You Are Not a Real Writer
March 21, 2018 § 35 Comments
By Vonetta Young
You squirm as you feel the inevitable question bubbling up to the surface whenever you’re around your spouse’s colleagues.
“Are you a lawyer, too?”
You sigh shortly and confess, “No, I’m a writer.”
You still hate saying it because you feel like a Fakey McFakerson every time you do.
“Oh, a writer!” They inevitably exclaim. “What do you write?”
You sigh again. “I write about myself.”
And there it goes: Not only are you a Fakey McFakerson, you’re also a narcissist.
“Would I have read anything you’ve written?”
You blink.
You imagine what they might be thinking since you haven’t responded yet. They might be thinking that you are not a real writer. They are correct.
Real writers don’t panic when their spouse’s colleagues ask what they do.
Real writers don’t have MBAs.
Real writers breathe for the sole purpose of writing.
Real writers enjoy every minute of writing, even the painful bits.
Real writers effortlessly emote and are in touch with their feelings. They are not prone to disassociation.
Real writers don’t let themselves get lured into the shiny darkness of Twitter and Facebook, where they watch nature videos of the smallest cat in Africa catching a bird in her mouth in the dark of night.
Real writers read way more than you do. How the hell do they read so much? Because they stay off the internet.
Real writers don’t need someone to double check every word they’ve written. They’re confident in what they write.
Real writers’ only weakness is that they work too hard. They are perfectionists. They are too honest.
Real writers are white, male alcoholics like Hemingway and Kerouac.
Real writers don’t wonder where they’re going to submit things while they’re writing them. They just write, dammit, because they love it and it’s their calling.
Real writers write every day, even when they don’t feel like they have anything to say.
Real writers always have something to say.
Real writers’ words are edited in the air between their brain and their fingers.
Real writers are quirky and imaginative, not cerebral and realistic.
Real writers don’t question virtually every word they put down on paper.
Real writers love when the sun shines into their windows so bright it physically hurts their eyes.
Real writers use Apple computers.
Real writers are carefree; you are not. Your mother told you so when you were in high school.
Real writers are bold enough to protest and raise their fists and shout.
Real writers make metaphors about making bread, and they…just…work.
Real writers have artist friends.
Real writers do yoga.
Real writers lift weights solely to gain a better understanding of what it means to struggle, as if they weren’t already intimately acquainted with it.
Real writers live in Brooklyn; you lived in Manhattan until you couldn’t cut it, so you left.
Real writers have one childhood home; you had seven.
Real writers were raised by both parents.
You are not a real writer.
But if you’re not a real writer, then who wrote this?
“Maybe,” you finally respond. “Do you read Brevity’s blog?”
___
Vonetta Young is a DC-based writer working on her first memoir. Her essays have been featured in/by Catapult, Ozy, The Billfold, and Levo League. Follow her musings at vonettayoung.com and on Twitter at @VonettaWrites.
Vonetta, this is priceless! Printing out and sharing with all my writing buddies. Thanks for locating and identifying all those squirmy places.
Funny. Relatable. I could tick off many : not reading enough, having seven homes growing home, no published work. And yet: I’m a writer. Without a doubt! Nice post.
Good one. Thanks for sharing.
Reblogged this on e-Quips and commented:
If you write, you are a writer. A published writer–that depends…..
How did you get inside my head??? So funny and relatable. Bravo!
This nicely sums up what I think. I have an MBA. I hate the sun. I don’t do yoga, but think writers do. I use IBM computers. Thanks so much!
I use a Mac, but that may change since the whole point of a Mac was simplicity, and I need a new battery . . . and real writers do not care about technology because they are too busy writing?
I tell people I am an aspiring writer. . . hoping they don’t ask too many questions.
Vonetta, you are my soul sister or a twin I never knew I had. There was not a sentence there to which I didn’t nod my head. Thanks for writing this.
Yes Vonetta, I read the Brevity blog!
Perfect! Especially the MBA bit. I type it into my third person bio, then slowly hit the delete button three times. Then type it all over again.
Yep, this is the work of a real writer. Wonderful! Thanks, Vonetta!
Great piece and totally relatable.
‘Writing is refined thinking.’ We write to think, to make stuff. https://wellsbaum.blog/2018/03/16/stephen-king-writing-is-refined-thinking/
I love this so much! Well done.
Fun stuff – made my morning, now I need to either start writing or head to the golf course, maybe some more social media – oh, the decisions.
Oh my goodness, this is wonderful. Fakey McFerson? Fabulous. I could have written this piece, but maybe not quite so well because I’m not a real writer. You are,Vonetta! My maiden name is Young. Maybe we’re cousins? 😀
Brilliant.
I guess I’m not a real writer either!
Love that ending!
Hurrah!
Totally love this kickass ode to writing!
I smiled with recognition all the way through this — seriously, ear to ear, goofy-happy smiling! Best wishes, Vonetta, on this writing journey.
I am so with you one every inch of your internal dialog. Every time someone asks about my job, I mumble something incoherent about being a writer. They smile and say how awesome that is… all the while a sad pity hides behind their eyes.
I can smell it…
I love this. Thanks! You write for many, many writers.
I’m just starting to view myself as a “writer,” and struggling with so much of this internal dialogue. Also, I just moved (read: survived and escaped) away from Manhattan, so my favorite was: “Real writers live in Brooklyn; you lived in Manhattan until you couldn’t cut it, so you left.” Hah! …Thank you for this!
Fifteen years ago the Commissioner on Aging contacted me to lead a memoir class for older adults in Chicago. Soon afterward, Chicago Public Radio asked if I’d record an essay about the writers who’d signed up. I wrote it, and the WBEZ editor emailed me back saying she didn’t like the word “older” when referring to the adults in class. “Something gentler, perhaps?” she wrote. “How about golden agers?”
I do not research ageism, and I don’t have a degree in aging. I do lead five memoir-writing classes a week now, though, and most of the people in my classes are in their seventies. Two students are in their nineties. I learn a ton listening to these people read their essays out loud in class every week, and I don’t really put much thought into what word to use to describe them any more. I just call them writers.
_____
This is a wonderful list, one I believe most of us can relate to. Thanks for the light touch with a deeper meaning.
You still hate saying it because you feel like a Fakey McFakerson every time you do.
Haha. Love this. The one about reading…well, all of them, quite nearly. I can relate.
[…] I love essays about writing. This one explains why it’s difficult to call yourself a writer. […]
[…] I’ve published two of the short pieces that I’d been toying around with forever, one on Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog and one on […]
I get this! I’ve been writing something almost every day of my life. I need to do it. No-one might ever read it. Ive never had any training. My qualifications are minimal. I’ve never introduced myself as a writer, simply because of the follow-up questions. Will I have read anything you’ve written? Who do you write like? Have you been published? The list is endless.
[…] But then I realized that’s not always my voice. That’s my grief voice, not my work voice, or my impostor syndrome voice, or my bougie Black Millennial […]
[…] “You Are Not a Real Writer,” Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog, March 21, 2018 […]
Real writers grew up in one home, 😂with both parents,
Real writers use apple computers and like to watch the sun, OMG I love this 💯
[…] man who teaches at Ohio State and runs Brevity magazine, one I’ve admired for a long time (and have published in its craft-related blog). He stipulated that our responses to the prompts should be 300 words or […]