping it does to me.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s about how we see ourselves and how others see us. Let me give you the example that prompted me thinking about this, that prompted me to want to talk to you about it.<\/p>\n
I ran a pair of workshops last Saturday, back to back things all day with mostly the same writers across the two. All sorts of writers, all sorts of experience, but every one of them professionals. And afterwards we got into a topic that for some reason is a recurring one in this job: the discussion over when and whether you can call yourself a writer. <\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know why we have this: maybe it\u2019s an arts thing as perhaps it happens with painters too yet there\u2019s no engineer who\u2019s ever been in doubt what their own job title was. It\u2019s a tough world, there probably isn\u2019t an engineer who hasn\u2019t doubted whether their job would continue, but they knew what it was called. When asked on a form they don\u2019t have heartbeat\u2019s hesitation over what to write as their occupation. Writers do.<\/p>\n
I used to. These days I\u2019ve come to accept that I\u2019m unemployable in any other field.<\/p>\n
But there was this one person on my workshop who was talking about this and about the genuine relief that she\u2019s recently felt able to call herself a writer. There\u2019s a deeper issue here about identity and I think also self-worth but this particular writer saying this particular thing was a jolt.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s not only published, she is a publisher. She has a poetry imprint, she runs events, she runs workshops. Now, to me that\u2019s all writing: she disagrees, she calls them writing-related jobs and of course she\u2019s right but to me it\u2019s all the one thing. You use the same muscles in producing an event as you do writing anything: there\u2019s a lot of actual writing, for one thing, but also you\u2019re communicating, you\u2019re persuading, you\u2019re trying to inform and to do so entertainingly. You\u2019re trying to learn, too, which is a big thing in this lark.<\/p>\n
A year or two ago, a mutual friend asked me to meet with this same writer to tell her how to do a particular thing \u2013 and I laughed. The notion that I could tell her a single thing she\u2019d hadn\u2019t already done and wasn\u2019t already doing. We did meet, we did have tea, I had a good time and fortunately there was something she hadn\u2019t happened to have tried. Or so she said. She may have been being kind.<\/p>\n
But the fact that it\u2019s only recently she has felt able to call herself a writer means she didn\u2019t think it when we met that time. There is absolutely not one single question that she wasn\u2019t a writer then, that she isn\u2019t now: she\u2019s a writer and she\u2019s a pro.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m glad and relieved that she now accepts it but I\u2019ve been thinking about this workshop conversation all week. The disconnection between how she was seeing herself and how I was seeing her. I\u2019ve been going around impressed with her and she\u2019s not seen why.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t exactly a new thought in the world but it resonates me with me this week: if she could be so wrong about how good she is, perhaps we all are. Even you.<\/p>\n
Maybe even me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m not going to name someone here because I don\u2019t want to embarrass them. But also because I think it … Continue reading