For the longest time, I have struggled to be a writer. Unfortunately, for just as long as this, being a writer has been the only thing I was willing to even try to desire. I have never wanted anything else, nor do I want to want something else. Writing is the only thing that has ever mattered to me as a hobby, or passion.
My relationship with writing is complicated. I love it, and I love what it provides the world with as a medium. As a language, and form of expression. It’s one of the oldest forms of art, expression of self, delivery of information, record keeping. No civilization can rise, and none would fall without writing. I admire writing as an entity and way of living life, and those who have figured out the secret language between the pen and the universe. Understanding how you fit into writing as the translator for a higher power, the artist, and your own muse.
These days, I find it hard. Not to tap into the heavens, to feel connected to the stars, my past lives, to feel as if I really know myself. These things come naturally to me. What does not, is devotion. I am so easily distracted. Social media is poison to my writing. It is easy to lose focus.
To allow yourself to sacrifice your devotion to your craft in the name of finding “community” online or “inspiration” for your next novel. The amount of novels I have written entirely in my head whilst making Pinterest boards, rather than typing a single letter is unfortunate.
Then I find myself feeling pathetic. A poser, who lies about her passion for writing. I wonder if I really am a liar. Telling myself I adore writing, when really I am just a talentless girl who will not admit this to herself. It is scary to live in a self proclaimed “meritocracy” where being an artist is a promised career. Even harder when you know how few people truly make it. Being an artist for a living is so rare, at least when it is genuine. The market is so over saturated with musicians, writers, painters, jewelry makers. We are everywhere online. So few of us truly live off of what we make.
Then there is the issue of losing relatability in the wake of success. That success brings stability which brings comfort which brings happiness. Soon, you are no longer relatable, depressed, poetic. You have nothing interesting to say anymore. Then you are a sellout.
To be a successful writer, author, poet, it seems like you must promote your writing, your self, your brand. TikTok, Facebook, YouTube. You must make yourself into a product in order to make any profit from your art. In order to have enough time in the day to create the amount of art you would like, creating art must be your career. In order for art to be your career, you must sell your soul to the internet to make people interested in what you have to sell, like a traveling salesman with a mule pulling a cart of curiosities.
If I don’t want to promote my art as if it’s an as seen on T.V. kitchen gadget, what am I to do? If I admit defeat, and run back to the work force, I lose the free time to create much art at all. This is the skill issue that I fall on, my sword that impales the creative spirit inside me. I know that this is my fault, and my fault alone. I want to live in an artists bubble where I sit and drink tea and write about my miserable worldly woes and hope they speak to people. I want to be remembered for my words, and have people love them.
I know that it comes with time. Everything comes with time. And I need to embrace time outside of my escapist phone addiction to create. But then I can’t get my words out there for people to love if I do not spend time on it.
So, I am in a season of life where I am turning my desire into devotion which in turn becomes self discipline, as it is mixed with want. I am a writer because I am writing, not because I want to be one, because it sounds nice, because it sounds romantic. I have ideas that I want to share, and I have a love for prose, rhythm, language, lyrical musings. I write because I was born with the ability to do.
If there is a childhood bully that has hindered my creative spirit, it is the internet. The internet and the way that it manipulates my mind with its addictive qualities and turns me into someone who has to fight her attention span in order to fulfill an incredible reachable and achievable dream. I can live my dream life, if only I am able to devote myself entirely to it. I have begun training my brain to find what I see online boring, and slowly devaluing.
I have already seen a change in myself. My creative energy is more accessible, and my understanding of self is more clear. Through this, I will become the writer I desire to be, and have already begun doing so. I can have anything I want because anything is possible if other people have it. I know that what I have to say, and what I have to write are valuable and interesting, but only I can prove that.
I wrote the majority of this essay before the “analog” boom on the internet. Every social media platform is plastered, far and wide with the notion that everyone – in pursuit of “whimsy”- has abandoned their old ways of phone addiction, and are aiming to get by with “analog” entertainment. Of course this creates a fallacy, if we were all living as “analog” as we aspire to, we wouldn’t be hearing about it as an internet trend.
However, it has taught me that I am not unique in my suffering.Those who talk about writing, post about writing, and aestheticize writing will always be leagues behind those who are out here writing. It is easy to talk the talk, and writing is a hobby which allows me to feel intellectual. Then I look at the work I have to show for myself and see nothing at all. It’s almost disrespectful to myself.
No, it is disrespectful to myself. There is a vast difference between being in love with being a writer, and being in love with writing. It has taken me a long time to realize and accept that writing is not an aesthetic pursuit, it is a meticulous practice. Sometimes I feel like writing isn’t a part of the arts, but something almost like a science. Medicinal, even. Perhaps it is a love child of all three.
Earlier this year I made a vow unto myself that I would quit engaging with “writertok,” “writertube,” or “writer aesthetic” on Pinterest-dot-gov. If that brought any value into my life, I would be a published novelist by now. From now on, if I feel the urge to watch others write, hoping to consume their productivity through the screen (like the monitoring spirit I am), I will open up a document on my own device and just write.
Photo: Laura Rivera
