Being a Writer

[ljwrites]

Do you find that having a writer's temperament or talent affects your life in other areas, for better or for worse? Here are the ways it's affected me:

- My only real economic value is as a writer. In my day job I keep falling into translation work. It's something I couldn't do if I weren't bilingual, of course, but that's just the bare minimum requirement. I make money with translation because constructing phrases and getting ideas across clearly is what I'm good at, really all I've ever been good at.

- Even when I'm not writing things down I keep exercising the same muscles. I teach subjects that have nothing to do with writing, but my most effective teaching comes from my creative sensibilities, not whatever knowledge I might have. I synthesize, adjust, and add nuance; I use Jon Stewart and V for Vendetta to teach international law concepts because I see the connections, the same way I do when I write.

- I use words as a weapon and a shield, sometimes in terrible wounding ways. I have inadvertently hurt relationships and feelings because of this, usually because I was right in but hurtful ways. It's something I'm working on, because having insight and the words to express it is no excuse to harm people.

- I love words despite their destructive potential (or maybe because of it). I pore over them and chew them over in my mouth. When someone is struggling with a word to use I'm almost always the person to supply them, and they're almost always the right words. This also means I am an inveterate interrupter, something else I am trying to change.

- In the end, I have never had any other ambitions. Looking back, I rather naively got a law degree because I was told I could get the financial security and time to be a writer that way. The results were mixed. I was largely a zombie through higher education--the only times I showed the professional hustle and passion my parents so wanted for me was when I was working on writing projects.

- Even while trying hard not to be a writer, I was writing anyway. I wrote on the backs of used paper, in notebooks that my mother would throw away, on a computer once I learned to use one. I wrote fanfic when I got an internet connection. As I moved up the education ladder and became increasingly confused about where I was going, the times when I wrote were some of the few hours of my day that felt real.

It's not always easy to like this part of myself. I still have a suspicion of artistic types as shifty and untrustworthy, no doubt through the lens of parental disapproval. Surrendering to this strange possession was like relaxing for the first time in my life. I still do my day job, and try to be productive in my stunted way, but I'm better aware of how this writing disease stretches its tentacles into every corner of my life. I've also come to acknowledge that the pages of my own creation are where I truly live, whether I like it or not.

Comments

[inkdust]

I relate to a lot of these points. When my undergrad honors thesis was allowed to fall outside my French major, I finagled my way into writing a fiction manuscript instead of an academic paper, even when the English department wouldn't take it on because I wasn't an English major. I wrote stories or scribbled notes related to stories in every class that could spare my brain from middle school through university. From the age of 12, I delighted in shredding my classmates' papers in peer editing groups. I look back on that, in particular, and realize what a snobby asshole I was about it, but that was where I found my edge in school. Now that I'm trying to figure out my post-student life, all I want to do is write. Spending the majority of my time doing anything else doesn't feel like a life worth living.

Edit: The power of words, too, resonates for me. I fight with them and hide in them, and I'm also the one to fill in people's sentences in a way I'm trying to restrain.

Being a writer is one of those things that just doesn't allow for compartmentalizing. If I weren't a writer, I have no doubt that I would be an utterly different person. And for me, I love this aspect of myself, because I find so much joy in it, and that makes up for the difficulties it can present. I also believe that every trait and similar pervasive skill brings its own challenges. A scientist can't remove that lens from their world any more than I can remove mine. In the end, I'd rather be stuck with this one.

[ljwrites]

You don't know what a relief it is that others had these experiences, too. For the longest time I thought I was just unspeakably weird. I think that was part of the reason (not justification) that I used words as a form of aggression--because I felt so inadequate and odd in other ways, but did have this one thing.

One positive use I've found for my observational and expressive talents was as a means for empathy instead of aggression. The difference between "You control people because you can't control yourself" and "That must be so hard, feeling that you have no control" was small (they're based on the same observation) but tremendous, and I had to undergo a lot of personal growth and soul-searching until I started using the latter more. I still slip up from time to time. I'm an angry person, lol.

I'm so glad you like your writer self. It gives me hope that I can do the same, and I think I'm getting there.

[inkdust]

You're not alone at all. That's one of the reasons I was so glad this community was starting up, because in spite of how different individual writers can be, we often find significant things in common just by being writers. And being a writer can be very isolating otherwise.

It's very interesting to me how certain things may be observed but are better kept to oneself or must be carefully phrased to frame the observation in a different way. We value honesty above many qualities, but we're also remarkably sensitive creatures. Actually one of the most insightful chapters on writing characters that I've ever read talked about how people don't change until it's too painful to remain the same. I think about that fairly often.

[sarillia]

Part of me feels like I relate more to being a storyteller than a writer but then another part remembers how important words are to me. When a friend was mad at me and fed up with my pedantry about language, the insult he came up with was "semantic whore". Which just made me laugh because I couldn't deny his complaints. Anyway, I do love finding just the right words to create the effect I'm looking for and that carries through to everything I do.

But stories are just as important to me as the words that build them. I'm constantly daydreaming about fictional people and cannibalizing bits and pieces from other media to come up with new stories. When I was at school, all my classes were potential story fodder. Anthropology gave me ideas for different kinds of fantasy societies and philosophy gave me interesting conflicts for characters to deal with.

[ljwrites]

Good point about the distinction between writer and storyteller. I think the latter is the core, really, unless you have particular stylistic ambitions. I'm reminded of this quote:

"If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write."
- Somerset Maugham

But of course, words are necessary in most cases to tell a story, give a clear image of a character, get incidents across and so on. So the division isn't clear-cut, but overall I would agree with Maugham it's a good idea to put words in the service of story and not treat them as ends in themselves.

"semantic whore"

Haha, better than "grammar Nazi," I guess?

I get all sorts of material from reading and classes, too. Politics are particularly fertile grounds for me, because I love the many levels of conflict, internal, interpersonal, and social, generated by a political clash. And increasingly I'm interested in the cultural context characters come from, all the more because the more people's differences are illuminated the more sharply universal themes come into view.

[splinteredstar]

Apparently half of what got me my current job was my history with tutoring English. Engineers are great at numbers and pictures, not so great at things like... commas. Or phrasing. Or not using "present" as the verb in nine sentences in a row and have it work particularly well in /any/ of them. I'm able to communicate effectively, and that makes me useful.

As for the temperament? Hmm. Stories and writing are how I deal with my own brain. My brain is only barely under my own control at the best of times, and it's much easier for me to sort out my thoughts when I have some way of...taking them out of my head. By talking (I think out loud a lot, which probably confuses my roommates) or by writing. It helps. Keeps them in order, helps me trace the thoughts and remember why things matter. Makes them...real.

Besides, sometimes the inside of my head is /exhausting/. So it's easier and safer in someone else's life, where things turn out for the better in the end and struggles are worthwhile - and most importantly, it's all a step removed, where it's safe and I can deal with it.

...besides, my fingers itch when I don't write, and my dreams start developing plotlines.

[ljwrites]

Engineers are great at numbers and pictures, not so great at things like... commas.

I've noticed this about artists, too. Left brain/right brain discrepancy, maybe? I'm the other way around--a stickler for writing and expression but can't draw to save my life, have trouble visualizing spaces, lose my direction all the time. I'm looking for ways to develop my right brain because my development is so lopsided (or left-sided, in my case).

it's much easier for me to sort out my thoughts when I have some way of...taking them out of my head.

Me, too! I would get so seized up with a story and the only thing that helps is to write it down, or rather write it out of my head so I can free up space for other things.

...besides, my fingers itch when I don't write

This, so much.

[inkdust]

Stories and writing are how I deal with my own brain.

I feel similarly, though I tend to view myself as using stories to deal with the world as a whole. The way I'm constantly visualizing scenes in my head started to make sense to me when I conceptualized it as my coping mechanism when the rest of the world is either too much to handle or not enough to satisfy. It can either create distance or add depth and meaning, and often does both. I haven't always written consistently, but I don't have any memory of the inside of my head without other people moving around in it.

[splinteredstar]

Every now and then (usually as a function of emotional exhaustion) my brain will go quiet and empty, without the faint pulse of Story ticking away. It's not that I can't make the scenes in my head work, it's just that I don't have any there.

It's always a very surreal experience, like my hearing has been turned off. But it is, thankfully, temporary.