Permission
“Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.” Virginia Woolf
I think the question of permission often arises around NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month - when people who have long wanted to write a novel are encouraged to give it a try, and NaNoWriMo hardened veterans aim for ever higher daily wordcounts.
Am I writer? What does it take to be a writer? Do I have to be published before I can claim to be a writer?
There are all kinds of issues wrapped up in this one.
One of the most pernicious, I think, is that we are (many of us) brought up to think that we are not really allowed to do anything just for ourselves, just for fun. Or at least, we are not supposed to take it seriously, if we do. ‘It’s just a hobby’ basically means you’re not supposed to invest much in it - not much time, and certainly not much in the way of money. If someone else wants something of you - then that must come first. Anything else would be selfish.
When we are children everything - even play - is seen as a form of preparatory work for becoming a grown up person, who has to live in the so-called real world.
I do understand this impulse not to lay claim to the word writer. I’ve only been able to do it very recently myself. Even when my first novel was published in 2016, I said to myself, well, it’s good but it’s only been published by a small independent press. I’m not a real writer yet.
It does feel better, having external validation, I have to admit. So two small presses have published my novels. I’ve had a story shortlisted for the Asham Prize, a short memoir shortlisted by Fish, and my full length memoir was shortlisted by the Black Spring Press in their Best of the Bottom Drawer competition.
But still, as I started sending out my third novel to agents last week, I look at my paragraph detailing all this, which shows at least some level of skill and a hell of a lot of persistence, and I feel a bit ashamed. It should look better than that by now, I should have started sooner… all these thoughts pass through my mind.
I know now that most writers feel this way. Even brilliant ones, like Neil Gaiman
Even Neil Armstrong! Who knew astronauts could feel like imposters?
We also should consider the Ira Glass (This American Life) theory of the GAP
Looking back, I had only been a reader for a very short time when I first wanted to be a writer. I remember flipping through the little book at Brownies that detailed all the different badges it was possible to earn. All of us were forced to do the Homemakers Badge, as taught by Mrs Brown, the poshest of the chapel ladies. I remember lighting the gas cooker for the first time - we had electric. And I remember dusting the books on her bookshelves - it was all a bit of a scam really, now I come to think about it. Although having one’s housework done by a group of inept kids in brown uniforms seems more loss than gain. And I should say, she was kind to me when she found me reading, rather than dusting the books. And she often brought me contraband books to the chapel jumble sale.
I asked to do the writer’s badge and wouldn’t back down, so there was a kerfuffle while they sorted out someone to judge. Unfortunately it was Mr Chantler, my primary school headmaster, of whom I was terrified. This led to my first case of writer’s block - which I eventually overcame, writing a daft fairy story.
I didn’t think I was a writer, even when I had a badge.
I wrote a short adventure story and sent it off to my favourite writer when I was ten, Malcolm Saville. He wrote back to me and encouraged me to carry on writing - how I wish I still had that letter!
I was a writer when I wrote a short pantomime based on the King Arthur stories, with the Lady in the Lake eating a Ripple chocolate bar and being too lazy to bother with the sword.
In my teens I wrote a Jane Bond story. I also wrote lots of short stories based on those of H E Bates and Angus Wilson - when I was much too young and inexperienced to have a clue what these stories were about - long before I understood that I should be developing my own voice and writing from my own experience.
I wrote the opening of a historical novel set during the Peasant’s Revolt.
I wrote some god-awful poems for the school magazine - because I was on the editorial board and there was space to fill and a lot of short lines was easier. They were excruciatingly embarrassing - I think I still have a couple somewhere.
In my late teens, I wrote the beginning of a story about a Goddess who was wandering the earth and somewhat disappointed with her mortal lovers, who felt quite relieved when they died off and she got another chance to find someone who didn’t bore her witless. I’m almost tempted to give that one another go - it was the first thing I wrote which is recognisably in my voice.
I carried on writing - journals and stories and never quite getting anywhere, knowing so little about the writing game that even when editors wrote back and encouraged me I didn’t recognise it.
I never, in all that time, thought of myself as a writer.
Yet, always I was writing. However badly.
Maybe a more useful way to look at it can be found in Oliver Burkeman’s latest piece in The Imperfectionist - We Are All (Still) Winging It
“But the absence of solid ground is also deeply freeing. Because if there's no solid ground… well, it means you don't need to beat yourself up for having failed to scramble onto it yet. And it means you don't need to wait until you can feel it under your feet before you turn to the things that matter to you most.”
Oliver Burkeman
I really like this conclusion. It’s not imposter syndrome if nearly everyone feels the same way.
Writers WRITE!
That’s all.
So, yes. I was a writer when I wrote a fairy story for that Brownie Writer’s Badge, and when I wrote an adventure story and sent it to Malcolm Saville, and when I wrote a Jane Bond story as a teenager…
So give yourself permission to be a writer. Maybe, like me, you’ve always written but for whatever reason, you didn’t think it counted. Maybe you have always wanted to write, but didn’t have the courage, or the time.
If you can’t quite give yourself permission - well, then, I give you permission.
Go. Write!
Ann
If you would like some editorial help with your novel draft. please do get in touch and we can have a chat. Check out my Facebook Page, at The Accomplice and message me there for more details, or get in touch through my substack email.
Bonus Link
Just one this week, from the Austin Kleon newsletter
Ray Bradbury’s thousand day plan to become more creative
I particularly like this quotation from Kleon’s piece
“It is my contention that in order to Keep a Muse,” he wrote, “you must first offer food…. If we are going to diet our subconscious, how prepare the menu?”
One thing he emphasizes is that you shouldn’t just feed on what you think you should feed on, but what’s most delicious and what really nourishes you.
“I have fed my Muse on equal parts of trash and treasure,” he wrote, and that often included “comic strips, TV shows, books, magazines, newspapers, plays, and films.”
He said that nothing is lost and you must resist the urge to throw out things that meant so much to you when you were younger.
What is most important, he writes, is “the continual running after loves.”
“The constant remains: the search, the finding, the admiration, the love, the honest response to the materials at hand, no matter how shabby they one day seem, when looked back on.”
This also reminds me of Alan Garner, who has turned back to childhood comics when writing his latest book.
There’s a lot of vital energy in those things we loved as children.
I hope you revisit that early idea about the Goddess wandering the Earth. It sounds fabulous!