Growing
Into My Own
Alex
Beauchamp
workshops
Play With
Your Words
Writing Workshop
Magic Money
in issue seven
Scintillations
Alice Springs
Putting Off Trust
She
What Do I Know
About Trust?
Growing Into My Own
Bits of Trust
Slowing Down
Death of a Season
Trust Me, I Was Told
Servicemen’s
Camaraderie
Moody Girl
On Faith
Letters To My
Younger Self
photography
Leaves
Anna Giabanidis
Lemon Chillin
Brian Mayden
Steering Wheel
Julie Russell
Cover Outtakes
Scott Carlisle
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Issue
Eight: Power
Issue Nine: Humor
It’s time to weed out my book collection, which
has grown by leaps and bounds this past year. It’s time to
choose which books I want to keep and which ones will be sold
to the second-hand bookstore down the street. Most of the
books I decided to sell were the ones that were so crucial and
biblical to me last year when I began my journey from
corporate dropout to freelance writer. They are the books on
how to write.
When I first began to write for a living, I
wasn’t sure of the steps I needed to take to be a writer,
sell my work, and make money. I believed there had to be a
right way to write and a wrong way to write just like in my
corporate days, when there were certain times I showed up to
work, certain times I took lunch, specific ways I could write
reports, and specific ways I could take notes.
At first, I needed direction, badly. I was certain
that I didn’t know the right way to go about “being a
writer.” I was so insecure and needed reassurance that I
looked to experienced writers to tell me how to successfully
be a writer. And so, my trips to bookstores became less for
pleasure and more for work. I became obsessed with
biographies, how to’s and self help books on writing. I dug
endlessly around bookstore shelves for answers.
One of the first books I read on writing was Julia
Cameron's book The Artist's Way. In her book, she
suggests writing three pages about anything on large blank
sheets of paper each morning. Her idea was planted into my
brain as a sure fire way to help me grow as a writer and so
each morning I began to write my “morning pages.”
I was a dedicated morning page writer for two days
until I failed because trying to write three blank pages at 8AM
did not work for me.
When I heard a famous writer declare that she broke
for tea at 9AM every morning, so did I, until I realised that
I much prefer a cup at 3PM.
After hearing the success of first time author J.
K. Rowling, I immediately researched how she wrote I found that
she kept notes in several large blank books at a time. I
bought a dozen. She also mentioned how she wrote almost every
page of her novels in a café. I had to try this also; despite
the fact I know I write better in solitude. I was afraid my
writing wouldn’t be as good as hers if I couldn’t hack the
romance of writing in a cafe.
Any author who gave advice on writing, I would take
it. I thought if they were able to write a book about it, they
had to know how to do it the right way, and the only way I could be
a writer was if I wrote just like them. Instead of trying to
find my own voice, I listened to those of others, which made
me feel less like a writer and more of copycat.
I couldn’t write with glitter pens, I couldn’t
write in bed, I couldn’t write in cafés and I couldn’t
write three large pages about nothing every day.
I began to feel like a failure because none of the
methods of published writers fit me.
After eight months of little writing and lots of
frustration I threw my hands in the air and tossed all the
books to the back of the closet and gave up on trying to fit
some image that I felt I couldn’t be.
When I did that, a strange thing happened. I
started to find a process that fit me – my own.
I wrote as I needed to – in front of a computer
screen, in silence with a small idea budding in my mind. I
would begin to type out my thoughts out and nurture them along
until they grew into words that would become an article. Then
I would submit the article to magazines and to my surprise,
some of my articles were accepted for publication.
By simply writing as I needed to, doing what works
for me, and seeing results from doing that, I was able to stop
feeling as though I was doing it all wrong, but in fact, doing
something right.
The more I worked, the more comfortable I became
with how I worked. And slowly I realised that the simplest,
easiest way to “officially” be a writer was just to write.
Despite the fact I had been brave enough last April
to declare myself a writer and leave my corporate job to
pursue writing full time, I had been so insecure in the
beginning that I forgot to trust myself enough to know how to
write. The schedule I currently keep isn’t found in any
book. I start around 8am and finish up around 4pm. I break for
tea at 3 o’clock without fail, and I actually take weekends
off. I scribble haphazardly in fifteen million different
notebooks – some blank, some with lines, some cheap, and
some coloured marvelously.
I don’t do morning pages and I stay out of cafés
except for late night dates with my husband.
So now, the books that were so vital to me in the beginning will be finding a new home this weekend. They weren’t all bad, but I know it’s best for me to use these books for ideas, but not as gospel. Because the answers I seek, the reassurance I need, and bravery I crave will never be found by following someone else’s methods. Only mine.
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